Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Knowledge Revisited

What is it about?

In the Sixteenth Century, the Italian humanist Giulio Camillo built a ‘Theatre of Knowledge’ for the French King Francis I in which he collected and displayed all that was said or could be said on any topic. While it has been debated whether the nature of Camillo’s theatre was that of a book or a work of imagination, new archival evidence has unequivocally proven for the first time that it was a physical structure, which, moreover, looked like an anatomy theatre. On the basis of this new evidence, I have created a reconstruction of Camillo’s theatre in 3D, which allows it to be explored in virtual reality. This makes it possible to experience some of the spatial features of the theatre that are not immediately accessible through reading, describing, drawing, and computer-generated images. It uncovers a thus far unknown story about the different ways in which people thought about the organisation and representation of information during these times; and how physical structures like Camillo’s theatre could help people to think and come up with material for their speeches, orations, etc. More recently, Camillo’s theatre was used as a model to explore our relationship with the computer and the internet. In light of this, the historical study of Camillo’s theatre also has the potential to offer exciting new insights for some of our current questions and problems.

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