Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 82

Unlike the Inventories of the Palazzo Medici (IC1), or the goods of the Portuguese merchant Simão de Melo (IA7), the present text is from the catalogue of a consciously assembled ‘cabinet of curiosities’. (For an earlier and more modest example, cf. IC3.) It was compiled by John Tradescant the Younger in the mid‐1650s and lists the collection put together by himself and his father before him. Compared to modern museums, it is notable for the way it combines things from the world of nature (‘Naturals’) with things resulting from processes of human manufacture (‘Artificials’). The Tradescant collection went on to form the basis of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the first public museum in the world. The present selection includes the list of contents of the whole collection (‘The Table’). However, we have completely omitted the contents of the garden and concentrated in our extracts on what would be seen today as works of ‘material culture’, rather than ‘nature’. The catalogue offers a fascinating glimpse into a world of ‘rarities’ and ‘curiosities’ before the characteristic distinctions of the modern scientific disciplines emerged, and before the separate departments of the modern museum came into being. We have modernized spelling and punctuation throughout. The error in numbering between the contents list and the subsequent sections is in the original. Our source is The Tradescant Collection, a Facsimile Reprint of the Catalogue of 1656, digitally produced from an original copy by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2009.