Special collections

The Abbey Library at St.Gallen has an important collection of art objects. Many of these items were once owned by the abbey. There are paintings and sculptures, models of architecture, paper designs for altars, prints, and precious furniture from the Baroque age. Few of the medieval artefacts have survived. One major exception is an early collection of valuable printed folios compiled by the monk Gallus Kemli (1417–1481). Active collecting did not begin in earnest at the Abbey of St Gall until the Baroque period. Compared with other places in Europe, the prince-abbots started their cabinet of curiosities quite late, in the middle of the 18th century. It was designed to complement the book knowledge amassed in the library with visible specimens of art, nature and science. The abbey acquired coins and medals, works of decorative art, paintings, mathematical and astronomical instruments, minerals, fossils, shells and other curiosities as purchases, barters or gifts. Items that could not be collected directly were illustrated by prints (portraits, maps, hagiographies) pasted into books. A particular highlight among these curiosities was the «East India Collection» built by the globetrotter Franz Müller. The most famous of all these rare objects was the big terrestrial and celestial globe (1571). One item that was not originally in the cabinet of curiosities is the Egyptian mummy Shepenese (7th c. BC). It did not come into the library’s hands until after the dissolution of the abbey. The special collection continued to expand in the 20th and 21st centuries thanks to purchases, donations and loans: of particular note are the Early Baroque stained glass figures, a set of designs by Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer (1696–1770) and a little ivory altar from the 13th century.