Abstract
It is a commonplace that the Kunst- und Wunderkammer brought together artificialia and naturalia in one space. From 19 November 2013 to 27 April 2014, the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid did precisely that. When Carlos III commissioned a new building to house the Royal Cabinet of Natural History from Juan de Villanueva in 1785, the latter in turn consulted Pedro Franco Dávila, whose collection of specimens of natural history from Central America had been acquired by the Spanish monarch fourteen years earlier. Neither Carlos nor Dávila was to know that the former would die in 1786 and the latter in 1788. Work on the Neo-Classical edifice progressed, but with the Peninsular War, exile and restoration of the monarchy under Fernando VII, the function of the building changed: when it finally opened its doors for the first time to the public in 1819, it was as the famous repository of the royal collection of paintings and sculptures that we know today.
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