Mankind has always striven to understand the cosmos and the world. Familiar concepts, such as the four elements, the four continents, the five senses, the seven liberal arts, the seven virtues and the seven vices, were ways of apprehending phenomena of the world and life in fixed numerical units. At the same time, these phenomena were not viewed as being separate from one another. Rather, microcosm and macrocosm were seen as interdependent systems. The graphic arts took these concepts and visualised them in manifold ways.
With important series of prints from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the exhibition The Order of Things presents some of the most important themes. At the same time, it draws our attention to the complex intellectual associations in the early modern world of knowledge. All prints are part of the Veste Coburg’s own art collections.
Pieter van der Heyden (1530-1572) after Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569), Summer, from: The Four Seasons, 1570, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg