“A pleasure to read…a rewarding book.”
— Journal of the History of Collections
“Bredekamp’s achievement goes well beyond bringing peculiar collections of obtuse constructions and ambitious alchemy to the attention of art historians. By explaining the sources of the pictures of the baroque era, he also succeeds in making plausible a world of ideas in which the museum was not yet a locus of highbrow diversion, but a means of gaining insight into the essence of the world. A superb essay.”
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Horst Bredekamp’s elegant, erudite book sheds a flood of new light on the relations between art, science and scholarship in early modern Europe. Deftly using a vast array of visual and textual sources, Bredekamp establishes the forgotten connections between enthusiasm and technical innovation.”
— Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University