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Great Museum Now Lost — Full Description & 171 Plates

Buonanni, Filippo. Musaeum Kircherianum, sive, Musaeum a P. Athanasio Kirchero in Collegio romano Societatis Jesu, iam pridem incoeptum nuper restitutum, auctum, descriptum, & iconibus illustratum. Romae: typis Georgii Plachi, 1709. Folio extra. [6] ff., 522 [i.e., 399], [1 (blank)] pp., [4] ff., engr. port., 171 plates.
[SOLD]

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• Polymath extraordinaire Athanisus Kircher (1601–80) established a highly personal museum in Rome. It ranked as an equal among such contemporaries as the Calzolari, the Cospi, Elias Ashmole's, and the Ole Worm, all amazing Baroque creations.

Kircher's position in the Jesuit order placed him in an excellent situation to use the Jesuit missionaries to bring him oddities and rarities from around the world and because he had so much from so many places, there was much to appeal to a wide variety of scholars and visitors. Unfortunately, like the Ashmolean his treasure house soon fell into decline and neglect.

Filippo Buonanni (1638–1725) took it on to restore the Kircherianum and this book is a monument to that effort. It describes in words and 171 engravings what was to be found in the awesome and astounding collection. Natural history and and antiquities are strongly represented (e.g., the final 48 plates are of shells!), but on pages 309–10 we learn of “Instrumenta musica, et authomata diversa.”

• Nissen, ZBI, 2198; Cobres I, p. 106; DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 381–382; Cicognara 3372; Honeyman Sale 550. Recent full brown calf by Grace Bindings (signed in blind “GB” on the lower rear turn-in) appropriately tooled in gold in the style of the era. Raised bands, gilt center devices in spine compartments. Marbled endpapers. Ex-library (properly deaccessioned) with all plates stamped on the verso (occasional light show through). A clean, handsome copy of an infinitely absorbing book. (21561)

In truth, this book didn't quite make it to the “FB” page —
it got itself sold otherwise, just as it was about to be posted!

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