The importance of gems in the work of Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640

Many are no larger than a fingertip. They are engraved with symbols, magic spells and images of gods, animals and emperors. These stones were used for various purposes. The earliest ones served as seals for making impressions in soft materials. Later engraved gems were worn or carried as personal ornaments – usually rings, but sometimes talismans or amulets. The exquisite engraved designs were thought to imbue the gems with special powers. For example, the gods and rituals depicted on cylinder seals from Mesopotamia were thought to protect property and to lend force to agreements marked with the seals. This edited volume discusses some of the finest and most exceptional precious and semi-precious stones from the collection of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities – more than 5.800 engraved gems from the ancient Near East, Egypt, the classical world, renaissance and 17th-20th centuries – and other special collections throughout Europe. Meet the people behind engraved gems: gem engravers, the people that used the gems, the people that re-used them and above all the gem collectors. This is the first major publication on engraved gems in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden since 1978

Peter Paul Rubens and the mineral world

Rubens has been recognised as an artist of extraordinary erudition as well as a collector, diplomat and linguist. Unsurprisingly the main focus of Rubens scholarship has been iconographical. By focusing on material I address an aspect of Rubens’s life and work that has by comparison been largely ignored. Antwerp, the artist’s home city, was a major centre for global trade in precious stones. There is evidence that the artist not only owned raw stones but dealt in diamonds. During the first two decades of the seventeenth century at which time Rubens was a visitor, Rome was a centre for the development of mineralogical science and collecting, not least through the Accademia dei Lincei with whose members Rubens was associated. By focusing on Rubens’s interest in traditional lapidary matters as well as in nascent scientific enquiry, and by attending to pictorial detail, I aim to shed light on how the artist not only acquired and valued minerals but how precious stones were thematised in portraits and subjects from mythology and the Bible

O Serviço de documentação textual e iconografia do Museu Paulista

The essay compares the curatorship's works realized during the decade of 1990 by the actual Department of Textual and Iconographical Documentation of Museu Paulista, responsible for the MP Fund / Permanent File (Fundo MP/Arquivo Permanente), hundreds of collections and textual funds and 50.000 iconography pieces, great part of which are gathered in photographic collections. It shows how the documentation work extrapolates the limits of SVDHICO in order to integrate itself with the group activities of the museum and with other research groups. It also points towards new work methodologies which allow to perform the curatorship in an integrated way with the interdisciplinary research and the culture diffusion.O artigo faz um balanço dos trabalhos de curadoria realizados durante a década de 1990 pelo atual Serviço de Documentação Textual e Iconografia do Museu Paulista, responsável pelo Fundo MP/Arquivo Permanente, centenas de coleções e fundos textuais e 50.000 peças de iconografia, grande parte delas reunidas em coleções fotográficas. Mostra como o trabalho de documentação extrapola os limites do SVDHICO para integrar-se com as atividades de conjunto do Museu e com outros grupos de pesquisa. Aponta também para novas metodologias de trabalho com imagens que permitem realizar a curadoria de forma integrada à pesquisa interdisciplinar e à difusão cultural

The importance of gems in the work of Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640

Many are no larger than a fingertip. They are engraved with symbols, magic spells and images of gods, animals and emperors. These stones were used for various purposes. The earliest ones served as seals for making impressions in soft materials. Later engraved gems were worn or carried as personal ornaments – usually rings, but sometimes talismans or amulets. The exquisite engraved designs were thought to imbue the gems with special powers. For example, the gods and rituals depicted on cylinder seals from Mesopotamia were thought to protect property and to lend force to agreements marked with the seals. This edited volume discusses some of the finest and most exceptional precious and semi-precious stones from the collection of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities – more than 5.800 engraved gems from the ancient Near East, Egypt, the classical world, renaissance and 17th-20th centuries – and other special collections throughout Europe. Meet the people behind engraved gems: gem engravers, the people that used the gems, the people that re-used them and above all the gem collectors. This is the first major publication on engraved gems in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden since 1978

Making Things Strange

Book review of 'Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities: The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo', series B Natural History parts four and five, a Catalogue Raisonné, by Henrietta McBurney, Ian Rolfe, Caterina Napoleone and Paula Findlen with Carlo Violani, Onno Wijnands, Arturo Morale Muñiz, Eufrasia Roselló Izquierdo, Arthur MacGregor and Kathie Way, Turnhout (Belgium): Royal Collection in association with Harvey Miller Publishers, 2017, 2 vols, pp. 944, col illus. 428, b&w illus. 28