A Matter of Amusement: The Material Culture of Philipp Hainhofer's Games in Early Modern Princely Collections

Games were important to the Augsburg art agent Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647) and this ludic category was included in most of his art cabinets. It offered amusement as part of an overall ambition for the cabinets to be of both service and use. Board games, dice, packs of cards and games of both chance and skill represented many of the various game types of their day, while constituting a material taxonomy of games. The encyclopaedic ambition of a Kunstkammer is apparent, and games provide an insi