The History of Collecting from Treasury to Museum

Undergraduate / Graduate

Renaissance collecting transcended the traditions of medieval treasuries, developed out of modes of categorization derived from antiquity, and ultimately became the foundation for the rise of the museum in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Motivated by aesthetic consideration, curiosity, a quest for order and knowledge, and an interest in personal display, renaissance princes, noblewomen, emperors, naturalists and artists alike acquired art, objects, flora, fauna, ethnographic materials and exotica within a variety of different collecting spaces such as studioli, gardens, libraries, and kunst and wunderkammern. Through an examination of primary sources such as inventories, accounts and letters, of secondary sources about particular collections and collectors, and of various modern theories regarding possessing, consuming and gift giving things, this course explores the multifarious Renaissance collections of Europe, primarily focusing on Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and England.