Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe ed. by Wolfram Koeppe (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe ed. by Wolfram Koeppe Mark A. Meadow (bio) Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe Edited by Wolfram Koeppe. New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2019. Pp. 308. This exhibition catalog, richly illustrated and furnished with nine brief but significant essays, accompanied the exhibition of the same name held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 2019–2020. The focus of Making Marvels is technology, as revealed in the 154 entries, which include Renaissance and Baroque mathematical and musical instruments, automata, tools, finely crafted jewelry, furniture, turned ivory, cups, and other vessels. The title itself, which gives an equal emphasis to the production, or "making," of these objects as well as to their reception, the "marvel" that they elicited from their original owners and from scholars and museum-goers today, makes the book's double imperative evident—to demonstrate that these objects exemplify an important period of technological innovation and are visually stunning artifacts worthy of our aesthetic attention. The paired terms "science" and "splendor" in the subtitle similarly signal a conceptual duality at work in Making Marvels: on the one hand, the book advances a claim that the creation and use of these objects and instruments generated knowledge, and on the other, it acknowledges that they also served as resplendent signs of princely power and prestige. The catalog is divided into four sections, each containing one or more essays accompanied by catalog entries. In the first section, "Setting the Standard: Forging a Culture of Magnificence," Wolfram Koeppe, the exhibition curator and the catalog's editor, frames this exhibition of technology within the contexts of the "marvelous" and courtly "magnificence." Many of these objects certainly were showpieces that served to glorify their collectors, and many were clearly designed as clever amusements, but as Koeppe and the other contributors to the catalog make clear, this is only one facet of their value, which should also be measured in the advancement of technologies, including metallurgy and metalworking, alchemy, glass-making, horology, mensuration, and many others. The second section, "The Kunstkammer: A Haven of Splendor & Study," is devoted to examining the Kunstkammer (the German term for museums in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, often called "curiosity cabinets" in English) as a locus of technology. In his contribution, Dirk Syndram provides a brief history of princely Kunstkammern, particularly those in German-speaking territories. Pamela H. Smith's essay offers some important insights on the lessons to be drawn from the exhibition as a whole; especially salient is her observation that the exigencies of courtly statecraft and display required the amalgamation of knowledge and practice from which modern [End Page 1241] science proceeded. Paulus Rainer takes up the place of foreign rarities in Kunstkammern, correctly noting their perceived utility in advancing knowledge of the world. Florian Thaddäus Bayer's essay is devoted to the Esterházy Kunstkammer, the only early modern collection to survive intact in its original location. The third section, "Princely Education & Entertainment," shifts attention from the collections in general to particular classes of objects, each exemplifying the meeting of pure and applied knowledge that typifies courtly interest in technology. Peter Plassmeyer provides a concise history of the sponsorship of European princely courts as patrons and consumers of useful mathematical instruments such as astrolabes, sundials, and astronomical clocks. Finely crafted artifacts made of ivory turned on the lathe are the topic of Noam Andrews's essay, which he rightly explains as instantiations not just of craft skills but also of applied geometry. Lathework was a particular passion of prince-practitioners, as was alchemy, the subject of Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie's essay. As she summarizes, the quest for transmuting base metals into gold was certainly a motivation for princes, but alchemy was also embraced for its practicality in producing medicines and other useful chemical products. The catalog culminates with a section on "Clocks & Automata: The Art of Technological Development," which contains a single essay by Koeppe. As the pinnacle of period craft skills and technology, these were Kunstkammer treasures and the stars of Making Marvels. More emphatically than in his introduction, here...