BHL Book Feature: Museum Kircherianum
Musaeum Kircherianum sive musaeum was authored by Filippo Buonanni (1638-1725), a student of Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). Kircher was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who amassed a large collection of natural history objects. In 1651, the Jesuit college for which he worked, Collegium Romanum, acquired an additional large collection of fossils. Kircher combined these fossils with his own collection to create the Museum Kircherianum, one of the very first public museums. Buonanni, a student of Kircher’s and the curator of Museum Kircherianum, authored the catalog of this vast collection. This work was digitized by @smithsonianlibraries.
The museum included the usual biodiversity suspects, like the reptiles and insects on the plate above, but it also included anthropological items, like these delightfully illustrated shoes!
Explore our other books in our Objects of Wonder collection featured this week: Istoria Naturale (1599) and Museum Wormianum (1655). We also explored Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Curiosities (1734-65) awhile back.
Thanks to the #BHLstore, you can bring the wonder home and help support science at the same time. 100% of the proceeds from the store will be used to digitize more books more BHL. Shop today!