Amazement and wonder were very popular in the early modern period: while the certainties of religions wavered, technical innovations led to a revolution in the sciences and the more intensive contacts with Asia, Africa and the Americas further challenged the European world view. In the tension of these diverse and often contradictory movements, the realm of wonder(s) opened up – as an alternative to unambiguous answers.
The vast field of the unknown, which fostered both longing and fear, had its own name in the nomenclature of the time: Thaumaturgia – the art of making miracles. This umbrella term encompassed media and arts, performances of all kinds, which had in common that they transcended immediate understanding.
Thaumaturgia moved between witchcraft and art, craft and dark magic. Suspected and eyed, admired and eagerly sought after.
Peep-boxes and magic lanterns, mirror arts and shadow plays, automata and puppet shows are as much building blocks of this field, as are anamorphoses (distorted images) and the magnificent fireworks that could be found all over the world as a genuinely global phenomenon.
Thaumaturgia was a migrant art that circulated between cultures and societies: sometimes through the networks of religious institutions such as the Societas Iesu (Jesuits) with their schools and mission stations, sometimes through merchants, gunners, scientists, sometimes on the backs of the Savoyards, the traveling artists who offered their goods and arts for sale in taverns, markets and courts alike. They created the intersections that form the prerequisite for a connected history, as Sanja Subrahmanyam has noted.
