The Met's new show "Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe" is about the Kunstkammern of central European worthies as places where early modern science and ingenuity - and luxury - met. The intention seems to be replicating the effect of one of these rooms: we're to marvel at the fascinating objects and, beyond them, the opulent resources and connections of our hosts. All manner of interesting stories might be told about how understandings of "science" changed over this time, or about how these technologies were part of international networks, but mostly we were just supposed to go "Wow!"
Wows there were, of course, like the writing/reading box (1570) above. But I was more intrigued by the bezoar - a kind of ruminant's gallstone, thought to be proof against any poisons, known to Europe through the Silk Roads. A reminder of other sciences, especially when you learn its an Ersatz one, likely composed of a paste of bezoar, clay, silt, crushed shell, amber, musk, resin, narwhal tusk and crushed gemstones. The artificial bezoars were known as Goa stones, after the place they were made (by Jesuits, no less), and thought to be just as effective as their natural counterparts. Tell me more!! Maybe it's just my professional deformation but I sensed religion - also other and different than we conceive of it now - coursing in the background throughout. Marvels, magic, miracles? It surfaced in one of the final objects, in a room of early androids: a model of a Franciscan monk which
walked, beat its breast, turned its head and mouthed blessings, from Spain, c. 1550. It was commissioned by Philip II when one of his sons was healed by a relic of Diego de Alcalá (namesake of San Diego); in gratitude his father vowed "a miracle for a miracle." The machinery of marvels beyond marvels!