Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Medicinal and Sacred Drugs
- Part III Divine Blood for Sale
- Appendix I ‘Rariteiten te koop’
- Appendix II Family and business network of Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of poems by Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Plate Section
3 - Drugs in the Wunderkammer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Medicinal and Sacred Drugs
- Part III Divine Blood for Sale
- Appendix I ‘Rariteiten te koop’
- Appendix II Family and business network of Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of poems by Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Plate Section
Summary
Abstract
Chapter 3 is devoted to a non-medical use of drugs: as collector’s items and objects of research in the Wunderkammer, which was popular in the early modern period. I argue that Joannes Six van Chandelier sees the wondrous nature of exotic collectibles as sources not only of sensory pleasure and of insights into nature, but also of moral danger, especially the vices avarice and curiositas, an immoderate and un-Christian thirst for knowledge. In poems on rarities such as bezoar stone, tulips, and human and animal bones, Six develops literary strategies that present himself as a learned merchant who recognises these dangers and has them well in hand.
Keywords: Cabinet of curiosities, senses, avarice, curiosity, bezoar stone, tulips
Ziet Sijbrand Feitama hier uitgebeeld na ‘t Leeven,
Zijn Geest wort daagelijks weetgierig omgedreeven
In Prenten na de Konst, in Vreemde Droogerij,
In wond’re Raarigheen, alsook in Poësy.
See Sijbrand Feitama, here portrayed after Life,
His Spirit dwells everyday curiously
Around Art prints, around Foreign Drugs,
Around marvellous Rarities, but also around Poetry.
– Jan NorelCabinets of curiosities
An interest in rarities played a central role in the early modern intellectual world. Since the Middle Ages, monarchs and aristocrats had had collections of curiosities that were well known throughout Europe and that were must-see stopping-off points for scientists and scholars travelling abroad. This practice of building up a collection of works of art and natural materials spread to other social strata in the Renaissance:
Closely connected with this new surge of interest in natural wonders was the emergence of collecting as an activity not just of patricians and princes, as in the High and Later Middle Ages, but of scholars and medical men as well. Unlike princely collectors, who continued to prize precious materials and elaborate workmanship, physicians and apothecaries collected mainly naturalia, which reflected their own interests in therapeutics and were relatively affordable.
This trend was particularly pronounced in the Dutch Republic. The collectors were usually physicians, apothecaries and merchants from the upper middle class. Noteworthy examples include the famous collections of Bernardus Paludanus, a doctor, and Jan Jacobsz Swammerdam, an apothecary and the father of the famous researcher. But they were not the only ones: there were also a good number of smaller cabinets in the Netherlands.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dangerous DrugsThe Self-Presentation of the Merchant-Poet Joannes Six van Chandelier (1620–1695), pp. 89 - 114Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020