Trading Luxury Glass, Picturing Collections and Consuming Objects of Knowledge in Early Seventeenth‐Century Antwerp

Abstract

In this assessment of the intersection of trade, picturing collections and knowledge‐making in Early Modern Antwerp, the focus is on the role of luxury glass, mirror and lens technology and the science of optics. Emphasizing the social ties that facilitated these intersections, it is argued that newly invented luxury goods such as the pictures of collections and the art cabinets allowed Antwerp craftsmen, artists and art dealers to export the message that the material objects in which they traded were objects of knowledge: not to everyone, however, but to those who desired membership of a select community.

Notes

¹ Cited and translated in M. Limberger, ‘“No town in the world provides more advantages”: Economies of Agglomeration and the Golden Age of Antwerp’, in Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe. Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, edited by P. O'Brien, D. Keene, M. ’t Hart and H. van der Wee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 39–62 (59).

² Limberger, ‘No town’, 41–4.

³ For London, see D. E. Harkness, The Jewel House. Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). For some suggestions about the Antwerp knowledge economy, see G. Vanpaemel, ‘Science for Sale: The Metropolitan Stimulus for Scientific Achievements in Sixteenth‐Century Antwerp’, in Urban Achievement, 287–304.

⁴ O. Gelderblom, Zuid‐Nederlandse kooplieden en de opkomst van de Amsterdamse stapelmarkt (1578–1630) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000).

⁵ K. Davids, The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership. Technology, Economy and Culture in the Netherlands, 1350–1800 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 203–43.

⁶ A. De Bruycker and D. van Netten, ‘“Zodat mijn verbanning tegelijk jouw straf is’. Bloei, verval en migratie van wetenschap in de Republiek en de Spaanse Nederlanden,’ Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 123 (2008), 3–30.

⁷ C. Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten tijde van de Opstand. Kooplieden, commerciële expansie en verandering in de ruimtelijke economie van de Nederlanden ca. 1550– ca. 1630 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 209–49.

⁸ H. J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 411. Cook wishes to revive the theme of science and commerce. The merging of the fields of art history and economics has a longer recent history. For a short overview, see the introduction to Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe 1450–1750, edited by N. De Marchi and H. J. Van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 3–13.

⁹ For this connection between science and the consumption of luxury goods in seventeenth‐century England, see L. L. Peck, Consuming Splendor. Society and Culture in Seventeenth‐Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), in particular, 311–45; For similar relationships in Italy, see A. Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), Chapter 4.

¹⁰ For Antwerp's luxury industry, see A. K. L. Thijs, ‘De Antwerpse luxenijverheid: Winsbejag en kunstzin’, in Antwerpen, verhaal van een metropool: 16^de–17^de eeuw, edited by J. Van der Stock (Ghent: Snoeck‐Ducaju, 1993), 105–13.

¹¹ Limberger, ‘Economies of Agglomoration’, 54.

¹² F. Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialization of Art in Antwerp's Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 19–28.

¹³ Vermeylen, Painting for the Market, 127–39. See also S. Denissen, ‘Het glazenmakersambacht te Antwerpen: de vereniging in gilden, de disciplines van het beroep en de voorziening van het materiaal’, Bulletin van de Antwerpse Vereniging voor Bodem‐ en Grotonderzoek, 3 (1985), 15–30.

¹⁴ For cristallo glass composition and quality in Venice, see P. A. Mandò, L. Mercatelli, G. Molesini, M. Vannoni and M. Verità, ‘The Quality of Galileo's Lenses’, in Galileo's Telescope. The Instrument that Changed the World, edited by G. Strano (Florence: Giunti, 2008), 63–85, 78–85.

¹⁵ See S. El‐Dekmak‐Denissen, ‘Glas te Antwerpen in de 16de en 17de eeuw’, Bulletin van de Antwerpse Vereniging voor Bodem‐ en Grotonderzoek, 2 (1988), 15–34, at 15.

¹⁶ For the establishment and history of the Antwerp glass industry, see J. Veeckman and C. Dumortier, ‘La production de verres à Anvers: Les données historiques’, in Majolica and Glass from Italy to Antwerp and Beyond: The Transfer of Technology in the 16^th–early 17^th Century, edited by J. Veeckman, S. Jennings, C. Dumortier, D. Whitehouse and F. Verhaeghe (Antwerp: City of Antwerp, 2002), 69–78, as well as other papers in this volume discussing the archaeological evidence. Older but still useful is F. W. Hudig, Das Glas mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Sammlung im Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst in Amsterdam (Vienna and Amsterdam: Selbstverlag der Verfasser, 1923), 14–17.

¹⁷ Mongardo first complained about the competition from London and Middelburg in his request to the City of Antwerp in 1581: ‘[…] nevertheless it has come to our knowledge that a certain Govaert Verhaegen, coming from England, recently received from the Council of Zeeland, residing in Middelburg, or from the Law there, the privilege and the permission to establish ovens in this same city of Middelburg, and also to make there glass in the Venetian manner […] much to the disadvantage and the detriment of the applicants’ / ‘[…] nochtans es tot huerlieden kennisse gecommen dat eenen Govaert Verhaegen, commende vuyt Engelant, soude onlancx vercregen hebben van die vanden Rade in Zeelandt, residerende tot Middelborch, oft van die vander Weth aldaer, oirloff ende consent om binnen deselve stede van Middelborch te mogen oprechten, fournaisen ende aldaer oick maecken gelaesen opde voirs. maniere van Venegien […] tot grooten achterdeele ende schaede vanden supplianten […].’ In 1592 Mongardo repeats his earlier complaints more forcefully: ‘Moreover, the masters are also secretly sollicited and requested to come to work in London in England and likewise in Zeeland, where since briefly ovens [to make] crystal [glass] have been established to draw away the art from here [Antwerp] […] which would cause the total ruin of the applicant and his household […]’ / ‘Bovendyen soe worden de meesters oyck seckretlycken gesoliciteert ende aensocht, ten eynde zy tot Londen in Engelant ende disgelycx in Zeelandt souden comen wercken, alwaer tzedert corten tyt cristalyne fournaisen syn gedresseert ende opgericht, om de conste van hier te trecken […] al dwelck soude causeren de totale ruine des suppliants ende zyn huysgesin […].’ P. Génard, De oude Antwerpsche glasblazerijen. Geschiedkundige Aanteekeningen (Antwerp: Drukkerij Wed. De Backer, 1883), 43, 53–4. Hudig, Das Glas, 16; S. Denissen, ‘Overzicht van de glasblazersfamilies te Antwerpen tijdens de 16^de en 17^de eeuw’, Bulletin van de Antwerpse Vereniging voor Bodem‐ en Grotonderzoek, 5 (1985), 9–19, at 13. For the glass industry in Middelburg, see C. De Waard, De uitvinding der verrekijkers. Eene bijdrage tot de beschavingsgeschiedenis (The Hague: De Nederl. Boek‐ en Steendrukkerij, 1906), 105–14.

¹⁸ El‐Dekmak‐Denissen, ‘Glas te Antwerpen’, 17.

¹⁹ The collection of Emanuel Ximenez is the subject of a collaborative project with Christine Göttler. This project deals more extensively with the Ximenez family than can be discussed here.

²⁰ H. Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), in particular for their commercial activities, 78–83; a family tree is at 357.

²¹ Fernão Ximenez, Emanuel's uncle, established a commandery of the Order of Saint Stephen in Antwerp. This military and religious order was founded by Cosimo de' Medici. The Order was irrevocably linked to the Medici, because papal bulls stipulated that the Grand Dukes of Tuscany held its Grand Magistery. Emanuel inherited the patronage of the commandery from Fernão. See Pohl, Die Portugiesen, 327. The Ximenez family also supplied influential members of the Florentine bureaucracy. For example, in the first decade of the seventeenth century Manuel Ximenez, another uncle of Emanuel and a Jesuit priest in Florence, and Niccolò Ximenez, a senator in Florence, were involved in the failed attempts of the Grand Dukes Ferdinando and Cosimo II to buy Sierra Leona from the Spanish Crown. See P. E. H. Hair and J. D. Davies, ‘Sierra Leona and the Grand Duke of Tuscany’, History in Africa, 20 (1993), 61–9.

²² P. Galluzzi, ‘Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: Alchimia, medicina ‘chimica’ e riforma di sapere’, in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura (Firenze: Olschki, 1982), 31–62; for the Neri–Ximenez correspondence, see 50–1.

²³ Z. Z. Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp 1550–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), in particular, 65.

²⁴ For naturalia in collections in the Dutch Republic, see (among others) A. Goldgar, Tulipmania. Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), in particular, Chapter 2, 62–130; E. Jorink, Het Boeck der Natuere. Nederlandse geleerden en de wonderen van Gods Schepping 1575–1715 (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2006), 267–360; C. Swan, ‘Making Sense of Medical Collections in Early Modern Holland: The Uses of Wonder’, in Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800, edited by P. H. Smith and B. Schmidt (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 199–213. Interestingly, Swan shows how the collection of the Leiden pharmacist Christiaen Porret resembled a Kunstkammer in that it not only contained items relating to medicinal preparations, but in addition to these naturalia, numerous ethnographic objects and scientifica. This is not to say that differences between the north and the south were non‐existent. As to images of objects – in turn, objects for collections – Honig argues that ‘no easy art historical connection exists to link Dutch imagery of things to their status as objects of commercial exchange and value, as does exist (if negatively) in the art of Antwerp’. See E. A. Honig, ‘Making Sense of Things. On the Motives of Dutch Still Life’, RES. Anthropology and Aesthetics, 34 (1998), 166–83 (172). Older but still useful are R. van Gelder, ‘Noordnederlandse verzamelingen in de zeventiende eeuw’, in Verzamelen. Van rariteitenkabinet tot kunstmuseum, edited by E. Bergvelt, D. J. Meijers and M. Rijnders (Heerlen: Open Universiteit and Gaade Uitgevers, 1993), 123–44; R. W. Scheller, ‘Rembrandt en de encyclopedische kunstkamer’, Oud Holland, 84 (1969), 81–147.

²⁵ J. Denucé, De Antwerpsche ‘konstkamers’. Inventarissen van kunstverzamelingen te Antwerpen in de 16^de en 17^de eeuw (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1932).

²⁶ I. Buchanan, ‘The Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: I. ‘Bacchus and the Planets’ by Jacques Jongelinck’, The Burlington Magazine, 132 (1990), 102–13; ‘The Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: II. The ‘Months’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’, The Burlington Magazine, 132 (1990), 541–50; G. Dogaer, ‘De inventaris van Diego Duarte’, Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1971), 195–221; H. Vlieghe, ‘Une grande collection anversoise du dix‐septième siècle: La cabinet d'Arnold Lunden, beau‐frère de Rubens’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 19 (1977), 172–204. Jaap van der Veen's discussion of collections of paintings in the Netherlands is useful, but repeats the traditional contrast between collections of naturalia in the northern Netherlands versus collections of paintings in the southern Netherlands. See J. van der Veen, ‘Galerij en kabinet, vorst en burger. Schilderijencollecties in de Nederlanden’, in Verzamelen. Van rariteitenkabinet tot kunstmuseum, 145–64. For the collection of Cornelis van der Geest, see Peterson in this issue.

²⁷ N. Büttner, ‘De verzamelaar Abraham Ortelius’, in Abraham Ortelius: cartograaf en humanist, edited by R. W. Karrow, H. Elkhadem, P. H. Meurer et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 169–80. See also T. L. Meganck, Erudite Eyes. Artists and Antiquarians in the Circle of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2003). For collecting material and visual evidence in the context of the related antiquarian and numismatic interests of Justus Lipsius, see J. Papy, ‘An Antiquarian Scholar between Text and Image? Justus Lipsius, Humanist Education and the Visualization of Ancient Rome’, The Sixteenth‐Century Journal, 35 (2004), 97–131. It is worth noting that Lipsius sometimes appears among the cognoscenti depicted in Antwerp pictures of collections, for which see Marr's overview in this issue.

²⁸ The inventory mentions ‘diversche Zeusche schelpen van veel couleuren’ in the study (comptoir). For the inventory of Rockox's house, see E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1989), vol. 4, 382–7 (386). For the paintings in Rockox's collection, see H. Van de Velde, ‘De schilderijencollectie van burgemeester Nicolaas Rockox (1560–1640)’, in Samson en Delila. Een Rubensschilderij keert terug (Vienna, Antwerp and Milan: Liechtenstein Museum, KBC Bank NV, Rockoxhuis, Skira, 2007), 33–56.

²⁹ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 3, 155–6.

³⁰ The inventory listed ‘een koffer met zeeschelpen’ in a room upstairs on the side of the street, and elsewhere, together but organized to size, more than fifty shells. See Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 1, 299–311. For Filips van Valckenisse and Rubens's entry in his album amicorum, see J. M. Muller, ‘De verzameling van Rubens in historisch perspectief’, in Een huis vol kunst. Rubens als verzamelaar, edited by K. Belkin and F. Healy (Antwerp: Rubenshuis & Rubenianum, 2004), 10–85, at 15–17.

³¹ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 1, 388–94.

³² Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 2, 432. For Italian examples, see P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and the Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994).

³³ The inventory lists ‘een houten reck met diversche Indiaensche antiquiteijten’, and in the garden ‘dry granaetboomen, dry vygeboomen, eenen grooten oraingerienboom […] ses teylen met jonge oraingieboomkens […]’, and the Achtercamerken op den Hoff two landscape paintings and ‘een weecke casse met cieckhoorens ende andere diergelijcke rariteijten’. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 6, 264–9.

³⁴ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 1, 400–61. For Michiel Coignet, see A. Meskens, Familia Universalis: Coignet. Een Familie tussen Kunst en Wetenschap (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1998), 51–145.

³⁵ Plantin was a friend of the Ximenez family whose members occasionally acted as brokers and patrons of Plantin's publication projects. See, e.g., M. Sellink, ‘“As a guide to the highest learning”: An Antwerp Drawing Book Dated 1589’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 21 (1992), 40–56, and the correspondence cited in n. 37 of that article. For the letter of Jan Moretus to Fernão Ximenez on Plantin's death, see Correspondance de Christoph Plantin, edited by M. Rooses, J. Denucé and M. Van Durme (Antwerp: De Nederlandse Boekhandel, 1883), vols 8–9, 559–62. The Plantin press traded not only in books, but also in Flemish mathematical instruments of makers such as Mercator and Arsenius. For example, the Plantin firm shipped Flemish instruments to Spain, including Philip II's collection of scientific instruments in the Escorial, using the Spanish theologian Benito Arias Montano, who collaborated with Plantin on the Polyglot Bible while he resided in Antwerp, as a middleman. See K. Van Cleempoel, ‘Philip II's Escorial and its Collection of Scientific Instruments’, in European Collections of Scientific Instruments, 1550–1750, edited by G. Strano, S. Johnston, M. Miniati and A. Morrison‐Low (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 101–27, at 116–23.

³⁶ I thank Peter van der Krogt for his help in identifying some of the globes. See P. van der Krogt, Globi neerlandici. The Production of Globes in the Low Countries (Utrecht: HES, 1993). See also F. Depuydt, ‘Aard‐ en hemelglobes in de Antwerpse schilderkunst’, Caert‐Thresoor, 26 (2007), 1–8 and, for an example of a Hondius globe in an Antwerp cabinet painting, M. J. Gorman and A. Marr, ‘“Others see it yet otherwise’: Disegno and Pictura in a Flemish Gallery Interior’, The Burlington Magazine, 149 (2007), 85–91.

³⁷ U. Härting, ‘“Doctrina et pietas”: Über frühe Galeriebilder’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1993), 95–133 (104–11).

³⁸ For the tacticle dimension of pictures of collections, see Gage and Peterson in this issue.

³⁹ Ximenez owned two editions of Cosmographia (1581, 1584). Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 1, 438.

⁴⁰ On paper instruments, see S. Vanden Broecke, ‘The Use of Visual Media in Renaissance Cosmography: The Cosmography of Peter Apian and Gemma Frisius’, Paedagogica Historica. International Journal of the History of Education, 36 (2000), 130–50; O. Gingerich, ‘Astronomical Paper Instruments with Moving Parts’, in Making Instruments Count. Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments presented to Gerard L'Estrange Turner, edited by R. G. W. Anderson, J. A. Bennett and W. F. Ryan (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 63–74.

⁴¹ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 1, 434–61.

⁴² However, this is not to say that ownership of books was widespread in Antwerp in this period. Ria Fabri has calculated that only 6.6 per cent of inventories of Antwerp houses in which one or more objects of art were displayed listed one or more books. See R. Fabri, ‘Diversche boeken van verscheyden taele, soo groot als cleyn. Aspecten van het Antwerpse privé‐boekbezit in Rockox' tijd’, in Rockox' huis volgeboekt. De bibliotheek van de Antwerpse burgemeester en kunstverzamelaar Nicolaas Rockox (1560–1640) (Antwerp: Museum Nicolaas Rockox vzw, 2005), 9–27. Then again, Rockox's library illustrates that ownership of a considerable number of objects other than paintings in a collection went together with a library on issues of natural knowledge.

⁴³ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 2, 49–54.

⁴⁴ The books are not listed. ‘405 boecken soo cleyn als groot van verscheyden taelen.’ Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen, vol. 2, 399–415, at 399.

⁴⁵ We see similar patterns of collecting objects and books on the making and use of these objects, and displaying them together, in the Kunstkammer in Dresden. There, evidence is strong that instruments were manipulated, even by the Electors. See S. Dupré and M. Korey, ‘Inside the Kunstkammer: The Circulation of Optical Knowledge and Instruments at the Dresden Court’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 40 (2009): 405–20.

⁴⁶ For merchants learning how to draw, see Goldgar, Tulipmania, 120–1; Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo, Chapter 3.

⁴⁷ Pohl, Die Portugiesen, 331.

⁴⁸ S. B. Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan. Sculptors' Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996); L. Devlieger, Benedetto Varchi on the Birth of Artefacts. Architecture, Alchemy and Power in Late‐Renaissance Florence (unpublished Ph.D diss., University of Ghent, 2004–5), 203–9.

⁴⁹ E. A. Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 203.

⁵⁰ J. Harris, ‘The Practice of Community: Humanist Friendship during the Dutch Revolt’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 47 (2005), 299–325 (315). See also J. Harris, ‘Het Album Amicorum van Abraham Ortelius: codicologie en verzameling’, De Gulden Passer, 85 (2005), 117–35.

⁵¹ Album Amicorum Emanuelis de Meteren Mercatoris Antverpiani (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 68). For the perhaps least well‐known friend in this company, Johan Radermacher, see K. Bostoen, Bonis in bonum. Johan Radermacher de Oude (1538–1617), humanist en koopman (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998).

⁵² ‘[…] durende sijn sieckte, soo nam hy seer vriendelick oorlof aende cooplieden ende andere goede vrienden, dien hem in grooten ghetale quamen besoecken, ende bedacktese voor haer voorgaende vermaeckelicke conversatie, hy wilde oock noch eens besien zijn medaillen, vrende munten, schelpen en andere selsaemheden, daer in dat hij hem somtijdts (na sijnen ordinaren arbeydt) plagh te vermaecken, doch seyde dat sulcks al maer ydelheyt en was […].’ E. van Meteren, Historie der Nederlanscher ende haerder Naburen … Oorlogen en Geschiedenissen tot de jare M.VI.CXII (‘s Graven‐haghe: By de Weduwe ende erfgename van wijlen Hillebrant Iacobsz van Wouw, 1623), cited from the appendix: ‘Het leven ende sterven van eerweerdigen, vroomen ende vermaerden, Emanuel van Meteren: Kortelijck beschreven door sijnen ghetrouwen vriendt Simeon Ruytinck’.

⁵³ E. A. Honig, ‘The Beholder as Work of Art: A Study in the Location of Value in Seventeenth‐Century Flemish Painting’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 46 (1995), 253–97 (280).

⁵⁴ See Gorman and Marr, ‘Other see it yet otherwise’; Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo, Chapter 6.

⁵⁵ J. M. Hofstede, ‘“Non Saturatur Oculus Visu” – Zur ‘Allegorie des Gesichts’ von Peter Paul Rubens und Jan Brueghel d. Ä.’, in Wort und Bild in der Niederländischen Kunst und Literatur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, edited by H. Vekeman and J. M. Hofstede (Erftstadt: Lukassen Verlag, 1984), 243–89.

⁵⁶ Härting, ‘“Doctrina et pietas”’, 123–8. For the ass as a symbol of ignorance, see G. J. M. Weber, ‘Poetenhafer, Flugesel und Künstlerparnass. Pegasus in den Niederlanden’, in Pegasus und die Künste. Ausstellungskatalog, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, edited by C. Brink and W. Hornbostel (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1995), 71–92, at 87–9.

⁵⁷ R. Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1991), 161–70.

⁵⁸ Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten, 184–8.

⁵⁹ Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten, 163.

⁶⁰ B. De Munck, ‘Construction and Reproduction. The Training and Skills of Antwerp Cabinetmakers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Learning on the Shop Floor. Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship, edited by B. De Munck, S. L. Kaplan and H. Soly (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007), 85–110, at 94–5. Perhaps most famous were the cabinets assembled by the Augsburg art dealer Philipp Hainhofer, on which, see S. Hauschke, ‘Scientific Instruments, the ‘Kunstkammer’ and the Invention of the Renaissance ‘Kunstschrank’, in Who Needs Scientific Instruments. Conference on Scientific Instruments and their Users, 20–22 October 2005, edited by B. Grob and H. Hooijmaijers (Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 2006), 49–55. See also C. E. Letocha, ‘The Augsburg Art Cabinet in Uppsala’, Opthalmic Antiques, 92 (2005), 9–13.

⁶¹ Likewise, the art cabinets reused (borrowed) existing designs and paintings of Rubens, and from the workshop of Frans II Francken. See R. Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast. Kunsthistorische aspecten (Brussel: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten, 1993), 14–80.

⁶² Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten, 112–44.

⁶³ De Munck, ‘Construction and Reproduction’, 87–9.

⁶⁴ For collaborative practices in Antwerp painting, see Honig, Painting and the Market, 177–89. Honig connects elite collaboration to friendship in E. A. Honig, ‘Paradise Regained: Rubens, Jan Brueghel and the Sociability of Thought’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 55 (2004), 271–300.

⁶⁵ For Michiel II Coignet, see Meskens, Familia Universalis, 147–51.

⁶⁶ De Munck, ‘Construction and Reproduction’.

⁶⁷ For this notion of merchant‐kenner, see N. De Marchi and H. J. Van Miegroet, ‘Art, Value, and Market Practices in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century’, The Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 451–64. On the role of art dealers more generally, see J. M. Montias, ‘Art Dealers in the Seventeenth‐Century Netherlands', Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 18 (1988), 244–56.

⁶⁸ R. Fabri, ‘Experiment en doctrina: Optische spelletjes in spiegelkamers van Antwerpse cantoren en het ontraadselen van exempla’, in Vermaak van de elite in de vroegmoderne tijd, edited by J. De Jongste, J. Roding and B. Thijs (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), 241–61; ‘Perspectiefjes in het spel. Optische ‘Spielereien’ in Antwerpse kunstkasten uit de zeventiende eeuw’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 14 (1998), 109–17.

⁶⁹ On 13 April 1575 Redor applied for a patent for ‘fort belle et nouvelle invention d’ un cabinet de miroirs, fort excellent, triuphant et tres plaisant a veoir, demonstrant ung tresoir de grant nombre de joyaux chose jamais usee nij veue’. Cited in Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten, 77.

⁷⁰ Fabri, De 17de‐eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en historische aspecten, 72–85.

⁷¹ ‘The wise ancients found a way to make a mirror out of plane surfaces in which, if one holds one thing [in front of it], many equal images are seen, as one may notice in the writings of Ptolemy. This mirror was made in the following way: On a plane table or other location where you would like to place such a mirror, one shall make half a circle and divide this in equal parts by as many points as the number of images. Draw the cords and cut off the little strips. Then place perpendicularly on [the cords] plane mirrors of equal breadth and height next to each other […] Therefore this mirror is called in Latin Theatrale’ / ‘De wijse ouders hebben ghevonden de maniere om een spiegel te maken van effen superficien / voor dewelcke houdende een dinghen / veel ghelijcke dinghen ghesien werden / ghelijckmen uit den schriften van ptolomeus mercke mach: dewelcke aldus gemaect wert. Op een effen tafel oft andere plaetse daer ghy sulcke spiegel stellen wilt / salmen maken een halve cirkel en desen ghelijck deelen met punten na het getal vande figuren / trect daer onder de coorden ende snijt de reepkens af: daerna so recht daer op effen spiegels vande selfde breedde en hoochde gelijc tegen malcander gestelt / […] Daerom wordt dese spiegel in latijn ghegheeten Theatrale.’ J. B. Della Porta, Magia oft de wonderlicke wercken der naturen (Antwerp: Chrystoffel Plantyn, 1566), 267–8.

⁷² ‘One also makes a mirror called polytaton, that is, to see many things, because by opening or closing with only one finger one sees more than twenty figures or images in it. You shall make this mirror in the following way: One shall place two crystal mirrors on a foot […] so that like a book they can be opened and closed, and so that the angles can be varied, like one uses to make them in Venice’ / ‘Men maect oock eenen spiegel polytaton ghenaemt / dat is te segghen / om veel dinghen te sien: want metten open doen oft sluyten van alleene een vingher / so sietmen daer in meer dan twintich figuren oft beelden. Desen spiegel sult ghy aldus maken. Men sal op een voet over eynde stellen twee stralen oft cristalline spiegels […] so datse ghelijc eenen boec meugen open ende toeghedaen werden / ende dat de hoecken divers comen / gelijcmen te Venegen pleecht te maken’. Della Porta, Magia, 268–9.

⁷³ Sacrobosco, Sphera cum commentis in hoc volume contentis, videlicet… (Venice: impensa heredum quondam domini Octaviani Scoti Modoetiensis ac sociorum, 1518), fols 250v–252v: ‘Ptolemeus De Speculis’. For the history of the transmission of the manuscript, its publication history, and a recent edition of the text, see A. Jones, ‘Pseudo‐Ptolemy De Speculis’, SCIAMVS, 2 (2001), 145–86. For the Renaissance reception of Hero's works, see A. Marr, ‘Understanding automata in the Late Renaissance’, Journal de la Renaissance, 2 (2004), 205–22 (209–14). Marie Boas discusses how Della Porta's catoptrical devices are copied from Hero in ‘Hero's Pneumatica: A Study of Its Transmission and Influence’, Isis, 40 (1949), 38–48.

⁷⁴ K. Tybjerg, ‘Wonder‐making and Philosophical Wonder in Hero of Alexandria’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34 (2003), 443–66.

⁷⁵ Cook opposes his views connecting commerce and Early Modern science to those which give pride of place to wonder, defined, however – following the work of Lorraine Daston – as a passion characterized by disinterestedness. See Cook, Matters of Exchange, 45. For the reintroduction of commerce into the history of the marvellous and wonderous, see Alexander Marr's introduction to Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by R. J. W. Evans and A. Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 1–20.