Cabinet of curiosities: Find the sum of human knowledge in this museum!

The cabinets of curiosities also known as the "imaginary museum" from the Renaissance is a temple devoted to the arts and the sum of human knowledge and is described as a ''symbol of with delight and surprise, with marvels and rare objects, but is also the mirror and representation of the world in its entire,'' by its creator Tommaso Campanella.

It represents a diversity of visual arts and scientific instruments, astrology and medicine, zoology and botany, gemology and metallurgy, as well as alchemy and the more esoteric sciences.

It is sub-divided in circles. The first circle comprises of mathematical figures, the second circle of precious and non-precious stones, and minerals and metals, the third of types of herbs and trees in the world and the the fourth circle of illustrations of types of birds

 

It was originally the Magistrates' Palace, as built by Giorgio Vasari "on the river, almost in the air;" in 1581 Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici transformed the top floor of the palace into a gallery to house the crown jewels. 

The gallery was itself created as a cabinet of curiosities, which means a place of wonders.

 

The most beautiful and most important cabinet of curiosities in Italy is in the Pitti Palace in Florence. In the northern part of the palace, known as the "Summer Apartment", is the Tesoro dei Granduchi, the "Treasury of the Grand Dukes", an extraordinary assemblage of rare and precious objects.

The kind of imagination which, in 1602, inspired Campanella's prose, is the same impetus that generated the culture of the cabinet of curiosities, a phenomenon that spread throughout Italy at this time as well as through the rest of Europe.