The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his friends, and the beginnings of modern natural history by David Freedberg, University of Chicago Press, £35/$50, ISBN 0226261476 Reviewed by Maggie McDonald
A NEW twist on tales about cabinets of curiosities is a story about a cupboard of uncuriosity at Windsor Castle. For years, no one had opened it. Curiosity, happily, is the hallmark of David Freedberg. When he opened the door, he discovered wonderful things: pages from a 17th-century attempt to assemble all that was known about the world into a single “paper museum”.
Freedberg’s book title, The Eye of the Lynx,…
