Western art in the Eastern court. The paradigmatic dialogue of art and religion in the Late Ming and...

Western art in the Eastern court: the paradigmatic dialogue of art and religion in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties

Rui Oliveira Lopes ([email protected])Postdoctoral Research Fellow, FCTArtistic Studies Research Centre,Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon

Face to Face.The transcendence of the arts in China and beyond

Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon3 - 5 April, 2013

terça-feira, 7 de janeiro de 2014

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Western art in the Eastern court: the paradigmatic dialogue of art and religion in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties

1601 - 1662 | Artistic and cultural mutual understanding

1662 - 1715 | Spread of European art as “Science of Vision”

1715 - 1798 | Stylistic confluence of European and Chinese painting


João da Rocha’s Song Niazhu guicheng, 1619 - 1620


Julio Aleni’s Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie, 1637


Francesco Sambiasi’s Shuida Huada, 1629

The example of European painting realism and linear perspective is used to spread Aristotelian philosophy - De anima - in China accordingly with the Jesuit educational system

Adam Schall’s Yuan jing shuo, 1626

Five senses as soul guides

Through the mnemonic function of images and visual perception the soul is able to provide emotional informations to the mind and therefore man is able to distinguish evil from good without any preconceived judgement attitude


Dong Qichang

the Tao of painting is to hold the whole Universe in your hand. There will be nothing in your eyes, which is not replete with life, and therefore painters often became very old. (Sirén, 2005, p. 136 - 137)

ChristianityDaoism

Confucionism

The faculty of Vision is the way through which man is achieve inner edification or, if you prefer, spiritual balance


Ferdinand Verbiest’s Astronomia Europea sub Imperatore Tartaro Sinico Cam-hy apellato, ex umbra in lucem revocata, 1687

Perspective, with her most shiny eyes, was the first among all arts to draw the Emperor’s eyes to her. Indeed, immediately after the beginning of the first year of the rehabilitation of our Astronomy, Perspective followed the latter in her free entry to the Court. She hereby presented to the eyes of the Emperor three very large paintings, which were excellently executed according to her own laws. Father Ludovico Buglio had the paintings composed from several books that came from Europe, and had them delineated as large as possible. Three other similar paintings, which are to be seen in our garden, we have been showing to the public to this very day.You can hardly believe how this art attracted everybody’s attention, not only that of the inhabitants of Peking, but also all the other people who daily gather in this Court from the other provinces. Really, there comes no end to their admiration [when they see] how such deep backgrounds with roads, porches, courtyards, columns and all other things can be conjured up on the absolutely flat surface of a canvas, and so close to reality that many of them - who had never seen or heard of such things before - were totally deluded when suddenly confronted at a fairly Great distance with such paintings of houses and gardens and thought they were seeing real houses and gardens! For this reason, paintings of this type, especially those of smaller size, are very frequently distributed, not only through this city of Peking but almost through the whole of China, so that set before their eyes one [of these paintings] as their model or prototype: although they often deviate from it considerably, in the belief that they produce a picture with shading, they satisfy themselves and the other people in supplementing through the power of their fantasy the defects of the external picture.I will not deal here with the drawing parallelogram of our fellow Father Chr. Scheiner [Christian Herdtrich]; immediately after the Emperor admitted us to his presence, I personally explained and demonstrated its use by means of a small instrument with silver plates. (Verbiest 1993, 116 - 117)


Jean Denis Attiret

Will this farce never come to an end? So far from the House of God, deproved of all spiritual sustenance, I find it hard to persuade myself that all this is to the glory of God.


Western art in the Eastern court. The paradigmatic dialogue of art and religion in the Late Ming and...

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