Wondrous Cetaceans

• Main Author: Henley, Logan D. S.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College 2017
• Subjects: narwhal; unicorns; naturalia; sea creatures; exploration; Ancient; Medieval; Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture; Fine Arts; History of Science; Technology; and Medicine; Industrial and Product Design; Intellectual History; narwhal*
• Online Access: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/wonders_exhibit/6; https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=wonders_exhibit

The Renaissance was named for the cultural rebirth it witnessed. It meant a decrease in the widespread artistic and scientific suppression of the Middle Ages. As a result, Europeans enjoyed a new exploratory enthusiasm, which brought them to the far corners of the world. The concept of exoticism was renewed by European contact with places like China and Brazil. But as well as new cultural connections being bolstered, immense scientific discovery was going on. Science, then named natural philosophy, was seeing breakthrough after breakthrough. Scientists and interested persons brought knowledge and specimens from far and wide together in curiosity cabinets, museums, and galleries. These wunderkammern, as German speakers called them then, were truly an embodiment of the scientifically inquisitive times. What better then, to embody these cabinets of curiosities, than an object which featured in so many of them: the narwhal tusk? [excerpt]