ABSTRACT
Noah’s ark was the first collection. Athanasius Kircher, the seventeenth-century Jesuit whose museum was one of the wonders of Rome, implicitly recognizes this in Area Noë (1675) [Figure 44], where the layout of the ark’s interior, with its serried tiers of animals and supplies, distinctly resembles the vertical and horizontal patterns in pictures of curiosity cabinets of the early modern period. In the ark, birds of all kinds occupy the top deck along with Noah’s family, as if to suggest their near relation to the heavens; quadrupeds and creeping things live far below, and they are organized by weight; snakes are consigned to the bilge, where they can be seen swimming about freely. Except for a pair of horses who seem to be copulating, all the animals appear to be very well behaved.
