‘Unusual Excrescences of Nature’. Collected Coral and the Study of Petrified Luxury in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp

Many seventeenth-century Antwerp collections contained red coral, both natural and crafted. Also, coral was a pictorial motif depicted by Antwerp artists on mythological scenes, still lifes, paintings of collector's cabinets, and allegories. This paper provides a 'biography of coral' in early seventeenth-century Antwerp to explain the interest in this naturalia. It argues that the interest in coral resulted from the fascination with metamorphoses – in particular the process of petrifaction, which highly interested naturalists, but also had artisanal, mythological, and religious connotations. Antwerp painters, engravers, gold- and silversmiths, jewellers, apothecaries, and collectors were knowledgeable about coral in different ways. Added up, their stories explain the multi-layered meaning of coral that was intrinsic to the value attached to this 'unusual excrescence of nature'. Coral was indeed many things at the same time: a commodity crafted into jewellery and artefacts, a popular collectable in its natural shape, a motif for Antwerp painters, an essential commodity in the European-Indian trade network, a naturalia associated with classical mythology, a substance associated with the Blood of Christ, and a problematic naturalia that raised questions about classification, origins and natural processes.

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