The Museum of All Things

There are perhaps no more than half a dozen museums worldwide that have celebrated a three-hundred-year anniversary. This year, Russia’s first public, state-run museum, St. Petersburg’s Kunstkamera, did just that.

Nowadays, the name Kunstkamera evokes a collection of anomalies, of “freaks” and “monsters.” But in the eighteenth century, the museum’s image was rather different. Back then, it was primarily a collection of curiosities, and not just the rare or truly anomalous: it included items that were not at all unusual, but tended to be hidden from human eyes. People came to the Kunstkamera to see what mysteries nature kept tucked away deep in the ground, in forests and fields, seas and oceans, in constellations, and even in our own bodies.

Yet the museum was far more than a collection of objects: it served as a repository of human knowledge about the world and ourselves. The exhibits, the findings of science previously unknown to Russians, and even the instruments that allowed for the extraction of new knowledge – all of these were brought together in this one building, erected for that purpose.

The Kunstkamera (or Kunstkammer) was created by Peter the Great: he conceived the idea and acquired its first collections. Amid wars and struggles, the destruction of the old and creation of the new, he had books and “naturalia” brought from the Apothecaries’ Chancery* in Moscow, along with preserved anatomical parts and books from the tsar’s personal library, to be complemented by books from the Duke of Holstein’s library in Gottorf. All of this was stockpiled in the stone Summer Palace, recently completed for the tsar by architect Domenico Trezzini.

Curating the books and naturalia fell to Peter’s royal physician and president of the Apothecaries’ Chancery, the Scotsman Robert Erskine. However, as a royal physician, Erskine was obligated to accompany the tsar on all military campaigns, so the sorting of books and various chemical solutions from Moscow fell to a young translator from Alsace, Johann Daniel Schumacher. This handoff occurred in 1714, and marks the starting point for the creation of this state-run public museum and library.

The Kunstkamera’s creation is typically associated with Peter the Great’s experiences and impressions during his two trips abroad (1697-1698 and 1717-1718). During his first voyage, Peter visited the Royal Society’s museum in London, as well as kunstkammers and collections of naturalia in Dresden and cities across Holland. In Amsterdam he visited Jacob de Wilde, a collector of ancient artifacts, coins, medals, and engraved gems, as well as his future friend and adviser Nicolaes Witsen, the learned collector and mayor of Amsterdam. He toured the naturalia collection of the famous anatomist Frederik Ruysch, as well as Leiden’s anatomical museum, curated by professor Herman Boerhaave. Another visit was to architect Simon Schynvoet, who had a collection of ancient artifacts, coins, and a hall dedicated to the natural sciences.

We actually know quite a lot about Peter’s visit to the Dresden kunstkammer. He arrived in Dresden with the Russian delegation on June 1, 1698, on his way back to Russia. Having arrived quite late – about 11 p.m. – the delegation settled into the castle of the Elector of Saxony (Augustus II of Poland). After dinner, Peter demanded an immediate tour of the kunstkammer. Naturally, the tsar’s wish was granted, and he was taken to the museum, accompanied by the curator and one of the elector’s marshals. Even though he was there until sunrise, the tsar only got through two rooms! He took particular interest in the mathematical instruments and the next day spent the entire afternoon, well into the night, visiting the kunstkammer.

A tile mosaic portrait of Peter the Great, by the Lomonosov workshop (1757).

Nicolaes Witsen, the learned Dutch collecter, mayor of Amsterdam and friend of Peter the Great.

After returning from this first voyage, Peter kept up a correspondence with his new acquaintances, and, like a true collector, exchanged Russian naturalia with them. A letter from Ruysch to the tsar, dated June 16, 1701, mentions that Peter had sent Witsen lizards and some kind of worms, preserved in alcohol, on the condition that he shared them with Ruysch.

Of course, the tsar’s European trips were primarily intended to serve Russia’s political and military interests. One of the main political goals was to create the image of a changing Russia. Russian diplomats, commissioners, publishers, and newspapers all worked to achieve this goal. Articles about the new Russia appeared in contemporary European periodicals, as when, in 1706, Journal de Trevoux wrote that the muses and the sciences were making their way north, “where the currently reigning tsar Peter Alekseyevich is set in his decision to enlighten his nation.”

The creation of a museum, and the procurement of collections that amazed all of Europe, was an excellent way to bolster this new image of Russia in the eye’s of European public opinion. But Peter I also had other goals: spreading knowledge and learning in Russia, organizing an Academy of Sciences, and creating universities and schools. These efforts were intended to aid in the study of the country’s resources and population and were assigned a high priority.

In a special decree, dated February 13, 1718, the tsar ordered “any freaks born” to be sent to St. Petersburg for a cash reward; anyone hiding such oddities of nature was to be fined, based on the idea that new findings in anatomy aided the development of medicine, including for military purposes. But why did Peter need to explicitly order the collection of abnormal specimens? It was not a royal whim: he was following the philosophy of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, written in 1620 and offering a new methodology for studying nature. According to Bacon, the first goal of any science was to create a special museum of observations and “deviating instances,” intended to clear the mind of “idols” that stand in the way of study. Bacon advocated the collection of unusual natural phenomena, including anomalies.

Russia had been introduced to Bacon’s ideas back in the first decade of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s rule,** by way of Scottish noble immigrants. These immigrants included William Bruce, father to Jacob Bruce, one of Peter’s supporters and an engineer, a scientist, and head of the artillery in Peter’s army. Bruce created his own curiosity collection and library, which, after his death, passed to the Kunstkamera and the Academy of Sciences library. He also founded Russia’s first observatory in Moscow’s Sukharevka Tower and led a navigational school there. His scientific endeavors (said to include alchemy) earned him the appellation “Sorcerer Bruce.”

The Kunstkamera’s first curator, Robert Erskine, also followed Bacon’s ideas. Both Erskine and Bruce accompanied Peter during his first voyage abroad, and naturally this group would have discussed the various curiosity and naturalia collections they visited.

Plans for enlightenment and the eradication of superstition were also on their mind. In his decree, Peter took care to describe reasons why children were born with deformities: “… and the ignorant cower, believing that such freaks are born of devil’s work, of witchcraft and evil, which cannot be, for the one Creator of all creatures is God, and the devil has no power over any creation; they are born of inner disturbance, and of the mother’s fear and dread while with child, as there are many examples of this – whatever the mother fears, such signs will appear on the child, and also when she is hurt, or ill, or such like.”

The same 1718 decree ordered any ancient items found in the earth (strange rocks, human or animal bones, old inscriptions on stone, iron, or copper, old weapons, dishes – anything “that be old and unusual”) were to be collected and sent in for a reward. The new Kunstkamera’s status as a national institution was what set it apart from other, similar collections in Europe. The Academy of Sciences’ founding charter (1724) stipulated: “to ensure that the Academy be adequately supplied and the Academy library and room of natural items be open […], any books and instruments needed by the Academy are to be ordered or made here.” As a place where foreign and domestic ores and minerals or Russia’s flora and fauna could be studied, it was an extremely important institution for the achievement of national goals and for developing the Academy of Sciences.

Once it was integrated into the Academy, the Kunstkamera became a major beneficiary of the fruits of academic expeditions. In addition to natural specimens, expeditions brought household and religious artifacts from the peoples of Russia and later from the entire world, as well as items excavated from “ancient graves,” paving the way toward advances in ethnography and archeology. The Kunstkamera’s rich numismatic collection traced world history from Ancient Rome to Russia’s victories in its most recent war with Sweden. Thus, even by the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, the Kunstkamera came to be a universal museum, organized in accordance with contemporary science.

Foreigners who visited the Kunstkamera and its library left detailed accounts. Holstein diplomat Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholtz described in great detail the naturalia on display at the St. Petersburg kunstkammer and noted that “such a variety of the most diverse monstrosities and items pertaining to natural history is gathered here because all that was natural and unknown throughout the land, in whatever form, was brought to Petersburg in accordance with the tsar’s decrees.”

In 1726, Schumacher showed the Kunstkamera and library to the French traveler A. de la Motraye, who later wrote, “The library is in the worst shape, due to lack of space. They plan to sort the books and manuscripts by areas of knowledge, and in the new rooms, those that speak of the same subject and issue will be placed together.” Yet many of the books had already been sorted, with labels above the bookshelves: regnum historicum for history, regnum anatomicum for anatomy, regnum vegetabile for botany, regnum minerale for mineralogy. “The library is very large and significant,” de la Motraye wrote. He saw mathematical instruments and botanical collections of plants from along the Dnepr and Volga rivers, as well as collections of fish, snakes, lizards, and insects. He was fascinated by the Russian mineral collection: a piece of gold ore from Siberia, gold-containing sand from the Caspian Sea, and iron ore found near Lake Onega. Among the other wonders were idols, utensils, sacrificial vessels from the banks of the Caspian Sea, and even a key to the city of Derbent, given to Peter by the naib of Daghestan in 1722.

The Swedish scientist Karl Reinhold Berk, who lived in St. Petersburg from late 1735 to May 1736 and studied ancient artifacts, was even luckier: he witnessed the opening of boxes and bags of specimens sent by members of the second expedition to Kamchatka. He saw “many well-mounted small birds and four-legged creatures; all sorts of figurines, made of iron and copper, and weapons from burial mounds; and various gods still worshipped by pagans in those corners of the land. The gods are faces made out of wood or copper, and some are merely black sheepskin, stretched out on thick felt, with blue pearls sewed on as eyes and the top part shaved to form some semblance of a face. The loveliest of all were a few groups of figurines from the border with China carved out of a beautiful, translucent red rock. Among the clothing samples, the strangest were the cloaks of several witches and sorcerers made of untanned hides with numerous strips hanging from the back and sleeves (much like a lackey’s laces) with pieces of iron and brass attached to them – the latter make for a great noise. Many similarly hanging strips are on their headdresses […] and the associated drums.”

Berk also wrote that the items received were immediately categorized and placed “according to their classification in the rooms reserved for naturalia and artificialia.” Indeed, all of the museum’s items, as well as the library’s books, were categorized according to the latest standards of science. A Kunstkamera catalog published in Latin between 1741 and 1745 serves as evidence of the orderliness of the system used: each artifact is associated with a specific shelf, box, and drawer.

On November 25, 1728, the Kunstkamera was opened to the general public. Documents and engravings from the time allow us to “stroll” through the museum and library, which then formed a single institution. Rowboats brought visitors up to the Kunstkamera building (no bridge spanned the Neva until 1850). The entrance was on the north side, rather than from the riverbank. Up the stairs, past the bookbinding workshop and store for “academic press books,” visitors found themselves in the library’s lower hall. Here they found 46 shelves lining the walls, with books on history, philosophy, oratory, mathematics, and geography. On the same floor, the library assistant’s quarters housed four bookshelves with library and museum catalogs. On the second floor, an additional 22 shelves housed books on anatomy, medicine, chemistry, and natural science. The third floor contained books on horticulture, architecture, genealogy, optics, hydraulics, as well as maps and atlases and books in foreign languages: Chinese, Turkish, Persian. One bookshelf was reserved for the Academy’s Russian-language publications; printed Russian books took up three bookshelves, while handwritten books took up another three. The library also had a collection of paintings; two large globes were located in the second-floor hall.

Walking past the library, we would have arrived at the Anatomical Theater, arranged as an amphitheater: lines of benches were set up in a semicircle, divided into four sections. Yet few public dissections were performed here: dissections in the Anatomical Theater were meant to promote science, not as a “spectacle” for the public. Twelve sets of shelves housed preserved specimens acquired by professors and adjuncts in their research.

From the Anatomical Theater visitors were channeled into a room housing Ruysch’s famous anatomy collection. Shelves along the wall held individual preserved organs of the human body: the skin, muscles, brain, etc. In between the shelves stood human skeletons. This hall also contained 24 cabinets with animal parts, preserved by Ruysch and Albertus Seba: “frogs and shellfish,” “various lizards,” snakes, fish, and “vipers of all sorts.”

A bit further along the hall and to the left were three interconnected rooms with the mineral collection. It did contain some rare minerals from abroad, but this exhibit primarily consisted of minerals from Russia’s provinces: quartzes, sulfur, resin, and various ores (iron, copper, gold). Another two cabinets were for fossils. Not only did visitors have an opportunity to see a wide array of mineral specimens, but they could examine a scale model of an ore-mining operation on one of the shelves. Across from the entrance to the third hall, visitors would see a cupboard full of shells, “and on either side two grottoes made of sea rocks, grass, and shells, masterfully arranged.”

Back in the hallway and a bit to the right, the visitor would find several halls, the first of which contained drawings of all the items in the Kunstkamera, bound into book-like volumes. Another room nearby held “all kind of curious and valuable items of gold, silver, and precious stones”: daggers, necklaces, diadems, bridles, the so-called “Scythian gold,” silver and gold vessels, and the keys to various cities. This hall connected to the “mint-room” – the collection of coins (filling eight cabinets) and medals, categorized by “state.”

From here, visitors were channeled back to the Anatomical Theater, from which a stairway led them to the second floor, which displayed bones (including mammoth and whale), horns, antlers, and several skeletons. The next room on the left displayed four-legged creatures, birds, and plants, categorized according to the most recent scientific research. The Kunstkamera’s herbaria were located on the cabinets’ lower shelves: among them were Ruysch’s, organized according to the system proposed by botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort; Georg Wilhelm Stöller’s, collected during an expedition to Irkutsk; and three collections by Johann Friedrich Gmelin. Three more cabinets displayed the seeds of medicinal plants.

The next four rooms were collectively named “Peter’s Study” and dedicated to Peter the Great. One housed the emperor’s famous “wax image,” with his clothes, sword, and other memorabilia displayed on nearby shelves. Here, too, were Peter’s reference books: on mathematics, shipbuilding, civil and military architecture, and copper engraving. Three adjoining rooms contained Peter’s woodturning workshop, including lathes he used and several items he had made.

In the upstairs galleries, the right-hand cabinets exhibited works of art: wax and plaster figurines and carved wood, bone, and stone. This “artificialia” collection comprised 10 whole cabinets. The left-hand cabinets contained what we would now call the ethnography collection. For the most part, these were items brought back from academic expeditions: clothing from peoples in Siberia and other parts of Russia, as well as religious items (shamans’ tambourines, clothing, depictions of gods, or as they were then called, “idols”). The Chinese collection was also housed here, as were two cabinets of non-precious archeological finds. Next to the gallery, there were two rooms piled with unsorted items brought or sent from the Russian expeditions, and two more containing the “reserves”: specimens not displayed in the cabinets.

The famous Globe of Gottorf was set up in a round hall at the building’s center, above the Anatomical Theater. The shelves lining the walls were filled with scientific instruments for physics, astronomy, and mathematics: sundials, earthly and celestial globes, burning-glasses, and ship models. Three observatories were located above the globe: lower, large upper, and minor upper.

The Gottorf Globe, dating to the middle of the seventeenth century. It was meticulously restored by Russian craftsmen after the fire of 1747.

The Academy of Sciences’ first astronomical observatory, an exhibit at the Kunstkamera comprised of the earliest telescopes.

Such was the Kunstkamera in its heyday in the mid-eighteenth century, an incarnation of Peter the Great’s ideas and designs, a unique museum for its time: universal, easily accessible, and scientific. Unfortunately, on December 5, 1747, a fire broke out in the Kunstkamera, after which it took 20 long years to restore it. The building remained without its central tower for 200 years, and it was not until 1947 that it regained its historic form.

Throughout Europe, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was known as the greatest research center of its time, and the Kunstkamera as the site of extensive and unique scientific collections. There were constant offers to procure new collections of rare items, minerals, and other objects pertaining to natural science for the Kunstkamera, and European scientists often wrote to the Academy requesting samples from the collection for their research. They were impressed by the wealth of materials that Peter the Great and subsequent expeditions had assembled for the use of Russian science.

In 1795 the anatomist and surgeon Justus Christian Loder wrote to Johann Euler that “the anatomical parts preserved […] by Ruysch are of great value to anatomists and physiologists.” In 1747, researchers at the Kunstkamera even succeeded in dissecting and preserving an elephant, despite the bitter January cold, by enclosing the carcass in a warm shed. The memo from the Academy’s chancellery included the following strange, but telling statement: “And it would be a shame to let such an opportunity pass, as there is no other place in the world where such animals may be observed by learned men.”

Also telling is the correspondence between renowned Dutch scientist Petrus Camper and his colleagues in St. Petersburg, as it shows one of the main reasons European scientists took such active interest in St. Petersburg’s Academy of Sciences. Camper was not just interested in his colleagues’ opinion of the works he sent to Russia. Camper’s letters show that he had used materials he requested be sent to him from the museum at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences: rhinoceros teeth in 1779, fossil copies in 1785. Another letter, from 1788, shows how anthropological research was conducted on the basis of the Kunstkamera’s collections: “I would like to obtain,” Camper writes, “[…] female pelvic bones from various tribes throughout the expansive Russian Empire, as well as newborn skulls – I need them to study the birth process. I also desire to have Tartar skulls of various sorts – from Siberia, Kamchatka, and elsewhere – for a more detailed understanding of what forms the characteristic traits of various ethnicities.”

In the end, the Kunstkamera’s close connection with scientific development meant that it ceased to function as an encyclopedic museum in the early decades of the nineteenth century. No one building could house all that was being discovered, and the differentiation of various sciences meant that the universal museum gave way to specialized ones. The Petrine Kunstkamera gave up parts of its collection to form the basis for the Zoological, Botanical, Mineralogical, and Asiatic museums. A significant portion of the inventory – coins, Egyptian artifacts, scientific instruments, art, and the Peter the Great memorial collection – was, over time, handed over to the Hermitage. The beautiful Kunstkamera building on Vasilievsky Island now houses the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, which has retained the original museum’s name and is still referred to as the Kunstkamera.

It could not have happened any other way. Peter the Great and his supporters conceived of and created the Kunstkamera not just as a roomful of curiosities and rarities, but as a scientific museum. Taking on a life of its own, it was only natural for it to expand and evolve in parallel with the expansion and evolution of scientific knowledge. RL

* The Apothecaries’ Chancery, formerly the Apothecaries’ Prikaz, oversaw hospitals, pharmacies, medical schools, as well as all doctors, physicians, and pharmacists.

** Peter the Great’s father.