The Common Roots of Library and Museum in the Sixteenth Century: The Example of Munich

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, big libraries developed in close affinity with Kunstkammern (cabinets of curiosities, art cabinets) and collections of antiques from the private study chambers, the so-called studioli, of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century popes, dukes and humanist scholars. Within the scope of the art policy pursued by Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, this development gained particular importance in Munich. At first, a close connection based on the study of antiquity was established between the court library and the collection of antiques by the Antiquarium, a separate Renaissance building which at the end of the sixteenth century on its upper floor housed the library comprising 17,000 volumes in a hall which was 60 metres long. When this building was used for different purposes, the library moved to another building next to the newly constructed building for the Kunstkammer, with which it was interconnected by an archway mirroring the close connection between these two institutions functionally as well. The common encyclopaedic concept uniting both the Kunstkammer and the library had been developed by Samuel Quichelberg from the material example set by the two collections in Munich and published in 1565 with Adam Berg in Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi |...|, also known as Theatrum Quicchebergi. This was the beginning of museology in Germany. The Munich example is representative of the common development of museum and library in theory and practice.