The conceptualization of time and space in the memory theatre of Giulio Camillo (1480?–1544) (original) (raw)
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MODOS, 2018
Este artigo considera os efeitos sobre os museus de arte da condição histórica de uma contemporaneidade global, à qual estão hoje sujeitos. A principal diferença, argumenta-se, diz respeito às formas de universalidade que os museus de arte articulam e às quais aspiram. O artigo parte de uma breve revisão da cada vez mais comum "crítica do museu" empreendida nas últimas décadas, que é uma crítica da concepção de um "museu universal" do século XIX. Ele procede refletindo sobre o caráter duplo e homólogo do projeto de totalidade desta concepção – a obra de arte como uma totalidade e a história como uma totalidade – em contraste com a heterogeneidade teórica das formas de unidade das categorias de periodização que são desenvolvidas pela história da arte hoje. As formas de totalidade herdadas revelaram-se projeções ilusórias ou fictícias. Entretanto, argumenta-se, em vez de representar uma dissolução da aspiração à universalidade do museu, como tal, essas formas heter...
Hildegard Wiegel and Michael Vickers (eds.), Excalibur Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor (Oxford Archaeopress, 2013)., 2013
Transition from early modern wonder into modernity, in the context of the history of ideas, has often been cast in terms of notions of discontinuity and closure, as opposed to those of survival and continuity. The foundations of modern domains of inquiry as separate disciplines in the 19th century has often acted as the privileged point in time and historical narration out of which histories of ideas depart in approaching the explanation of irrational, from the standpoint of our current thought style, notions and their material embodiments-visual depictions and material collections-of objects, such as the ones associated with the idea of natural wonder in 16th century thought and natural philosophy The notion of the thunderbolt is such a variety of 16th century natural wonder. Often depicted in 16th century visual sources and treatises as comprising irreducibly artificial form, which is recognizable from our current perspective as identical to the form of an archaeological object and the object of a prehistoric stone tool, the 16th century notion of the thunderbolt explained the origin and nature of such objects by recourse to extraordinary forces in action in nature. Ceraunia and glossopetra were collected and can be traced back in cabinets of curiosities but were also depicted as extraordinary objects comprising the status of natural wonders in 16th century natural philosophy treatises. Key words Natural wonders, 16th century natural philosophy treatises, illustration, ceraunia, glossopetra, Cabinets of curiosity, printed catalogues, formed stones, the transition across the modern and pre-modern divide, 20th century ethnographic collections, art
Over time, museum as a space of exhibition was subject to some qualitative metamorphic processes. From the perspective of museum history, the 16 th -18 th centuries represent the period of marvel rooms. Collections of objects were repertoires of the world, belonging rather to science than to the art of astonishing. Such rooms placed their exhibits according to contiguity relations, not according to temporal succession. Sharing the same space was the sign of a similar time frame, suggesting the viewer that the congestion made them consubstantial.
Centaurus, 2019
Collections, botanical gardens, and museums are key places for natural history. As multi-coded spaces of knowledge, they fulfil many different functions. Their focus and their meanings have changed over time. Having originated from convent gardens and curiosity cabinets, they first became prominent in the 16th and 17th centuries within a variety of politically infused circumstances-courts, scholarly culture, patronage, trade, and colonialism. 1 The gradual separation between natural and cultural objects, which became visible by the late 18th century, transformed the landscape of collections. By the 19th century, many of them had become public museums that welcomed both professional scientists and an increasingly widening spectrum of the general public. Objects and specimens from different parts of the world were assembled in collections and museums, facilitating comparison, synopsis, and the dissemination of knowledge. Each collection has its own unique history. However, collections should also be analysed in terms of configurations that were essential to all of them-the interrelation between the collector, the object, and the viewers. Over the past 20 years, historical interest in physical spaces dedicated to the accumulation of scientific objects-specimens, visual images created to capture and analyse nature, research instruments, and living creatures, such as wild and exotic animals and plants-has grown rapidly. Collections, botanical gardens, natural history cabinets, and museums have attracted new attention, now associated with the making of knowledge rather than with more traditional stories about academic luminaries making important acquisitions for the benefit of science. 2 Paula Findlen has provided an important stimulus to such work by arguing that natural history and collections situated at the princely courts of Renaissance Italy were essential for understanding the world that dramatically expanded in the 16th century as a result of voyages of discovery and the printing press. Collections not only provided a means of controlling the influx of new objects and information, they helped to ease the tension between the authority of ancient texts and the new experiences opening up for Europe. 3 With a focus on materiality and cultural dimensions, collections become interesting not only because they can be used to illustrate a scientific argument, but also because they provide a means for scholars to reconstruct the very process of knowledge production. Collections are no longer seen as immutable entities, but rather as things and their meanings in flux. These historiographical changes include a wide range of perspectives, such as the political, social, cultural, and administrative as well as that of economic 1
Universal orders in collections of 16th and 17th century Italy
Nordisk Museologi
Anne Aurasmaa’s article will discuss beauty, harmony and order as expressions of a belief in a living universe and in the connection between the material and the spiritual. This is approached through an examination of 16th and 17th century Italian collections, with help of Marsilio Ficino’s Book of Life. According to Aurasmaa’s interpretation, the sensuous pleasure derived from the study of objects was believed to be a way to relate to, and be in contact with the surrounding world and the heavenly spheres. The symmetrical arrangements of the collections, on the other hand, were visualizations of a belief in the harmonious nature of the ideal universe. The article discusses how principles of universality were represented, how the collecting and organization of things were spiritualized, and, as a consequence, how collecting practices came to be approved by society.
2023
The paper aims to demonstrate the importance of time in the imagery of Francesco Maria II della Rovere (1549–1631), the last Duke of Urbino. The study is part of the project ‘Immaginare i Saperi’ (Imagining Knowledge) at the Sapienza – University of Rome. The research primarily focuses on the perception and representation of time and time-keeping at the court of Urbino, one of the most important courts in Renaissance Italy. The Duke was almost obsessed with time, a theme that had interested him since his youth and, over the years, influenced his moral vision of governance and even his official portraiture. This study will examine the ego-documents and first-hand sources relating to the Duke, including his manuscript diary, receipts, letters, and inventories of goods and properties. The documents also record the Duke’s rich collection of clocks and scientific/mathematical instruments. Also, in his colossal library, an entire section was dedicated to the science of time measurement, accompanied by volvelles and illustrations. The analysis of this robust source library material held in the Biblioteca Universitaria Alessandrina, where the Duke’s library has been kept since 1667, is embedded in the studies of the cultural and material history of science.
Re-thinking the Curiosity Cabinet: A Study of Visual Representation in Early and Post Modernity
This thesis examines the concepts and visual strategies employed within the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century curiosity cabinet – here defined as privately-owned European collections of extraordinary objects – to represent the world. This research also examines how these concepts and strategies are paralleled in contemporary art practice from 1990 to the present in Europe and the USA. As such, it challenges traditional museological interpretations of the cabinet as a mere proto-museum, as well as the notion that the cabinet is obsolete as a form of cultural practice. This thesis primarily focuses upon Northern European collecting practice from c. 1540 - c. 1660, and draws upon artworks, objects and collections as illustrative examples. The thesis also offers a new translation of parts of a seminal text in the history of early collections: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones Vel Tituli Theatri Amplissimi (1565), included in the Appendix. During the last two decades, there has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in the cabinet, yet perspectives on early collections remain limited – often to a single interpretive lens. Furthermore, scholarship on the nature of the cabinet’s connections with and relevance to contemporary cultural practice is still in its infancy. This thesis contends that the cabinet is best understood as a complex set of practices, related to but distinct from the contemporary museum, and draws upon the Derridean concept of the spectre in order to demonstrate how these practices are echoed within contemporary art practice at both a visual and conceptual level. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a new historiography, theoretical perspective and methodological approach to the early modern cabinet, one which sets it in an appropriate historical context, but also considers the nature of its significance in the contemporary era.
Damnatio memoriae: Antiquities without context
CIDOC 2018 Heraklion, Crete, 2018
The documentation of ancient artefacts today in cosmopolitan museums and private collections around the world is quite often incomplete, because of the absence of their finding contexts. What do we really know about cultural objects? Is this knowledge accurate indeed? Most of the items in question are looted and smuggled out of their site, region, or even country of origin, and are sold as artworks, themselves too poorly documented, as "orphans without history". Their treatment reminds us, metaphorically, of the Latin damnation memoriae-a kind of condemnation of memory. Cycladic figurines provide a typical example of the material and intellectual damage which is caused by such practices. Besides the loss of their context, it is also the extended circulation of forgeries, due to their high demand in the art market, that intensify the loss. Each figurine with exceptional, unique features becomes, at once, a controversial issue. Are they faked, some or all of them? We cannot prove it, but interestingly enough we cannot deny, neither ignore it anymore. This paper deals with a particular form of knowledge, that of archaeological provenance, known as provenience in literature. It argues that solid scientific information needs apart from the objects, their secure stratigraphic contexts, making the provenience of knowledge also a desideratum.