The Animal Body as a Medium: Preservation and the Culture of Curiosity in Seventeenth-Century Germany

• In Event: Kingdom Animalia: Collecting and Representing Animals in the Global Renaissance II

Abstract

Technical advances in preserving soft tissue (alcohol preservation, taxidermy) from the seventeenth century onwards caused nothing short of a revolution in the relationship between Europeans and the animal body. The culture of preserving and exhibiting dead animals played not only a crucial role in introducing Europeans to ‘exotic’ and ‘wild animals’, familiarizing Europeans with the look (and feel) of their bodies. The easy availability and malleability of animal bodies also drove the evolution of ways in which concepts about the natural world could be represented. The history of preservation is therefore not only of importance to the history of science but likewise to the history of European visual culture. This paper draws on a rare collection of 17th-century preserved specimen of non- European animals in a cabinet of natural curiosities in Saxony/ Germany to describe the development of animal bodies as media (Belting) in the European visual arts.

Author

• Alan S. Ross, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin