The Astronomia Europaea of Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J.

Golvers, Noël

doi:10.2307/1399521

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The Italian Giovanni Gherardini (1655-ca. 1729) was among the first painters in China to introduce these perspective techniques [10] (pp. 117-118, 298-299) at the court of Kangxi (r. 1662-1723).…”

Section: Development Of Graphic Drawings In the Late Ming Dynasty And The Early Qing Dynastymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cultural Heritage of Architectural Linear Perspective: The Mural Paintings in Nantang Church

Castilla

2021

Heritage

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This paper presents a contextual use of the innovative drawing techniques that involved architecture and painting in the Qing court during the first half of the eighteenth century. At this point architectural linear perspective in painting (quadratura) and stage design had become common fields of experimentation for the Chinese and Jesuit artists missionaries. In this conceptual context, Western quadratura was developed in China by Giovanni Gherardini. (1655–1729), and especially by Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), who is remembered as an extraordinarily versatile architect–painter. The focus of this paper is on the “illusory mural paintings of architectural perspective in Nantang Church” (Beijing), which has now disappeared, and which spread the influence of the Western Renaissance. The imported Western linear perspective and the fundamentals of architectural drawing facilitated the systematization and dissemination of the quadratura as an unknown technique in China. Based on the text described by the contemporary scholar Yao Yuan Zhi, an original interpretation of the architectural perspective mural paintings in Nantang Church is proposed. These paintings provide an important case study of Sino-European collaboration in the eighteenth century from different points of view: the representation of the light in drawings and the fact that the concept of shadow in some respects was unknown to the Chinese artist.

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Section: Development Of Graphic Drawings In the Late Ming Dynasty And The Early Qing Dynastymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cultural Heritage of Architectural Linear Perspective: The Mural Paintings in Nantang Church

Castilla

2021

Heritage

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“…10 Although present in China from at least the late seventeenth century, the peepbox was not among the scientifi c or artistic devices with which the Jesuits in Beijing demonstrated optics to the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) around 1667. 11 Instead, it appeared fi rst in southern and southeastern China, seemingly via European traders active in ports such as Guangzhou (Canton). In light of the dominant role that both the Jesuit mission in China and the Qing court played in mediating Sino-European cultural exchanges from Beijing, it is signifi cant that the peepbox is not marked by either religious or imperial associations, and did not trickle down from these elite northern institutions into southern and southeastern society.…”

Section: The Arrival and Sinicization Of The Peepboxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peepboxes, Society, and Visuality in Early Modern China

Kleutghen¹

2015

Art History

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“…These three very large paintings, one representing a Chinese palace, and the other two of a European palace and a garden, were 'excellently executed according to her own laws' around 1667. 31 Buglio was in Beijing after 1648, and the three pictures are unknown to us. This story can be taken as the earliest record of European painting created with perspective that appeared in the Chinese court, and, as Verbiest commented, 'You can hardly believe how this art attracted everybody's attention'.…”

Section: The Jesuits and Perspective In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Chen

2009

The Seventeenth Century

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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.

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The Astronomia Europaea of Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J.

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Cultural Heritage of Architectural Linear Perspective: The Mural Paintings in Nantang Church

The Cultural Heritage of Architectural Linear Perspective: The Mural Paintings in Nantang Church

Peepboxes, Society, and Visuality in Early Modern China

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

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