Journal of the History of Collections vol.  no.  () pp. –
Wonders of America
The curiosity cabinet as a site of representation and knowledge
Isabel Yaya
This essay examines the representation of the New World in cabinets of curiosities throughout the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite the contrasting nature of these private collections and the
varying degrees of access that European states had to such exotic objects, the characterization and
assessment of the Americana displays a consistent similarity. It is argued here that the meaning of
these items within the microcosm of the cabinets can be comprehended by the intellectual enterprise
that sustained the gathering of curiosities and by the representation of Amerindian societies in moral
history works.
AMERICAN antiquities contained in European collections before the Age of Enlightenment are particularly
difficult to evaluate for several reasons. Firstly, many
objects have since disappeared from European cabinets, some of them taken apart to extract precious
stones and others melted down for gold and silver to
finance the political aspirations of their proprietors.
Furthermore, when inventories or private correspondence mentioned these works, they were commonly catalogued under the denomination ‘objects of
savages’, providing few details on their ethnic origin
or function.1 In addition, the taste for American
antiquities affected the European countries neither
simultaneously nor in a uniform manner. For example, the economic power of the Habsburg empire and
its allies facilitated their access to the curiosities of the
New World, whereas England awakened to them only
at the dawning of the seventeenth century. Finally,
the acquisition of knowledge concerning Amerindian
societies developed quite differently from one country
to the next depending on the diffusion of travellers’
tales, illustrated chronicles or historical treatises.
Nevertheless, in spite of the complexity and paucity of first-hand information, other perspectives are
available, notably concerning the places in which the
objects were displayed. Upon arrival in Europe,
American objects entered the eclectic ensemble of the
cabinet of curiosities, alongside remarkable items
shaped by nature or fashioned by man. Whether it
constituted an object of philosophical speculation or
represented the social ambitions of its owner, the
curiosity cabinet contributed a certain conception of
the universe to the scale of European residences, for
the common ambition of many such collections was to
assemble a ‘microcosm’ of the known world. While
many collectors may not have followed such an exacting agenda, for those whose finance and aspirations
allowed, the content of their cabinet came to form a
theatrum mundi. In order to grasp the principles governing the content and the organization of this space,
as well as the place of the American object in its setting, it is necessary to understand how men of the
late-Renaissance and Baroque period comprehended
their universe and by what means they endeavoured
to explain the nature of human societies. Such a task
is difficult, not least due to the differing ideologies of
collectors. Nevertheless, the phenomena of private
collections developed within an intellectual context
that came to have an immense and unifying influence
on the modes of collecting and the classification of
knowledge. At the heart of this intellectual undertaking were the many discourses of curiosity, which provoked eulogies as well as condemnations amongst
early modern scholars. Indifferent to its detractors,
the practice of collecting curiosities, whether literal or
metaphorical,2 became central to the late-Renaissance
episteme. It provided a didactic approach to the
discipline of history, which, like the most ambitious
cabinets, endeavoured to reconstitute the order of the
universe.
© The Author . Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/jhc/fhm038 Advance Access publication 9 February 2008
ISABEL YAYA
The ‘discovery’ of the Americas did not, as the
modern reader might be tempted to imagine, immediately shatter this order as represented in early publications and collections. Only a few decades after the
New World’s emergence on the international scene,
cosmographies and historical treatises began to include
references to it. Scholars who intended to reconstruct
world history from the sources they inherited from
the medieval period now faced the issue of cultural
diversity with new data at hand. Their task received a
significant impetus with the development of universal
histories and the appearance of books of manners and
customs. Throughout the second half of the sixteenth
century, at the same time that European enthusiasm
for exotic objects developed, the domains of social
history became more specialized. From then on,
many written works focused on one particular subject:
describing, comparing and appraising in monographic
studies the religious practices, funerary rites and traditional costumes of long-known societies. In this
context, the Americas gradually became an object of
enquiry at the service of the wider undertaking pursued by scholars.
Whether behind the closed doors of cabinets or in
the pages of moral histories, the practice of collecting
and the ordering of knowledge aspired to reconstructing and understanding the universe, both divine and
terrestrial. Accordingly, these two enterprises would
often share commonalities that, considered together,
enlighten the nature of European curiosity towards
exotic objects. One of the most patent examples of
this interconnection can be found in the titles and
names given to the collections and publications of the
time. For instance, both the cabinet of the plantsman
and gardener John Tradescant and a famous curiosities shop in Paris were known as ‘the Ark’, in obvious
reference to Noah’s vessel that preserved the specimens of every earthly species. Georg Horn and
Athanasius Kircher were among a class of learned men
from the seventeenth century who contributed to the
genre of universal history with their serial publication
entitled Noah’s Ark.3 Through this biblical metaphor,
the collection appears both as a repository of God’s
creation and a way to address the issue of the origin
and history of the world’s species. In order to understand the role of the New World’s discovery in this
debate and its impact on European consciousness, the
present study analyses the place of Americana within
the organization of curiosity cabinets, as well as refer-
ring to works of moral history. The essay first contextualizes the phenomena of curiosity cabinets before
presenting an inventory of American antiquities kept
in these European collections.
Cabinets of curiosities: content and reflection
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
curiosity cabinets became the object of desire for
many of the European élite. This craze impassioned
the nobility, scholars and university academics alike,
as well as members of the middle class who fostered a
network of ‘international relations’ in the domain of
their professional activities, usually commercial. The
phenomenon encompassed a great diversity of collections and was known under different appellations,
depending on the locality and the proprietor’s aspirations. Before its appearance, European courts and
religious institutions had gathered treasures and wonders, but the emergence of the cabinet as a site of
representation and knowledge was a product of the
intellectual and economic upheaval of the Renaissance.4 There arose at this time a need to organize and
classify the new learning, giving birth to the collection
catalogue by the end of the sixteenth century. The
development of this systematic approach was partly a
response to the increasing influx of materials proceeding from the far lands. Faced with the extension of
the known world and its uncertainty, the cabinet
attempted to control and frame the unfamiliar. It also
reflected a preoccupation to apprehend better a longstanding device of fascination and enquiry for
Europeans: the object of wonder. Endowing a collector
with much prestige, mirabilia were objects that stood
out for their rarity and were intended to evoke curiosity
and a sense of awe. Such objects were assembled in one
or more rooms of private houses, accessible to chosen
visitors, where Greek and Roman antiquities kept
company with automata, anamorphoses, or works by
masters such as Dürer, Rubens and Cellini. Other
meticulously detailed items under the appellation of
artificialia were also collected, combining the workings
of nature with the creations of man.
In addition, a selective place in the curiosity cabinets of naturalists and apothecaries was reserved for
the naturalia. Such a section assembled fauna, flora
and minerals, as well as items that were intriguingly
rare or possessed some affinity with the world of
fables. It would include representations of deformed

WONDERS OF AMERICA
or atypical beings such as dwarves and giants, rare
botanical specimens, unicorn horns, fossils and corals
which defied the conventional classification of natural
objects. Other, more common, animals earned the
wonderer’s attention via an emblematic significance.5
Finally, together with this material, there were exotic
and even fantastic animals representing the hydra,
basilisk or griffin, stuffed and put together from the
different parts of existing animals. These fabulous
and unique creatures depicted in the Bible, by classical authors, as well as in treatises on natural history,
were considered as creations of the Almighty and due
to their strangeness were entitled to be studied and
interpreted. In the words of Krzysztof Pomian, the
study of nature was thereby subordinated to ‘the study
of signs inscribed by God in the process and visible
appearance of natural phenomena’.6 So it was that the
urge for collecting strange and fantastic specimens
grew as the Christian world opened to the marvels of
the Orient and the New World.7 These articles, as
with rare and exotic plants, were prized for their
alleged therapeutic power and their commercial
potential. It followed that apothecaries, naturalists,
professors and alchemists were all fervent collectors
of exotica that were then scrupulously analysed in
their cabinets.8
Discussions of the reciprocal relationship between
art and nature were frequently held in the intimacy of
private collections where the virtuosity of artificialia
competed side by side with the perfection of a work of
nature. Thus, in the making of many objects, the division
between the raw material and human workmanship
was barely discernable. The skill of the artist lay in
taking advantage of the form and the irregularities of
the material in order to create an original work where
the hand of the craftsman merged with the hand of
nature. Bernard Palissy’s work or masterly creations
such as the grottoes of the late Renaissance are sumptuous examples of this tendency. In a majority of early
cabinets, this aesthetic principle governed the
selection of objects proceeding from the New World.
Amongst them, the most popular were objects of
finely detailed works such as mosaic ornaments and
featherwork from Mexico and Brazil (Fig. ). These
skilfully crafted works brought about an unprecedented trend in Europe where clergymen and a few
laymen commissioned religious scenes composed of
multicoloured feathers. Numerous bishops’ mitres
and pictures of virgins and saints appeared during this
period. All these items were made in America using
the techniques of Pre-Columbian featherworking of
which admirable examples are the famous portraits of
Church Fathers conserved in the Santa Casa de
Loreto.9
From an aesthete’s perspective, such artefacts
elicited wonder because they were assembled from
unusual raw materials. In a similar fashion to that in
which shell and coral sculptures were elaborated, or
in the way that Arcimboldo realized his portraits,
Pre-Columbian mosaic masks and featherwork
assemblages defied traditional techniques of representation by ingeniously assembling Nature’s own
creation. Indeed, the same requisite induced the
first evaluation of American objects, when the second
ship sailing from Mexico reached Europe in .
For the following year, its cargo travelled to Seville,
Valladolid and Brussels where curious individuals
flocked to admire the works of precious metal,
feathered pieces and mosaic items of semi-precious
stones. Aside from these hand-crafted objects, the
cargo also included a number of animal skins,
ceremonial garments of dyed wool, as well as some
‘women’s and peasants’ tunics’, all inventoried in a
letter written by Cortés to Charles V for the occasion.10 The painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer,
who had the opportunity of contemplating the
shipment, enthused upon seeing the extraordinary
craftsmanship of the objects displayed. Peter Martyr
d’Anghiera, his contemporary in the service of the
Emperor, shared Dürer’s wonderment: ‘Verily, I am
not so much amazed at the gold and gems; what
causes my astonishment is the painstaking skilfulness
due to which the work transcends the material. I have
contemplated an infinite number of figures and faces,
too many to describe; it seems to me I have never
seen anything to match such beauty which dazzles
the eye’.11 D’Anghiera’s aesthetic judgement, like
that of his contemporaries, depended largely on an
appreciation of the technical virtuosity of the items.12
He expressed admiration for man’s work on the raw
material and his faculty to master and control his
environment in making a masterpiece more complete than that of nature. These qualities call to mind
those of the artificialia of the curiosity cabinets
which, through the exuberance of their forms,
revealed man’s skill to master and perfect the natural
elements, demonstrating in this way the superiority
of man over his environment.

ISABEL YAYA
Fig. . Featherwork shield, c. 
(Ambras collection, ex. Pedro de la
Gasca collection) cat. no. ,
Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna.
With permission from the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Beyond the limited sphere of the curiosity cabinets,
in the fields of fine arts and literature there was also a
turning away from the classical standards of beauty
towards an emphasis on the atypical work of nature
and the abnormal. This artistic ideal certainly reflected
the political and religious preoccupations of the lateRenaissance and Baroque periods in Europe. Baroque
art, though often reduced to a decadent, eccentric
form, nevertheless reflected the crisis with which the
Catholic Church was confronted, both within and
without the institution. Central to this upheaval was
the Protestant vision of man – autonomous within his
milieu and with an individual relationship with God –
a view that fundamentally destabilized the hierarchy
of the pre-existing world and questioned the previously unchallenged axiom of man’s passive submission to the actions of the Almighty. The outcome of
these intellectual speculations was an inevitable questioning of ‘the autonomy of nature, the sovereignty of
God and the divisions of function between God and
nature’.13 For some great minds of the time such as
Descartes and Bacon, the curiosity cabinet was a foyer
of reflection and a laboratory of primordial experimentation in this debate.
Inextricably linked with the development of the
cabinet, ‘curiosity’ emerged as an implement of
philosophical knowledge. Influenced by contemporary
studies in medicine and alchemy, philosophical writings encouraged men’s wonder when confronted by
the strange, rare or exotic, with the aim of reaching a
comprehension of the natural order.14 This intellectual movement embraced not only the study of the
arts and techniques developed by human agency but
also extraordinary phenomena observed in nature.
The comprehension of the mechanism that regulated
them would provide the keys to knowledge of the universe. In this way, the artificial imitation of nature’s
workings would enlighten modern man on the
order of creation brought about by the power of the
Almighty. Supporters of this movement set up new

WONDERS OF AMERICA
scientific societies and favoured the assembling of
curiosities within these establishments. It is perhaps
not surprising that European princes interested in the
principles of natural philosophy and possessing a cabinet of marvels in their residence frequently patronized these institutions.15
In the homes of Italian scholars, the curiosity cabinet took on the name of studiolo or museo. It was a
place reserved for silent contemplation with a library
where the scholar could ponder his collection and
extract a meaning from it. The first texts dedicated to
Italian cabinets usually present them as products of
humanist ideals where the principles prefigured that
of modern museology. These same writings
offer ready comparisons to the Germanic collections
(Wunderkammern) that, in turn, reflected the ethnocentric aspirations of the Habsburgs and their allies
and their enthusiasm for strange specimens. Such a
parallel is no longer tenable, however, for it is inconsistent with numerous examples of Germanic and
Transalpine cabinets based on both intellectual and
social aspirations.16 As expressed by Daston and Park,
‘the aim of the naturalist’s collection of marvels, like
the collections of princes from the dukes of Burgundy
to Rudolf II, was to transfer the emotion of wonder
from the objects themselves to their erudite and discriminating owner’.17 Furthermore, Pomian’s studies
reveal the difficulty of categorizing European collections according to their functions, of distinguishing
between the didactic role of cabinets of natural history
assembled by physicians and botanists and the entertaining role of the cabinet of marvels. Illustrating the
complexity of the undertaking, he cites the cabinets of
natural history assembled by the Medici from a noncognitive perspective.18
While the motivations of these amateurs of curiosities were varied, the representative value of the items
collected, and particularly objects from far-off countries, was founded both on a coherent knowledge and
fantasy shared by the public at large. Through a common cultural prism, exotic products informed the
European observer about their creators, and although
conclusions on the subject inevitably diverged, the
qualities of the work examined by an inquiring mind
depended largely on its cognitive framework and on
the intellectual context of the period. The first stage
towards the acquisition of such knowledge and the
construction of exotic fantasy began with the
choice of the objects collected. As previously men-
tioned, featherwork pieces were the material most
frequently associated with Amerindians, not only in
curiosity cabinets but also in illustrations of the time.
Yet studies on visual media show that feather apparel
became the stereotypical attribute of New World populations in Renaissance imagery. This iconography
promptly imposed itself in the fantasized depiction of
exotic man, regardless of his origin – so much so that
the representation of America in cabinets of curiosities and printed documents became the paradigm of
non-civilized societies.19 This construct is remarkably
exemplified in the inventories of European collections
where the term ‘Indian’ came to describe exotic items
at large whether Amerindian, ‘Moorish’ or Chinese.
It seems, therefore, that far from representing the
specificity of the New World’s cultures, the Americana of the cabinets served to illustrate and confirm a
certain vision of exoticism.
An inventory of American antiquities in
European curiosity cabinets
In the year  the ship dispatched by Cortés reached
the Spanish shores, its bounty dispersed among many
princely cabinets and entering the papal collections.20
While it is almost impossible to retrace the itinerary of
these first ethnographic items to Europe, the fascination they aroused marked a period of intense maritime commercial activity. The study of inventories
reveals that, aside from mosaic ornaments and featherworks, European collections of Americana comprised mostly carved stone figures, Brazilian and
Canadian weapons as well as everyday objects such as
toilette requisites, fishing and hunting implements
and some dress ornaments. The Habsburgs were certainly the most fervent collectors of American antiquities in Europe. The cabinets of the Emperor
Ferdinand I (reigned –) and his successors
Maximilian II (reigned –) and Rudolf II (reigned
–), as well as his brothers, the Archdukes Karl
II and Ferdinand II, possessed Mexican, Taino and
Brazilian objects (Fig. ). The same interest was
shown by more distant relatives such as Dukes
Albrecht and Wilhelm of Bavaria, together with their
allies, the Dukes of Württemberg. An example is provided by the ducal cabinet in Munich, which contained figurines of Mexican and Olmec divinities.21
Among these princes, some did not hesitate to use the

ISABEL YAYA
Fig. . Featherwork fan, c. ? (Ambras collection), cat. no.
, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna. With permission from
the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
ethnographical items from their cabinets to create a
setting for their courtly festivities. In , Duke
Friedrich of Württemberg organized a carnival where
he took the role of the Queen of America, surrounding himself with revellers decked in feathers and
sporting American weapons from his curiosity cabinet.22 Archduke Ferdinand II, on the occasion of his
second marriage, adorned his helmet with feathers he
had plucked from the Pre-Columbian works in his
collection.23
The economic and intellectual climate of the
Habsburg Empire certainly gave an impetus to the
acquisition of such objects. The Germanic territories
held the most important centres of publication in
Europe and were the first to provide illustrated chronicles and travellers’ tales, as well as numerous poems
and political satires on the theme of America.24 It was
there that the curiosity of the Empire’s subjects
towards these works was most intense. In addition,
the northern cities were important centres for exotic
trade, the direct consequence of the close relationship
between the imperial house and the powerful
families of bankers and traders, particularly the Fuggers.
Owing to their numerous workshops (factors) in
Europe and the Levant, the Fuggers had privileged
access to maritime routes and monopolized much of
the European economy. They played a key role in the
Habsburgs’ diplomatic games not only due to their
activities at the court but also by providing exotica and
countless marvels for their benefactors.25 Within this
network of relationships, objects passed from hand to
hand through exchanges of goods, gifts or trading
activities.26
Italy held an advantage in these endeavours because
of her seaports and the privileged relations the papacy
maintained with the imperial family. Via this network
of friends, patrons and the like, numerous American
objects circulated throughout Europe, passing from
one important personage to the next. Notably, in
, Count Jakob Hannibal von Hohenems is known
to have offered to Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol
an Amerindian anchor axe, which previously had
belonged to the collection of Pope Pius IV.27 Similarly, the famous Codex Vindobonensis passed from
the hands of King Emmanuel of Portugal to Pope
Clement VII before entering the collection of a
German cardinal in Weimar; it finally ended up in
Vienna where it remains to this day. In , Cosimo
de’ Medici sent Duke Albrecht in Munich a featherwork portrait of the Virgin, which was part of an
exotic shipment recently landed in Livorno.28
The most fervent collectors of Mexican objects in
Italy were members of the Medici family. Cosimo and
his successors in Florence had assembled many jade
and mosaic masks, some of which have survived
to this day. In Bologna, the Marchese Ferdinando
Cospi, together with erudite scholars such as Ulisse
Aldrovandi and Antonio Giganti, began to collect
codices, Mexican idols, knives, headdresses, Taino
objects and Brazilian weapons. In Rome, Tommaso de’
Cavalieri kept a number of feathered shields in his residence, while Athanasius Kircher devoted himself to the
study of Mexican gods and codices kept in the Jesuit
collections at the Collegio Romano.29
From the second half of the sixteenth century,
individuals taking advantage of the strategic position

WONDERS OF AMERICA
of trading posts opened their own curiosity cabinets.
In Augsburg and Antwerp, collectors did a lucrative
trade selling their perpetually renewed acquisitions to
princes and nobles.30 The demand was such that as
the seventeenth century dawned, numerous shops,
specializing in the sale of exotic curiosities – antiquities
and naturalia – opened in all corners of Europe. In
Lisbon, the ‘Shop of the Indies’ attracted many customers, while in Paris those who collected rare objects
were assiduous visitors to ‘Noah’s Ark’. Elsewhere, in
Delft, Dieppe and Rome, the existence of this type of
trade has been recorded, although up until now little
information on the subject has been available.31
In Simancas, Charles V (reigned –) assembled many antiquities from the Americas, comprising
gold and silver figurines, footwear from Peru, a cotton
and feather headdress, jewellery and a great variety of
‘weapons from the Indies’. However, it was his successor, Philip II (reigned –) who became the
greatest collector of exotica in Europe, with items
from China, Africa, the Middle East and the New
World. His enormous collection was divided between
the Monastery of El Escorial and the Alcázar Palace
(Segovia) where the last exhibition gallery displayed
portraits, mythological and allegorical paintings
together with illustrations of exotic animals, side by
side with portraits of the Inca emperors, dispatched
by the viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, in the
s. An inventory of his collection reveals that
Philip II possessed an extraordinary number of Peruvian objects including anthropomorphic idols of
wood, stone and gold; animal figurines (pumas, butterflies and llamas); ritual vases; sculpted seats; headbands (insignia of the Inca nobility); featherwork
items; jewellery of various materials and numerous
garments of tinted wool, which were in the main a
heritage of the Incas.32 Such an inventory and that of
the cabinet of Prince de Esquilache prove indisputably that Spanish collectors acquired many Peruvian
objects in the seventeenth century. However, these
pieces did not circulate (or rarely did so) beyond the
Peninsula and therefore would not have been included
in a system of diplomatic exchange between allied
courts. The explanation for this phenomenon does
not lie solely in the melting down of precious metals
or in the determination of certain steadfast Catholics
to destroy pagan idols. Indeed, numerous objects of
gold remained extant throughout the seventeenth
century, such as the Peruvian idols of Don Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, while both Vincenzio Juan de
Lastanosa (in Huesca) and the Count de Guimerá were
enthusiastic collectors of stone idols with the same
provenance.33 The questions that surround this matter
remain open and merit further research. Finally, elsewhere in Spain, many monasteries were just as eager to
collect Americana and specifically religious images displaying the technique of Pre-Columbian featherwork.
Before the accession of Philip II to the throne of
Spain, the Low Countries benefited from a privileged
status within the German empire. During those years,
Brussels flourished and hosted a princely court whose
members developed a taste for curiosities. After
the Spanish repressions of the late sixteenth century,
however, the Dutch started to cultivate a particular
attachment to South America and published numerous illustrations, plays and lampoons comparing the
conditions of the Amerindians with the Dutch
oppressed under the Spanish yoke.34 This political
context, as well as their expansion of exotic trade35
certainly sparked the interest of the Netherlanders for
Native American works. Between  and  the
flow of Brazilian objects arriving in the country accelerated considerably owing to several Dutch expeditions to the Chilean and Peruvian coasts, plus the
appointment as governor-general of Johan Maurits in
Brazil. Johan Maurits supplied the collection of his
cousin Frederick Henry of Nassau with exotica, featherwork items, necklaces and Brazilian musical
instruments. The traveller Van Linschoten was another
important figure in the Dutch trade in exotic objects.
He provided the physician Bernhard Paludanus with
some Brazilian clubs and featherwork pieces which
were displayed in the Paludanus’s cabinet; later, some
of these items were shared between the collections
of Duke Frederick of Württemberg and the Duke of
Gottorp.36
In England, despite the incursions of some British
expeditions in the South Seas, interest in the Americas
lagged behind that of the Continent, but after the
Civil War, the revival of anti-Spanish sentiment and
the progressive translation of principal chronicles
contributed to the creation of a more favourable climate. Here too, in the collections of individuals like
John Tradescant, featherwork articles were to be
found, along with Brazilian clubs and hammocks, garments and necklaces of jaguar, ocelot and monkeys’
teeth and a picture of the Madonna worked in feather
mosaic. Some of these objects are still visible today,

ISABEL YAYA
exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.37
The Bodleian Library, also in Oxford, has, since ,
held the famous Codex Mendoza, an indigenous document commissioned by the viceroy of New Spain
some twenty years after the conquest.
It has been suggested that the French courts did
not cultivate the same taste for exotic curiosities as
their neighbouring states. The economic and political
realities in France were certainly not conducive to
forming an important collection of Mexican artefacts,
and these are notably absent from French inventories.
Nevertheless, during the first half of the sixteenth
century François I (reigned –) and Henri II
(reigned –) collected Amerindian objects, most
of which have regrettably disappeared. It seems that
Jacques Cartier initially brought to the court many
ethnographic items collected during his voyages.
Some years later, Nicolas de Villegagnon, followed by
André Thevet and Jean de Lery, brought back
Brazilian clubs and featherwork cloaks for French
dignitaries. Amongst these items were a hat made of
toucan plumage and some ‘bags, chausses, belts,
lacings and other fine works made in the manner of
Barbary’.38 Unfortunately, during the reign of Henri
IV (–), the king’s cabinet of ‘singularities’,
which included many new items brought by Jean
Mocquet, was mostly destroyed by fire.
In France the sovereigns were not the only ones
interested in these items. Religious institutions and
laymen had also cultivated a taste for Brazilian
artefacts: the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris,
for instance, preserved Canadian, Brazilian and
Guyanese clubs. Outside the capital, individuals such
as the shipowner Jean Ango showed a keen interest in
these artefacts. Situated in Dieppe, Ango was able to
benefit from the development of Normandy’s maritime trade with far-off countries to acquire Brazilian,
Indian and African exotica. Among apothecaries,
professors of botany and certain lawyers, further
American antiquities could be found. Many of the
collections were concentrated in the south of the
country, which was favoured by the proximity of trading ports. Cabinets located in Montpellier, Bordeaux
and Poitiers assembled items from the New World
including garments, feather headdresses, weapons,
arrows, shields and jewellery with a necklace of human
teeth. Another example was the cabinet of the
Bernons at La Rochelle, which possessed ‘diverse
curiosities used by a chief of the savages’.39
Enthusiasm for the Americas spread rapidly in
France to the extent that from the mid-sixteenth
century the Americana featured prominently in the
constructed universe of exotic curiosities. In , a
Brazilian village was reconstructed to its original
scale at the stately entrance of King Henri II into the
town of Rouen. Attempting to replicate Amazonian
tribal life,  players simulated scenes of hunting
and gathering food, while others pretended to go
about their traditional pastimes. Among these men,
fifty were true natives with their chins, lips and ears
pierced and adorned with gemstones. But even more
astonishingly, added to this vivid portrayal was a
mock battle scene between two rival groups. Overseen by the French king, the two factions faced each
other brandishing their weapons (Fig. ). Some of
these were authentic bows, clubs and lances from the
American continent that, after the event, certainly
joined the cabinet of curiosities. A series of engravings of the time reveal that other curiosities and marvels from afar completed this picture, associating
fantastic creatures like the unicorn, exotic animals
and plants transported for the occasion, together
with playlets from Greek and Roman mythology.40
This type of representation was inherited from a
medieval tradition of festivities and exotic banquets.
In the fifteenth century these receptions were composed of ‘tableaux vivants’ during which exotic
menageries paraded and mythological scenes were
enacted, while dwarves and giants frequently accompanied Moorish dancers. Extremely popular with
the Capetian monarchs, this tradition spread from
France throughout Europe, particularly in the
Germanic courts where American exoticism replaced
the theme of the Turkish Orient.41 Through the display of these wonders in the restrictive intimacy of
European courts, the monarchies enraptured their
public, thereby consolidating their authority. Moreover, it is remarkable that these festivities made use
of the same elements displayed in the cabinets and
therefore conjured up veritable tableaux vivants of
the world of curiosities. Between objects of wonder
and objects of investigation, these curiosities invariably served to depict the universe and represent its
diversity. Whether in the intimacy of the cabinet
or in staged courtly activities, history and natural
history became inseparable elements, fusing an
ancient past with the exoticism of the day, thereby
enabling a reconstitution of the world.

WONDERS OF AMERICA
Fig. . ‘Figure des Brasilians’ reproduced from C’est la deduction du sumptueux ordre plainsantz spectacles … (), shelfmark .d..
© British Library Board. All rights reserved.
Such a universe, however, was not one that
bestowed the Americas with any degree of privilege.
On the contrary, absorbed within the microcosm of
the cabinets, the American object was lost amidst the
surrounding curiosities. Christian Feest, noticing
the absence of any explicit indications concerning
these specific objects, concluded that ‘it is unlikely
that most of the viewers were able to differentiate
between the American objects and those sent from
far-off countries’.42 Numerous exotic items received
ornamental additions once they entered the sphere
of European displays: the Olmec mask of the Munich
cabinet or the figurines of the Medici collection, for
instance, were embellished with baroque frames and
precious insets.43 These aesthetic requisites disregarded cultural ‘authenticity’ and particularism,
which constituted the standards that governed the
collecting of exotic materials at a later date. On the
contrary, the Americana of the curiosity cabinets
were incorporated into a homogenous mould that
rarely acknowledged their origin and selected them
according to the moral tenets of curiosity. A century
after its entry into the European consciousness, the
New World was still not an object of investigation in
itself. Nevertheless, it did extend the geographical
and social universe of western Christendom, knowledge of which had formed the sole intellectual preoccupation of Europe. The Americas took their place
in this immense puzzle that God had created for the
community of believers. It was up to modern man to
understand the mechanism of the universe and the
reasons for its diversity, but in order to accomplish
such a task, he needed to organize and classify his
material. Yet the arrangement of these curiosity cabinets appeared chaotic, jumbled and cumulative,
invariably leaving early researchers of the collections
perplexed. The number of objects displayed was
extensive and each was placed in such a manner as to
create a strong visual impact alongside the others.
Items would frequently take the viewer by surprise,
through opulence of form or extreme technical skill,
leaving little space for contemplation. How, then,

ISABEL YAYA
could the curiosity cabinet, this microcosm so often
evoked by the collectors, constitute a representative
compendium of the known world?
The representation of the Americas in
curiosity collections
Although the taxonomy of the curiosity cabinet did
not reflect the systematic series of later collections, it
would be erroneous to assume such cabinets excluded
any organized reflection. Certainly, the categories
used in inventories such as artificialia, naturalia and
exotica misrepresent the practical way in which the
collections were assembled. The cabinets were in fact
organized according to strict principles. One of these
derived from the thought of the ancient writer Pliny
the Elder, whose Natural History was revived among
naturalists and reinterpreted by humanist scholars.44
Following this first precept, as exemplified by the
museum of Ole Worm in Copenhagen (Fig. ), objects
of the same raw material were grouped together
irrespective of form, function or state of execution. A
second principle gave more importance to the organization of objects according to their period or function.
In this case the display area was divided into a number
of chambers or cabinets comprising, for instance, a
weaponry room, an antiquarium of Greek and Roman
sculptures or a medal cabinet. Charles V’s collection
of Brazilian clubs, for example, formed part of a larger
display of weapons from the known world. From the
second half of the sixteenth century numerous publications discussed the organization of the ideal cabinet
and raised the question of the classification of knowledge. Overall, the cabinets did not always follow the
epistemological agenda advised by these works;
however their popularity, even among the nobility,
reflected a need to classify appropriately and order the
knowledge at hand. Supporting evidence can be found
in the principal works by Quiccheberg and Bacon,
along with the catalogues compiled by the collectors
themselves.45 These registers complemented the collections by commenting on the nature of each object
or by providing the reader with a history (often embellished) of the item. Amongst the scholars to have produced a textual appendix to his cabinet was Ulisse
Aldrovandi, a Bolognese professor and collector of
naturalia and exotic objects. He wrote a discourse
clarifying the presentation of his museo, affirming that
the contents reflected the organization of the world.46
More precisely, the microcosm of his cabinet was
intended to replicate the order of the universe created
by God and where the most perfect being possessed
the most developed functions. His botanical collection was therefore arranged in an increasing order,
Fig. . Frontispiece of Olaus Worm,
Museum Wormianum sue Historia
rerum rariorum (). With
permission from the Smithsonian
Institution.

WONDERS OF AMERICA
from the most imperfect example (leafless plants) to
the perfection of fruit-bearing trees and medicinal
herbs. A similar order applied to the animal world,
more perfect than the flora, to the point that the universe depicted in Aldrovandi’s cabinet was organized
according to the hierarchy of kingdoms.47
Closely related to the enterprise of hoarding and
displaying wonders was the constitution of private
libraries, where the printed material enlightened the
content and organization of the cabinet. Indeed,
curiosity was a disposition of the mind in which the
collecting of mirabilia and a knowledge of books went
hand in hand. Since the fifteenth century, European
courts had placed themselves at the centre of the intellectual renaissance, competing for the patronage of
scholarly works, expeditions and reprints of Classical
materials. Frequently, the generosity of popes or
monarchs funded the cabinets of famous naturalists
and physicians who, with good grace, dedicated their
publications to their benefactors. More than ever,
erudition had become the nobility’s pageantry and in
many instances, royal collections were entrusted to
the care of the learned men who had gained the
sovereign’s esteem. Such was the case of André Thevet,
cosmographer of the French kings and jealous protector of Henri II’s cabinet of ‘singularitez’. Yet, the subject
matter of Thevet’s discipline itself was remarkably
similar to the ambition pursued by many collectors.
Cosmography was concerned with the patterns
structuring the universe, combining astronomical
knowledge with geography. In the words of Peter
Heylyn it provided ‘a universal comprehension of
Natural and Civil History’. Throughout the sixteenth
century, cosmographies became extremely popular
in the libraries of European scholars and patrons.
Amongst them was Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia
Universalis (), translated into six languages and
which became a reference point for the discipline for
more than a century. As M. T. Hodgen observed, this
work ‘set out not only to edify but to entertain’ in the
manner of medieval treatises – and, we might add,
collections of wonders.48 Münster not only describes
the geography, customs and social institutions of
known people but also includes an examination of
fabulous creatures such as the cockatrice, ‘the monsters of Africa and India’, together with extraordinary
phenomena. By addressing the same subjects as moral
and natural histories, many cosmographies followed
the content and patterns of early collections. Their
content lingered over the ‘accidental’ and repeated
medieval commonplaces of cultural differences,
describing the Persians as ‘disloyal and unfaithful’ or
the French as ‘glottons’.49 These publications devoted
no particular attention to the inhabitants of the New
World as such,50 and indeed, half a century after the
Spanish incursion on American soil, Münster made
only sparse mention of the ‘new islands’ and, like
many of his contemporaries, incorporated this new
section in his volume dedicated to Asia. Under this
vague geographical construct, scholars as well as curiosity collectors participated in modelling the cultural
unity of the ‘Indies’, regardless of its ethnic
diversity.
In this century of reinterpretation, cosmographies
and historical treatises began by comparing the exotic
world, as a cultural unity, with the familiar – the people of the Bible, Classical and European societies.
They catalogued and equated, concluding with their
own exegeses of cultural and natural phenomena. The
intellectual undertaking of the late Renaissance was,
therefore, primarily concerned with the activities of
collecting and contrasting materials that had long
been diffused. Thus, when confronted with the data
brought by travellers, scholars naturally proceeded by
integrating them within known cultural and geographical templates. In this way, America became the
natural habitat of the mythical beasts mentioned in
abundance in biblical and Classical texts. This epistemological approach led Münster, for instance, to suggest that the Cannibals of the New World descended
from the Androphages described by Herodotus, while
a later edition of his Cosmographia included an engraving which pictured ‘Barbarians’, ‘Savages’ and monsters under a single category. Similarly, cartographers
of the period embellished representations of the
Americas with extravagant scenes of fabled creatures
and marauding cannibals, perpetuating a traditional
iconography of the medieval mappa mundi in which
wonders were represented on the periphery of the
Christian world.51
Because the curiosity cabinet reconstructed a universe organized and understood on similar principles,
they also included reconstructions of fabulous creatures, antiquities, collections of bezoars, instruments
of exquisite craftsmanship, exotica and illustrations of
deformed beings. Attempts at understanding the
mechanisms regulating such a universe, or at producing an unabridged representation of the known world,

ISABEL YAYA
included both the domains of Creation, namely naturalia and artificialia.52 This organizational system
reflects the narrow correlation that united social history with natural history (climatology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, etc.), conceived as matters exercising
a mutual influence upon each other. Indeed, the disciplines became inseparable in the sixteenth century,
since both were concerned with explaining the
characteristics of human societies according to their
milieu. Heylyn explained this approach in his
Cosmographie in Four Books (), which he had
expanded from an earlier work titled Microcosmus. In
his words, the understanding of the whole world
combined ‘Natural History or Geography’ which
treated the ‘regions themselves, together with their
sites, and several commodities’, ‘Civil History’ which
discussed ‘Habitations, Governments and Manners’
and ‘Mathematiks’ encompassing ‘the Climates and
configurations of the Heavens’.53 The accepted belief
was of a correlation between the social dispositions of
mankind and the characteristics of climate, between
human reasoning and topography. Others similarly
advocated the existence of a common temperament
amongst people living in the same (relative) longitude,
therefore assimilating the fury of Brazilian cannibals
to the Neapolitans’ melancholy that drives them to
insatiable revenge.54 Finally, it was not uncommon for
natural histories of the seventeenth century to include
sections on local customs and narratives of the regions
under scrutiny.
Also symptomatic of the late-Renaissance period
was the lavish publication of moral histories, conceived to compile the customs of all nations. One of
the first examples of this genre was Johann Boemus’s
Omnium gentium mores, published in Augsburg in
. Boemus’s ambition was to produce an unabridged manual of the customs and manners of known
societies, for the betterment of European governance
in those regions. Yet despite being a work of the sixteenth century, his collection of ‘façions’ made no
mention of the New World. It should not occasion
any surprise that most of his contemporaries adopted
a similar position. As M. T. Hodgen showed, the second half of the sixteenth century saw the growth of
specialized publications that assembled and contrasted
specific social practices of all nations, such as funerary
rites, forms of marriage or religious beliefs. Among
them, compilations of costumes and habits serve to
illustrate the insignificant impact that America had
made on early European collections of human customs. Remarkably, even a hundred years after the
conquest, the New World is patently absent from
most of the costume books that set up ‘an iconographic
system revealing less about the arrays of different
social and ethnic groups populating America, than
about the small stock of images that late sixteenthcentury printing ateliers had at their disposal’.55
Almost all of these publications depicted the
American Indians in feather apparel or modestly hiding
their nudity away from the reader’s eye. In all of these
collections of customs, the representation of the New
World certainly fed European curiosity but served
no anthropological purpose. For the time being, the
nations of America had no influence upon the shaping
of an ideal model for moral governance of Christendom.
Such an influence would come gradually, with the
emergence of the moral archetype of the savage and
an increasing number of works on the question of
Amerindian origins.
The classifying of ethnographic materials from the
New World also remained haphazard in the curiosity
cabinet until the shift towards more ethnocentrist
approaches. For instance, the  inventory of Cosimo
de’ Medici’s collection reveals that his Amerindian
feather cloaks were recorded under the section ‘clothing of different types’, while two Aztec masks encrusted
with turquoise were described as ‘jewellery’. A decade
later, an attempt to interpret the function of those
masks was made by integrating them into the
European notion of theatrical disguise and costume; in
the  inventory they thus appear listed among different types of religious habits and costumes. By the
mid-seventeenth century, however, the Medici collection had substantially increased and the latter arrangement was no longer sustainable. Several exotica and
objects of American origin were therefore transferred
to armoury in the Uffizi as part of an assortment of
non-European materials. According to Heikamp, this
small assemblage of ethnographic items represented an
early attempt to organize into a single category materials alien to Christian Europe for the purpose of comparison.56 Exotica were increasingly differentiated from
other artificialia as they took on a role in the reflection
on human diversity and its origin. Another example of
this shift was the mid-seventeenth-century collection
of Ole Worm, who assembled in Copenhagen in a separate room of his cabinet exotic weapons and other
utensils from Turkey and the Americas.57

WONDERS OF AMERICA
Once exclusively a reflection of European fantasy
and exoticism, Amerindian items gradually came to
form the focus of comparative intellectual curiosity.
This development appeared first in printed sources,
but cabinets also played a central role in this enterprise. From the first half of the seventeenth century,
reproductions of Amerindian objects appeared in an
increasing number of publications on moral theory,
serving to illustrate comparative studies of manners and
customs. Thus, scholars such as Lorenzo Pignoria, in
Imagini degli dei indiani, used the materials made
available by European collectors. In his appendix to
Vicenzo Cartari’s treatise on the Graeco-Roman pantheon (), the Italian antiquary assembled illustrations of so-called Indian gods from Chinese, Japanese
and Mexican origins. His primary sources for the representation of American deities included a colonial
codex owned by the Vatican Library, probably the
Codex Vaticanus A, and several figurines held in notable European cabinets.58 European curiosity for the
New World received a significant impetus with
the multiplication of colonial manuscripts commissioned to satisfy the need and taste of important officials. Such was the case of the Codex Vaticanus A and
the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, both of which used
extant documents to depict the history and cosmology
of Mesoamerica.59 Moreover, as previously noticed by
Heikamp, Pignoria’s illustrations reveal an interest in
Egyptology and his probable adherence to the widespread theory connecting the inhabitants of the New
World to the Ancient Egyptians. This assumption
also rested on a philological foundation shared by
many scholars, most notably Athanasius Kircher. His
Oedipus Aegyptiacus, written between  and ,
was an imposing attempt at deciphering Egyptian
hieroglyphs and contained an extensive discussion on
Aztec writing and religion. In order to support his
hypothesis on the common origin of pagan nations,
Kircher used the exotic material at his disposal in the
museum of the Collegio Romano, ordering and comparing in his work what he believed was the esoteric
knowledge of ancient and Oriental societies.60 The
intellectual investigations of Kircher and his contemporaries were facilitated by diffusion in printed form
throughout Europe of ethnological material housed in
cabinets. This phenomenon appeared by the late sixteenth century when scholars, especially naturalists,
sought to gain a wider recognition by publicizing their
collections.61 One of the major steps in American
studies was the publication in  of the Codex
Mendoza, acquired by an Englishman from Thevet’s
hands, and which kindled a curiosity for Mexican
writing amongst the antiquaries.62
Finally, this approach to the diversity of cultural
phenomena and its origins cannot be isolated from
the debate that increasingly dominated the late
sixteenth century. At issue was the classification of
barbarous and savage societies, a question that
encroached on the nature and origin of paganism,
and thus, on the principles and motivations behind
the policy of evangelization. In , José de Acosta’s
notably popular book, Natural and Moral History of
the Indies, revisited the many quandaries faced by
Europe concerning exotic societies. A Jesuit and
Provincial of the Society in Peru, Acosta was dedicated to defining the nature of American Indians. As
indicated by the title, the study of both natural history and the social behaviour of man were inseparable
undertakings in Acosta’s work.63 These two fields of
investigation enabled the author to reconstruct a
microcosm of the New World by encompassing the
totality of known facts on the Indies. He developed a
complete cosmographical study of America, recording detailed descriptions of climate, minerals and
rare specimens. He also compared the environmental
milieu of the Americas with the mythical countries
described by Aristotle, Plato and Pliny, in exploring
the possibility that they each referred to the same
land. For the same reasons, Acosta also investigated
similarities between Amerindians and the Biblical
people of Ophir. This intellectual curiosity finally led
him to establish a classification of barbaric societies,
which were graded from the most primitive to the
most civilized through the examination of specific
criteria. With this in mind, he categorized the social
and political order of Mexican, Peruvian and Brazilian
societies along with that of other exotic civilizations
such as Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian and Chaldean. In
this way, Acosta suggested three stages in mankind’s
social evolution, in direct correlation with the three
stages of paganism towards the true religion. The history of civilized beings thus began with the adoration
of raw and rudimentary things (stones and rivers)
before turning to animal idolatry and concluding with
the cult of anthropomorphic figures. These three
stages reflected the work of God described in Genesis,
from the most primitive creation to the perfection
of man.

ISABEL YAYA
Though partly embedded in a traditional epistemology, the Natural and Moral History foreshadowed
the organization and evaluation of exotic materials in
later European collections. For Acosta – and exemplified also in the cabinet of Aldrovandi – the organization of the world depended on the hierarchy
orchestrated by the Almighty, in which the natural
order reflected that of human societies.64 Man’s evolution towards civilization was therefore dependent
on his ability to control and comprehend the sophisticated work of creation and to produce evidence of his
stage in the human hierarchy from primitive to civilized. From these principles emerged the Indian as an
archetype of primitive man who, in the context of a
new era of intellectual enquiry, gradually left the
sphere of wonder to become more of a central actor
for an entire social paradigm.
In the centuries that followed this intellectual revolution, ethnographic items were to be evaluated by the
process of separating objects from the crude material
of their natural state. The deductions that observers
drew from this method, in turn, constructed a body of
information about the societies that produced them.
In particular, the level of fine craftsmanship and the
finesse of human industry evident in the items revealed
an ability by their creators to rise above the ‘natural
state’ towards the perfection of modern man. From
the gathering and ordering of curiosities to the anthologies of manners and customs, Amerindian items thus
followed the path of European understanding and
representation of cultural difference. In the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, such an undertaking
centred on two inseparable disciplines, namely, social
history and natural history. The scientific basis of this
approach superseded the interest in ‘curiosities’ and
heralded a new era in ethnological research that would
completely change the organization and attainment of
knowledge.
participants for their interest and comments on this early dissertation. My special thanks go to Christian F. Feest and David Cahill
for their critical readings and helpful suggestions. This work would
not have seen the light of day without the help of Heather Yaya and
John A. Rees. Research for this article was funded by a grant from
the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South
Wales. Responsibility for the final product is mine alone.
Notes and references
Address for correspondence
Isabel Yaya, School of History and Philosophy, University of
New South Wales, Sydney NSW , Australia.
[email protected]
Acknowledgements
The first draft for this essay was originally presented at the International Congress of Americanists . I am most grateful to the
organizers of the panel ‘Reevaluation of the collections of ethnological museums’, Manuela Fischer and Adriana Muñoz, and to the

 On this subject, see the section ‘sources and problems’ in C. F.
Feest, ‘The collecting of American Indian artefacts in Europe,
–’, in K. O. Kupperman (ed.), America in European
Consciousness, – (Chapel Hill, ), pp. –.
 I have chosen to use here the terms employed by Neil Kenny
in his latest study: see N. Kelly, ‘The metaphorical collecting
of curiosities in early modern France and Germany’, in
R. J. W. Evans and A. Marr (eds.), Curiosity and Wonder from the
Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, ), pp. –.
 G. Horn, Arca Noae sive historia imperiorum et regnorum
(Leiden, ); A. Kircher, Arca Noë (Amsterdam, ).
 The collecting of riches was already at the centre of
ecclesiastical and princely treasures of the Middle Ages. They
included reliquaries, liturgical materials, precious vessels and
jewellery, which sometimes cohabited with exotic wonders.
However, the function of these treasures and their lack of
systematic organization contrast dramatically with those of the
later cabinets of curiosities.
 W. B. Ashworth, ‘Emblematic natural history of the
Renaissance’, in N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary (eds.),
Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge, ), pp. –.
 K. Pomian, ‘Histoire naturelle: de la curiosité à la discipline’,
in P. Martin and D. Moncond’huy (eds.), Curiosité et Cabinets
de Curiosités (Neuilly, ), p. .
 P. Findlen, ‘Inventing nature. Commerce, art and science in
the Early Modern Europe: an cabinets of curiosities’, in P. H.
Smith and P. Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels. Commerce,
Sciences and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York, ),
pp. –. See also L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the
Order of Nature, – (New York, ), pp. –.
 P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and
Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, );
A. Barrera, ‘Local herbs, global medicines: commerce,
knowledge and commodities in Spanish America’, in Smith
and Findlen, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 For an inventory of the featherwork items collected during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see A. A. Shelton,
‘Cabinets of transgression: Renaissance collections and the
incorporation of the New World’, in J. Elsner and R. Cardinal
(eds.), The Cultures of Collecting (Carlton, ), pp. –.
For an introduction to featherwork technique and its colonial
context, see P. Mongne, ‘La Messe de Saint Grégoire du musée
des Jacobins d’Auch, une mosaïque de plumes mexicaine du
XVIe siècle’, La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France /
(), pp. –.
 For a discussion on the fate of Cortés’s  shipment and its
content, see C. F. Feest, ‘Vienna’s Mexican treasures, Aztec,
Mixtec, and Tarascan works from sixteenth-century Austrian
collections’, Archiv für Völkerkunde  (), pp. –.
 ‘No me admiro en verdad del oro y de las piedras; lo que me
causa esturpor es la habilidad y el esfuerzo con que la obra
WONDERS OF AMERICA
aventaja a la materia. Infinitas figuras y rostros he contemplado,
que no puedo describir; paréceme no haber visto jamás cosa
alguna que por su hermosura pueda atraer a las miradas
humanas’, in P. M. d’Anghiera, Decadas del Nuevo Mundo
(Mexico, ), vol I, p.  (my translation). See also C. F.
Feest, ‘Dürer et les premières évaluations européennes de l’art
mexicain’, in J. Rostkowski and S. Devers (eds.), Destins croisés,
cinq siècles de rencontres avec les Amérindiens (Paris, ),
pp. –; G. Kubler, ‘Aesthetics since Amerindian Art
before Columbus’, in E. Hill Boone (ed.), Collecting the PreColumbian Past: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington,
), pp. –.
 Concerning the first appreciations and their context, see Feest,
op. cit. (note ).
 See Daston and Park, op. cit. (note ), p. .
 See Daston and Park, op. cit. (note ), p. –.
 P. Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, from Gutenberg to
Diderot (Cambridge, ), pp. –.
 B. J. Balsiger, ‘The “Kunst- und Wunderkammern”: A
Catalogue Raisonné of Collecting in Germany, France and
England, –’, Ph.D. dissertation, Pittsburg, ;
A. Schnapper, Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe, collections
et collectionneurs dans la France du XVII siècle (Paris, ),
pp. –.
 See Daston and Park, op. cit. (note ), p. . For an exhaustive
study on this phenomenon, see T. DaCosta Kaufmann,
‘Remarks on the collections of Rudolf II: the Kunstkammer as
a form of Representatio’, Art Journal  no.  () pp. –;
O. Impey and A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums,
The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
Europe (Oxford, ); E. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the
Shaping of Knowledge (London, ).
 See Pomian, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 W. C. Sturtevant, ‘First visual images of native America’, in
F. Chiappelli (ed.), First Images of America: the Impact of the
New World on the Old (Berkeley, ), pp. –; P. Mason,
Infelicities. Representations of the Exotic (Baltimore, ), pp.
–.
 It is necessary to mention here the exhaustive work of
Professor C. F. Feest who itemized in detail the first American
ethnographic collections in Europe. For more information
on this question, the reader is referred to his publications. I
wish to contribute to this issue by remarking that the Peruvian
pieces were certainly more numerous than is generally thought,
particularly in the case of the Spanish cabinets. See C. F. Feest,
‘Mexico and South America in the European Wunderkammer’,
in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; idem,
‘European collecting of American Indian artefacts and art’,
Journal of the History of Collections  no.  (), pp –;
idem, ‘The collecting of American Indian artefacts in Europe,
–’, in Kupperman, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 See Feest, op. cit. (note ); E. Scheicher, ‘The collection
of Archduke Ferdinand II at Schloss Ambras: its purpose,
composition and evolution’, in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit.
(note ), pp. –; L. Seelig, ‘The Munich Kunstkammer’,
in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 E. Bujok, Neue Welten in europäischen Sammlungen. Africana
und Americana in Kunstkammern bis  (Berlin, ).
 M. A. Meadow, ‘Merchants and marvels, Hans Jacob Fugger
and the origins of the Wunderkammer’, in Smith and Findlen,
op. cit. (note ), pp. –; Seelig, op. cit. (note );
H.-O. Boström, ‘Philipp Hainhofer and Gustavus Adolphus’s
Kunstschrank in Uppsala’, in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit.
(note ), pp. –.
 R. Pieper, ‘Los límites del mundo atlántico: artificialia y
naturalia en el comercio transatlántico del siglo XVI’, in
R. Pieper and P. Schmidt (eds.), Latin America and the Atlantic
World/El Mundo Atlántico y América Latina (–)
(Cologne, ), pp. –.
 Known in Italy by the name of Jacopo Annibale Altemps
(–), Count von Hohenems was the nephew of the
Medici Pope Pius IV and related to the Archbishop of
Salzburg. An important military leader, he entered the service
of the Habsburgs and also headed the Vatican army. He
would have obtained the anchor axe thanks to his connection
with the Medici family. The weapon, attributed to the Gé,
had a note attached to it when it was discovered at Schloss
Ambras mentioning that Cortés had given it to the Pope. The
reference to the Spanish conquistador is undoubtedly a hoax
but illustrates the common practice of attributing personal
association to items in inventories. In their endeavour to give
historical credit to anonymous items, European collectors
often contrived the origin of these objects by associating them
with important characters. This practice applied not only
to Western figures but also to exotic leaders, whose names
became famous thanks to travel literature. The catalogues
offered many examples of ‘Montezuma’s battle axe’ or
‘Montezuma’s feather cloak’, which were later proven to be
Brazilian artefacts. The Ashmolean Museum also holds the socalled ‘Powhatan’s Mantle’, a deerskin cloak embroidered with
shells that may never have belonged to the ‘King of Virginia’:
see Feest, op. cit. [European collecting] (note ), p. . I am
most grateful to Professor Feest for providing me with the
detailed historiography of the Vienna anchor axe.
 D. Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici (Florence, ).
Concerning the Codex Vindobonensis, see L. Toorians,
‘Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I, its history completed’,
Codices manuscripti  no. (), pp. –.
 D. Heikamp, ‘American objects in Italian collections of the
Renaissance and Baroque: a survey’, in Chiappelli, op. cit. (note
), pp. –; L. Laurencich-Minelli, ‘Museography and
ethnographical collections in Bologna during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries’, in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note
), pp. –; W. Schupbach, ‘Some cabinets of curiosities
in European academic institutions’, in Impey and MacGregor,
op. cit. (note ), pp. –; Findlen, op. cit. (note ).
 Boström, op. cit. (note ); R. Pieper, ‘The upper German trade
in art and curiosities before the Thirty Years War’, in M. North
and D. Ormrod (eds.), The Art Markets in Europe –
(Aldershot, ), pp. –; Feest, op. cit. (note ), p. .
 M. T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, ), p. ; A. Boesky,
‘Outlandish-fruits: commissioning nature for the museum of
man’, English Literary History  (), pp –; Findlen,
op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 See Scheicher, op. cit. (note ).
 C. J. Julien, ‘History and art in translation: the paños and
other objects collected by Francisco de Toledo’, Colonial Latin
American Review  no.  (), pp. –.
 H. Jantz, ‘Images of America in the German Renaissance’, in
Chiappelli, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 J. M. Morán Turina and F. Checa, El Coleccionismo en España. De
la Cámara de Maravillas a la Galería de Pinturas (Madrid, ).

ISABEL YAYA
 B. Schimdt, ‘Exotic allies: The Dutch Chilean encounter and
the (failed) conquest of America’, Renaissance Quarterly  no.
 (), pp. –.
 See Pomian, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Early Dutch cabinets of
curiosities’, in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note ), pp.
–.
 A. MacGregor (ed.), Tradescant’s Rarities: Essays on the
Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum , with a Catalogue of
the Surviving Early Collections (Oxford, ); A. MacGregor,
‘The cabinet of curiosities in seventeenth-century Britain’, in
Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; Boesky,
op. cit. (note ).
 See N. Pellegrin, ‘Vêtement de peau(x) et de plumes: la nudité
des Indiens et le diversité du monde au XVIe siècle’, in J. Céard
and J-C. Margolin (eds.), Voyager à la Renaissance (Paris,
), pp. –.
 See Schnapper, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; A. Vitart,
‘Notre monde rencontre un autre monde. Cabinets de
curiosités: la part de l’Amérique’, in Destins croisés, cinq siècles
de rencontres avec les Amérindiens (Paris, ), pp. –;
F. Zehnacker and N. Petit (eds.), Le Cabinet de Curiosités de
la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, des origines à nos jours (Paris,
); M. Marracha-Gouraud, ‘Le Magasin du monde en
Poitou: Cabinets et curieux aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in Martin
and Moncond’huy, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 M. Wintroub, ‘L’ordre du rituel et l’ordre des choses: l’entrée
royale d’Henri II à Rouen ()’, Annales: Histoire, Sciences
Sociales  (), pp. –.
 See Daston and Park, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; R. Strong,
Art and Power, Renaissance Festivals – (Woodbridge,
); Mason, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; J. R. Mulryne
and E. Goldring (eds.), Court Festivals of the European
Renaissance. Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot, );
J. R. Mulryne, H. Watanabe-O’Kelly and M. Shewring (eds.),
Europa Triumphans. Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern
Europe (Aldershot, ).
 See Feest, op. cit. (note ), p. .
 Heikamp, op. cit. (note ).
 See C. G. Nauert, ‘Humanists, scientists, and Pliny: changing
approaches to a classical author’, American Historical Review
 no.  (), pp. –.
 G. Olmi, L’inventario del Mondo. Catalogazione della natura e
luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna (Bologne, ). See
also Hooper-Greenhill, op. cit. (note ), pp. –; Burke,
op. cit. (note ), pp. –, –.
 U. Aldrovandi, ‘Discurso naturale di Ulisse Aldrovandi’, in
S. Tugnoli-Pattaro (ed.), Metodo e sistema nel pensiero scientifico
di Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna, ), pp. –.
 M.-E. Boutroue, ‘Le cabinet d’Ulisse Aldrovandi et la
construction du savoir’, in Martin and Moncond’huy, op. cit.
(note ), pp. –.
 See Hodgen, op. cit. (note ), p. .

 See M. T. Hodgen, ‘Sebastian Muenster (–): a
sixteenth-century ethnographer’, Osiris (), pp. –.
 On the relative disinterest in America amongst early
sixteenth-century scholars, see P. Burke, ‘America and the
rewriting of world history’, in Kupperman, op. cit. (note ),
pp. –.
 F. Lestringant, ‘Le déclin d’un savoir. La crise de la
cosmographie à la fin de la Renaissance’, Annales ESC 
(), pp. –; E. Edson, Mapping Time and Space.
How Medieval Mapmakers viewed their World (London,
).
 This precept was specifically important to Samuel Quiccheberg
for whom Nature and Art completed themselves. See his
Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi (Munich, ).
 See A. Johns, ‘Natural history as print culture’, in Jardine
et al., op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 F. Lestringant, ‘Rage, fureur, folie cannibales: le Scythe et le
Brésilien’, in J. Céard (ed.), La folie et le corps (Paris, ), pp.
–.
 See Pellegrin, op. cit. (note ), p. .
 See Heikamp, op. cit. (note ); A. Turpin, ‘The New World
collections of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and their role in
the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo
Vecchio’, in Evans and Marr, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 See Hodgen, op. cit. (note ), p. .
 Peter Mason suggested that Pignoria’s primary source was the
Icones coloribus ornatate idolorum Mexicanorum, a manuscript
commissioned by the Cardinal Marco Antonio Amulio. This
manuscript compiles drawings of exotic gods, copied from the
codex collection of the Vatican Library. See P. Mason, The
Lives of Images (London, ), pp. –. See also Heikamp,
op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 See E. Quiñones Keber, ‘Collecting cultures: a Mexican
manuscript in the Vatican Library’, in C. Farago (ed.),
Reframing the Renaissance. Visual Culture in Europe and Latin
America – (New Haven, ), pp. –.
 See D. Stolzenberg, ‘Kircher among the ruins: esoteric
knowledge and universal history’, in D. Stolzenberg (ed.), The
Great Art of Knowing. The Baroque Encyclopedia of Athanasius
Kircher (Stanford, ), pp. –.
 Findlen, op. cit. (note ), pp. –.
 At the instance of Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Purchas
published an English translation of the codex in his Purchas his
pilgrimes ().
 Historia natural y moral de las Indias en que se tratan de las
cosas notables del cielo, elementos, metales, plantas y animales
dellas, y los ritos y ceremonias, leyes y gobierno de los indios. My
translation: ‘Natural and Moral History of the Indies treating
remarkable aspects of the skies, the elements; metals, plants
and animals there, and the rites and ceremonies, laws and
government of the Indians’.
 A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, The American Indian and
the Origin of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, ).