harp. His large output of works for organ and stringed
keyboard instruments includes diferencias (sets of varia-
tions on secular melodies and popular dances), glosas
(compositions based on works by other, usually non-
Spanish, composers), tientos (fantasias), and fabordones
(embellishments of hymns and plainsong). Among his
best-known works are the variations on the song “Canto
del caballero.” Cabezón’s works were highly influential in
the development of keyboard music throughout Europe.
cabinets (Italian studioli, German Wunderkammern,
French cabinets de curiosités) Collections of rarities of art
and nature through which the Renaissance originated the
idea of the museum. The term “cabinets,” it should be
noted, refers to the collections themselves or to the rooms
housing them, not to the cupboards in which they might
be stored or displayed. Several present-day European mu-
seums can indeed trace their origins directly to such col-
lections.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the European’s
conception of the world he or she lived in was constantly
assailed. New territories populated by undreamt-of peo-
ples, animals, and plants were discovered; scientific ad-
vances inconceivable in the medieval period were made at
an ever-increasing rate. Cabinets encapsulated the prod-
ucts and apparatus of these discoveries, making them at
once more tangible and more comprehensible. Within his
or her cabinet the collector confronted the mysteries of
the universe.
Universality was the theme common to almost all
such collections: their ambitious aim was no less than the
re-creation of the world in microcosm. Although this
quest could result in an amazingly heterogeneous range of
material, both natural and man made, most collectors
were content to seek a purely symbolic completeness,
in which certain items or categories of exhibit stood
emblematically for each of the continents, for each of the
elements, or for scientific, historical, mythological, or
magical themes.
To the Renaissance grandee a cabinet was as indis-
pensable as a LIBRARY: the two served complementary
philosophical purposes and frequently occupied adjacent
chambers. In Italy almost every princely household had its
studio, that of Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–87) being the
most perfectly realized. Further north the Hapsburgs and
other noble dynasties populated Austria and Germany
with numerous Kunst-und Wunderkammern: the collection
of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol still exists at Schloss Am-
bras, near Innsbruck, and elements of other princely cab-
inets survive in Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, and
elsewhere. Frederick III established one Kunstkammer in
Denmark and Gustavus Adolphus another in Sweden. In
France the ducal collections of Montmorency (1493–
1567) and Orleans (1608–60) preceded the founding of
the cabinet du roi in the 17th century. Their invariable pur-
pose was for the personal recreation of their owners.
Cabinets were not solely the prerogative of noble
households; many of the most influential were developed
by scholars as resources for scientific study rather than for
philosophical diversion. Such purposefulness can be de-
tected in the cabinets of men like Ulisse ALDROVANDIand
Ferrante Imperato (1550–1631) in Italy, of Konrad GESNER
(1516–65) in Zürich, of Bernard Paludanus (1550–1633)
in the Netherlands, and Olaus Worm (1588–1654) in
Denmark. Men like these systemized and classified the
wonders of the world, while their publications described
not only the contents of their cabinets but also the greater
world which they represented. An indication of how wide-
spread the practice of assembling a cabinet of curiosities
had become by the mid-16th century can be seen in the
list of nearly 1000 names compiled by the Flemish print-
maker and collector Hubert Goltz (or Goltzius; 1526–83),
who between 1556 and 1560 journeyed around the
Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and
France visiting every place at which such a collection ex-
isted; among the collectors named by Goltz were lawyers,
doctors, monks, poets, and artists, as well as the more pre-
dictable grandees such as the pope, the emperor, and other
princes.
From the early 17th century the numbers of private
citizens of lesser means who founded collections began to
increase. Some bourgeois collectors, such as Pierre Borel
(1620–71) of Castres, emulated their social superiors in
forming cabinets as a basis for romantic contemplation.
Others, such as Manfredo Settala (1600–80) of Milan, pur-
sued more scientific goals. The John Tradescants at Lam-
beth, London (the elder died 1638; the younger 1608–62)
were of a more practical bent, opening their collection to
the public and deriving income from it. As the numbers of
collectors increased, the universal nature of the prototype
cabinets was abandoned in favor of collections specializ-
ing in specific aspects of natural history, art, or antiquity.
Academic institutions also began to recognize the
practical value of cabinets. That of the anatomy school at
Leyden was perhaps the most famous, having opened its
doors to the public from the early 1600s. At Oxford sev-
eral smaller collections within the university were over-
shadowed by the founding (1683) of the Ashmolean
Museum. Within the Royal Society in London, which re-
ceived its charter in 1662, the aim of founding a museum
with a precisely defined collecting program, designed to
produce comprehensive and systematic collections (par-
ticularly of natural history specimens), clearly demon-
strates the extent to which the original concept of the
cabinet of curiosities had become outmoded.
See also: BOTANIC GARDENS; ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS
Further reading: Patrick Mauriès, Cabinets of Curiosi-
ties (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002); Krzysztof Po-
mian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice8800 ccaabbiinneettss