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Summary
The survival of a unique set of drawings, complemented by a contemporary description and a sale catalogue, enable us to ‘reconstruct’ the cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson (1702–1744), a miscellaneous collection formed in Paris c. 1740. A brief assessment is offered of the status of such cabinets in the growth and diffusion of science in ancien régime France. We also point to a link with the decorative arts: in a study of such a subject the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions must be treated as a unity if we are fully to evoke the context of the cabinet in the age of the rococo. Only the modern ‘discipline’-oriented viewpoint forces a separation between the history of science and the history of art.
