This talk is part of the 8th Annual Graduate Early Modern Student Society Symposium.
What is the precise relationship between early modern collecting and early modern sovereignty? This is the question at the heart “Inventing Inventories, Picturing Pictures,” which takes up the largest and arguably the most famous early modern princely collection, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer in Prague. Art historians have long considered Rudolf’s Kunstkammer to be a quintessentially “political” and aggrandizing representation of the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire’s mastery of nature. However, close examination Daniel Fröschl’s 1607-1611 Inventory of the Kunstkammer, reveals that it is only by way representations of the collection, not the collection itself, that allowed the emperor to appear as if he had dominion over the collection and by extension the world.
Professor Jessica Keating teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at Carleton College. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the art of early modern Europe and the intertwined histories of collecting; technology; cultural contact and exchange; and empire and sovereignty. Professor Keating’s publications include a monograph entitled Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire and the Early Modern World (Penn State University Press, 2018), in which she discusses how clockwork automata—which were both tools for timekeeping and visual objects tied to temporal movements—served as a means for the specific political ends. Her scholarship also exemplifies the recent academic trend that situates European artworks within a broader global context. Her keynote presentation will instruct GEMSS members and other attendees on the issues of time and temporalities in early modern European society from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines art, politics, and history of science.
FREE and OPEN to all those interested in early modernity, including undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and members of the public.