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Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature van de Roemer, B.

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Bert van de Roemer explores the curiosity cabinet of the Dutch collector Levinus Vincent and how the aesthetic FOLLOW US ON: drive behind his meticulous ordering of the contents FOLLOW US ON: was in essence religious, an attempt to emphasise the wonder of God’s creations by restoring the natural world to its prelapsarian harmony. A project of: “Magnificent… A model of digital curation.” The Guardian

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Detail from a print featured in the first part of Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature – Source.

he cabinet of curiosities of the collector Levinus Vincent (1658-1727) was known as one of the Dr Mitchill and finest and most remarkable in the Dutch Republic the Mathematical T during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tetrodon A visitor once stated that, in the same way that nobody When the Birds One of the early and the Bees Republic's great would believe you could visit Rome without seeing the Were Not polymaths, New Yorker pope, so nobody would believe you‘d visited Amsterdam Samuel L. Mitchill was Enough: a man with a finger in without seeing Vincent’s collection. Vincent himself called Aristotle’s many a pie, including his collection a “Wonder Theatre of Nature” Masterpiece medicine, science, natural history, and (Wondertooneel der Nature). The collection comprised of Mary Fissell on how a wildly popular sex politics. Dr Kevin Dann eight cabinets containing, among other things: 600 phials argues that Mitchill's manual - first published peculiar brand of of animal cadavers in spirits, 288 boxes of indigenous and in 17th-century London and reprinted in curiosity can best be exotic insects, 32 drawers of shells and crustaceans, 14 seen in his study of fish hundreds of subsequent and the attention he drawers of minerals and fossils, and a cabinet with a editions - both taught gives one seemingly and titilated through the unassuming specimen. woodland-like scene created from different kinds of corals early modern period and …Continued and sponges. beyond. …Continued

Though the sheer volume and variety of exotic and

http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

marvellous objects on display played a key part in the fame of Vincent’s collection, it was also the unique manner in which these objects were presented which made the collection so special. Indeed, a German visitor, the scholar and bibliophile Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Cat Pianos, The Nightwalker Sound-Houses, wondered what was cause for more astonishment, the and the Nocturnal and Other objects themselves or the novel manner of their Picaresque Imaginary presentation. Through various prints Vincent had made of The introduction of Musical street lighting to 17th- his cabinets we can see just what so impressed its visitors century London saw an Instruments and the enormous effort that Vincent and his wife Joanna explosion of nocturnal Deirdre Loughridge and activity in the capital, Thomas Patteson, van Breda must have taken in arranging their precious most of it centring curators of the Museum around the selling of of Imaginary Musical collectables. sex. Matthew Beaumont Instruments, explore the explores how some wonderful history of Earlier collections of the sixteenth and seventeenth writers, with the made-up musical centuries usually displayed a heterogeneous assemblage intention of contraptions, including condemning these a piano comprised of based on the accumulation of individual objects, all nefarious goings-on, yelping cats and Francis took to the city's streets Bacon's 17th-century juxtaposed in such a way as to emphasise variety, after dark, and in the vision of experimental abundance and contrast. In the late seventeenth and early process gave birth to a sound manipulation. … peculiar new literary Continued eighteenth centuries, however, a new tendency of ordering genre. …Continued began to gain favour. Collectors were focused more on the

overall composition of their collection as a totality, paying particular attention to the proportional and aesthetic harmony between the individual objects. More and more the abundance of nature became subject to a mathematical and symmetrical ordering. The cabinets of Vincent, so

The Empathetic painstakingly arranged by himself and his wife Joanna van Scurvy and the Camera: Frank Breda, were at the forefront of this movement and the Terra Incognita Norris and the example par excellence of such a style. One remarkable Invention of Film symptom of scurvy, that Editing constant bane of the Age of Discovery, was At the heart of the acute and morbid American author Frank heightening of the Norris' gritty turn-of- senses. Jonathan Lamb the-century fiction lies explores how this an essential engagement unusual effect of sailing with the everyday shock into uncharted territory and violence of echoed a different kind modernity. Henry of voyage, one Giardina explores how undertaken by the this focus, combined Empiricists through with his unique their experiments in approach to storytelling, enhancing the senses helped to pave the way artificially. … for a truly filmic style. Continued …Continued http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

Black on Black Ignorant Armies: Private Snafu Should we consider Goes to War black a colour, the absence of colour or a Between 1943 and suspension of vision 1945, with the help of produced by a Warner Bros.' finest, the deprivation of light? U.S. Army produced a Beginning with Robert The frontispiece to Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature – Source. series of 27 propaganda Fludd's attempt to cartoons depicting the picture nothingness, calamitous adventures Eugene Thacker The great importance that such an aesthetic ordering played of Private Snafu. Mark reflects* on some of the in Vincent’s cabinet is shown in the frontispiece he had David Kaufman ways in which explores the blackness has been used designed for his small catalogue, Wondertooneel der overarching theme of and thought about Nature, published in 1706. In the background of the image containment and how through the history of one film inadvertently art and philosophical there stretches out a hall with eight symmetrically placed let slip one of the war's thought. …Continued greatest secrets. … cabinets. The foreground reveals allegorical figures that Continued tell the viewer about various aspects of collecting. The figure on the far left represents the Explorer. He holds a net to collect insects, fishes and other small animals, and the zodiac around his shoulders shows that his inquisitive mind should have no limits. He is shown peering under the exquisitely embroidered garment of the figure next to him, Sex and Science in who represents Nature, here depicted as the many breasted Robert When Chocolate goddess Isis with a city wall crown on her head and a globe Thornton’s was Medicine: Temple of Flora under her arm. The Explorer, ever curious, is investigating Colmenero, Wadsworth and http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

Bridal beds, blushing what Nature has to offer. To the right of Nature sits the Dufour captives, and swollen personification of Seafaring with oar in hand and a shell on trunks - Carl Linnaeus' Chocolate has not taxonomy of plants her head under which flows her hair as waves of the sea. always been the heralded a whole new She represents the possibility given to Dutch collectors to common confectionary era in 18th-century we experience today. Europe of plants being be able to collect such exquisite exotica from the East and When it arrived from spoken of in sexualised the Americas into terms. Martin Kemp the West. At the far right of the picture is a reclining figure Europe in the 17th explores how this holding a letter, a caduceus and a jar containing a lizard. century it was a rare and association between the mysterious substance, floral and erotic reached Behind her ear sits a writing pen. She represents the thought more of as a its visual zenith in Enthusiast or the Collector, describing and noting down drug than as a food. Robert Thornton's Christine Jones traces exquisitely illustrated everything she observes and communicating this with her the history and literature Temple of Flora. … fellow collectors and enthusiasts. of its reception. … Continued Continued

Illustrations of The Poet, the Madness: James Physician and the Tilly Matthews Birth of the and the Air Loom Modern Vampire Mike Jay recounts the From that famed night tragic story of James of ghost-stories in a Tilly Matthews, a Lake Geneva villa in former peace activist of 1816, as well as the Napoleonic Wars Frankenstein's monster, who was confined to there arose that other London's notorious great figure of 19th- Bedlam asylum in 1797 century gothic fiction - for believing that his the Vampire - a creation mind was under the of Lord Byron's control of the "Air personal physician John Loom" - a terrifying Polidiri. Andrew machine whose McConnell Stott mesmeric rays and explores how a fractious mysterious gases were Detail from the frontispiece to Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature, relationship between brainwashing politicians showing the Explorer having a sneaky peek at what Nature has to offer – Polidiri and his poet and plunging Europe Source. employer lies behind into revolution, terror, the tale, with Lord and war. …Continued Byron himself With respect to this new method of harmonious and providing a model for the blood-sucking aesthetic ordering, the sculpted group in the background at aristocratic figure of the the very back of the hall between the cabinets is legend we are familiar with today. … particularly significant. The woman in the middle is Continued described as a ‘swift nymph’ who is responsible for the

good order of the collection; the beehive in her hands

expresses that her busy efforts can be compared with the “O, Excellent Air Bag”: Humphry indefatigable work of the bees, constantly storing honey in Davy and Nitrous the ‘remarkable structure’ of wax cells. The nymph is Oxide assisted by two putti, named ‘Pattern’ and ‘Adornment’. The summer of 1799 The former holds a compass and a set square and takes care saw a new fad take hold Picturing in one remarkable circle of the harmonious layout of the ground-plans, the latter Pyrotechnics of British society: the inhalation of "Laughing holds a peacock’s tail and a drawing and sees to it that the Simon Werrett explores Gas". The overseer and vertical elevations of the cupboards make for a splendorous how artists through the pioneer of these ages have responded to experiments was a and magnificent sight. the challenge of young Humphry Davy, representing firework future President of the displays, from the Royal Society. Mike highly politicised and Jay explores how allegorical renderings of Davy's extreme and the early modern period near-fatal regime of to Whistler's self-experimentation impressionistic with the gas not only Nocturne in Black and marked a new era in the Gold. …Continued history of science but a turn toward the philosophical and literary romanticism of the century to come. … Continued

In the Image of God: John Comenius and the First Children’s Picture Book The Naturalist and In the mid 17th-century the Neurologist: John Comenius On Charles published what many consider to be the first Darwin and picture book dedicated James Crichton- Detail from the frontispiece to Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature, to the education of Browne showing the sculpted group at the very back of the hall, the nymph young children, Orbis Sensualium Pictus - or Stassa Edwards assisted by her two putti, Pattern and Adornment – Source. The World of Things explores Charles Obvious to the Senses Darwin's photography drawn in Pictures, as it collection, which The end results of this expert ordering become apparent in was rendered in included almost forty the seven prints of the separate cabinets shown in the English. Charles portraits of mental McNamara explores patients given to him by second part of the catalogue. A closer look at these will how, contrary to http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

the neurologist James show how Vincent and Joanna varied in different modes of Comenius' declarations, Crichton-Browne. The the book can be seen to study of these display, but were both consistent in their desire for be as much about the photographs, and the harmonic proportion. For instance, Vincent possessed two invisible world as the related correspondence visible. …Continued between the two men, large cupboards of which the upper halves comprised five would prove instrumental in the shelves filled with phials containing animals suspended in development of The spirits, including remoras, swordfish, snakes, toucans, Expression of the Emotions in Man and sloths, opossums, chameleons, crocodiles and even some Animals (1872), human embryos. The space between the shelves Darwin's study on the evolution of emotions. diminished gradually on each higher level and Vincent …Continued gives, like all of his other drawers and cupboards, the exact Victorian measurements in his catalogue. Each shelf was divided into Occultism and the thirteen compartments by delicately turned pillars and each Art of Synesthesia compartment contained one large phial flanked by two Grounded in the theory smaller ones. When looking at these prints, comparison that ideas, emotions, and even events, can with the bees in their beehive seems certainly apt. The manifest as visible cupboards presented an elegant harmonic spectacle in auras, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater’s Darkness Over which proportional and geometric order ruled. Thought-Forms (1901) All: John Robison is an odd and intriguing and the Birth of work. Benjamin Breen the Illuminati explores these Conspiracy “synesthetic” abstractions and asks to Conspiracy theories of a what extent they, and secretive power elite the Victorian mysticism seeking global of which they were domination have long born, influenced the held a place in the Modernist movement modern imagination. that flourished in the Mike Jay explores the following decades. … idea’s beginnings in the Continued writings of John Robison, a Scottish scientist who maintained that the French revolution was the work of a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati. … Continued

Encounter at the crossroads of Europe – the fellowship of Zweig and Verhaeren Stefan Zweig, whose Frederik Ruysch: works passed into the public domain this year The Artist of http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

in many countries Death around the world, was Luuc Kooijmans one of the most famous explores the work of writers of the 1920s and Print featured in Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature – Source. Dutch anatomist 30s. Will Stone Frederik Ruysch, explores the importance known for his of the Austrian's early remarkable ‘still life’ friendship with the oft displays which blurred overlooked Belgian the boundary between poet Emile Verhaeren. scientific preservation …Continued and vanitas art. … Continued

The Serious and the Smirk: The Lost in Smile in Translation: Portraiture Proust and Scott Why do we so seldom Moncrieff see people smiling in http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

Scott Moncrieff's painted portraits? English translation of Nicholas Jeeves Proust's A la recherche explores the history of the smile through the du temps perdu is Detail from above, showing phials containing animals suspended in widely hailed as a ages of portraiture, from spirits, each shelf separated by the delicately turned pillars – Source masterpiece in its own Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa right. His rendering of to Alexander Gardner’s photographs of the title as Another, more stylized mode of display, can be seen in the Remembrance of Things Abraham Lincoln. Past …Continued is not, cabinet containing insects, eggs and dried animals. In this Today when someone points a camera at us, however, considered a print, one of the drawers with insects is turned on its side to high point. William C. we smile. This is the Carter explores the two show its contents to the beholder. The butterflies, beetles cultural …Continued men's correspondence on this somewhat sticky and flies are arranged in decorative patterns of symmetrical issue and how the curls and loops. The countless individual specimens form Shakespearean title missed the mark the tesserae by which the grander form is built. In his regarding Proust's description Vincent stresses that every insect was placed theory of memory. according to their colour, size and design in relation to the adjacent specimen, but also with consideration of the total design that, according to Vincent, resembled pieces of Robert Baden- embroidery: ‘a work that is impossible to represent in Powell’s Entomological words or images’. Looking at the print we can only wonder Intrigues what the effect would have been like in real life with all the In 1915 Robert Baden- shining and brilliant colours of the insects still present. Powell, founder of the The Lost World of worldwide Scouts Vincent told a German visitor, who compared the drawers the London movement, published with delightful tapestries, that tsar Peter the Great took to his DIY guide to Coffeehouse espionage, My In contrast to today’s his knees before this cabinet to take a closer look, a posture Adventures as a Spy. rather mundane spawn that was later interpreted to be an act of praise. Mark Kaufman explores of coffeehouse chains, how the book’s ideas to the London of the 17th utilise such natural

and 18th century was objects as butterflies, home to an eclectic and moths and leaves, thriving coffee drinking worked to mythologize scene. Dr Matthew British resourcefulness Green explores the and promote a certain halcyon days of the ‘weaponization of the London coffeehouse, a …Continued haven for caffeine- fueled debate and innovation which helped to shape … Continued

Vesalius and the Body Metaphor City streets, a winepress, pulleys, As a Lute out of spinning tops, a ray fish, curdled milk: just a Tune: Robert few of the many images Burton’s used by 16th century Melancholy anatomist Andreas Vesalius to explain the In 1621 Robert Burton workings of the human first published his body in his seminal masterpiece The work De Humani Anatomy of Corporis Fabrica. Marri Melancholy, a vast feat Lynn explores. Andreas of scholarship Vesalius threw down a examining in …Continued encyclopaedic detail that most enigmatic of Print featured in Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature – Source. maladies. Noga Arikha explores the book, said to be the favorite of both Samuel Johnson and Keats, and places it within the context of the …Continued

Still Booking on De Quincey’s Mail-Coach Robin Jarvis looks at Thomas de Quincey’s essay “The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion” and Mary Toft and Detail from above, showing the butterflies, beetles and flies arranged in how its meditation on Her decorative patterns of symmetrical curls and loops, reminiscent of the technology and society Extraordinary fabric patterns that Vincent would have worked with on a day to day is just as relevant today Delivery of basis – Source as when first published Rabbits in 1849. In the last quarter of 1849 Thomas

In late 1726 much of The pride of the collection was a cabinet containing 68 De Quincey published Britain was caught up in two separate essays in the curious case of drawers with 288 boxes of insects and some small birds. Blackwood’s … Mary Toft, a woman Vincent stresses that the collectables here were submitted Continued from Surrey who claimed that she had to an ‘extraordinary regular order’. As science historian given birth to a litter of rabbits. Niki Russell Emma Spary has pointed out in her article “Scientific tells of the events of an Symmetries”, the print shows a deliberate juxtaposition of elaborate 18th century hoax which had King the boundless variety of nature with the strict ordering George I’s own … practices of the collector. She discerns three tiers. In the Continued upper part we see three columns of drawers, showing the ‘order imposed by the human possessor’ and expressing Trüth, Beaüty, and the ‘classificatory principles used by the naturalist’. The Volapük Arika Okrent explores upright drawers in the lower half presenting their contents the rise and fall of show how the ‘strong contrasts in form and pattern’ of the Volapük – a universal language created in the insects were subjected to a ‘bilateral symmetry in late 19th century by a ordering’. On the ground, the third tier, we see specimens German priest called Athanasius, Johann Schleyer. ‘placed completely at random, even, apparently, escaping Underground Johann Schleyer was a the frame of the picture’. They show the boundless and German priest whose With his enormous irrational passion for range of scholarly disordered state in which nature presents herself, and umlauts may have been pursuits the 17th which man could bring into better, more organized states his undoing. During one century polymath sleepless night in 1879, Athanasius Kircher has through his intellectual and artistic capacities. he felt …Continued been hailed as the last Renaissance man and “the master of hundred arts”. John Glassie looks at one of Kircher’s great masterworks Mundus Subterraneus and how it was inspired by a subterranean adventure Kircher himself made The Polyglot of …Continued Bologna Michael Erard takes a look at The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, a book exploring the extraordinary talent of the 19th century Italian cardinal who was reported to be able to speak over seventy The Implacability languages. Without a of Things doubt, the most important book in Jonathan Lamb explores English devoted to the genre of ‘it- Cardinal Giuseppe narratives’ – stories told Mezzofanti (1774- from the point of view 1849), the …Continued of an object, often as it

travels in circulation through human hands. Some of the best recent books about things, such as John Plotz’s Portable Property (2008) and Elaine Freedgood’s Ideas in Print featured in Vincent’s Wondertooneel der Nature – Source. Things (2006), deal … Continued From a modern point of view the activities of Vincent and The Krakatoa Sunsets Joanna might seem a frivolous way of passing time, but we When a volcano erupted only have to think about the enormous amount of effort on a small island in Indonesia in 1883, the they must have put into their compositions to understand evening skies of the the many words of praise from their guests. For example, world glowed for months with strange creating the drawer with butterflies must have been a colours. Richard particularly laborious and toilsome task. First, as insects Hamblyn explores a Seeing Joyce little-known series of constrict their legs and wings as they die, each specimen letters that the poet This year’s would have to have been brought back to its natural Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘Bloomsday’ – 108 sent in to the journal years after Leopold posture. This was done by soaking them and then placing Nature describing the Bloom took his each leg and wing, without breaking them, to their original phenomenon – letters legendary walk around that …Continued Dublin on the 16th June state. Next, a rough sketch of the total design would have 1904 – is the first since the works of James been made, which was then elaborated on special gridded Joyce entered the public paper. This would then have been transferred to the bottom domain. Frank Delaney

asks whether we should of the velvet-lined drawer. Then, with tiny needles each perhaps now stop trying to read Joyce and insect, one by one, would have been pinned in the drawer, instead make … slowly building up the total form. The utmost care was Continued taken so that each specimen fitted according to their An Unlikely proportion, colour and design in relation to its neighbour. Lunch: When Thus a gigantic work of natural mosaic was created. But Maupassant met even then the work would have still not been finished: Swinburne three to four times a year all the boxes and drawers with Julian Barnes on when a young Guy de insects would have to have been rubbed with lavender oil Maupassant was invited to lunch at the holiday for preservation. cottage of Algernon Lost Libraries Swinburne. A flayed In the latter half of the In the panegyrics on the collection the designs of Vincent human hand, 17th century the English and Joanna are often compared with the most delicate pornography, the polymath Thomas serving of monkey Browne wrote pieces of embroidery, tapestry or damask. This was no meat, and inordinate amounts of alcohol, all Musaeum Clausum, an coincidence, as it relates to Vincent’s trade. In the literature imagined inventory of made for a truly strange ‘remarkable books, he is often described as a ‘damask merchant’ or simply a Anglo-French antiquities, pictures and encounter. …Continued rarities of several kinds, ‘merchant’ but this does not fully do him justice. He was scarce or never seen by indeed a merchant of luxurious tissues such as silks and any man now living’. Claire Preston explores damask, but first and foremost he presented himself as a Browne’s extraordinary ‘designer of patterns’. The silk production was a complex catalogue amid the wider context of a … and specialized industry that involved many different Continued crafts, from creating the first thread to selling the final cloth. Pattern designers often had an artistic background and from Vincent himself – whose education remains a The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi mystery – it is known that he was a member of the guild of Andrew McConnell St. Luke, the guild for painters. The artistic skills he used Stott, author of The Pantomime Life of in his trade were applied to add lustre to his collection. In Joseph Grimaldi, his catalogues, time and time again, Vincent emphasizes introduces the life and The Mysteries of memoirs of the most that the arrangements were according to his own famous and celebrated Nature and Art ‘ordinance and design’. It seems to have been of great of English clowns. Few Julie Gardham, Senior biographers have Assistant Librarian at importance. He also repeatedly expresses the great pains proved so reluctant, but University of and costs it took to maintain his cabinet. But it was when the raw materials Glasgow’s Special that would become Collections Department, certainly not an idle pastime. He declares that many *The Memoirs of takes a look at the book visitors, whilst looking at his collection, were strengthened Joseph Grimaldi* that was said to have reached Charles spurred a young Isaac in their religious faith. Dickens’ desk in the … Newton onto the Continued scientific path, The Mysteries of Nature and Art by John Bate. Courteous reader, this http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

ensuing treatise hath lien by mee … Continued

Dog Stories from The Spectator Dogs who shop, bury frogs, and take 800-mile solo round trips by rail – writer and broadcaster On Benjamin’s Frank Key gives a brief tour of the strange and Public (Oeuvre) delightful Dog Stories On the run from the from The Spectator. Nazis in 1940, the Here is a puzzle: [Feb. philosopher, literary 2, 1895.] I venture to critic and essayist send you the following Walter Benjamin story I have … committed suicide in Continued the Spanish border town of Portbou. In 2011, Detail from a print featured in the first part of Vincent’s Wondertooneel over 70 years later, his der Nature – Source. writings enter the public domain in many countries around the Vincent presented this as his ultimate goal. He noted the world. Anca Pusca, beneficial effects of his cabinet: the righteous saw author of Walter Benjamin: The … themselves affirmed in their beliefs, while the ungodly Continued found reason to acknowledge the Almighty. The faith of American visitors was not only affirmed by the magnificent objects Kaleidoscope: they beheld, but also by the special manner of its Morton Prince and the Boston presentation. Levinus and Joanna were creating a spectacle Revolution in that presented nature in a harmonious and balanced state, a Psychotherapy state which it had once known in Paradise. After the Fall In 1906 the American and the Deluge, nature was considered to have departed physician and neurologist Henry Labillardière and from this original harmony and fallen into disarray. This Morton Prince his Relation was now rectified by Levinus’ and Joanna’s intricate and published his When the French remarkable monograph explorer Lapérouse laborious work. One visitor wrote: ‘Where once in paradise The Dissociation of a Personality in which he went missing, a search was Adam with his Eva, thou are there with your spouse to voyage was put together details the condition of to retrace his course arrange God’s wonders.’ Another poem expressed how Sally Beauchamp, America's first famous around the islands of Joanna and Levinus ‘re-created’ nature in their cabinet. By Australasia. On the multiple-personality mission was the presenting their collectables in such designs they were not case. George Prochnik naturalist Jacques discusses the life and Labillardière who only presenting a pleasurable sight, but also restoring thought of the man published a book in nature to the beauty of its prelapsarian state. In this way, in Freud called an 1800 of his experiences. unimaginable ass. …

Edward Duyker, author Vincent’s room of cabinets, knowledge of nature, aesthetic Continued of *Citizen appreciation and religious contemplation all intermingled Labillardière: A Naturalist’s Life in and enhanced each other. His collection functioned, Revolution and indeed, as a wonder theatre of nature. Exploration (1755- 1834)*, explores the impact of his pioneering work. …Continued

The Life and Work of Bert (G.M.) van de Roemer is assistant professor Cultural Studies at the Nehemiah Grew University of Amsterdam. He specializes in early modern collections, In the 82 illustrated plates included in his museology, art theory and the history of Amsterdam. He has published on the 1680 book The collections Frederik Ruysch and Simon Schijnvoet and is preparing a book Anatomy of Plants, the English botanist Bugs and Beasts about Dutch collections of curiosities from the early eighteenth century. See Nehemiah Grew Before the Law revealed for the first here for more info. Murderous pigs sent to time the inner structure the gallows, sparrows and function of plants in prosecuted for all their splendorous chattering in Church, a intricacy. Brian Garret, gang of thieving rats let professor of philosophy off on a wholly at McMaster Univerity, technical acquittal - Links to Public Domain Works explores how Grew’s theoretical psychologist pioneering ‘mechanist’ and author Nicholas vision …Continued Humphrey* explores the strange world of Images of Vincent’s collection. medieval animal trials. …Continued Wikimedia Commons (uploaded from University of Strasbourg)

Rijksmuseum [here] and [here] Wondertooneel der Nature (1706) by Levinus Vincent Christopher University of Strasbourg Smart’s Jubilate Wondertooneel der Natuur (1715) by Levinus Agno Tales from Tahiti Vincent The poet Christopher Smart – also known as In 1890 Henry Adams – University of Strasbourg “Kit Smart”, “Kitty the historian, academic, Elenchus tabularum, pinacothecarum, atque Smart”, “Jack Smart” journalist, and and, on occasion, “Mrs descendent of two US nonnullorum cimeliorum, in gazophylacio Levini Mary Midnight” – was presidents – set out on a Vincent (1719) by Levinus Vincent and de Romeyn – a well known figure in tour of the South 18th century London. Pacific. After (Latin and French version of Vincent’s catalogue) Nowadays he is perhaps befriending the family Internet Archive best known for of “the last Queen of considering his cat Tahiti,” he became Jeoffry. Writer and inspired to write what is broadcaster Frank Key considered to be the looks at Smart’s weird first history of the … Further Reading …Continued http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/20/redressing-the-balance-levinus-vincents-wonder-theatre-of-nature/[19-10-2015 11:17:28] Redressing the Balance: Levinus Vincent’s Wonder Theatre of Nature | The Public Domain Review

Continued

G.M. van de Roemer, ‘From vanitas to veneration. The embellishments in the anatomical cabinet of Frederik Ruysch’ in: Journal of the History of Collections 22 (2010), nr. 2, p. 169-186.

G.M. van de Roemer, ‘Neat Nature. The relation between art and nature in a Dutch cabinet of curiosities from the early eighteenth century’ in: History of Science 42 (2004), p. 47-84.

E. Spary,’Scientific Symmetries’ in: History of Science 42 (2004), p. 1–46.

CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES HARDCOVER (Thames and Hudson, 2011) by Patrick Mauriès

The fascinating history of the curiosity cabinet, how collectors from the Renaissance to the 18th-century attempted to display the breadth and variety of life and culture in microcosm, in little “theatres” of the world.

READING THE BOOK OF NATURE IN THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE, 1575-1715 (BRILL, 2010) by Eric Jorink

A challenge to the usually held view about the Golden Age’s scientific culture in the Netherlands. The book shows how nature was, next to the Bible, thought of as a second book of God, and how the advances in biblical criticism led to a new view of nature.

WHEN WEAVING FLOURISHED (Aronson, 2010)

by Dr. Sjoukje Colenbrander

A study of the Dutch textile industry between 1585-1750, of the fabrics made and the lives of those who made them.

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