Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

465 Pages·1996·29.257 MB·English

by  Paula Findlen

Possessing Nature
Museums, Collecting, and
Scientific Culture
in Early Modern Italy
Paula Findlen
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
The publisher gratefully acknowledges
the contribution provided fry the
General Endowment Fund of the
Associates of the University of Califurnia Press
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press
London, England
Copyright © 1994 by The Regents of the University of California
First Paperback Printing 1996
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Findlen, Paula.
Possessing nature: museums, collecting, and scientific culture in
early modern Italy I Paula Findlen.
p. cm. - (Studies on the history of society and culture; 20)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-520-20508-6
1. Science museums-Italy-History. 2. Science museums-Europe
History. 3. Natural history museums-Italy-History. 4. Natural
history museums-Europe-History. I. Title. II. Series.
QI05.ISF56 1994
50S'.074'45-dc20 93-14997
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
09 08 07
12 II 10 9 8 7
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TeF).
It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
e
(Permanence ofP aper).
To my great-grandmother
Margaret Black Avery:
a museum in her own right

The soul of man affects a kind of infinity
in its ol1ects. The affectations are always
reaching after new pleasures, the desires
carried forth after new possessions ... the
eye is never satisfied with seeing.
-JOHN SPENCER, DISCOURSE CONCERNING PRODIGIES (1665)

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi
ABBREVIATIONS / XV
PHOTO CREDITS / xvii
INTRODUCTION / 1
PART I • LOCATING THE MUSEUM
1. "A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut" / 17
2. Searching for Paradigms / 48
3. Sites of Knowledge / 97
PART II· LABORATORIES OF NATURE
4. Pilgrimages of Science / 155
5. Fare Esperienza / 194
6. Museums of Medicine / 241
PART III· ECONOMIES OF EXCHANGE
7. Inventing the Collector / 293
8. Patrons, Brokers, and Strategies / 346
EPILOGUE: THE OLD AND THE NEW / 393
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 409
INDEX / 433
ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In a book about early modern scholarly rituals, it is tempting to view the writ
ing of acknowledgments as an example of our own organic links with the
culture that created this genre; it gives me great pleasure to think that we
share something in common with Aldrovandi and Kircher, since most of
their world is alien to our modern sensibilities. This project has metamor
phosized from a graduate seminar paper at the University of Chicago into a
dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley and (finally) into a
book written at the University of California at Davis. Along the way, I have
imposed on a number of people who deserve my thanks.
Randy Starn, Roger Hahn, and Barbara Shapiro survived the reading of
a lengthy dissertation and offered much encouragement and acute criticism
along the way. Lorraine Daston, Bill Eamon, Anthony Grafton, and Laurie
Nussdorfer all reminded me that the leap from dissertation to book is nei
ther quick nor easy. Elizabeth Knoll has been the best sort of editor; while
encouraging me to get it done, she has always listened to the most recent
transmutations of the project with patience and good humor. Other friends
have offered comments, criticisms, and bibliographic suggestions along the
way, in particular, Bill Ashworth, Martha Baldwin, Cristelle Baskins, Ann
Blair, Mario Biagioli, Jim Bono, Ken Gouwens, Phyllis Jestice, Jeff Ravel,
Nancy Siraisi, Pamela Smith, and Jay Tribby. Colleagues in the History De
partment and Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, particu
larly Bill Bowsky and Betty Jo Dobbs, have made Davis a particularly conge
nial environment in which to complete my revisions. Ryan Henson spent
part of two summers excavating materials from the library. Jennifer Selwyn
helped proof and index. Marta Cavazza and Giuliano Pancaldi kindly un
earthed a plan of the Studio Aldrovandi. A special thanks to Cathy Kudlick
and Katy Park for reading so many drafts, and to Michelle Nordon and
Michelle Bonnice at U.C. Press and the copy editor, Kathy Walker, for see-
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ing it into print. Their comments and queries have greatly improved the ar
gument and clarity of this book.
This project could not have been conceptualized nor completed without
the fine work done by many (mostly Italian) scholars on collecting, natural
history, and the permutations ofCinquecento and Seicento culture. I would
like to thank Lina Bolzoni, Gigliola Fragnito, Paolo Galluzzi, Adalgisa Lugli,
Arthur MacGregor, Giuseppe Olmi, KrzysztofPomian, and Lucia Tongiorgi
Tomasi, among others, for showing me how such a project could be done
well. In a different spirit, I also wish to acknowledge the work of two schol
ars with whom, unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of discussing this
subject: Eric Cochrane and Charles Schmitt. No doubt they would have dis
agreed with my methodology and interpretation in many instances; yet I
hope they would have appreciated my own fascination with the vagaries of
sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Italian academic culture, which both ex
plicated in such loving detail.
The research for this study in England and Italy was funded by the Ful
bright Commission, the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy, and
a Wellesley College Graduate Fellowship. Fellowships from the History De
partment and the University of California at Berkeley allowed me the time
to conceptualize and complete the project as a dissertation; Faculty Re
search Grants and aJunior Faculty Fellowship from the University of Cali
fornia at Davis gave me the opportunity to rethink it, once again, and pro
duce a publishable version.
Librarians at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, the University of Califor
nia at Davis, the Newberry Library, and the University of Chicago made
books, both old and new, materialize when they were most needed. My re
search in England was greatly facilitated by the help of the staff at the British
Museum Library and Manuscript Room, the Wellcome Institute for the His
tory of Medicine and the Warburg Institute. In Italy, M. Cristina Bacchi,
Irene Ventura Folli, Laura Miani, Patrizia Moscatelli, and Maria Cristina
Tagliaferri, all of the Biblioteca Universitaria in Bologna, provided biblio
graphic and paleographic assistance and generously shared their knowl
edge of the A1drovandi manuscripts with me during my stay in Bologna, as
did the staff of the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio and the
Archivio di Stato in Bologna. Father Monachino ofthe Pontificia Universita
Gregoriana allowed me to consult the Kircher correspondence, while
the archivists at the Archivum Romanum Societatis lesu kindly provided
me with a copy of the unpublished catalogue to those manuscripts. The
director of the Archivio Isolani in Bologna let me peer at the burned
and crumbled fragments of the Paleotti papers, to make what sense I
could of them. There are many others I would like to thank whom I
omit only for the sake of brevity. As the list of abbreviations may indicate,
this is a project fabricated out of many trips to different regional archives
and libraries.