OPTICAL OBJECTS IN THE KUNSTKAMMER: LUCAS BRUNN AND THE COURTLY DISPLAY OF KNOWLEDGE

Sven Dupré and Michael Korey*

Introduction

The museum situation that we see today in Dresden is the consequence of a radical reorganization of the Saxon court collections by Friedrich August I (August the Strong) in the 1720s.1 One of the steps in this restructuring was the formation of a distinct, specialized collection of scientifi c instruments, which is the basis of the Mathematisch- Physikalischer Salon. This reorganization effectively ended two centuries’ development of the Kunstkammer,2 the vast early modern collection in Saxony thought to have been founded around 1560 by Elector August.3 It was principally in the context of this Kunstkammer that ‘scientifi c instruments’ were collected in Dresden in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. We will sketch the evolution of the Dresden Kunstkammer

* The research of the fi rst author has been made possible by the award of a post- doctoral fellowship and a research grant of the Research Foundation—Flanders. 1 On this reorganization of the collections, see Dirk Syndram, Die Schatzkammer Augusts des Starken. Von der Pretiosensammlung zum Grünen Gewölbe, Dresden-Leipzig, 1999, and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden: From to , New York, Palgrave, 2002, ch. 7. 2 Even after its reorganization under August the Strong, a truncated torso of the Kunstkammer in fact continued to be displayed—including a gallery of fi ne clocks and automata—until its fi nal dissolution in 1832. Many of the remaining items were then absorbed into several other Dresden court collections: the Grünes Gewölbe (), the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, and the Historisches Museum, now once again known as the Rüstkammer (Armoury). See Rudolf Berge, “Das Schicksal der Dresdner Kunstkammer. Zu ihrer Aufl ösung vor hundert Jahren”, Wissenschaftliche Beilage des Dresdner Anzeigers 10, No. 1 ( January 3, 1933), pp. 1–3. 3 On the founding of the Kunstkammer and earlier collecting in Dresden, see most recently Dirk Syndram, “Über den Ursprung der kursächsischen Kunstkammer,” in Die Dresdner Kunstsammlungen in fünf Jahrhunderten (Dresdner Hefte. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte, Sonderausgabe), Dresden, Dresdner Geschichtsverein e.V., 2004, pp. 3–13; and also Dirk Syndram, “Princely Diversion and Courtly Display. The Kunstkammer and Dresden’s Renaissance Collections,” in Dirk Syndram, Antje Scherner eds., Princely Splendor. The Dresden Court, 1580–1620 (exhibition catalogue, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Metropolitan Museum of Art), Milan, Electa, 2004, pp. 54–69. 62 sven dupré and michael korey and the role of such instruments in this collection, with a focus on the optical objects—primarily mirrors, eyeglasses, and telescopes. On the basis of an analysis of the successive inventories we will reconstruct how these instruments travelled through the collection, especially between 1590 and 1640. We intend to show how their movement within the Kunstkammer interacted with the evolution of ideas in Dresden about what a court collection should be. We will also stress the role of Lucas Brunn (ca. 1575–1628), court mathematician and curator of the Dresden collection, in the organization of the objects under his care. In tracing the movement of optical objects and the role of their mathematically trained curator, our aim is to show that contemporary optical knowl- edge circulating at the Dresden court infl uenced the entrance, exit, and display of the optical objects in the collection.

‘Scientifi c Instruments’ in the Dresden Kunstkammer

The Kunstkammer was initially housed in seven rooms within the Palace in Dresden, just beneath the workshop of the court turner and (at least from 1586 on) adjacent to the electoral library (Figs. 1 and 2).4 Its fi rst inventory was compiled in 1587, only a year after the death of the founder of the collection, Elector August, by its custodian David Usslaub. The most important room of the Kunstkammer, the “Reiß Cammer und kleines Gemach” or “small drafting room”, was listed fi rst in the inventory, though it was neither the largest room nor the point of entry. It held—besides a miscellaneous group of gifts from other courts and a small number of pictures, among which many were also gifts—a considerable collection of mathematical instruments.5 Most of these

4 For a good general overview of the localization and organization of the Dresden Kunstkammer (to which our account is highly indebted), see Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 71–99. 5 Inventar 1587, fols. 1–88 (Room 1) und fols. 89–219 (Room 2). For brevity, the fi ve full pre-1700 inventories of the electoral Kunstkammer in Dresden will be referred to here simply by the year of their creation: Inventar 1587, Inventar 1595, Inventar 1610, Inventar 1619, or Inventar 1640; these correspond to Nr. 1, 3, 4, 7, and 9, respectively, in Elfriede Lieber, Verzeichnis der Inventare der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 1979. The actual title of the earliest inventory from 1587, for example, is “Inuentarium vber des Churfürsten zu Sachsenn vnd Burggrauen zu Magdeburgk [. . .] Kunst-Cammernn im [. . .] Schloß vnd Vehstunge zu Dreßden: Wie desselben Vornheme Sachen, Kunststücke vnd zugehorhiger Vorradt iedes besondern Sortirt vnd Ordinirt wordenn vnd nachvolgendenn Orten zu