Curiosity and science. Wonder rooms

Throughout human history, many have dedicated their lives to research, science, and knowledge. The supernatural, the strange, or simply the unknown has always captured the attention of men and women from the past. Alongside scientific inquiries, there has also been a curiosity and fascination with all aspects of the natural world. These two elements were primarily responsible for the proliferation throughout modern centuries in all of Europe of genuine treasures of collecting products or items considered rare or valuable. We refer to chambers of wonders, also called cabinets of curiosities.

In the present day, we have access to all types of museums, exhibitions, or events where we can contemplate important scientific discoveries made throughout history. Not to mention the vast amounts of information that are instantly and automatically available to us. Thanks to modern means of transportation, it is possible for us to travel to the antipodes of our country in a matter of hours. All this logically makes our concept of what is «exotic» very limited. 

Needless to say that this was not the case centuries ago. Populations were much less geographically dynamic than they are today, and available means of transportation turned any route we might imagine today into a long and uncertain journey due to the insecurity of land routes or the dangers of maritime storms. All this made it necessary for living, seeing, and experiencing the exotic to be physically present where the rare and unknown was found, and visiting all kinds of regions around the globe. And that was impossible in Cervantes' Europe. Thus, even nobles and kings could only imagine the vast number of natural and unnatural wonders hidden at the world's edges. Well then, chambers of wonders came to fill this need.

But what were these chambers? What did they consist of? Alberto Castán tells us that the origin of these peculiar collections lies in the schatzkammer German late medieval, or the studiolo Italian (Castán, 2015, p. 251), but they found their moment of greatest splendor in the final decades of the sixteenth century when they proliferated throughout Europe. However, the idea of gathering pieces considered marvelous for various reasons into a room is older. María Eugenia Alcatena, for example, tells us that already King Cosroes II of Persia, who ruled from 590 to 628 AD, took the cross on which Christ died and placed it in a room he had built (Alcatena, 2023, pp. 12-13). Arthur Mac Gregor highlights the importance of these chambers of wonders, considering them a central construction in Western culture (Mac Gregor, 2007) 

These cabinets were therefore large collections that included all kinds of elements appealing to the minds of the time. In them, it was possible to find natural elements such as minerals and animals of all types, whether fossils or preserved specimens, and plants, with herbariums and exotic plant collections standing out in this group. But collectors did not only admire everything related to the natural world but also artifacts. Thus, it was not uncommon to find all kinds of antiquities and ancient objects that we would now consider archaeological but which at the time, before the birth of the sciences of Antiquity, were more elements of admiration and curiosity than proper scientific study objects. Within this chapter, a very singular appearance must be highlighted: automatons, i.e., artifacts that could move, precursors, with many nuances, to today's robots. The taste for this last type of ingenuity was indeed common. In Spain, the "mascot" in Burgos Cathedral stands out, a peculiar character that can still be seen and who rings a bell every hour in a curious and striking gesture that attracts visitors who annually visit the temple. There was also room for objects of nature almost mythological or fantastic, such as mermaid fins or dragon blood, along with drawings or graphic representations of other strange objects or parts of animals. 

Naturally, these rooms were the taste of refined collectors who not only had the necessary concerns to contemplate these rare beings and artifacts but also the capital needed to collect them. This makes most users of such «wonderful rooms» nobles or wealthy merchants, but in any case, we are talking about people with means that could either travel around the world collecting several of these objects or buy them from dealers of all kinds. Among other prominent collectors of the sixteenth century, we find Dr. Hans Worm, who amassed a large collection of natural objects, antiquities, and artifacts from various civilizations (Gutiérrez, 2015, pp. 784-785).

Given the above, we can say that chambers of wonders represent the best example of interest in the unknown and the exotic, and they show us that throughout history there has been an admiration for all kinds of antiquities or objects considered special, whether natural or created by human ingenuity. However, it must be said something about this interest in the world surrounding collectors. On many occasions, the goal of these cabinets and the collection of their pieces did not stem from a scientific interest or a desire to systematically study the natural environment but rather responded to pure curiosity and the taste for the unknown. In the Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it still lacked some time before sciences as we know them today developed, but it seems indisputable that the concerns of these select groups left a valuable legacy: curiosity and the desire to know. 

Bibliography

Alcatena, María Eugenia (2023). “Artificios mecánicos: autómatas y cámaras maravillosas en la Gran conquista de Ultramar”. Revista chilena de estudios medievales, 23, 7-26.

Castán, Alberto (2015). “”Todo lo raro y hermoso” las “cámaras de maravillas”, pervivencia estética y museográfica del modelo”. De las ánforas al museo: estudios dedicados a Miguel Beltrán Lloris. Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza e Institución Fernando el Católico, 251-263.

Gutiérrez Pla, Coro (2015).”Coleccionismo extravagante: “monstruos”, “fenómenos”, “portentos” y sus imágenes en las Cortes de la Edad Moderna”. Líneas recientes de investigación en Historia Moderna, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 783-801.

Mac Gregor, Arthur (2007). Curiosity and Enlightenment. Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Yale University Press.