Magic and artifice in the collection of Athanasius Kircher

Situated at the center of intellectual life in baroque Rome, the museum administered by the Jesuit naturalist Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) simultaneously instructed and bemused its audiences with an exuberant mix of exotic animals, classical art and technological marvels. Kircher's playful use of spectacle and his irrepressible fondness for “magic” were derided by contemporaries as frivolous wonder-mongering, but the lavish machines at the heart of his museum were more than mere showpieces. Instead, they presented audiences with a compelling vision of the natural world in which the hidden foundations of the universe could be captured and displayed by artifice. Kircher's collection was in itself a vast instrument of revelation, conceived on a grander scale than the telescope of Galileo but rooted all the same in contemporary scientific culture.