Missionários jesuítas na China

《<古籍中的神跡：晚明沙勿略傳初版中文本>修訂本》，《合璧西中——庆祝顾彬教授七十寿辰文集》，外语教学与研究出版社，2016年，264-272页

沙勿略於一五五二年去世，四年後，依納爵也與世長辭。西班牙耶穌會士里瓦德內拉（Pedro de Ribadeneira，1527-1611）撰寫《依納爵傳》，一五七二年在義大利那不勒斯（Napoli）出了拉丁文初版  ，其中第四部第七章為「關於沙勿略之死」，首度將沙勿略的生平筆之於書。裡面所提供的信息雖較粗略，然來源可靠，符合史實。雖然如此，當時沙勿略已過世二十年，享有頗高的聖人聲譽，該書因而述及沙勿略的多起神蹟，但並未提供詳細根據。

Music, as a cultural commodity, usually travels early on, and so it was that even as the first important sixteenth century mission was established in China (by Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri, at Zhaoqing in 1583) Western musical instruments were present, and were the subject of admiration by the local literati. No instrument better reflected the highest level of Western technology than the pipe organ, the most complex mechanical device in Western culture from antiquity until the Industrial Revolution. In examining Chinese reactions to the organ one can note that it was precisely the technical/mechanical aspects which excited interest. Aesthetics and music were firmly secondary considerations. Thus, the organ was seen to be an instrument in the scientific, as well as or even more than in the musical sense of the word. In this way it presented a vector of technological exchange, one however not taken up until the twentieth century. This paper examines a selection of Chinese accounts of the pipe organ from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although few in number, these reports reflect a cross-section of Chinese society encountering and reacting to Western ‘others’ and Western cultural artifacts: official accounts, travel writing, and a high-culture literary essay, they display a variety of representations of incidents of cross-cultural confrontation, evaluation, and exchange.


Would my readers kindly note that Hong Kong University Press does not make electronic copies of book chapters available to authors, so please do not request a PDF. Thank you.

The generation of missionaries which followed Ricci's method after his death in the 17th century, continued to work among the Chinese literati, producing a variety of religious, philosophical, and scientific treatises. Yet, the Jesuits, including Ricci himself, did not neglect the instruction of new converts through simpler text (doctrinae), devised to teach the Christian dogmas in a language that could be easily recited by those who could read, and memorized by the flock. One of the most well-known missionaries of the post-Ricci generation was the Italian Giulio Aleni (1582-1649), active in the southern provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian between the 1620s and 1649. Aleni was not only interested in converting the literati, but also tried, with the help of Chinese Christians, to build a strong local church at the popular level. Among his numerous works in Chinese, one which certainly bears witness to this evangelical effort at the grass root level is a booklet entitled The Four-Character Classic of the Holy Religion of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shengjiao sizi jingwen, original ed. 1642; revised 1663 ed.). For whom was this Christian primer written? How was it used in religious education? How did it compare with similar texts in other religious traditions of China? These are questions I will try to answer in this essay.
Riassunto. La generazione di missionari che seguì il metodo di Ricci dopo la sua morte nel corso del Seicento continuò a lavorare tra i letterati cinesi, producendo una varietà di trattati religiosi, filosofici e scientifici. Tuttavia, i gesuiti, compreso lo stesso Ricci, non trascurarono l'istruzione dei nuovi convertiti attraverso testi più semplici (doctrinae), ideati per insegnare i dogmi cristiani in un linguaggio che potesse essere facilmente recitato da coloro che sapevano leggere, e memorizzato dai fedeli. Uno dei missionari più noti della generazione post-Ricci fu l'italiano Giulio Aleni (1582-1649), attivo nelle province meridionali di Zhejiang e Fujian tra gli anni 1620 e 1649. Aleni non era solo interessato a convertire i letterati, ma cercò anche, con l'aiuto dei cristiani cinesi, di costruire una chiesa locale a livello più popolare. Tra le sue numerose opere in cinese, una che certamente testimonia questo sforzo evangelico è un libretto intitolato Il Classico dei Quattro Caratteri della Santa Religione del Signore del Cielo (Tianzhu shengjiao sizi jingwen, ed. originale 1642; ed. riveduta 1663). Per chi fu scritto questo abbecedario

In Companions in Geography, Mario Cams revisits the early 18th century mapping of Qing China, without doubt one of the largest cartographic endeavours of the early modern world. Commonly seen as a Jesuit initiative, the project appears here as the result of a convergence of interests among the French Academy of Sciences, the Jesuit order, and the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722). These connections inspired the gradual integration of European and East Asian scientific practices and led to a period of intense land surveying, executed by large teams of Qing officials and European missionaries. The resulting maps and atlases, all widely circulated across Eurasia, remained the most authoritative cartographic representations of continental East Asia for over a century.

1. Hacia un corpus de arquitectura jesuítica. Bases actuales y líneas de trabajo futuro, por M.ª Isabel Álvaro Zamora y Javier Ibáñez Fernández 

2. La ratio aedificiorum di un'istituzione globale tra autorità centrale e infinità del territorio, por Richard Bösel 

3. Episodi emergenti dell'architetture gesuitica in Italia, por Richard Bösel 

4. La provincia di Sicilia, por Marco Rosario Nobile 

5. Le architetture della Compagnia di Gesù in Sardegna (XVI-XVIII secolo), por Emanuela Garofalo 

6. L'architecture jésuite en France: état de la question et perspectives de recherches, por Alexandre Gady y Pascal Julien 

7. Étienne Martellange: un architecte de la Compagnie de Jésus en France au XVIIe siècle, por Adriana Sénard 

8. The architecture of the jesuits in the Southern low Countries. A state of the art, por Joris Snaet y Krista de Jonge 

9. Jesuits architecture in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1564-1772, por Andrzej Betlej 

10. La arquitectura jesuítica en Castilla. Estado de la cuestión, por Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos 

11. La arquitectura jesuítica en Andalucía. Estado de la cuestión, por Alfredo J. Morales 

12. La arquitectura jesuítica en Valencia. Estado de la cuestión, por Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer 

13. La arquitectura jesuítica en Aragón. Estado de la cuestión, por Javier Ibáñez Fernández y Jesús Criado Mainar 

14. De historias globales y locales: una aproximación a la historiografía de la arquitectura de los jesuitas en Hispanoamérica, por Luisa Elena Alcalá 

15. Arquitectura de los jesuitas en Portugal y en las regiones de influencia portuguesa, por Paulo Varela Gomes y Rui Lobo 

16. Arquitectura jesuita en Filipinas y China, por Pedro Luengo

This database, under construction at Boston University's Center for Global Christianity & Mission, in partnership with the Institute of Qing History at Renmin University of China and the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco,  is an essential tool to visualize and map Christian presence in China (1550-1950). Please open the PDF and click the links for more information! To collaborate, email: emenegon@bu.edu

Tauste: una historia en la frontera (1105-1813).
Enrique Galé Casajús.-

La Villa de Tauste y la Inquisición.
José Enrique Pasamar Lázaro.-

El archivo musical de Ángel García García, “El Botero”: sesenta años de tradición musical en Tauste y alrededores.
Gregorio Ibáñez Gómez.-

Planificación Estratégica de Tauste: Análisis y estrategias para el posicionamiento de Tauste como destino turístico.
Carolina Izquierdo Álvarez.-

De Tauste a la China. El caso de Adriano de las Cortes.
Beatriz Moncó Rebollo.-

The Christian-Muslim Relations Bibliographical History is an ambitious attempt to provide scholarly entries and bibliographies for all works written by Muslims about and against Christianity, and all works written by Christians about and against Islam! This entry, published in volume 7 (16th century, 2015), concerns encounters along the western coast of India and the eastern coast of Africa between the Portuguese and Muslim kingdoms. Luis Frois is also famous for writing about Japan.

En este volumen se recogen las Actas del Simposio Internacional La Compañía de Jesús y las artes. Nuevas perspectivas de investigación, celebrado en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Zaragoza los días 19 y 20 de diciembre de 2013, vinculado con el Proyecto I+D Corpus de Arquitectura Jesuítica II; un proyecto interuniversitario e internacional, dirigido desde el Departamento de Historia del Arte de la Universidad de Zaragoza. En este encuentro quedó patente el renovado interés por el estudio del arte de los jesuitas y se expusieron las vías de investigación que se están desarrollando en diferentes universidades nacionales y extranjeras, presentadas tanto por prestigiosos estudiosos sobre el tema, cuanto por jóvenes investigadores, que explicaron sus trabajos, intercambiaron conocimientos, debatieron hipótesis, plantearon sus propuestas metodológicas y relataron la variada problemática surgida en cada investigación, con una discusión y debate en los que pudieron participar todos los asistentes. Todo ello se ofrece ahora al público en general –y a la comunidad científica en particular– en este volumen.

1.- Los Jesuitas y las artes. Nuevas investigaciones, nuevas visiones, por María Isabel Álvaro Zamora y Javier Ibáñez Fernández
2.- La arquitectura jesuítica en Aragón: primeras fundaciones. Objetivos y metodología de trabajo, por Naike Mendoza Maeztu
3.- El colegio de la Compañía de Jesús de Tarazona (Zaragoza): metodología de trabajo y fuentes para su estudio, por Rebeca Carretero Calvo
4.- La Compañía de Jesús en Navarra y las artes. Estado de la cuestión y fuentes para la investigación, por María Josefa Tarifa Castilla
5.- El Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús de Segovia. Fuentes y metodología de estudio, por Cristina García Oviedo
6.- El colegio de la Compañía de Jesús de Soria. Fuentes y metodología, por Fernando del Ser Pérez
7.- La Casa de Administración del Colegio Imperial de Jesuitas en Arganda del Rey (Madrid), por Raquel Novero Plaza
8.- La serie dei disegni della Provincia Mediolanensis Italiae, por Isabella Carla Rachele Balestreri
9.- Bartolomeo Ammannati, arquitecto y benefactor de la primera sede jesuítica en Toscana: San Giovanni Evangelista (1572-1592), por Teresa J. Gómez León
10.- Progetto e revisione. Il modo nostro nelle vicende del collegio dei Gesuiti di Iglesias, por Emanuela Garofalo
11.- A arquitectura das primeiras igrejas jesuítas em Portugal: São Roque de Lisboa e Espírito Santo de Évora. Confessionários, púlpitos e tribunas, por Rui Lobo
12.- Ciudad y territorio en las misiones jesuíticas de indios guaraníes, por Pablo Ruiz Martínez-Cañavate
13.- Identidad y globalización en las fachadas jesuitas de Pekín en el siglo XVIII, por Pedro Luengo
14.- La adopción del manual de Perspectiva de Andrea Pozzo en la docencia jesuítica española, por Sara Fuentes Lázaro
15.- Reconsideración de la iglesia del noviciado de San Luis, de Sevilla, a la luz del tratado del jesuita Andrea Pozzo, por Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos
16.- Tan verdadero Dios, como verdadero hombre: Cristo vestido de Jesuita, por Ángel Peña Martín

“Yongzheng’s Conundrum. The Emperor on Christianity, Religions, and Heterodoxy  /  Der Rätselhafte Yongzheng. Der Kaiser über Christentum, Religionen und Heterodoxie.” In Barbara Hoster, Dirk Kuhlmann, and Zbigniew Wesolowski eds., Rooted in Hope / In Der Hoffnung Verwurzelt. Festschrift in Honor of Roman Malek S.V.D. on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Festschrift für Roman Malek S.V.D. zu Seinem 65. Geburtstag. Routledge – Monumenta Serica Institute, 2017, vol. I, pp. 311-335 + 430 (image).

The Chinese world expanded beyond its imperial borders thanks to the development of a port area with a different social dynamic than what was found in the provinces in the empire's interior. Networks of merchants, migrants, and pirates, along with agents defending the imperial interests and its ideas, were in constant movement throughout Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific region. In the Philippines, this situation allowed Spanish Catholic missionaries to work with Chinese or Sangleys before entering China. What did this situation represent for the China Mission? What kind of missionary dynamics developed between the Chinese or the Sangleys? Can we talk about a Sangley Mission?

In the early modern world, the Jesuit garden arguably became a transcultural phenomenon materializing the transfer of both elite knowledge and ideas. This paper elaborates the transcultural dimension of the Jesuit symbolic garden by focusing on the so-called Beitang garden in eighteenth-century Beijing, built in the European style by French Jesuits. As witnessed by a number of Chinese and Korean travelers, however, the Beitang garden was not the only tangible garden constructed by Jesuit missionaries. Like their counterparts in Europe, garden spaces were essential to the Jesuit residences in Beijing. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these gardens, in which advanced European knowledge of cultivation, mechanism, as well as water conservancy were applied, were gradually turned into a dynamic space of increasing Jesuit botanic and cosmopolitan learning. Considering their unique social and political functions within sacred spaces, this paper will first synthesize the relevant facts in order to re-contextualize the construction of these garden spaces by examining various forms of their visual representation. Relying on written records by Korean travelers, this paper will elaborate on how concrete spatial arrangements and pattern designs, which were used to convey certain attitudes and ideas, became accessible for the Beijing Jesuits. This paper thus captures a transcultural moment for Jesuit garden spaces by demonstrating the ways in which a Jesuit garden in France was transferred to an eighteenth-century Jesuit space in Beijing.

“ ‘The Habit That Hides the Monk’: Missionary Fashion Strategies in Late Imperial Chinese Society and Court Culture.” In Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia: Patterns of Localization, edited by Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, and Christian Windler. London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 30-49.

The present study delves into the significance of missionary entradas within the Maynas region in relation to the diverse ethnic groups involved. The Maynas missions were established amidst the indigenous populations dwelling in the western fringes of the Amazonian region, particularly in the valleys of the Marañón, Napo, and Amazon rivers. Active in the region between 1638 and 1767, the Company of Jesus resorted to military expeditions known as "missionary entradas" to draw the Indians from the vicinity to dwell on reductions, either through force or persuasion. While this approach was a common practice in other areas of Jesuit activity, it gained unprecedented frequency in Maynas, with successive entradas aiming to expand and consolidate the territorial domain of the missionaries and fulfill the demands of indigenous groups in the face of increased interethnic rivalry. However, as the present work endeavors to demonstrate, the indigenous reality overshadowed the designs of the missionaries. The repeated entradas endeavored to accommodate groups that were not amenable to living together, leading to an excess in the number of reductions beyond the capacity of the Jesuits to attend to them. This recurrent process ultimately necessitated further missionary entradas to restore balance and homogeneity within the province. = This article was originally written in Spanish. For a more in-depth and up-to-date discussion, see my book Missionizing on the Edge.

Eugenio MENEGON [Mei Oujin 梅欧金]. “Shei zai liyong shei? Qingdai Beijing de Ouzhouren, zhuiqiu yule he zhengzhixing kuizeng 谁在利用谁？ 清代北京的欧洲人、追求逸乐和政治性馈赠” (“Qui tirait profit de qui ? Les missionnaires européens à la Cour de Pékin au XVIIIe siècle et la pratique des échanges de cadeaux”), pp. 117-139 in Quanli yu zhanbu  权力与占卜 (Faguo hanxue 法国汉学, no. 17, eds. Lu Kang [Luca Gabbiani] & Zhang Wei eds. 陆康，张巍主编), Zhonghua shuju, Dec. 2016.

In the mid-late 18th century the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799)
launched a number of great military campaigns in order to expand the Qing control over new territories on the north and south western part of his empire, as well as over the Tibeto-Himalayan region: they have been recorded as the “Ten Great Campaigns” (Shi quan wugong 十全武功). The results of these winning campaigns were the acquisition of new territories and the submission of people, primarily the Zunghar tribes and the Khambas of Sichuan, to the Qing empire. Such an endeavor had its cost in number of lives and military expenditure. During this time some Jesuit missionaries living at court in Peking were involved on a few occasions in the emperor’s agenda. In particular, the Portuguese fathers Felix da Rocha and José de Espinha, following in the footsteps of their fellow brethren almost a century earlier, at the request of the emperor not only drew maps of his new domains, but also cast cannons for one of his campaigns. In doing so, Qianlong followed the example of his predecessor Kangxi in using the scientific and technical skills of the court Jesuits in order to secure his victory and control over new conquered territories. This paper focuses mainly on Felix da Rocha’s undertakings in the service of Qianlong, both as a mapmaker and as an expert in ballistics and cannon casting. At the same time, it aims to show how in the 18th century the Qianlong emperor followed the example of his grandfather in his relationship with the Jesuit missionaries at court and their scientific knowledge.

“Amicitia Palatina: les jésuites et la politique des cadeaux offerts à la cour des Qing,” in Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, 43, thematic issue “Des arts diplomatiques. Présents entre la Chine et l’Europe, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles – The Arts of Diplomacy: The Exchange of Gifts between China and Europe, 17th-18th centuries,” 2019, pp. 61-80. [Revised French translation of English article below, “Amicitia Palatina: The Jesuits and the Politics of Gift-Giving at the Qing Court,” 2014].

This essay focuses on the gestures of courtesy described by Matteo Ricci (1552– 1610) in his treatise "Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina" (1600 ca.). The Italian Jesuit was the first European missionary of the early modern period to settle in the capital of the Ming Empire. He gained the approval of the establishment only after practicing the Jesuit method of accommodatio, that is, adapting to the civilization he wanted to spiritually “conquer.” One of the most complicated aspects of Chinese culture were gestures, which in recent years have become the subject of fascinating and interdisciplinary research: not only in history, but anthropology, social studies, psycholinguistics, and others. Although not verbal, gestures are a fundamental aspect of any communication. This was true especially in the early modern Far East, where European missionaries constantly struggled because of unsurmountable linguistic differences. The gestures that Ricci described did not pertain only to religious men but had to be performed by anyone who wanted to immerse and integrate in such a refined society, in his case with the aim of converting it.

The manuscript travel journals of the jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (Della Entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina) were published in a latin translation (De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Iesu) in 1615. The translation has been, for centuries, the most detailed description of the Celestial Empire accessible to the European readers. It was, however, also  the product of a manipulation by their translator, the Flemish jesuit Nicolas Trigault. The aim of his manipulation - obtained for the most part by censoring some descriptions and by translating 'creatively' some terms - was ecclesiastic strategy: it was in fact necessary to 'justify' Ricci's 'soft' approach by even more exalting the wisdom of China's rulers. The translation had a role, for centuries - and perhaps even now - in determining the western idealized perception of Ming China.

In  the  following  research  are  analyzed  some  of  the  discourses  produced  during  the Catholic  missionary  work  with  Chinese  in  the  islands  of  the  Philippines  in  the  late Sixteenth Century. How Chinese religiosity was represented in Spanish? How Christian enterprise  was  projected  in  the  early  writings  and  translations  to  or  from  the  Chinese? This  paper,  such  as  questions,  is  divided  into  two  parts.  First,  it  was  explained  the representations  of  the  Chinese  religiosity  written  in  Spanish  from  the  texts  of  the Augustinian Martín de Rada, the inquisitor Bernardino de Escalante and the Jesuit Luis de  Guzmán.  Second,  it  was  examined  the  translations  of  the  Dominican  Juan  Cobo, from the Spanish to the Chinese of Mingxin  Baojian明心寶鑑or Rico Espejo del Claro Corazón[Bright  heart-mind  Precious  Mirror])  and  from  the  Chinese  to  the  Spanish  of Apología  de  la  verdadera  religión[Apology  of  True  Religion]  or Tianzhu  Zhengjiao Zhenchuan Shilu天主正教真傳實錄.

The French Jesuit mission in Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century created a unique musical workshop with the construction of a pipe organ with bamboo pipes in 1856-57. Destroyed in the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the 'Bamboo Organ of Tungkadoo' nonetheless had a kind of legendary status and remained an artifact of cultural memory into the 1990s. This article, relying on unpublished documents found in archives in France, reveals the full story of the instrument, and the many other bamboo organs constructed during the era of the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War, and identifies the one surviving example, now in Paris. It also explores the symbolic importance of these cross-cultural instruments and offers a new perspective on aesthetic and musical exchanges in an age of imperialism.

The early seventeenth century is noted for the fruitful cultural, religious, and artistic exchange between Europe and the Chinese imperial court. The missionaries of the Society of Jesus (Societas Iesu) became a prominent bridge connecting the two distinct cultures, where the main differences were, at the same time, the reason for their mutual allure. At that time, Jesuit priests, such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), João da Rocha (1587–1639), and Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), contributed significantly not only to the dissemination of Christianity in Beijing, Nanjing, and other important cities beyond the Portuguese administration of Macau, but also to the transmission of Western knowledge and technology. Along with the flow of goods and rare commodities brought from Europe which overwhelmed the Chinese emperors of the late Ming and High Qing courts, Western art was introduced into China as a synthesis of visual science, artistic sophistication, and eloquence, explaining why it became so valuable, particularly during the time of the three Qing emperors, Kangxi (1654–1722), Yongzheng (1678–1735), and Qianlong (1711–99). The modus operandi in the apostolic ministry of the Society of Jesus around the world is well known for the use of images as a visual explanation of Christian doctrine, particularly in China, India, and Japan. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (Exercitia Spiritualia), composed between 1522 and 1524, suggests that the images should be referred to as a reflection on the word, demonstrating the complementary function between text and images in the explanation of Christian teachings. This article discusses the agency of one of the earliest sets of European prints used in the context of the Jesuit mission in China as a visual explanation of biblical teachings. By means of iconographic examination and iconological approach, it examines how Christian prints included in the Chengshi moyuan 程氏墨苑 (The Ink Garden of Mr. Cheng) were used as a visual reasoning of the scriptures, demonstrating that the three biblical prints were linked to each other and purposely put together as a result of a doctrinal program.

In this article, an analysis is conducted on the depictions of the devil found in the written works of missionaries who worked in the Spanish Amazon during the 17th and 18th centuries. The European missionaries, notably the Jesuits, wove their "spiritual conquest" of the Amazonian territories into a narrative of the battle between good and evil. They presented themselves as liberators who came to free the Indians from the chains of devil worship, which was perpetuated by the shaman's manipulation to cause conflicts and destruction, and inspired celebrations and sacraments that mimicked Christian practices but ultimately reinforced the natives' subservience to the common enemy. This text delves into the various aspects of this narrative in great detail. In contrast to what some studies suggest, demonization was not merely a means of discrediting indigenous cultures. The Jesuits deemed as demonic those practices they endeavored to comprehend, but whose immediate significance eluded them. Hence, the demon image acted as a bridge between cultures, making the native culture comprehensible. Demonization was not tantamount to rejecting the Other altogether; rather, it was an effort to create analogical links that allowed for intercultural communication and negotiation of the sacred universe. = This article was originally published in Portuguese. A revised and updated rendition of the material may be found in my book, "Missionizing on the Edge."

In the middle 17th Century,around the time when the Manchurian occupation overthrew the Ming Dynasty,Catholic missionaries found new opportunities in China,and in the Northwest,it was particularly so.Waves of missionaries,mostly members of the Society of Jesus,swarmed into Gansu and Qinghai,settled in such places as Lanzhou,Ganzhou,Liangzhou and Xining,and started church building and conversion.By the time of Kangxi's reign,Catholic missionary activity had been well established,and when the Franciscan monks came to Gansu the missionary cause gained substantial development.Despite the atrocious persecutions against the missionaries and the converts during the reign of Yongzheng and Qianlong,the missionary influence remained till the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Attraverso la lettura attenta di un dipinto di grande formato in cui è presente
una varietà di specie botaniche, attualmente conservato presso la Bibliothèque nationale de France, il contributo cerca di rintracciare il graduale mutamento degli scambi botanici sino-europei, effetto del movimento fisiocratico. La committenza del dipinto, attribuito ai missionari gesuiti che si trovavano presso la residenza di Beitang, può rivelare non solo le sue possibili fonti e i protagonisti implicati, ma anche le modalità con le quali le reti globali di conoscenza erano stabilite nel XVIII secolo. Il saggio identifica le piante rappresentate nel dipinto, collegandole al più ampio contesto delle pratiche botaniche dei gesuiti a Pechino, e sottolineando che le piante
cinesi da giardino, più che le erbe o altri tipi di flora esotica, costituivano il principale oggetto di desiderio dei committenti europei. Dietro tale domanda, vi era la convinzione dei fisiocratici che la superiorità dell’agricoltura cinese avrebbe dato spinta all’economia, portando vantaggi alle società europee. Il contributo fornisce infine un contesto alla committenza del dipinto, considerandolo come
una delle rappresentazioni ordinate da Henri-Léonard Jean-Baptiste Bertin (1720-1792), figura chiave del movimento fisiocratico francese nonché degli scambi sino-europei nel XVIII secolo.