Collecting Treasures: Grűnes Gewwölde in Dresden and the Wallace Collection

Interesting online lecture from the Wallace Collection comparing the Grűnes Gewwölde in Dresden and the later collecting of Richard Wallace.

Theresa Witting from Staatliche Kunstsammlugen in Dresden and Ada de Wit from the Wallace Collection discussed the original of their collections of cabinet of curiosity type objects. The Dresden Collection had its origins the 16th century under the Electors of Saxony who developed the private kunstkammer and the pubic Grűnes Gewwölde which the museum has recreated. The Wallace Collection was developed in the 19th century by Richard Wallace during a fashion for collecting these types of objects and the picture here shows part of his collection of antiquities in 1880.

They them compared their collections highlighting various objects that they had in common such as a ewer shaped like an ostrich with a horseshoe in its mouth in London and a set of drinking vessels of a similar design in Dresden and two precious objects in carved rock crystal and garnet both made by Sri Lankan artists soon after Christianity arrived in the country. I loved two pendants built around Baroque pearls. Wallace Collection has a rabbit and Dresden a cat.

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