F 





.ttJ^ 



f: 



1 ».(,,— —77 ■iftL'J' 





tiitiit He/nmtr M . i,,.,^ 



G- Klipitfiait ■ ^ D«fifle*«i«ofeiaiea*i»fnt -^ 



Fig. 6. — Ambras Casile in the Tyrol wlicrc Aicliduke Ferdinand kept his art treasures 



(photo from Schlosser). 



Beyoiici the Alps, the Hapsbiirtjs were [jronipted to 

 colled coins in order to complete the portrait galleries 

 of the Holy Roman emperors by including the Roman 

 iconographic scries. Old documents indicate there 

 were collections in Hapsburg possession as early as 

 the 13th century, but not until Emperor Maximilian I 

 (1493-1519) can we speak of an actual coin collection 

 at the Vienna court. The first reference to it occurs 

 in an inventory made by the Imperial "Kammer- 

 diener" Heubcrgcr in 1547 during the rule of Emperor 

 Ferdinand I (1531 1564), a great patron of art who 

 created the \'iennese " Kunstkammer" in 1563.°' At 

 the Court of Buda in Hungary, King Matthias 

 Corvinus (1458 -1490) assembled a circle of humanists 

 and antiquarians who helped him enrich his collec- 

 tions of art objects and ancient coins. 



5' Ferdinand I referred to his collection in his will; see LuscniN 

 VON Ebencrei'tii, Die Miinze tiL hislorischrs Denkmal, p. 39. For 

 the inventory, see Holzmair, "Das wiedergefundene Inventar 

 del Munzsammlung Ferdinands F" (1961). 



One of the characteristics of most of the collections 

 during the 15th and 16th centuries was their hetero- 

 geneous content. They were planned as accumula- 

 tions of precious objects — such as jewels and rich 

 garments — of unusual specimens, and of curios. These 

 early periods betray little of the refinement reflected 

 in many of the collections of the later Renaissance, 

 when genuine esthetic appreciation of art objects and 

 a scholarly interest in .science and history were the 

 chief criteria. 1 he approach of the pre-Renaissance 

 collector was le.ss so[)histicated; in childlike bewilder- 

 ment, he yearned mainly for the exotic, the mystic. 

 In the "W'underkammern"*- curio cabinets, skeletons 

 of strange animals, and artifacts of remote peoples 

 often abounded and even took precedence over real 

 products of art. Only very slowly was the mysticism 

 of the Middle .\ges dissipated before a realistic ap- 



" See Schlosser's interesting work Die KunsI- und U'utidcrkam- 

 mern dt'r Spatrenaissance (1908). ^ 



14 



BULLETIN 229: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .\ND TECHNOLOGY 



