Kircherianum Museum
The Kircherianum Museum was established in the Roman Collegium in Rome in 1651 . It was a typical baroque cabinet of curiosities and a forerunner of the later scientific museums. It was named after the polymath Athanasius Kircher . He was not the founder of the museum, but its trustee and curator. The basis of the museum was formed on the one Kircher's personal collection, which was inspired by a donation of the scholar Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc , secondly, the estate of the 1650 deceased Roman Senate secretary Alfonso Donnino, the Collegium an extensive collection of antique finds, fossils , from Bequeathed works of art and curiosities.
Kircher set up the museum in a side wing of the Palazzo del Collegio Romano . In addition to the objects, the museum also had a library. Kircher enlarged the collection of valuable rarities by lending other scholars and his Jesuit friars (missionaries in China and America) and by contributing his own constructions and inventions.
Athanasius Kircher lived in a time of miracles, art and curiosity chambers . They were widespread among scholars and nobles alike. One wanted to understand the idea of the universe on a small scale and recognize oneself in it ( macrocosmos in microcosmo ). While many collections were aimed at the display of curiosities, others, such as Athanasius Kircher or Ulisse Aldrovandi , served scientific and experimental purposes. The objects were partly research material, partly research results or intended for illustration. At this time, the Kircherianum Museum is practically the paradigm of a collection. A visit to the “Museum Kircherianum” with the skeletons, sculptures, paintings and mechanical devices as well as the guided tours by the landlord were soon an indispensable part of a visit to Rome for intellectuals.
The museum was after the annexation of the Papal States by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 secularized and dissolved 1915th In 2001 the Central Institute for Archives in Rome organized the exhibition “Il museo del mondo” (Italian “The Museum of the World”) in the Palazzo Venezia . With the help of the printed catalog written by Kircher himself, a large part of the original collection of the "Museum Kircherianum", which was scattered in various Roman museums, was briefly exhibited together again.
literature
- Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca: Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico , a cura di Maristella Casciato. Venezia, Marsilio 1986. ISBN 88-317-4846-7
- Athanasius Kircher - il museo del mondo [Roma, Palazzo di Venezia, 28 February - 22 April 2001], Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici. A cura di Eugenio Lo Sardo. Roma, De Luca 2001. ISBN 88-8016-421-X , ISBN 88-8016-409-0
- Angela Mayer-Deutsch: The Museum Kircherianum. Contemplative moments, historical reconstruction, visual rhetoric , Diaphanes Verlag, Zurich 2011 ISBN 978-3-03734-115-5
Web links
- Literature from and about Museum Kircherianum in the catalog of the German National Library
Coordinates: 41 ° 53 '56.2 " N , 12 ° 29' 4.4" E