Chinese Perception of European Perspective: A Jesuit Case in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

The late-Ming master of literati Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555-1636) commented on the relationship between nature and painting, as quoted and translated by James Cahill: 'From the standpoint of splendid scenery, painting cannot equal [real] landscape. But from the standpoint of the sheer marvels of brush and ink, [real] landscape is not at all the equal of painting.' 1 This early-seventeenth-century remark about Chinese landscape painting demonstrates the mutually irreplaceable status of nature and painting as reflected in contemporary artistic discourse. However, in the European Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) claimed that painting not only derives from nature but can also imitate it, through science. Speaking of composition in painting, for example, Alberti states in his treatise that, as for the movements of the body, the painter 'must take from Nature with great skill'. Painters must work 'with the greatest diligence from Nature and always directly imitated, preferring those in painting which leave more for the mind to discover than is actually apparent to the eye'. In Alberti's De Pictura (1435), this first treatise on linear perspective for painting, the author claims at the outset that he wants 'to explain the art of painting from the basic principles of nature '. 2 The above comparison between the two different methods of painting does not exclude the possibility that Dong thought of painting in the sense of its being able to imitate nature. However, the intermediary role that science played between art and nature in the Renaissance was not evident in China. Perspective is a scientific theory derived from the ancients and a 'geometric-optical way of picture making'. 3 It was revived and formulated in Renaissance art as a special pictorial construction of 'linear perspective'. In its tradition in classical antiquity, it derived from the application of geometrical laws to analyze human vision. As Leonardo states, perspective is a science originating from arithmetic and geometry, devoted to all the functions of the MUP_17C24_1_05_Chen.

Developing Encounters between Chinese and Western Art: The Contribution of Two Jesuits in China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

“…Scholarly attention to Jesuit-imported art in China is also robust, with McCall's (1948) investigations of Early Jesuit Art in China and Macau before 1635; Zhu's (1982) analysis of Castiglione's artistic endeavors after arriving in China; Nie's (1982) discussion on Castiglione's collaborators; and Criveller's (1997) analytical exposition of the religious iconography promulgated by Matteo Ricci and Giulio Aleni. Both Huimin Chen (1997) and Huihong Chen (2009) meticulously studied the reception of Jesuit-disseminated perspectival techniques. Wen's (2008) inquiry delved into the Chinese literati's appraisal of Ricci's imported artistic oeuvre.…”

Seeing as Worldmaking: Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock and Yogācārin Epistemology in Late Ming China

“…For newly imported European pictures in late Ming China and the Chinese version of Evangelicae Historiae Imagines translated by Gulio Aleni, see (Mateo 2010;Chen 2009;Lippiello and Malek 1997). See (Goodman 1978, p. 8).…”