Bath’s Holburne museum to unveil ‘art chamber’ of Renaissance masterpieces

Beneath the Georgian city of Bath, a gleaming treasury of Renaissance masterpieces created for kings, queens, church leaders and scientists is about to be unveiled.

Based on the idea of the Renaissance kunstkammer – an art chamber – the basement room at the Holburne Museum is crammed with scores of exquisite pieces of silverware, paintings, bronzes and ceramics.

They include an astonishing model of a silver ship, a rare mechanical celestial globe and a bronze vessel likely to have belonged to Henry VIII.

“It’s wonderful having pieces here that you’d usually see in places like the Met in New York or the British Museum,” said Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne.

The treasures were collected over many decades by the Schroder family, who made their fortune as merchants and bankers, and have been loaned to the Holburne for at least 20 years.

A £2m gallery has been created out of two store rooms to show off the objects, which have never been brought together in one place before.

The relationship between the Holburne and the Schroders began about five years ago, when the family’s art curator wondered if the museum would like to borrow a few of the family’s Renaissance paintings.

Stephens boldly asked if they could possibly loan all of them. “I thought they’d say no but they were delighted and we turned my office into a gallery for them.”

The family then offered the Holburne other Renaissance treasures and the idea of creating Bath’s very own kunstkammer emerged.

Stephens said: “The key decision was to have everything in there together, not to separate the different art forms. That created the sense of the kunstkammer, the Renaissance idea in which wealthy people would bring together exotic items from around the world.”

Among the highlights of the collection is a celestial globe commissioned in the 16th century by one of the earliest modern astronomers, Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel.

When it was wound up, the globe turned to show the position of constellations. “It’s like those apps of the night sky you get that tell you which stars you are looking at,” Stephens said. “It was made in the 1570s. To have that level of precision and complexity and so many moving points is awesome.”

The silver ship – the Schwarzenberg Nef – was created in about 1580. It is a ceremonial ewer – a pitcher or jug – that could be filled with drink through a hole in the deck with the spout concealed within the bow. “It’s miraculous,” said Stephens, pointing out details such as the rigging billowing out with the weight of a crew member and the hefty chicken on a plate in the captain’s cabin.

It is not certain that Henry VIII handled the bronze cup that appears in another cabinet, but the signs are that it was his – one of his inventories describes such a vessel weighing exactly the same as this one.

Most of the objects were collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They have been held at various homes and offices owned by members of the Schroder family.

The only collection comparable to Bath’s new kunstkammer, Stephens said, was the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, a collection of Renaissance treasures collected by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild. “What’s really exciting is to see all these objects brought together in one place. It’s extraordinary, really.”

• The Schroder Gallery opens to the public on 10 September 2025