Thought Patterns in the Space of an Eighteenth-Century French Curiosity Cabinet

Abstract

In Thought Patterns in the Space of an Eighteenth- Century French Curiosity Cabinet, Lauren R. Cannady demonstrates how formal and conceptual affinities were forged between the various evocations of the natural world within Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson’s curiosity collection and the embroidered parterre garden on his property. The discourse around the patterned garden, the display of shells and natural specimens, and the decorative paintings inside Bonnier’s rooms reflect early modern modes of comparative and visual thinking about the natural world that brought aesthetic philosophy into dialogue with metaphysics and natural philosophy at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Reconsidered in the context of contemporary garden treatises and manuals, Bonnier’s curiosity collection is revealed as an important site of naturalist and artistic thought in the emerging European Enlightenment.