Lumenrare’s Cabinet of Curiosities
In this cabinet, we gather fragments of history: angry botanists, visionary mapmakers, and artists who blurred the line between reason and dream. Each story connects to works held or studied by Lumenrare — original prints, maps, and books that reveal how knowledge once took shape on paper.
Pietro Mattioli - The Angry Naturalist
Sources: H. Leclerc, “Un naturaliste irascible: P.A. Mattioli de Sienne,” Ianus, XXXI (1927), 336–345; C. Preti, “Mattioli, Pietro Andrea,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 72 (2008); G.B. De Toni, Commemorazione di P.A. Mattioli, Siena 1901; Epistolarum medicinalium libri V, Praga 1561.
Jules Renard meets TLT’s lazy bull while out fly-fishing
Over there, among the peaceful, reclining cows, a bull has just heaved itself up heavily.
How Herman Moll’s Map of Ireland Came to Be: Coercion, Control, and the Power of Mapping
When you hold an antique map of Ireland by Herman Moll, engraved in 1723, you are actually looking at the end product of a long and often brutal history of conquest, coercion, and administration.
Francisco de Goya (1746–1828)
Goya and Trump would never have been friends; one mocked the abuses of power, the other is his fiendish cartoon come alive.
Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968)
Tsuguharu Foujita was one of the most distinctive artists of the early twentieth century, a man who moved effortlessly between cultures and who left behind some of the most unforgettable images of cats in modern art.
The Mercator–Hondius Map of Ireland — Myth and Memory in Print
When Gerard Mercator (1512–1594) began compiling his great atlas, he aimed to capture the entire known world in a single printed work.