114 – 115 Cabinet of Curiosities | 1 Exh. cat. Hamburg 2010, p. 104. | 2 Cf. Segelken 2009, p. 38. | 3 Segelken 2009, p. 144. | 4 Cf. Hogendorn/Johnson 1986, pp. 14 f. | 5 Cf. exh. cat. Amsterdam 2021, p. 11. | 6 Cf. Raveaux 2020. | 7 Cf. Warsh 2018, pp. 32 f. | 8 Cf. Ravichandran 2012, p. 320. Collecting for a cabinet of curiosities was motivated by secular rulers’ pretensions of status. The macrocosms of the world were to be collected and owned in the microcosm of the cabinet of curiosities. Thus, such cabinets were images of the temporal power of their owners. The goal of trade expeditions of the major European powers was to obtain non-European goods. In 1682, Elector Frederick William founded the Brandenburgisch-Afrikanische Compagnie in an effort to gain direct access to these materials. The slave trade was a practice of colonialism to increase profits through unpaid labour. Many of the materials in Hainz’s painting show links to colonialism or were even used in the slave trade. For example, cowrie shells, bottom centre, were used in Bengal as a means of payment in the slave trade.4 The Dutch East India Company sold cowrie shells from the Maldives to the Dutch West India Company, which in turn used them in the enslavement trade on the coast of West Africa.5 Red coral from Italy in the form of chains was also used.6 After the violent invasion of South America by the Spanish, pearls were shipped from there to Europe. On the north coast of present-day Venezuela, especially near the island of Margarita, the rich oyster beds caused the Spanish to rush in.7 Later, the Dutch began to fish pearls on the southwest coast of India, the so-called Coromandel Coast, which led to violent clashes with the local population.8 Thus, the Cabinet of Curiosities tell at least two stories. One shows a monarch’s wealth and claim to power; the other shows how these objects and materials came to Europe through the colonial practices of European trading companies. | CONSTANT I JN JOHANNES LEL IVELD
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