Running parallel to the main exhibition hosted in the former pedagogical school of the Ursuline Monastery in Sibiu, the Brukenthal National Museum presents a capsule exhibition in the European Art Gallery, in the room displaying works from Baron Samuel von Brukenthal’s cabinet of curiosities.
The capsule brings together paintings and drawings by Ștefan Câlția featuring vegetal and animal motifs from private collections, placed in dialogue with two works from the museum’s collection that reflect the same attentive fascination with the natural world. The selection was made by art critic and historian Liviana Dan, curator of the exhibition Transilvania | Extravaganza.
The first work is the Baussner Herbarium (1734), created by Georg Friedrich Baussner and considered the earliest herbarium on the present-day territory of Romania. The plants, largely cultivated and collected within the German cultural sphere, are documented with remarkable precision, transforming the herbarium into an object of extraordinary cultural and documentary value.
The second piece is Animali Esotici, an 18th-century work by Austrian painter Philipp Ferdinand Hamilton, described by Liviana Dan as “excessively eccentric and extravagant.” The oil painting on canvas - depicting a red-bottomed monkey surrounded by exotic birds and eagles - was considered so unusual that, once brought from Vienna by Brukenthal, it sparked more controversy than the great Italian nudes in the collection.
The capsule exhibition will be open to visitors from June 19 to August 16. Romania
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