‘Julius Schlosser breaks yet another barrier’. Review of: Julius von Schlosser, Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance: A Contribution to the History of Collecting, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, translation by Jonathan Blower, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2021, 222 pp., 7 colour and 103 b/w illustrations, 1 line drawing, paperback US $65.00, UK £55.00, ISBN 978-1-60606-665-2

Abstract

This is the first book by Julius Schlosser to appear in English. Written in 1907, it offers an excellent translation of a text that is unusually difficult in many ways. It documents the history of collecting in the era before the first art museums, before the definitions of art we are familiar with, and is based on his work as curator of the Ambras collection then in Vienna and now largely reinstalled in the castle near Innsbruck. It gives insight into one aspect of Schlosser’s early work, but not yet into the better known methodological and theoretical issues that occupied him later.