One of the world’s first museums was founded in 1651 in Rome. The Kircherian Museum was a Cabinet of Curiosities, full of objects of the real and imaginary. Despite the name, the museum was certainly larger than a cabinet (the word “cabinet” originally described a room).
Like all cabinets of curiosities (also known as Kunstkammers, Wunderkammers, Cabinet of Wonders or Wonder-rooms) the museum contained an array of interesting objects. Kircher’s collection included exotic plant and animal specimens, archeological finds, relics and antiquities, works of art and mechanical inventions.
Athanasius Kircher
The caretaker of this collection was Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), the famous German Jesuit scholar and polymath. Kircher was a superstar academic in his day with an extraordinary output. He studied and wrote on everything imaginable, from linguistics to geology. He made numerous discoveries, although a number were later proven wrong. In particular, his decryption of Egyptian hieroglyphs turned out to be mostly based in incorrect assumptions. He had plenty of novel ideas, like attempting to create lights from firefly extract. He also went on some truly wild adventures. Kircher supposedly once had himself lowered into a volcano soon after its eruption to observe changes inside the volcano.
He constructed or designed many marvelous inventions, including the rather terrible and cruel idea of a ‘cat piano’. This device featured a line of cats with their tails positioned under the keys. Thankfully there is no evidence this was ever actually constructed. Most of Kircher’s works have not yet been translated into English, but he is well remembered today partly due to the aesthetics of his fascinating designs.
Bonanni’s Catalog
Kircher was the museum’s caretaker for nearly thirty years until his death in 1680, at which time his pupil Filippo Bonanni took over the role. The museum collection Bonanni inherited to take care of was in some disrepair, and objects were missing from the collection or broken, such as in the case of mechanical inventions. In 1709 he created a catalog of the remaining museum collection which contains many interesting curiosities. We have been working on restoring some of the catalog illustrations this week.
The Cover Image: A strange head from Bonanni’s collection reminded us of the floating stone head from Zardoz, the 1974 loin-cloth clad Sean Connery film epic, and that idea morphed into this rather colorful vaporwave aesthetic.
