Circa 1492

Art in the Age

of Exploration

C/ rca

1492

Edited by Jay A. Levenson

National Gallery of Art, Washington
Yale University Press, New Haven and London

The exhibition is made possible by generous grants from

Ameritech
and

The Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. and

The Mitsui Taiyo Kobe Bank, Ltd.
and

Republic National Bank of New York.

The National Gallery of Art
is grateful for additional support provided by
The Rockefeller Foundation
and

Banco Exterior de Espana (Grupo CBE).

Copyright 1991, Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, except "The Realms
of Pride and Awe," copyright 1991, Daniel J. Boorstin. All rights reserved. This
book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Exhibition dates at the National Gallery of Art: October 12, 1991January 12, 1992
Front cover: cats. 143 (foreground) and 359 (background)
Back cover: cat. 311
Endpapers: cat. 451
Title page: adapted from Liber chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493, National Gallery of Art
Text for cat. 27: adapted with permission from Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts: Treasures
from the British Library by Thomas Kren. Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum (1983).
L I B R A R Y OF C O N G R E S S CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Circa 1492: art in the age of exploration / edited by Jay A. Levenson. p.

Catalogue for a major quincentenary exhibition to be held at the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-05167-0 hardbound
ISBN 0-300-05217-0 softbound
i. Fifteenth century Exhibitions, i. Levenson, Jay A.
ii. National Gallery of Art (U.S.) in. Title: Circa fourteen
ninety-two, iv. Title: Circa fourteen hundred ninety-two.
CB367.C571991
909'. 4074753 dc20
Printed in Italy

cm.

91-50590
CIP

Contents

Foreword

j. CARTER BROWN

Lenders to the exhibition

11

Contributors to the catalogue

13

The Realms of Pride and Awe

Circa 1492: History and Art

DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
JAY A. LEVENSON

Acknowledgments

15
19
22

I,

EUROPE AND THE

MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
OBSERVATIONS AND BELIEFS:
THE WORLD OF THE CATALAN ATLAS
Jean Michel Massing

27

PORTUGUESE NAVIGATION:
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Luis de Albuquerque

35

SPAIN IN THE AGE OF EXPLORATION:

CROSSROADS OF ARTISTIC CULTURES
Jonathan Brown

41

SCULPTURE IN CASTILE c. 1492

J. J. Martin Gonzalez

cat. 123

51

THE SPAIN OF FERDINAND

AND ISABELLA
Richard Kagan

55

THE ART OF W E S T E R N AFRICA IN THE

AGE OF EXPLORATION
Ezio Bassani

63

THE GORGEOUS EAST': TRADE AND

TRIBUTE IN THE ISLAMIC EMPIRES
J. Michael Rogers

69

PICTURING THE LEVANT

Julian Raby

77

MAPS AND THE RATIONALIZATION

OF GEOGRAPHIC SPACE
David Woodward
TRADITION AND INNOVATION:
COLUMBUS' FIRST VOYAGE AND
PORTUGUESE NAVIGATION IN THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Francis Maddison
THE MEAN AND MEASURE OF
ALL THINGS
Martin Kemp
MICHELANGELO 1492
Giulio Carlo Argan
THE QUEST FOR THE EXOTIC: ALBRECHT
DRER IN THE NETHERLANDS
Jean Michel Massing

THE CATALOGUE
Distant Worlds (cats. 1-17)
The Realm of the Spirit (cat. 18)
Portugal and the Sea Route South (cats. 19-32)
Spain: The Foundations of Empire (cats. 33-57,)
African Kingdoms (cats. 58-78)
Islamic Empires (cats. 79-110)
Measuring and Mapping (cats. 111-137)
The Rationalization of Space (cats. 138-151)
The Human Figure (cats. 152-168)
Leonardo and Drer (cats. 169-210)

83

89

95
113

115
cat. 231

120
134
136
154
176
192
214
240
256
270

THE KANGNIDO: A KOREAN

WORLD MAP, 1402
Gari Ledyard

329

KOREAN PAINTING OF THE

EARLY CHOSON PERIOD
Sherman E. Lee

333

CHINA IN THE AGE OF COLUMBUS

F. W. Mote

337

ART IN CHINA 1450-1550

Sherman E. Lee

351

ENCOUNTERS WITH INDIA:

LAND OF GOLD, SPICES, AND
MATTERS SPIRITUAL
Stuart Cary Welch

363

II.

TOWARD CATHAY
CIRCA 1492 IN JAPAN: COLUMBUS AND
THE L E G E N D OF GOLDEN CIPANGU
Martin Collcutt
ART IN JAPAN 1450-1550
Sherman E. Lee

305
315

THE CATALOGUE
Muromachi Japan (cats. 211-263)

368

Korea (cats. 264-282)

Ming China (cats. 283-346)

414
428

India (cats. 347-355)

488

III.

THE CATALOGUE
The Aztec Empire (cats. 356-407)

THE AMERICAS

The Tupinamba (cat. 408)

499

THE AZTEC GODS-HOW MANY?

Miguel Lon-Portilla

507

THE TAINOS: PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS

OF COLUMBUS' INDIES
Irving Rouse and Jose Juan Arrom

509

EARLY EUROPEAN IMAGES OF AMERICA:

THE ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH
Jean Michel Massing

515

SIGNS OF DIVISION, SYMBOLS OF UNITY:

ART IN THE INKA EMPIRE
Craig Morris

521

THE FALCON AND THE SERPENT: LIFE IN

THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES
AT THE TIME OF COLUMBUS
James A. Brown
EMBLEMS OF POWER IN THE
CHIEFDOMS OF THE NEW WORLD
Warwick Bray

The Southeastern United States (cats. 424-440)

574
575
582

The Inkas and Their Empire (cats. 441-474)

590

The Lands of Gold (cats.

604

A WORLD U N I T E D
J. H. Elliott

647

Notes to the reader

References
Picture Credits

653
654
671

The Tamos (cats. 409-423)

THE AZTEC EMPIRE:

REALM OF THE SMOKING MIRROR
Michael D. Coe

540

LIST OF MAPS
529

Medieval Trade Routes

26

Portuguese Voyages to 1498

36
56
66

Cities of the Mediterranean

Africa and the World of Islam
535

Japan and Korea

East Asia in Ming Times
Zheng He's Maritime Expeditions
Aztec Empire
The Valley of Mexico

343
500

Caribbean Cultures

500
509

Inka Empire

522

Mississippian Peoples

530

Chiefdoms of the Intermediate Area

The Americas

cat. 488

307
338

535
539

Foreword

f the date 1492 has been drilled into the consciousness of generations of American school
children, it has, until recently, been largely
from the single viewpoint of a European civilization transported to a "New World."
Now, with a 5ooth anniversary, we have an
opportunity to pause and reflect on the significance of a milestone in human history that,
however it may be interpreted from diverse
points of view, must be considered a watershed
in the history of our globe. The meeting of
worlds that took place around 1492 has, in fact,
been called "the most significant secular event
in human history, a statement with which even
partisans of a revisionist view concur. One
opportunity this anniversary affords is to hold
an exhibition that attempts, from the lasting
perspective of art and cultural achievement, to
assess what we have loosely termed the "Age
of Exploration"; what it has meant, and by
inference, could, and even must mean to our
present world.
E pluribus unum. Pluralism is at the very
root of the American tradition. Globalism is
increasingly becoming recognized, in a country
that is not without its isolationist past, as a
necessity for survival. While Americans search
out their specific cultural identities and roots,
globalism pleads for awareness, sensitivity, and
a new sympathy for the cultural identities of
others. The single epoch in human history that
can be said to have made possible the idea of
globalism is the Age of Exploration, an age that
began in the fifteenth century with the voyages
of the Chinese admiral Zheng He, and, for the
Western world, with the Portuguese voyages
down the coast of Africa.
Circa 1492 examines, first of all, the ethos of
a Mediterranean world in which, with a new
vibrancy and energy, mankind was searching to
understand its place in relation to this earth,
bringing to bear a new consciousness, a new
humanism growing out of centuries of concentration on other-worldliness. The measuring
and mapping that led to the navigation of
unknown seas sprang from the same impulses
that helped define spatial perception through
perspective, the structure of the human body,
and even the attempt to chart what Leonardo
called "the motions of the mind/'
The first section of this exhibition begins
with a prologue that sketches in the Europeans'

mounting curiosity about what were, for them,

distant worlds. It then takes the Mediterranean
littoral as an entity. It examines the Portugal
that gave contemporary navigation its start, the
Spain that sent Columbus and so many others
on their epoch-making voyages, and the Italy
from which Columbus and the humanist tradition sprang. Not limiting itself to these, it goes
on to make reference to the lands and cultures
that were connected with them, such as the
kingdoms of western Africa, linked by their
trade routes northward, and the world of Islam,
which made many astronomical and other intellectual contributions to Mediterranean culture
and played a particularly crucial role in the early
interchange between East and West.
Then, as now, the world of the intellect knew
no national boundaries, and among the personalities reflected in this section are a Polish
astronomer, a German cartographer who worked
in Lorraine, as well as the greatest artistscientist from north of the Alps, Albrecht Diirer.
The section closes with the most protean explorer of them all, born within a year of ColumbusLeonardo da Vinci.
The show then takes a bold leap into the
imagination. It invites the visitor on an imaginary voyage, to explore the European search for
"Cathay," the Indies, "Cipangu" (Japan),
moving into the subjunctive mode to reveal,
with the hindsight of 500 years, some of the
extraordinarily rich cultures that existed in
Asia, in the order in which Columbus would
have encountered them if he had been able to
complete the voyage that he thought he had
made until his dying day.
Finally, the reality of the American continents unknown to Europe and Asia before
Columbus is presented, selectively, with the
impact of their highly developed civilizations.
We are left to marvel at the achievements and
diversity of these cultures and the aesthetic
power of their arts.
Our hope is that, by attempting an exhibition
that for once goes horizontally through space
rather than vertically through time, we can help
sensitize our visitors to the significance of world
culture at a particular moment, in its multiform variety. The period of human achievement
surrounding the year 1492 was a truly epochal
one, with repercussions, positive and negative,
that inform our own age. Certain objects

selected for this show, as explained in the introduction, illustrate specific historical points. But
the essence of our exhibition is to go beyond
illustration, to embodiment. This show is not
about a man called Christopher Columbus; his
name does not even appear in the title. It is
about the extraordinary age in which he played
his part. The worlds of visual art and artifact
communicate so much more than the dry facts
of historical events and do it, bridging time and
space, without words, directly. It is the thesis of
this exhibition that to grasp the lasting significance of an epoch, there is nothing quite so illuminating as the experience of an original object
made in that time. When that object is a work
of art, the experience can be unforgettable.
The juxtapositions provided here will generate,
we hope, a newer, keener understanding, both
intellectually and affectively, of this historic
era, and cannot but help give new resonance
to the very concept of a Quincentennial
commemoration.
Begun at the time of our Treasure Houses of
Britain show in 1985-1986 as the Gallery's next
large-scale undertaking, the project has been
unusually complex, involving loans from some
210 collections and individuals in 34 countries.
We are fortunate to have secured the services
for this project of Dr. Jay A. Levenson, a specialist in late fifteenth-century art who had started
his career at the National Gallery and then
became a mergers and acquisitions lawyer in
New York. He is chiefly responsible for the
articulate formulation and organization of the
exhibition's many diverse elements. He has
been ably assisted by a talented staff here at the
Gallery and a team of some fifty scholars with
expertise in all the various fields on which the
exhibition touches. The contributions of many
of these gifted people are recognized in more
detail in the acknowledgments. We are grateful
for the early help of the Renaissance authority
Professor Sydney J. Freedberg before his retirement as the Gallery's chief curator, and to the
many other distinguished scholars throughout
the world who have contributed to the exhibition and to this catalogue. A special word of
thanks is owed to our editors office, and our
colleagues at the Yale University Press, Marsilio
Editori in Venice, and at National Geographic
Society, all of whom had to work under
extremely tight deadlines.
CIRCA 14Q2

We wish in particular to thank our museum

colleagues and all those in the various countries
who have taken a special interest in our quest.
They are listed in greater detail farther on, but
we would like to mention especially, for the personal interest they have taken in this exhibition,
His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain; President Francesco Cossiga and Prime Minister
Giulio Andreotti in Italy; President Lech
Walesa of Poland; President Mario Scares of
Portugal; and President & Mrs. Turgut Ozal of
Turkey. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n of
England is an especially generous lender. The
following members of the cabinets of several
governments have been instrumental in assuring that the most important works of art from
their countries be included in our exhibition and
they deserve our sincerest thanks: Erhard
Busek, Minister for Knowledge and Research in
Austria; Zhang Deqin, Director of the State
Bureau for Cultural Relics in the People's
Republic of China; Gianni de Michelis, Foreign
Minister, and Francesco Sisinni, Director-General for Cultural Affairs in Italy; Victor FloresOlea, President of the National Council for
Culture and Arts in Mexico; Pedro Santana
Lopes, Secretary of State for Culture in Portugal; Marek Rostworowski, Minister of Culture and Arts in Poland; Jordi Sole Tura,
Minister of Culture and Jorge Semprun, former
Minister of Culture in Spain; Chin Hsiao-yi,
member of the Cabinet in Taipei; and Gokan
Maras, Minister of Culture and Namik Kemal
Zeybeck former Minister of Culture in Turkey.
In addition, we were particularly favored by
interest at the highest level in the Mexican gov-

10

CIRCA

1492

ernment in this special opportunity to consider

their Aztec treasures in a context of
unprecedented breadth, and by the high-level
attention paid in Beijing and Taiwan, the latter
Parliament changing a twenty-five-year-old law
against lending in their enthusiasm for this
exhibition. In the United States, we have been
gratified by the personal interest in this undertaking shown by President Bush; our trustee,
Secretary of State Baker; and Chief of Protocol,
Ambassador Joseph V. Reed. Space does not
permit citing the many other supporters of this
exhibition in the federal government, but it is
impossible not to mention, with warm appreciation, our appropriations chairman in the House,
Congressman Sidney R. Yates.
Needless to say, an exhibition of this complexity requires substantial funding. We were
pleased that the Congress, acting on a specific
recommendation in the President's budget, saw
fit to award a supplement to our exhibitions
funding in recognition of this special situation.
Nonetheless, Congress has consistently indicated that it expects the Gallery to raise a substantial portion of its exhibition expenses from
the private sector. In a climate of business
uncertainty and reordering of corporate priorities, we consider ourselves extremely fortunate
to have enlisted the generosity of a consortium
of corporations who have understood the
extraordinary nature of this undertaking.
Ameritech, which is based in Chicago and is
the telephone company for a large section of the
central United States, was the first to come
aboard, and helped make the early development
of this project possible. Next came The Nomura

Securities Co., Ltd. and The Mitsui Taiyo Kobe

Bank, Ltd. in Japan, helping symbolize the
global reach of the exhibition's theme. Similarly, the Safras, with their South American and
Lebanese roots, brought further symbology
with the welcome support of Republic National
Bank of New York. The specific inter-American
aspect of the exhibition was underscored by
the ancillary participation of The Rockefeller
Foundation. Last, Banco Exterior de Espana
(Grupo CBE), representing Europe and particularly Spain, graciously funded the gala opening dinner. The exhibition is supported by an
indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts
and Humanities.
Augmenting an exhibition program that produces each year many small and highly focused
exhibitions, and occurring in the Gallery's fiftieth-anniversary year, during which a reinstallation of the permanent collection has been a
high priority, this exhibition has only gone
from dream to reality thanks to the extraordinary support, generosity, and efforts of what is,
for us, an unprecedented number of people,
both on the Gallery staff, and around the globe.
Our heartful thanks go to them all. The dream
of a globe wholly knowledgeable of and sympathetic to its multi-form cultural components
may still be beyond us; however, it can only be
our hope that undertakings such as this can
contribute their small part to that long-dreamt of realization.
/. Carter Brown
Director
National Gallery of Art

Lenders to the exhibition

Muzeum Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego

Collegium Maius, Cracow

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, on extended

loan from Gilbert J. and Clara T. Yager

Daisen-in, Kyoto

Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, Seto City

The Detroit Institute of Arts

Alfonso Jimenez Alvarado

D6jo-ji, Wakayama

Jofuku-ji, Kyoto

American Museum of Natural History,

New York

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and

Collections, Washington

Jose Maria Jorge

Kagoshima-jingu

Eisei Bunko, Tokyo

Kencho-ji, Kamakura

H.M. Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle

Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth

Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon

The Asia Society, New York

R. H. Ellsworth Ltd., New York

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Kunsthalle Bremen

En'6-ji, Kamakura

Askeri Miize, Istanbul

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Etowah Mounds State Historic Site Georgia

Department of Natural Resources, Atlanta

Kuromori-jinja, Iwate

Berlin EKU; Museum fur Kunst und

Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt Liibeck

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,

Cambridge

Library of Sint-Baafskathedral, Ghent

Biblioteca Estense, Modena

Fujita Art Museum, Osaka

Linden-Museum, Staatliches Museum fur

Volkerkunde, Stuttgart

Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

Fundacion Garcia Arevalo, Inc., Santo Domingo

The London Gallery Ltd., Tokyo

Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice

Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli

Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

Brian and Florence Mahony

Biblioteca Palatina, Parma

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Matsudaira Yasuhara

Biblioteca Reale, Turin

Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Matsuo-dera, Nara

Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna

The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American

History and Art, Tulsa

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Bibliotheque de iTnstitut de France, Paris

Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

The British Library Board, London

Haags Gemeentemuseum

Musee de 1'Homme, Palais de Chaillot, Paris

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Hakutsuru Museum of Fine Art

Musee du Louvre, Paris

The Brooklyn Museum

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Roger Brunei

Hasebe Yasuko

Musee National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet,

Paris

The John Carter Brown Library, Providence

Musees Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels

Excmo. Cabildo Catedral, Burgos

Hessisches Landesmuseum, Staatliche

Kunstsammlungen Kassel

Ente Casa Buonarroti, Florence

Hinohara Setsuzo

The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library,

Dublin

Ho-Am Art Museum, Kyunggi-do

Museo de Antropologia, Historia y Arte,

Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

Arthur Holzheimer Collection

Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence

Church of Nossa Senhora da Ourada, Aviz

Hong Kong Museum of Art, Urban Council

Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Honolulu Academy of Arts

Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte,

Naples

Archeological Museum, Bijapur

Armeria Reale, Turin

Church of San Domenico, Gubbio

Church of the Ognissanti, Florence

The Denver Art Museum

Jan Mitchell and Sons

Koho-an, Kyoto

Kyoto National Museum

Mitsui Bunko, Tokyo

Museo de America, Madrid

Chuson-ji, Iwate

Horim Art Museum, Sungbo Cultural

Foundation, Seoul

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Hosomi Minoru

Museo Diocesano Catedralicio, Valladolid

Viscount Coke and the Trustees of the Holkham

Estate, Wells, Norfolk

Huaian County Museum

Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo

Domingo

Museo Civico, Turin

Convento de Santo Domingo el Real, Segovia

Institut de France, Musee Jacquemart-Andre,

Paris

Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City

Daio-ji, Kyoto

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, San Jose

CIRCA 1492

11

Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid

Navin Kumar Gallery, New York

Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Santiago

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City

Museo Naval, Madrid

Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi
Pigorini, Rome

The Warden and Fellows of New College,

Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

The New York Public Library

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Santa Fe

de Bogota

The Newberry Library, Chicago

Museo Pachacamac

Nigerian National Museum, Lagos

Museo Parroquial de Pastrana

Ohio Historical Society, Columbus

Museo Parroquial de Santa Eulalia, Paredes

de Nava

The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art

Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo

Museo Templo Mayor, Mexico City
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica,
San Jose
Museu de Grao Vasco, Viseu
Museu Nacional de Arte Amiga, Lisbon

Oxford

Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo

George Ortiz Collection

Palace Museum, Beijing
Palacio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon
Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid
Peabody Museum of Natural History,
Yale University, New Haven

Museum of Art and History, Shanghai

Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art,

London

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Museum of Natural History, University of

Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Private Collections

Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Koln

Museum Rietberg, Zurich
Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basel
Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna
Muzeum Narodowe W Krakowie, Oddzial
Zbiory Czartoryskich
Nanjing Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington
National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Ireland, Dublin
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington

Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Sze Tak Tong
The Rabenou Charitable Settlement
Number One
Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum fur Volkerkunde
der Stadt Koln
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art,
Sarasota
Rohsska Konstslojdmuseet, Goteborg
The Royal Library, Copenhagen
Ryukoku University Library, Kyoto
Saidai-ji, Nara
Sata-jinja, Shimane
Seikado Bunko, Tokyo
Rifaat Sheikh El-Ard
Shinagawa Yoichiro
Shinju-an, Kyoto
Shirayamahime-jinja, Ishikawa
Shonen-ji, Kanagawa

National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside,

Liverpool Museum

Jose da Silva Lico

National Palace Museum, Taipei

Saint Louis Science Center

12

CIRCA 1492

Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,

Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Skulpturensammlung
Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown
Stadtische Museen Konstanz, WessenbergGemaldegalerie
Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo
Suwasugi-jinja, Fukui
Se Patriarchal de Lisboa
Taima-dera, Nara
Tesoro di San Marco, Venice
The Textile Museum, Washington
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
Tokyo National Museum
Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music
Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi, Istanbul
Turk ve Islam Eserleri Miizesi, Istanbul
The University Museum of Archeology and
Anthropology, Philadelphia
The University of Arkansas Museum,
Fayetteville
The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London
Visual Equities Inc., Atlanta
Fiirstlich zu Waldburg-Wolfegg'sche
Kupferstichkabinett
The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore
Yamato Bunkakan, Nara
Yoho-ji, Kyoto

Contributors to the catalogue

C.A.

CANDACE ADELSON

I.F

IRIS FISHOF

G.O.

GEORGE ORTIZ

L.D.A.

LUIS DE ALBUQUERQUE

H. Y.

HIROIYUICHI

C.P.I.

CRESCENCIO PALOMO IGLESIAS, O.P.

R.E.A.

RICARDO E. ALEGRIA

R.L.K.

RICHARD KAGAN

C.P.

CLEMENCIA PLAZAS

G.C.A.

GIULIO CARLO ARGAN

R.K.

RONDAKASL

J.R.

JULIAN RABY

J.J.A.

JOS JUAN ARROM

M.K.

MARTIN KEMP

H.R.

HOWARD ROGERS

E.B.

EZIOBASSANI

K.K.

KUMJAKIM

J.M.R.

J. MICHAEL ROGERS

C.B.-S.

CHRISTIAN BEAUFORT-SPONTIN

F.K.

FRITZ KORENY

M.A.R.

MARY ANN ROGERS

E.P.B.

ELIZABETH P. BENSON

G.L.

GARILEDYARD

I.R.

IRVING ROUSE

C.B.

CLAUDE BLAIR

S.E.L.

SHERMAN E. LEE

M.J.S.

MICHAEL J. SNARSKIS

D.J.B.

DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

J.A.L.

JAY A. LEVENSON

F.S.

FELIPE SOLIS

W. B.

WARWICK BRAY

F. M.

FRANCIS MADDISON

S. S.

SUZANNE STRATTON

J.A.B.

JAMES A. BROWN

J.J.M.G. JUAN J. MARTIN GONZALEZ

J. T.

JOSE TEIXEIRA

J.B.

JONATHAN BROWN

T.K.

THOMAS KREN

D.T.

DORA THORNTON

M.D.C.

MICHAEL D. COE

J.M.M.

JEAN MICHEL MASSING

J. U.

JAMES ULAK

M.C.

MARTIN COLLCUTT

L.L.-M. LAURA LAURENCICH-MINELLI

S.C.W.

STUART GARY WELCH

E.C.

EGIDIOCOSSA

ML.-P.

MIGUEL LE6N-PORTILLA

D. W

DAVID WOODWARD

J.E.

JOHN ELLIOTT

E.M.M.

EDUARDO MATOS MOCTEZUMA

D.Z.

DANIELA ZANIN

A. M. F.

ANA MARIA FALCHETTI

C. M.

CRAIG MORRIS

C.F

CHRISTIAN FEEST

F.W.M.

FREDERICK W. MOTE

C I R C A 1492

13

The Realms of Pride and Awe

by Daniel]. Boorstin

n our age of overweening pride in man's

power over the physical world, this exhibit can
balance our view of human nature and be an
antidote to the contagion of science. By opening
our eyes to art in the Age of Exploration, Circa
1492 can remind us how much of the world
that we enjoy and admire lay outside the Discoverer's ken, even when man's discovering
energies were at full flood. Here we bring
together some of the best mementos both of
Man the Discoverer and Man the Creator, the
Realms of Pride and Awe. Seldom have these
two realms of human fulfillment been so richly
displayed in one museum, and perhaps never
before have they been so gloriously shown in
a single exhibit.
In both the sciences and the arts the Age of
Exploration was an era of spectacular achievement. But the usual rituals of the quincentennial year of Columbus' voyage are liable to
be a festival only of pride in man's ability to
brave the unknown, to increase his knowledge
and mastery of the world. Our National Gallery
exists to show us that such a celebration would
recognize only one side of man's adventuring
nature. Neither then nor now could man live
by science alone.
Here we have an opportunity without
precedent to see how disparate, though sometimes complementary, are the Culture of
Discovery and the Culture of Creation. The
Discoverer's work is often the prosaic charting
and measuring and extrapolating, to define
where man has already reached. The exhilaration of his work requires the artist or poet. It
took Keats to remind us of the "wild surmise"
awakened in
. . . some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific...
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
This exhibit, too, can remind us of the oceans
of ignorance, the vistas of human creation still
unknown to Europeans in the Age of Exploration. And so help us reflect on the scope and
promise of these two ways of fulfillment.
Columbus' life and work offered an allegory
of the Culture of Discovery international,
collaborative, and progressive. The Genoese
Columbus had sought support from several

other sovereigns before he allowed himself to

be enlisted by Ferdinand and Isabella. The maps
he relied on had their origins in the cartographic efforts of Jewish mapmakers at least a
century before, and of the Greek Ptolemy long
before that. His voyages were conspicuous feats
of organization and command, holding the
crews together and keeping up their morale
under threats of mutiny. Columbus relied on
the best manuscripts and printed books of his
time to impress Isabella's experts. Despite the
limits to his information, and the misinformation which made his voyage seem possible, it
was the community of scientific knowledge of
his time, the accumulating heritage of centuries,
that sent him across the ocean.
The other grand voyages of the Age of
Exploration were also products of international
collaboration. In 1498 Vasco da Gama might
not have succeeded in his voyage around Africa
to India, proving the error in the Ptolemaic
maps that had made the Indian Ocean into an
enclosed sea, had he not been able to enlist an
Arab pilot at Malindi to guide his fleet the
twenty-three days across the treacherous Arabian sea to Calicut. An unsung godfather and
catalyst of all these voyages had been the sedentary Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal.
Though a reluctant navigator himself, he had
marked the adventuring paths for European sailors and cheered them on their way. Henry, too,
had found clues for the design of his miraculous
"caravels" which rounded Africa, in the Arab
"caravos" long used off the Egyptian and Tunisian coasts, and modeled on the ancient fishing
vessels of the Greeks. The printing press, which
had come to Europe only decades before Columbus' voyage, was an unprecedented vehicle
for sharing knowledge, spreading information
(and misinformation) to people who earlier
had been grateful for only a trickle.
Geographic knowledge, a product of discovery, was a precious international currency,
coveted by everyone, easily stolen, and valuable
to hoard. Anybody's new bit of information
about an easy passage or a treacherous shore
could be added to anybody else's in the race for
gold and glory. The secrecy rigorously enforced
on the fruits of discovery must have cost the
lives of many an indiscreet sailor. The Portuguese "policy" of secrecy was itself so secret
that some have even denied that it existed. On

the other hand, recent champions of Portuguese

primacy in the American voyages have dared to
use the very absence of documentary evidence
as proof that the Portuguese discoveries must
have been too valuable to share.
In the long run secrecy could not prevail. For
Discovery, this realm of science, was by its very
nature collaborative and cumulative. Europe's
community treasurehouse of geographic knowledge from the past was inevitably international.
Columbus was a young man of seventeen at
the death of Gutenberg, in 1468. Now printed
books, themselves potent products of this Age
of Exploration, made knowledge even more
fluid, more mobile, more difficult to confine.
The barriers of language, multiplied by the
change from Latin to the vernaculars of emerging nations, threatened to be more obstructive
than rivers and mountains. But these barriers,
too, were soon penetrated by the newlyflourishing arts of translation. And the vernacular languages became widening currents
of exchange.
Despite all obstacles, news of Columbus' first
voyage spread speedily across Europe. Columbus' "letter" describing what he thought he
had accomplished, first written in Spanish and
printed in Barcelona about i April 1493, was
translated into Latin as De Insulis Inventis
and published in Rome before the end of that
month. By the end of that year there were three
more editions in Rome, and within the next
year six different Latin editions were printed in
Paris, Basel (cat. 136), and Antwerp. Soon there
was a translation into German, and by midJune 1493 the Latin Letter had been translated
into a 68 stanza poem and published in Tuscan,
the dialect of Florence. The Aldine Press in
Venice and others across Europe prospered by
diffusing knowledge.
Discovery was obviously a progressive science. How to add your bits of new knowledge to
others' in the never-ending battle against ignorance? In this exhibit we see the many ways
in which Circa 1492 was an epoch of scientific
advance and climax. Cartography, the protoscience for explorers, was making great
progress. Ptolemy was still the patron saint
of astronomy and geography. But by 1459 the
Venetian Fra Mauro's planisphere map for the
King of Portugal made in his workshop near
Venice revised Ptolemy's version which had
CIRCA 1492

15

made the Indian Ocean inaccessible by water

from Europe, and bore the first mention of
"Zimpago" or Japan on a European map. Waldseemiiller's world map of 1507 was the first to
put the label "America" on the new world and
his new edition of Ptolemy's Geography came to
be known as the first modern atlas.
In the fifteenth century, as David Woodward
explains in his essay, a new way of looking at
the earth was coming into being. In place of
the legendary and theological maps which had
placed Jerusalem at the center, the earth was
being measured, and mapmakers were offering
new aid to navigators. Now the portolano pilot
books, a product of the newly extensive use of
the magnetic compass, aimed to provide accurate maps of limited regions. And the portolan
(harbor-finding) charts, first designed to help
Mediterranean sailors find their way along the
surrounding coastlines, began to be drawn for
the west coasts of Europe and of Africa.
The famous Catalan Atlas of 1375, seen in
our exhibit (cat. i), though ornate by modern
standards, was a monument to the new empirical spirit. Though a quarter-century after the
return of Nicolo, Maffeo and Marco Polo, it is
the first map to show the informative influence
of their travels, and the first to give Europeans
a reasonably accurate description of East Asia.
Notable for what it omitted, it showed the
courage to leave out mythical and conjectural
data that had populated maps for the Christian
centuries. And, in an impressive feat of selfcontrol, the cartographer actually left parts of
the earth blank, in the spirit of the harborfinding portolan charts which gave only information useful for reaching a known destination.
Vast regions once embellished by anthropophagi
and mythical monsters remained vacant, waiting to be filled in by the reports of hard-headed
sea-captains. And now at last geographic spaces
were shaped into the sterile geometry of latitude and longitude. Even before 1501, the era of
"incunabula" when printing was still in its
cradle, there were seven folio editions of Ptolemy's classic Geography (cat. 127) which had
finally been translated from the Greek and was
continually being revised from the latest travel
reports. The rediscovered Ptolemy provided a
framework on which geographers could hang
the new bits of discovery.
And navigators were continually improving
their instruments. The earlier Islamic astrolabes, like the one seen in the exhibit, were
models for the elegant late fifteenth-century
astrolabes of Martin Bylica and Alphanus
Severus (cats. 121,123), which show us how far
the instrument-makers had come from the
primitive wooden disk suspended by a ring that
was familiar to the ancients. One of the oldest
16

CIRCA 1492

of scientific instruments, the device had been

used to observe and chart the heavenly bodies.
Now the astrolabe had become an instrument
of navigation accurate enough to help mariners
find their latitude. In the next centuries it
would be displaced by the quadrant and the
sextant. In 1484, Martin Behaim was said to
be the first to adapt the astrolabe to navigation.
He is best remembered for the terrestrial globe
he constructed in Nuremberg, which is more
notable for its beauty than for its verisimilitude.
In this grand universal enterprise of Discovery all scientists, explorers, and navigators were
collaborating willy-nilly, intentionally or unintentionally. All knew that they were working
toward the same end, a more accurate map of
the earth. And their efforts bore fruit. The
European "discovery" of America not only provided new destinations for Western civilization.
It enlarged and redefined European knowledge
of the whole earth. Whatever ills feudalism,
chivalry and the crusades may have visited on
the peoples of the West, the new centuries
never failed to improve cartography.
Still, inherited "facts" had a dignity and a
prestige that made them hard to displace. They
had become the basis not only of myth and lore
but of commercial hopes and political ambitions. Discarding the old geographic knowledge
for the new was always painful, and often
resisted. Columbus found it hard to doubt that
what he saw on the shores of the Caribbean was
the Terrestrial Paradise. When Vespucci showed
these figments of ancient desire to be unimagined real continents, he shocked learned Europeans, but he nourished pride in the advances
of their "modern" science. Reports of pagan
temple sacrifices and cannibal feasts, documented by sacrificial knives like those in this
exhibit (cats. 389-395), impressed Europeans
with their superiority over the heathen. The
greatest discovery of an age of discoveries was
to realize how little of the earth was known to
Europe. Never before had such vast areas of
ignorance been so suddenly unveiled.
Discoverers everywhere focused their vision
on the same object the physical, sensible world
that all shared. They brought the unknown
down to earth. All were marching in the same
direction. Ptolemy advanced along the lines
marked by Aristotle, Vespucci on the lines
marked by Ptolemy. Discovery reinforced faith
in human collaboration and human progress.
And it sparked the sense of being born again in
a Europe-wide Renaissance.
In this brilliant Age of Exploration European
man flexed his scientific muscles. When had
there been more reason for pride in what man
could do? Or in his capacity to discover new
areas of his ignorance? This age, "Circa 1492,"

was a tonic for man's belief in his power to

master wind and wave, to find and then conquer
terra incognita. "The Measure of All Things" in
this exhibit brings together the maps, astrolabes
and navigating instruments with which explorers added to this increasing stock of knowledge.
A steady forward march against the unknown
is only one sort of human effort. And not the
kind to which our National Gallery is a special
monument. What our National Gallery celebrates is the Culture of Creation. The happy
coincidence that in Europe the epoch-making
Age of Exploration was also an epoch-making
Age of Creation gives us now the dramatic
opportunity in our exhibit to compare the two
Cultures. Renaissance belief in the inspired
unique creator gradually elevated the painter,
equipped with a newly rediscovered science of
perspective, from craftsman to artist. No longer
paid by the hour like other skilled laborers, he
began to be liberated from guild traditions. By
the end of the period covered by the exhibition,
the artist himself was being sought after by
Kings and Popes who left him free to conceive
and execute his personal vision. And we must
not allow glib attacks on the Philistinism of scientists to blind us to the real gulf between the
two Cultures. Surveying not just the European
arts but the whole world of the arts, mostly still
unknown to Europeans, Circa 1492 can remind
us of the limits of the pride-nourishing Culture
of Discovery.
Peoples competing and collaborating in the
search for knowledge are inevitably converging.
Discovery is what men everywhere have found
on our same earth. But Creation is what men
have added to the world. Its hallmark is autonomy, the freedom to make the new. While there
are of course traditions and styles and schools
in the arts, every act of Creation is a kind of
personal declaration of independence. Which
makes the story of art infinitely more confused
and confusing than the story of science, with
countless communities of artists, each daring to
be a community of one. The diversity, the
diffuseness, the chaos is what makes representative works of art.
In this exhibit the works of artists in Portugal, Spain, Florence, and Venice give us
glimpses of Europe's variegated Culture of Creation "Circa 1492." Artists on the other side of
the world richly embellish the fantasy. From
Japan the delicate brushwork of Sesshu Toyo
and the masks and ceramics of the prolific
Muromachi era, from China the monumental
paintings of the Ming imperial palaces, and
from India sculptures of the still-flourishing
Hindu traditions. These many worlds of the
arts show us a kaleidoscope of visions and of

stylesAfrican bronzes and ivories, Brazilian

featherwork, Mississippian stone effigies, Aztec
codices, Costa Rican and Colombian works
in gold.
If we are puzzled and startled by this miscellany, still mostly hidden from Columbus7
European contemporaries, it is because we have
begun to see the distinctiveness of the two Cultures and the unique message of this exhibit.
Here we can correct our myopia in this year of
Discovery-Pride. We become aware of the limits
of the kinds of fulfillment that dominate our
consciousness in an age of science. The Culture
of Discovery, an invisible community forged in
the spirit of quest, focused on the same object,
an earth to be mastered and mapped, winds and
ocean currents to be harnessed, accumulating
and sharing fragments from everywhere. But
the Culture of Creation was a host of countless
independents. Their only limits were their
inherited styles and materials. Each was aiming
at a personal target. Their heterogeneous and
chaotic worlds, instead of nourishing our pride
in a generalized mankind, inspires our awe at
the infinite capacities of atomic individuals.
We see an astonishing, even bewildering, array
We must be struck by the diffuseness and disconnectedness of man's efforts in different places to
express himself. The subtle masks of No players contrast spectacularly with the monumental
palace paintings of Ming artists and the massive
rotundity of Aztec sculpture. It is folly to try
to put them in a line. Not progress, surely, but
endless variety! In this fertile chaos we see
individual artists, and mankind, moving infinitely in all directions. We see every artist
inventing an artist. As uncanny as the inevitable collaboration of Discoverers is the uncanny
uniqueness of Creators.
Sometimes of course traditions converge or
compete, and often artists learn from other
artists, just as the Japanese painter Sesshu Toyo
learned from his visits among the artists of Ming
China, or as Diirer learned from Italian painters
in Venice. Then each does much more than
translate. He transforms these predecessors.
While Discoverers are marching, or trying to
march to the same tune, the world of Creators
tells us no such simple story. Each is his own
compass, not finding but making his directions.
This exhibit can remind us of how random and
diffuse were man's efforts to create in an era
when, more effectively than ever before, leaders
of Western Europe were competing for the
common currency of discovery. Creations are
the strange fruit of diverging imaginations.
Vasco da Gama might not have reached India
without that Arab navigator. But there was no
Arab apprentice or mentor in Leonardo da
Vinci's studio. The earlier maps were displaced

by the later, and Columbus' compass itself was

an improved model. His voyage was promptly
excelled by later navigators. So, too, the anatomy and physics of Leonardo and Diirer would
be displaced. But Leonardo's Lady with an
Ermine (cat. 170) and Diirer's Knight, Death
and Devil would never become obsolete. The
designs of Ming China and Inka stonework
remain treasured originals. Textbooks can
arrange maps in a clear line of progress, from
Ptolemy and T-in-O medieval versions, advancing through Juan de la Cosa's planisphere,
Waldseemiiller's world, and Battista Agnese's
portolan world atlas and endlessly on into
the future .
In the Culture of Creation there is no correct
or incorrect, and in the long run no progress.
Works of art reveal no linear direction but
experiments radiating in all directions. While
the post-Columbian maps of the world make
their predecessors obsolete, works of art are
always additive. They provide the pleasures of
novelty and addition without pains of subtraction. Pre-Columbian arts only gain from
modern comparisons.
The two Cultures differ too in the roles they
assign to the individual. Oddly enough, though
Discovery is the arena of collaboration, it offers
its historic prizes for individual priority. There
is something decisive and exclusive about every
first discoverer. Although great discoveries,
including those of Columbus, are a team product, it is somehow always the "Discoverer" who
gets the credit. Columbus has no peer. While
cities and nations are named after him, historians still debate the Portuguese claims, some
seeking the laurels for Leif Ericson or an Irish
Saint Brendan. And the laurels that go to the
one are lost to all the others. Discovery seems
to be a history of firsts, as we see illustrated
in this exhibit.
But the Culture of Creation offers no superlatives or absolutes. While the arts celebrate the
unique and the original, the uniqueness of the
artist, even the greatest, is usually incremental.
The individual differences between the works of
Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci are
minute, but they add up to reveal the works of
different artists. These works can easily be distinguished, and the pleasures of the art historian come from the irrelevance of "firsts" and
"bests." We can speak of the style or "school"
of a Leonardo or a Diirer which can diminish
the value of a work claimed for the master. But
we do not speak of the "School" of Copernicus,
Columbus, or Magellan. The Culture of Creation is full of minor variants and near misses,
but the Culture of Discovery insists on naming
the winner of first prize. The scene of Discoverers, then, is dominated by a star system,

with each idol displacing idols of the last generation and destined to be displaced in turn.
Yet hero-artists like our Leonardos and Diirers
never lose their starring role.
The great civilizations produce their own special triumphs of both Discovery and Creation.
And each offers us its own distinctive large area
of overlap. Technology, bastard offspring of the
two Cultures, uses the fruits of past discoveries
for surprising future creations. And Technology
can mislead us into the illusion that there is
progress in art and that somehow the findings
of science can be made immortal, immune to
displacement. The portable, durable, and
accessible works of craftsmen put their stamp
on our popular notions of other civilizations.
In this exhibit we will be impressed by the skills
of Flemish weavers, Portuguese silversmiths,
Spanish ceramicists, Turkish swordsmiths, and
Colombian jewelers, by the makers of Chinese
lacquer and Korean porcelains. Every triumph
of craftsmen has been made possible by earlier
discoveries of the properties of wool, silver,
jade, bronze, steel, or glass. The achievements
of sculptors and painters become possible by
discovering the special qualities of marble, of
tempera and oil. The Cultures of Creation and
of Discovery meet in a fertile limbo.
"Circa 1492" was an era of awesome achievements in the three hybrid arts of Cartography,
Perspective, and Anatomy. In these years European cartography probably made more progress
than in the millennium before. Even after
explorers on the real earth ceased to be satisfied
by the theological symmetries and mythological embellishments on their maps, they still
expected their maps to be decorative objects.
Accustomed as we are to the antiseptic schematic newspaper maps of our time, we can especially enjoy the elegance of the Islamic celestial
globe of 1275, the whimsies of camels and elephants and giraffes, of sultans and emperors,
that still adorn the Catalan Atlas of 1375, the
many-handed monsters and monstrosities of the
Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. We see science
translated onto a tapestry seen in this exhibit of
the Mechanism of the Universe (cat. 111). The
navigator's instruments, his globe and astrolabe,
attain a filigreed elegance to equal that of the
silver for communion or for the royal table.
In the years of our exhibit, "Perspective," a
medieval synonym for the science of sight or
optics, became a name for a rediscovered ancient
art. "Circa 1492" reveals epochal progress in
man's capacity to capture space on paper or on
canvas, to translate the three-dimensional world
into persuasive two dimensions. We see the
fruits of this rediscovery in the studies of
Uccello, the treatise of Piero della Francesca,
CIRCA 1492

17

and delightfully idealized plans for Italian cities.

And we see that Diirer himself took the trouble
to show us how a draftsman could use the new
perspective device. The technique which Giotto
had applied by rule-of-thumb became a science
in the hands of Leonardo or Diirer.
"Anatomy," originally a name simply for dissection or cutting up, "Circa 1492" was beginning to mean the science of bodily structure.
Leonardo and Diirer, both pioneers of anatomy
(as illustrated in our exhibit) made it the ally
and handmaid of their painting and sculpture.
Leonardo da Vinci used what he had learned at
the dissecting table (seen in his drawings of sections of a human head and of the urinogenital
system of a woman), while the mathematicallyminded Diirer constructed his Adam and Eve
with a compass and ruler. Artists felt new need
for the science of anatomy when they made
nudes a focus of their Renaissance vision. In the
history of science and of art, rarely have the
talents for both kinds of human fulfillment
been so brilliantly embodied in the same artist,
as we see in Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht
Diirer.
In our age of triumphant science, we are

18

CIRCA 1492

inordinately proud of the progressive powers of

discovery. Knowledge is still the most precious
international currency. The triumphs of technology, too, still bring the world together in the
marketplace and on the battlefield. Both science
and technology, but especially technology,
assimilate the ways of life of people everywhere. Photography, television, the airplane,
and the computer erase time and space. And in
the long run technology becomes the enemy
of cultural distinctions, extinguishing cultural
species.
So today we are more than ever in need of
the impulse of the arts for the variety of creation. Salesmen assure us of the progressive
improvements in every new model, every latest
"generation" of their devices. Research and
Development laboratories confidently and deliberately chart the course of the future. Refugees
from the extrapolations of statistics and the
certitudes of advertising, we must welcome
the wonderfully random unpredictable arts.
For us living in "Circa 1992" this exhibit of
Circa 1492 should be an especially illuminating
and chastening experience. Here we can take
ourselves off the speedy tracks of Progress and

enjoy the fertile chaos of the arts. Just as the

Europeans of the Age of Exploration were ignorant of the creations of most of the world in
their time, so our confident lines of discovery
can give us no hint of the spectrums of creation.
This exhibit of the world-wide creations
unknown to Europeans in one of the great ages
of European exploration can remind us of the
still vast continents of our own ignorance.
While knowledge is a moving target and old
maps are discarded for new, works of art hold
their place in expanding constellations with
richly iridescent afterlives. As every generation
and every great scientist displaces predecessors,
the stature of a scientific work is measured by
how many earlier works it makes obsolete. But
the artists only add. They are the re-creators of
the world. Later artists help us discover the earlier, just as they will acquire new interest from
the works of artists still unborn. Circa 1492 can
inspire our awe and caution us against the conceit, bred by all Ages of Discovery including our
own, that by mastering more of the world we
can ever encompass the mysterious vagaries of
the human spirit, of Man the Creator.
(Copyright 1991 by Daniel J. Boorstin)

Circa 1492: History and Art

JAY A. LEVENSON

"It needs to be painted by the hand of a

Berruguete or some other excellent painter
like him, or by Leonardo da Vinci or Andrea
Mantegna, famous painters whom I knew
in Italy."

I,

.n this passage written in the 15305, Gonzalo

Fernandez de Oviedo, author of the Historia
General y Natural de las Indias, an early compendium of knowledge about the Americas, was
trying to describe a strange plant, unlike any he
had ever seen in Europe. Yet his remark not
only evokes the excitement over the wonders of
this "New World" that quickly spread among
the more perceptive European observers of his
generation; it also vividly reminds us that the
Age of Exploration was a period as celebrated
for the achievements of its artists as for those of
its explorers.
The remarkable circumstance that the years
around 1492 were a period of artistic excellence
in so many different parts of the globe has made
possible the exhibition which is the subject of
this catalogue. That fact is one that is easily
overlooked. Art history traditionally takes as
its focus a single visual tradition, and so our
timelines of artistic development tend to be
one-dimensional, oriented toward a particular
country or style. We recognize that certain
movements cut across national boundaries.
Albrecht Diirer, to take an example, is frequently discussed as a contemporary of Leonardo da Vincibut that is because the Italian
master influenced specific works by the German
artist, who consciously set out to transport the
achievements of the Italian Renaissance north of
the Alps. We rarely stop to think that the two
lived at the same time as Hieronymus Bosch in
the Netherlands or the painters Sesshu Toyo in
Japan and Shen Zhou in China, that some of the
best-known early sculpture from Benin is likely
to have been cast during the lifetimes of these
same masters, and that the finest surviving
works of art from the Aztec and Inka empires
originated during this period.
It is especially appropriate to take 1492 as the
point at which to make this horizontal survey of
the visual arts, for it was in the Age of Exploration that links among continents were created
that changed the character of the relationships
between the world's cultures forever. We need

not adopt the uncritical enthusiasm for the

exploits of Columbus and his contemporaries
that has for so long been a part of the European
tradition to recognize that their voyages
brought about a metamorphosis in international
communications. Admittedly, we may exaggerate the degree to which society before 1492 was
fragmented if we look at the world solely from a
European perspective. While there had been
little direct contact between western Europe and
eastern Asia since the time of Marco Polo, the
picture is quite different if we take into account
the Islamic world, whose merchants carried on a
profitable East/West trade throughout the
period. A mere glance at the Transport of the
Porcelains miniature from the Topkapi Saray
Library (cat. 100) makes it clear that the Islamic
knowledge of China was of a completely different order of magnitude from the European.
Moreover, Arab travelers had written extensively about Africa hundreds of years before the
first Portuguese ventured down the coast, while
Zheng He's Chinese fleets, described in F. W.
Mote's essay in this catalogue, sailed majestically across the Indian Ocean to the east coast
of Africa nearly a century before Vasco da Gama
reached it. Still, for all practical purposes the
Americas remained completely outside this network of trade and tribute, and by any standard
the new connections that were established,
from about the middle of the fifteenth to the
end of the sixteenth century, were revolutionary indeed. If we are looking for a symbolic date
of birth for the modern world, 1492 is clearly
the most appropriate year to choose.
This exhibition includes over 600 paintings,
sculptures, prints and drawings, maps, scientific
instruments, and works of decorative art from
four continents, most of them created during
the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It
makes no claims to completeness, either from
the point of view of history or of art history. A
survey that included, in acceptable depth, every
significant culture that existed in the world
of 1492 would be beyond the scope of any
exhibition or catalogue. Difficult choices had
to be made in each of the major sections of
the show, and if a particular culture is not represented, that is likely to be because it is less
central to the theme of that segment of the
exhibition rather than because of any shortcomings in its artistic creations.

We have specifically tried to present each

civilization on its own terms, not as it might
have appeared to visiting Europeans of the
period. As a result, each of the sections of the
exhibition has its own special focus and individual point of view. Homogeneity was not a feature of the world of 1492, and under no
circumstances could a single theme have done
justice to the amazing variety that characterizes
the cultures that are represented in the show.
"Europe and the Mediterranean World"
focuses on the lands in which the Culture of
Discovery, as Daniel Boorstin has termed it, had
its origin. After a prologue, "Distant Worlds,"
that examines the curious image that had
evolved in Europe of the unknown realms to the
south and east, the section explores the reflection in the visual arts of the religious and political forces that underlay European expansion.
Bosch's unforgettable Temptation of Saint
Anthony (cat. 18) evokes the unsettled spiritual
climate that prevailed at the end of the fifteenth
century, when many, including Columbus
himself, thought the end of the world was
approaching, and the evangelical spirit ran high.
The presentation then concentrates on those
parts of the Mediterranean world that played
special roles in the historic events of the time.
Portugal comes first, as the sponsor of voyages
down the coast of Africa that inaugurated the
Age of Exploration in Europe and led to the
opening of the sea route to Asia. Spain, itself an
early crossroads of cultures, sent Columbus on
his voyage west; though he failed to reach the
Indies, he laid the foundation for his sponsors'
rapid rise to world power. The Islamic empires
formed serious counterweights to European
might in the eastern Mediterranean. It was also
in this period that the kingdoms of western
Africa, which had long been part of the Islamic
trading network, entered the European ambient
as well. During this period African ivory carvers created some of the earliest cross-cultural
works of art, combining their traditional
artistic vocabulary with new subject-matter
introduced from abroad (cats. 67-78). The last
part of the Mediterranean section ranges across
political boundaries, from Iran, to Egypt, to
Spain, Italy, Germany and Poland. It examines
the advance of scientific knowledge particularly cartography, that specially characteristic
science of the age. It also surveys those
CIRCA 1492

19

branches of the visual arts that have the most

pronounced intellectual and theoretical stamp:
the mathematically-structured rendition of
space and the revival of the classically-inspired
human figure. It concludes with presentations
of works by Leonardo and Diirer, the two masters whose wide-ranging intellectual curiosity
which centered on man but ranged across the
entire natural world makes them particularly
characteristic embodiments of the period's
aspirations.
"Toward Cathay" presents the lands of eastern Asia, the goal of the early European voyagers. Except in the case of India, there were
few real connections between the European
states and these countries until much later in
the sixteenth century. This section consequently deals not with the encounters that were
to come but rather with the civilizations of
Japan, Korea, China and India as they existed in
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century,
reflected in their visual arts. What is most striking about Asia in this period is how far its culture surpassed Europe's in precisely that
technological dimension with which the Europeans were already so enamored. China, administered by an efficient bureaucracy that had
already perfected a civil service system, was the
archetype of the great world empire. The
emerging European kingdoms seem paltry
indeed by comparison, despite the ambitious
titles which their rulers were fond of adopting.
Far Eastern porcelains were regarded as almost
miraculous objects in Europe, and printed books
were in wide circulation in both China and
Korea centuries before Gutenberg's press.
While European maps of the fourteenth and
early fifteenth century, prior to the rediscovery
of Ptolemy's Geography, present a fantastic
image of the East, Korea's world map of 1402,
which is discussed in Gari Ledyard's essay, was
systematically compiled from the best available
models and actually included a reasonably
accurate account of Europe. Major advances in
technology in eastern Asia had taken place long
before this period, and the development there
was more gradual, the consequences less revolutionary. That may be why there are no real parallels in the Far East at this time to works like
Uccello's studies in perspective (cats. 139-140),
which embody the artist's exultant fascination
with his discovery of the possibilities of mathematics. The early development of technological
expertise in Asia had obvious political consequences : the principal countries were formidable
powers circa 1492. Several essays in this catalogue speculate on the reception Columbus
might have received had his voyage actually
taken him to southeastern Asia; they make it
clear that this was not a propitious moment for
20

CIRCA 1492

successful European expansion into the area.

The final section of the show, "The Americas," provides a sampling of the extraordinary
diversity that characterized civilization in the
Americas during this period. Like the other
sections, it represents a limited selection. The
Aztecs and Inkas had created great empires by
any standard, and their rulers were capable of
employing art for political ends with all the
subtlety of Renaissance princes. And yet the
extraordinary skill evinced by the works in gold
produced in the more modest societies headed
by caciques, or chiefs, in what are now Costa
Rica and Colombia indicate that the visual arts
also flourished in less complex political settings.
Chiefdoms of this sort were characteristic of
much of the Americas at this period, and the
works in the exhibition created by the Tamos
in the West Indies, the Tupinamba in Brazil,
and the Woodlands peoples in what is now the
southeastern United States document other cultures of this type. The work of archaeologists
and ethnographers has given us substantial
insight into the often intricate systems of
meaning in which such works of art figure. In
the case of the Aztec religion, which absorbed
subsidiary faiths as the empire expanded, theological thought achieved particular complexity.
The exhibition includes a veritable pantheon of
Aztec deities; as Miguel Leon-Portilla explains
in his essay, however, these were in reality subordinated to more inclusive spiritual concepts.
Although the occasion for the exhibition is a
historical anniversary, Circa 1492 was conceived
as an exhibition of works of art, not of historical
documents. Even the objects like maps and scientific instruments that appear in the show
were chosen for their aesthetic quality as well as
for their historical importance. It is our belief
that works of art can bring this period alive in a
way that no other artifacts can. That premise
also required us to make decisions, a process
which is most easily explained by specific
examples.
Fortunately for the organizers of an art
exhibition, visual beauty was remarkably pervasive in the material culture that has survived
from the fifteenth and early sixteenth century.
In the societies of 1492, artistry could be lavished on the most utilitarian objects, particularly if they were crafted for the wealthy and
powerful. Just to take an example, while few art
museums would exhibit contemporary weapons,
the splendid parade armor made in Innsbruck
for the young Charles v (cat. 36), or a Muromachi daimyo's colorful lacquered armor (cat. 257258), or an Aztec ruler's carved and gilded
spear-thrower (cat. 384) are objects of great
beauty by anyone's definition.
There is no guarantee, however, that each

point of historical or cultural interest in the

period will be reflected in a work of aesthetic
interest. Throughout the late fifteenth-century
world, patrons generally determined the
subject-matter of the works they commissioned,
and the achievements of royalty and the nobility
were more likely to be commemorated than
those of people of more modest origins, however
famous they may ultimately have become.
Some of the historical events that to us seem
the most crucial found no expression whatsoever in works of art in the period. Columbus'
landfall was depicted in only a few modest
woodcuts (cat. 136) in early editions of the
letter he wrote upon his return. Admiral Zheng
He's voyages, which in many ways were far
more extraordinary than Columbus' are also
known primarily from texts rather than images.
The major European artists of the period, like
those for whom Fernandez de Oviedo yearned,
often traveled, but generally within Europe,
staying close to the principal centers of patronage. Venice's special relationship with the Islamic world enabled some of her masters to
travel to and work in the Near East; the Reception of the Ambassadors (cat. 106) is the most
impressive visual document of this fascinating
episode. The New World in this period, however, attracted far more adventurers than
artists; the latter knew it principally through
the artifacts that were shipped back to Europe.
It was on his trip to the Low Countries that
Diirer was able to view and admire the Aztec
treasures that Cortes presented to Charles v.
Maddeningly enough, although Diirer appears
always to have had a sketchbook with him, no
drawings of his are known of the now-lost masterpieces which he described.
Sometimes art and history combine serendipitously in a single object. That is particularly
true of the celebrated Catalan Atlas of 1375
(cat. i), the centerpiece of "Distant Worlds."
This map of the world, produced by the Jewish
cartographer Abraham Cresques in Majorca, is
both our principal image of Europe's vision of
the East, which was still based largely on Marco
Polo's Travels, and a spectacular work of illumination in its own right. Its famous representation of a caravan along the Silk Route splendidly
illustrates the early land-based trade with the
East. It was indeed fortunate that the Atlas
entered the French royal collection soon after it
was created, remaining there and ultimately
entering the Bibliotheque Nationale.
Accidents of survival are particularly critical
for our image of the art of the Americas. The
widespread destruction that accompanied the
sixteenth-century wars of conquest effectively
eliminated whole categories of works of art. The
Inkas' large-scale works in precious metals, for

example, completely disappeared. Contemporary inventories describe objects such as human

and animal figures made of pure gold and
weighing over fifty pounds. What have survived are relatively small votive figurines
recovered in modern times from archaeological
sites (cats. 442-448). Sometimes still wearing
their miniature clothes, they tell us much about
Inka religious practices and give us as good a
sense as we will ever have of the much larger
works that were turned into gold and silver
ingots nearly 500 years ago.
We can also be thankful that a small number
of pre-Hispanic religious manuscripts survived
early colonial attempts to suppress the Aztec
religion. These books, on pages of deerskin
covered with gesso and assembled into screenfold codices, communicate through a beautiful
pictographic language that can still be read.
Represented in the exhibition by the Codex
Fejervdry-Mayer (cat. 356) and the Codex Cospi
(cat. 359) (a work that had entered a celebrated
Bolognese Kunstkammer as early as the seventeenth century), they are the source for much of
our primary knowledge of the Aztec religion
and calendar. The depiction of the baneful influence of the planet Venus on different classes of
mankind that appears in the Codex Cospi strikingly parallels representations of the " Children
of the Planets" in astrological manuscripts from
Renaissance Europe, like the Este De Sphaera
(cat. 116).
Works of art from such diverse cultural traditions have rarely been included in the same

exhibition, and that, too, is reflected in the

selection of objects. Large-scale secular paintings designed for public display, like the Miracle
of the Relic of the True Cross of 1494 by Vittore
Carpaccio (cat. 150), which is included in "The
Rationalization of Space/' are very characteristic
of European art late in the century. The Chinese
paintings of this period that are best known, on
the other hand, are subtle landscape scrolls
intended for a scholar's study. While such works
are well represented in the show, the presence
of monumental European paintings made it an
excellent opportunity to focus attention on the
much less familiar paintings produced by
Chinese court artists for display in the imperial
palace. Shang Xi's splendid hanging scroll
depicting Guan Yu Capturing Pang De (cat.
287), nearly eight feet wide, which portrays a
battle scene from a novel of the early Ming
period, shows the Chinese master, like Carpaccio, responding to the demands of composing
for large public spaces.
The selection of specific masters to be
included in the exhibition also reflects its special
themes. Sesshu and'Shen Zhou are pivotal figures in their respective artistic traditions, but
they also form marvelous parallels to the artists
that have been singled out in the Mediterranean
section, Leonardo and Diirer. Sesshu was a
great artist-traveler, who journeyed to China,
much like Diirer to Italy, to learn the Chinese
painting tradition at its source. And Shen
Zhou's remarkable range of artistic interests
included the rendering of humble plants and

animals, drawn from life. At about the same

time as Leonardo and Diirer executed their
famous studies (cats. 184, 203, 204), Shen Zhou
produced an equally astonishing album of his
own (cat. 314).
Today's world, which is rapidly approaching
1992, is dramatically different from the world
of 1492. And yet, as John Elliott explains in his
essay, the same could be said of the world of
1592. The changes set in motion by the Age
of Exploration were immediate and profound,
bringing together parts of the globe that had
never before been in direct contact. It is difficult for us to imagine a world in which communications between cultures were as restricted as
they were circa 1492. This fact makes it all the
more remarkable to find such consistent creative excellence in so many widely separated
lands. Even Diirer, who lived in Columbus' age,
was struck and moved by this phenomenon,
when he saw the Aztec works in Brussels: "All
the days of my life I have seen nothing that
rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for
I saw amongst them wonderful works of art,
and I marvelled at the subtle ingenia of people
in foreign lands." We hope that sense of wonder emerges clearly from the works of art
assembled in this exhibition. From our vantage
point in a world in which cultural interchange
and mutual interdependence are almost taken
for granted, there is much to be learned from
looking back to the remarkable moment in history when the world first began to grow
smaller.

CIRCA 1492

21

Acknowledgments

The distinguished scholars who contributed

essays and entries to this catalogue are identified on the following page. We are indebted
to them not only for their writing but also for
the crucial role they played in the organization
of the show and the choice of works to be
exhibited. Among them several must be singled
out for the extent of their contributionsin
"Europe and the Mediterranean World" Martin
Kemp and Jean Michel Massing, who were
responsible for the largest of the subsections; in
'Toward Cathay" Sherman E. Lee, who masterminded the entire presentation of Asian art; and
in 'The Americas" Michael D. Coe, who conceived the overall scholarly program, and David
Joralemon, who worked selflessly to ensure the
excellence of each subsection. I would also like
to extend special personal thanks to Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon and their staff, who graciously
made their offices available to me during my
work on this project.
J.A.L.
AUSTRIA
Christian Beaufort-Spontin, Armand
Duchateau, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Fritz Koreny,
Manfred Leithe-Jasper, Hans Manndorff,
Johann Marte, Konrad Oberhuber, Matthias
Pfaffenbichler, Karl Schiitz, Wilfried Siepel
BELGIUM
Ludo Collin, Dora Janssen, Sergio Purin,
F. Van Noten
CANADA
Glenn Lowry, Shirley Thompson
CHILE
Luis Capurro
COLOMBIA
Mauricio Obregon, Clemencia Plazas, Juanita
Saenz
COSTA RICA
Louise Crain, Eduardo Faith Jimenez, Alfonso
Jimenez-Alvarado, Melania Ortiz
DOMINICAN R E P U B L I C
Manuel Antonio Garcia Arevalo, Fernando
Morban Laucer
DENMARK
Erland Kolding Nielson, Erik Petersen
22

CIRCA

1492

ENGLAND
Alain Arnould, Tony Campbell, Elizabeth
Carmichael, Andrew Ciechanowiecki, Viscount
Coke, Prince Adam Carlos Czartoryski-Borbon,
Annabel Dainty, Martin Davies, Michael Evans,
Oliver Everett, Anthony Griffiths, John Hale,
Peter Jones, Jill Kraye, Kristen Lippincott, John
Mack, Annie Massing, Ian McClure, Malcolm
McLeod, Theresa-Mary Morton, John
Murdoch, Richard Preece, Andrew Prescott,
Jessica Rawson, Jane Roberts, Michael
Saunders-Watson, Yvonne Schumann,
Rosemary Scott, Anthony Shelton, Sarah
Tyacke, Christopher White, Roderick Whitfield,
Adam Zamoyski
FRANCE
Dorothy Alexander, Francois Avril, Claude
Baudez, Gilles Beguin, Florence Callu,
Monique Cohen, Walter Curley, Jacques Fabrics,
Jean Guiart, Rene Huyghe, Michel Laclotte,
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Dominique de
Menil, Monique Pelletier, Andree Pouderoux,
Pierre Rosenberg, Frangoise Viatte
GERMANY
Prinz Franz von Bayern, Gerhard Bott,
Alexander Diickers, Bernhard Heitmann,
Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Gerhard
Holland, Rainer Kahsnitz, Michael Knuth,
Lothan Lambacher, Hans Mielke, Mary
Newcome, Anne Rover, Siegfried Salzmann,
Eckhard Schaar, Walter Scheel, Helmut
Schindler, Erich Schleier, Eberhard Slenczka,
Peter Thiele, Hildegard Vogeler, Erbgraf
Johannes zu Waldburg-Wolfegg, Prinz Max
Willibald zu Waldburg-Wolfegg, Johannes
Willers
HONG KONG
Quincy Chuang
IRELAND
Joan Duff, Mairead Dunlevy, Michael Ryan
ISRAEL
Martin Weyl
ITALY
Francesca Abbozzo, Giovanni Agnelli, Susanna
Agnelli, Marcella Anselmetti, Franca Arduini,
Giovanna Giacobello Bernard, Luciano Berti,
Lionello Boccia, Letizia Boncampagni, Leonard
Boyle, Mauro Broggi, Gilbert Callaway, Claudio

Cavatrunci, Sara Ciruzzi, Luigi Covatta, Paolo

Dal Poggetto, Cesare De Michelis, Sabine Eiche,
Andrea Emiliani, John Fleming, Maria
Antonietta Fugazzola, Pietro Furieri, Giovanna
Gaeta Bertela, Paolo Galluzzi, Luisella Giorda,
Hugh Honour, Elisabetta Kelescian, Venanzio
Luccarini, Angelo Macchi, Daniella Masci,
Francesco Negri Arnoldi, Giovanna Nepi Scire,
Fabienne-Charlotte Orazie Vallino, Antonio
Paolucci, Anna Maria Petrioli-Tofani, Silvana
Pettenati, Cristina Piacenti, Pina Ragionieri,
Fiorella Romano, Sante Serangeli, Francesco
Sicilia, Nicola Spinosa, Rosalba Tardito,
Paolo Emilio Taviani, Francesco Valcanover,
Alessandro Vattani, Umberto Vattani,
Paolo Venturoli, Paolo Viti, Marino Zorzi
JAPAN
Akashi Eikan, Hosomi Minoru, Ikeya Sadao,
Inai Keijiro, Kamei Seiji, Kanazawa Hiroshi,
Katsu Takako Yokokawa, Kobayashi Yosoji,
Kono Tetsuro, Morisada Hosokawa, Okabe
Osamu, Ono Shyunjo, Ono Jyokan, Shibagaki
Isao, Shimosaka Mamoru, Shiraki Setsuko,
Sugahara Hisao, Tabuchi Setsuya, Tajima
Mitsuru, Tsuchiya Yoshio, Washizuka
Hiromitsu, Watanabe Akiyoshi
KOREA
Chong Kiu-Bong, Chung Yang Mo, Han Byongsam, Kim Gwon Gu, Kim Hwan Soo, Rhi
Chong-Sun, Park Shinil, Yun Jang-Sub
MEXICO
Bertha Cea, Celia Chavez, Marysol Espina,
Roberto Garcia Moll, Miriam Kaiser, Ricardo
Leggoretta, Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, Eduardo
Matos Moctezuma, John Negroponte, Pedro
Ramirez Vazquez, Mari Carmen Serra Puche,
Felipe Solis, Rafael Tovar Y De Teresa, Mario
Vazquez
NETHERLANDS
E. Ebbinge, Rudi Fuchs, Car el van Tuyll
NIGERIA
Emmanuel Arenze, Robert Lagamma,
Ade Obayemi, Lannon Walker
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Du Fu Ran, Huang Xuanpei, Liang Bai-Quan,
Michael McCary, Sheng Wei-Wei, Song
Beishan, Zhang Zhongpei

POLAND
John Brown, Bruce Byers, Tadeusz Chruscicki,
Isabel Cywinska, Kazimierz Jaszczyk,
Aleksander Koj, Joseph McManus, Agnieszka
Morawinska, Andrzej Rottermund, Thomas W.
Simons, Jr., Krzysztof Jan Skubiszewski, Janusz
Walek, Stanislaw Waltos, Zdzislaw Zygulski
PORTUGAL
Simonetta Luz Afonso, Martinho de
Albuquerque, Maria Manuel Godinho de
Almeida, Jose Bouza Serrano, Anna Brandao,
Maria de Fatima Ramos, Antero Ferreira, Marie
Teresa Gouveia, Maurilio Gouveia, Duarte
Cabral de Mello, Vasco Graga Moura, Inacio
Guerreiro, Jose Maria Jorge, Antonio Martins
da Cruz, Joao Deus Pinheiro, John Shippe, Jose
Teixeira, Margarida Veiga
PUERTO RICO
Ricardo Alegria, Juan Fernandez, Annie
Santiago de Curet
SAUDI ARABIA
Rifaat Sheikh El-Ard
SPAIN
Jose Delicado Baeza, Paz Cabello Carro, Sabino
Fernandez Campo, M^ Rosa Garcia Brage,
Manuel Gomez de Pablos, Carmen Gonzalez
Lopez-Briones, Marcelo Gonzalez Martin, Luis
Luna Moreno, Jose Luzon Nogue, Agustin
Lazaro Lopez, Crescencio Palomo Iglesias,
Conchita Romero, Angel Sancho Campo, Piru
de Urquijo, Jaime Carvajal Urquijo, Joseph
Zappala, Julio de la Guardia Garcia
SWEDEN
Christian Axel-Nilsson, Thomas Baag0e
SWITZERLAND
Gerhard Baer, Eberhard Fischer
TAIPEI
Leslie Chang, Kung Huang, Dan Sung,
Richard Wang
TURKEY
Morton Abramowitz, Nurhan Atasoy, Ermine
Bilirgen, Ismet Birsel, Filiz (gagman, Marjorie
Coffin, Nejat Eralp, Metin Goker, Mehmet Akif
Isik, Ahmet Mentes, Nazan Tapan Olc,er,
Giinsel Renda, Turgei Tezcan, Hiioya Tezcan

U N I T E D STATES
Stephen Addis, Gordon Anson, Susan
Arensberg, Anne von Arentschildt, Esin Atil,
Paul Baker, Silvio Bedini, Egbert Haverkamp
Begemann, Joseph Bell, Stephanie Belt, Arthur
Berger, Robert Bergman, Elizabeth Boone,
Suzanne Boorsch, Ruth Boorstin, Bill Bowser,
Piergiuseppe Bozzetti, Yanna Brandt, Nancy
Breuer, David Alan Brown, David Bull,
Agostino Cacciavillan, Mauro Calamandrei,
Allen Carroll, Cameran Castiel, Carroll
Cavanagh, Marjorie Cohen, Annie CohenSolal, Wendy Cooper, James Cuno, Joseph
Czestochowski, Susan Danforth, Thatcher
Deane, Sandro Diani, Ding Mou-Shih,
Christopher Donnan, Jack Dorr, Kazimierz
Dziewanowski, Colin Eisler, Anita Engel,
Eugene Enrico, Athala Morris de Estes, Kate
Ezra, Gonzalo Facio, Diana Fane, Norman
Fiering, Michelle Fondas, Bryna Fryer, Jorge
Fuentes, Jaime Garcia Parra, Joseph Gore, Diane
de Grazia, Antonio Guizzetti, Michael Hall,
Immaculada de Hapsburgo, Pamela Harriman,
Timothy Healy, Linda Heinrich, Lena
Hernandez, Genevra Higginson, Gretchen
Hirschauer, Nancy Hoffman, Peggy Hsia, Colta
Ives, Andrzej Jarecki, Helen Jessup, William
Johnston, Julie Jones, William Jordan, Michael
Kan, Nuzhet Kandemir, Ruth Kaplan, Walter
Karcheski, Jr., Shinohara Katsuhiro, Thomas
Kaufmann, Kim He Beom, Joseph Krakora,
Marcia Kupfer, Donna Kwederis, Lewis Larson,
Thomas Lawton, Lee Ching Ping, Mark
Leithauser, Catherine Levenson, Claire
Levenson, Li Chun, Constance Lowenthal,
Colin MacEwan, Vivian Mann, Pablo Marentes,
Gail Martin, Sartaj Mathur, Edward McBride,
William McNeill, Susan Milbrath, Charles
Moffett, Margarita Moreno, Frank Mowery,
Kenneth Nebenzahl, Helmut Nickel, John
Nicoll, Jeannine O'Grody, Jaime de Ojeda,
Michon Ornellas, Carlo Pedretti, David Penney,
Mirtha Virginia de Perea, Elizabeth Perry,
Rinaldo Petrignani, Michael Pierce, Stuart
Pyhrr, Orest Ranum, Gaillard Ravenel, Philip
Ravenhill, Jose Ramon Remacha, Mervin
Richard, Naomi Richard, David Robinson,
Graga Almeida Rodrigues, Maria Cecilia Rosas
de Brito, John Rosenfield, Nancy Rosoff, Morris
Rossabi, Vuka Roussakis, Ann Rowe, Sara
Sanders-Buell, Enid Schildkraut, Mary
Schuette, Juergen Schulz, Thomas Settle, Alan
Shestack, Akiko Shiraki, John Shupe, Roy
Sieber, Ray Silverman, Marianna Shreve

Simpson, Joaneath Spicer, Thomas Spooner,

John Stevenson, William Sturtevent, Sally
Summerall, Mary Suzor, D. Dodge Thompson,
Richard Townsend, Carlo Trezza, Elaine
Trigiani, Evan Turner, Susan Vogel, Dean
Walker, Immanuel Wallerstein, Wang Ying
Min, Anne Wardwell, James Watt, Laurie
Weitzenkorn, Richard West, Jr., Alice
Whelihan, Reinhard Wiemar, Johannes
Wilbert, Lucy Fowler Williams, Sylvia
Williams, Marc Wilson, Martha Wolff, Yang
Heyun, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, Deborah Ziska

C I R C A 1492

23

I
Europe and the
Mediterranean

World

Si

.....

Cape Vtrdt

lsfands

Mald,vt
Islands

>

'\>

... .
S

'T

J{

'r
o

. Seychtlles

C
J)

205

MEDIEVAL TRADE ROUTES

800km

26

CIRCA 1492

Longitude East.20 of Gree_nWlch

40

800mi

AZIMVTHIJ. EQUIJ.,ARLI PROJECTION

so

OBSERVATIONS AND BELIEFS:

THE WORLD OF THE CATALAN ATLAS
Jean Michel Massing

JLh,
. he exotic world of the Far East, which tantalized Columbus in the years he spent organizing his "Enterprise of the Indies/' is the world
of Marco Polo's famous narrative. Polo, along
with several other European travelers who
reached China in the years of Mongol dominance, before the borders were again closed to
Westerners in the second half of the fourteenth
century, left vivid accounts of their experiences
that remained, nearly two hundred years later,
the best available sources of information about
the Far East. One extraordinary historical and
artistic document, the so-called Catalan Atlas
(cat. i), integrates the information provided by
these travel accounts with medieval geographical knowledge and lore into a complete view of
the then-known world, stretching from the
newly discovered Atlantic islands to the China
Sea. It is an indispensable summary of late
medieval Europe's geographical knowledge, one
of the last great mappaemundi (map of the
world) created prior to the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography in the early fifteenth century,
and the closest we have to an image of Columbus' Cathay.
The Catalan Atlas was drawn in 1375 by a
Majorcan mapmaker, probably Abraham
Cresques.1 By 9 November 13 8o2 it had entered
the library of Charles v of France. The map of
the world proper is preceded by two sheets of
cosmological information in the Catalan language, which reveal a mixture of ancient and
medieval conceptions of the world: that it takes
the form of a globe or sphere or, again, is a flat
disk. The first of these preliminary sheets deals
with the days of the month from the first to the
thirtieth. To the right, from top to bottom, is a
diagram of the tides; another lists the movable
feasts, and a third drawing represents a bloodletting figure. The latter is accompanied by a
long text describing the world; it deals with its
creation, the four elements of which it is composed, its shape, dimensions, and divisions.
Then come geographical accounts of countries,
continents, oceans, and tides, as well as astronomical and meteorological information.
The second sheet presents a spectacular diagram of a large astronomical and astrological
wheel. The earth at its center is symbolized by

an astronomer holding an astrolabe. The other

elements (fire, air, water) are incorporated into
the next three concentric circles; then come the
seven planets, the band of the zodiac, and the
various stations and phases of the moon. The
next six rings are devoted to the lunar calendar
and to an account of the effect of the moon
when it is found in the different signs of the
zodiac. Three more rings show, respectively, the
division of the circle into degrees, while the last
gives an account of the Golden Number. The
four seasons, finally, are shown in the corners as
personified figures bearing scrolls.
The world map itself combines the basic form
of a sea chart of the Mediterranean and the
Black Sea4 with a traditional mappamundi.5 The
origin of portolan or sea charts is still obscure,
but they seem to have appeared at the end of
the thirteenth century. Portolan charts have
rightly been considered one of the most important developments in the history of mapmaking,
providing a relatively accurate image of the
Mediterranean based on firsthand navigational
knowledge, "a living record of Mediterranean
self-knowledge undergoing constant modification" in the interest of greater accuracy.6 As in
most portolans, the rendering of the Mediterranean is especially accurate: the harbors are
clearly indicated and almost always placed in the
right order, at least in the best-known areas.
Flags specify, although not always correctly, the
political allegiances of the various towns, crescents often being used for Muslim cities.
However, the farther the detail is from the
coast, the less reliable the rendering becomes
portolan charts are, after all, navigational maps.
This is especially true for areas outside the
Mediterranean, even for Northern Europe. The
empiricism of the sea chart contrasts strongly
with the medieval tradition of world mapping,
which relies mainly on biblical, classical, and
medieval lore known through literary sources.
In the Catalan Atlas, Southern Europe, the area
bordering the Mediterranean, is carefully
recorded. Abraham Cresques, or rather the
anonymous author of the map he used as his
model,7 was familiar with the political divisions,
even in eastern areas under Muslim control. In
the Near East both the Ottoman and Mamluk

powers are clearly symbolized by images of

their rulers. The Ottoman state, originally a
small power nestling between the Byzantine
and the Seljuk empires, had already greatly
expanded at the expense of Byzantium. Progressive Ottoman control over the Balkans was
to culminate in the siege and final conquest of
Constantinople by Mehmed n, the Conqueror,
in 1453. The Catalan map does not make much
of Ottoman power. The Cilician kingdom of
Armenia Minor is more clearly indicated.
Founded at the end of the twelfth century, it fell
to the Turks in 1375, the very year in which the
Atlas was made.8 There is some interest in the
cities of the Near East, but the emphasis, here as
elsewhere, is on the coastal area.9 Egypt is symbolized by its sultan, curiously shown with a
long-tailed green parrot on his arm: "This
Sultan of Babylon [i.e., Cairo] is great and
powerful among the others of this region."10
The Mamluks (1250-1517) controlled Egypt and
Syria until Selim i conquered Aleppo and
Damascus in 1516 and Cairo a year later.
The compiler of the prototype used by
Cresques for the Catalan Atlas had recourse to
different, sometimes even contradictory
sources. The legendary Insula de Brazil, for
example, which is found on various medieval
maps of the North Atlantic and later gave its
name to Brazil, is shown here twice, once west
of Ireland and a second time farther south.11
The Islands of the Blest, located in accordance
with the specifications of Isidore of Seville in
his great seventh-century encyclopedia, the
Etymologiae, are called both lies Beneventurades and yles Fortunades: "The Islands of
the Blest are in the Great Sea to the left... Isidore says in his 15th book [in fact the 14th] that
these islands are so called because they possess a
wealth of all goods
The heathens believe
that Paradise is situated there, because the
islands have such a temperate climate and such a
great fertility of the soil." Here, too, the text
informs us, is the island of Capraria, full of
goats, and the Canary Isles called after the dogs
(Latin: canes] that populated them.
The text adds that, according to Pliny the
Elder, "there is one island on which all the gifts
of the earth can be harvested without sowing

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

27

and without planting.... For this reason the

heathens of India believe that their souls are
transported to these islands after death, where
they live for ever on the scent of these fruits.
Thus they believe that their Paradise is there.
But in truth it is a fable/'12 In this case, classical
and medieval tradition is not borne out by experience and is accordingly rejected by the mapmaker; the Canary Islands had been discovered
in 1336 and appear on Angelino Dulcert's chart
of three years later.13 Elsewhere, however, the
weight of received opinion is still felt, as, for
example, in the various islands with fabulous
names; they cannot represent the Madeiran
group, as these islands were discovered only in
1418-1419. Nor can they be the Azores, which
are first mentioned in 1427, or the Cape Verde
Islands discovered only in 1455-1456.14 The
Catalan Atlas, in fact, marks the progress in the
gradual discovery of the Atlantic and the west
coast of Africa with an illustration of Jaime Ferrer's ship, which, we are told, set sail on 10
August 1346 bound for the fabulous Rio de Oro
(River of Gold) in Africa.15
Scarcely any place on the west coast of Africa
is identified only one name, perhaps a
mythical spot, is found south of Cape Bojador in
the former Spanish Saharabut we are told
that Africa, land of ivory, starts at this point and
that by traveling due south one reaches Ethiopia.16 Only a few cities in mainland Africa, such
as Timbuktu and Gao, are indicated,17 and yet
the map is full of information. For here, as is
often the case in other maps of the period, the
cartographer compensated for the dearth of
known geographical points by including historical facts.18 We are told, for example, that
merchants bound for Guinea pass the Atlas
mountain range shown here in its typical form
of a bird's leg with three claws at its eastern
end at Val de Durcha.19 More geographical
information is given on the Maghreb, which,
after all, is part of the Mediterranean. The
Sahara, however, is shown with a lake in its
center a traditional medieval error. The text
beside a Touareg riding on a camel and also a
group of tents informs us that this land is
inhabited by veiled people living in tents and
riding camels. The crowned black man holding a
golden disk is identified as Musse Melly, "lord
of the negroes of Guinea" in fact, Mansa
Musa, of fabulous wealth. "The King," we are
told, "is the richest and most distinguished
ruler of this whole region, on account of the
great quantity of gold that is found in his
land/'20 Mansa Musa, who reigned over the
kingdom of Mali, probably from 1312 to 133/,21
is known for having encouraged the development of Islamic learning. His pilgrimage to
Mecca, including a visit to Cairo, was famous
28

CIRCA 1492

fig. i., fig. 2. Preliminary sheets of cosmological information from the Catalan Atlas (cat.

for the enormous amount of gold he spent on

that occasion. This is plausible enough, for he
controlled a large part of Africa, from Gambia
and Senegal to Gao on the Niger, and had access
to some of its richest gold deposits.22 Reports of
the fabulous wealth of this African ruler
whose first appearance on a European world
map is on that of Angelino Dulcert of 1339 did
much to encourage an interest in the exploration of Africa and certainly had something to do
with Jaime Ferrer's voyage.23
East of the Sultan of Mali appears the King of
Organa, in turban and blue dress, holding an

oriental sword and a shield. He is, we are told,

"a Saracen who waged constant war against the
Saracens of the coast and with the other
Arabs."24 Still farther to the east is the King of
Nubia, "always at war and under arms against
the Nubian Christians, who are under the rule
of the Emperor of Ethiopia and belong to the
realm of Prester John."25 A number of portolan
maps mention and sometimes even illustrate
the mythical figure of Prester John.26 The legend of this Christian ruler living somewhere in
the east originated with a letter purporting to
have been sent by him, around 1165, to the pope

and to two lay rulers of Christendom. Marco

Polo, among many others, searched in vain for
Prester John throughout Central Asia. As a
result, mapmakers began to locate his kingdom
in East Africa instead for the first time, it
seems, in 1306 and thereafter he was often
confused with the Emperor of Ethiopia.27 On
the Catalan Atlas, Africa is also symbolized by
a nude black man with a camel and a turreted
elephant. Camels were first used for the transSahara trade sometime between the second and
fifth century A.D., after being introduced from
Arabia. Thanks to their notorious capacity to

travel long distances without water, they completely transformed African trade, opening subSaharan areas to Islam.28 The elephant, which
inhabits the area south of the Sahara, signifies
the fact, as the text puts it, that Africa is the
land of ivory "on account of the large numbers
of elephants that live there/'29
In Asia the Red Sea stands out, being shown
as red a characteristic that derives, we are told,
less from the color of the water than from that
of the sea bed.30 It is cut in two by a land passage, a conventional allusion to Moses' miraculous crossing (Exodus, 14:21-22). The port of

Quseir is clearly marked, and the accompanying

text specifies that it is here that spices are taken
on land and sent to Cairo and Alexandria.31 In
Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf/is located the kingdom of Sheba; the
queen, who came to visit King Solomon, is
shown crowned and holding a golden disk as
symbol of her wealth.32 Today, we are told, the
area "belongs to Saracen Arabs and produces
many aromatic substances, such as myrrh and
frankincense; it has much gold, silver and many
precious stones and, moreover, it is said that a
bird called phoenix is found here/'33 This passage is altogether typical of the approach of late
fourteenth-century cartographers, who freely
mix biblical information with later accounts of
foreign countries, in this case based on Isidore
of Seville's Etymologiae.34
Mecca and Medina are clearly marked,
although they are placed too close to the coast.35
Between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea
appears the King of Tauris (Tabriz) and north of
him Jan'i-Beg, ruler of the kingdom of the
Golden Horde, who died in 135/.35 The importance of Baghdad as a center of the spice trade is
emphasized; from there, precious wares from
India are sent throughout the Syrian land and
especially to Damascus. Navigational information is also recorded: "From the mouth of the
river of Baghdad, the Indian and Persian Oceans
open out. Here they fish for pearls, which are
supplied to the town of Baghdad." We learn that
"before they dive to the bottom of the sea, pearl
fishers recite magic spells with which they
frighten away the fish" a piece of information
that comes straight from Marco Polo, who mentions that the pearl fishers on the Malabar coast
are protected by the magic and spells of the
Brahmins.37 Various trading stations are indicated on the shore of the Indian Ocean from
Hormus, "where India begins," to Quilon in
Kerala.38 There, pearl fishers are mentioned
again with reference to magic spells. So are
boats (called nichi) with a length of keel of sixty
ells (a unit of measurement that in England was
equal to 45 inches) and a draft of thirty-four,
with "at least four but sometimes as many as
ten masts, and sails made of bamboo and palmleaves." One of these boats is illustrated next to
the text and another east of the Indian peninsula: with their transom bow and stern, rails on
the stern galley, portholes, and as many as five
masts with unmistakable mast and batten sails,
they are undoubtedly Chinese junks such as
Marco Polo had described.39 From the Persian
Gulf and the Red Sea, from the African coast to
Sumatra and China, maritime trade developed
considerably in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries; with the improvement in maritime
technology, Arab and Persian, Gujarat and

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

29

Chinese boats sailed the South Asian seas, carrying pepper and spices, dyes and drugs, as well
as porcelain and the other exotic wares that
were so valued in the West.40 This is the world
that Vasco da Gama finally reached in 1498 and
explored with the assistance of local pilots,
opening the area to European influence.41
The Indian powers are represented on the
Catalan Atlas by the Sultan of Delhi and the
Hindu King of Vijayanagar, who is wrongly
identified as a Christian.42 Farther north appear
the Three Wise Men on their way to Bethlehem43 and at the top (or bottom) of the map a
caravan; all of the latter figures are drawn
upside down, as the map was probably meant to
be laid horizontally and viewed from both sides.
Camels laden with goods are followed by their
drivers; behind them various people, one of
them asleep, are riding horses. Next to this
group is a mass of fascinating information based
once more on Marco Polo's travel account: "You
must know that those who wish to cross this
desert remain and lodge for one whole week in a
town named Lop, where they and their beasts
can rest. Then they lay in all the provisions
they need for seven months/' Farther on we
read that "when it happens that a man falls
asleep on his camel during a night-ride or wanders away and loses his companions for some
other reason, it often happens that he hears the
voices of devils which are like the voices of his
companions and they call him by his name and
lead him in all directions through the desert, so
that he can never find his companions again. A
thousand tales are told about this desert/'44 The
scene thus clearly refers to the Silk Road, the
overland route to China. The caravan is crossing
the Sinkiang desert through the Tarim Basin.
The province and town of Lop mentioned by
Marco Polo can be connected with the modern
town of Ruoqiang (Charkhlik) south of Lop
Nor.45
For more than a thousand years trade with
the Far East had been conducted not only by the
sea route but also, whenever possible, overland.
The Greeks traveled as far as India, while the
Romans developed economic relations with the
Chinese empire.46 The land road linked Europe
directly to China but was more prone to political turmoil. The Mongol conquest, which
united large areas of Central Asia in the midthirteenth century, led to the reopening of the
route from the Black Sea to the Far East and
China, especially after 1264 when Kublai Khan
moved his capital to Beijing. Marco Polo's father
and uncle, Nicolo and Maffeo, must have been
among the very first Europeans to take advantage of this development when, sometime after
1260, they set out for Cathay, where they were
received by Kublai Khan. They returned to
30

CIRCA 1492

Europe in 1269 but revisited China only two

years later with the young Marco. Marco Polo's
Description of the World (also called II Milione)
is the most comprehensive account of China to
be written by a Westerner before the sixteenth
century, for he described in great detail his life
and travels in the service of Kublai Khan. Marco
Polo left China in 1292, returning by the sea
route from Zhangzhou to Sumatra, Ceylon, and
India, and providing a firsthand account of these
countries.47 The Catalan Atlas, in fact, presents
the Far East as he described it, but without
much geographical accuracy. Historically it
illustrates the political disintegration of the IIKhanid state after the death of Genghis Khan
(Chingiz-Khan), with Jani'-Beg (here called
Kaniebek) ruling the Golden Horde from 1340
until his death in 1357, Kebek Khan leading the
Middle Horde from 1318 to 1326, and Kublai
Khan (1215-1294), who founded the Yuan
dynasty, reigning over China.48 In the areas that
these rulers controlled and the bordering lands,
towns and cities are not often correctly located;
towns such as Bukhara and Samarkand in western Turkestan, for example, are shown south
rather than west of the caravan. Cities are often
located simply in the order in which they appear
in lists rather than according to their relative
geographic position.
Quite a number of harbors are indicated on
the eastern coast of India, a few of them still
identifiable, while a sailing junk testifies to
trading activity, especially with the island of
lana (?), which is here associated with the legendary isle of the Amazons (regio femarum
[sic]} and symbolized by its queen.49 The text
describes the richness of the area: "on the
island of lana are many trees of aloe, camphor,
sandalwood, fine spices, garenga, nutmeg, cinnamon trees, from which the most precious
spice of all India comes, and here are also mace
and leaves."50 The mention of a regio femarum
and of two of its cities, Malao and Semescra,
seem to refer to Marco Polo's Malaiur and
Semenat (Sumatra).51 The location of this land
"in India" and its geographic position, however,
suggest it is instead Ceylon.
In mainland India, King Stephen has been
represented: the text beside him indicates that
this Christian ruler is "looking towards the
town of Butifilis," Marco Polo's kingdom of
Mutifilis.52 The notion that there were Christian rulers east of the Islamic world stems
largely from the legend of Prester John; also
important, however, were the real Christian
minorities in India and the fact that the tomb of
Saint Thomas was thought to be in Mailapore, a
suburb of Madras, the Mirapore of the map.53
Farther north is the realm of Kebek Khan, a
historical figure who reigned from 1309 to

1326: "Here reigns King Chabeh, ruler of the

Kingdom of the Middle Horde. He resides in
Emalech."54 Next to him, between India and the
Chinese empire, is a group of pygmies fighting
cranes: "Here are born men who are so small
that they do not grow to above five spans in
height, and although they are so short and
incapable of hard work, they are strong enough
and in a position to weave and herd cattle. And
know that these people marry at the age of
about twelve years and generally live to be 40
years old. But they are happy and defend themselves valiantly against the cranes, which they
hunt and eat." The ancient writer Pliny had
already described pygmies who lived in the
remotest mountains of Asia, and he commented
on their antagonism to cranes; they were later
mentioned in the travel accounts of Odoric de
Pordenone and Mandeville, but Marco Polo
doubted their existence. They are, however, also
shown on the Ebstorf map of 1284.55
Above, upside down, is a curious scene of the
cremation of an old man to the accompaniment
of music: "Know that the men and women of
this region, when they are dead, are carried
away to be burnt, to the sound of instruments
and in ecstasies of joy
And it sometimes
happens though rarely, that the widow of the
dead man throws herself into the flames," a
practice that recalls widow-burning (sutti) of
India.56 Here the text conflates information
from Marco Polo's account of how in the province of Malabar the death of criminals, who are
compelled to commit suicide, is celebrated by
their relatives with his observation on the
custom of widows immolating themselves on
the pyres of their dead husbands, mentioned a
few lines later.57 Also upside down, as it is on
the upper half of the map, are people seeking
diamonds. Their rather peculiar method of
doing so is explained at length: "As they cannot
get between the mountains where the diamonds
are, they ingeniously throw lumps of meat to
the place where the stones are lying, and the
stones adhere to the meat and come away from
their original site: then the diamonds that are
attached to the pieces of meat are carried away
by the birds and thus obtained by the men."58
Alexander the Great, we are told, was already
familiar with this method: it is illustrated on
the map by two men cutting off pieces of meat
and a bird flying over the mountains of Baldasia
[Badakhstan], from which flows the stream that
marks the eastern border of India (finis indie}.
Abraham Cresques has shown snakes in the
crevices of the rock: Marco Polo, after all, tells
us that the diamonds are found in deep valleys
with "so many serpents" that "he who should
go down there would be devoured
immediately."59

Alexander the Great is shown in the upper

right half of the map. There we are told that
Satan came to his aid and helped him to imprison the Tartars Gog and Magog. Alexander
then had two bronze figures made by which to
bind them with a spell. The reference is to the
gate that Alexander is supposed to have built in
the Caspian Mountains to exclude Gog and
Magog, who are here equated with various
Central Asian tribes. The text on the map specifically refers to the "various tribes who have
no scruples about eating any kind of raw
flesh..., the nation from which the Antichrist
will come forth/ but which will ultimately be
destroyed.60 There is a further allusion to Alexander having erected two trumpet-blowing figures in bronze; these, according to various
medieval legends, resounded with the wind and
frightened the Tartars until the instruments
were blocked up by various nesting birds and
animals.61 The text freely combines the
medieval legend of Alexander with biblical traditions. This applies equally to the corresponding scene, where the great lord and ruler
over Gog and Magog is shown with his men,
the devil painted on their banners: "He will
march out with many followers at the time of
the Antichrist" but will ultimately be defeated
as predicted in the Book of Revelation (20: 7io).62 To the south are those who will be sent to
declare his glory among the Gentiles. The text
here refers to Isaiah 66:19: "I shall send those
who are saved to the peoples of the sea, to
Africa and Lydia"; and further, "I will send to
the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame,
neither have seen my glory; and they shall
declare my glory among the Gentiles/'63 To this
prophetic inscription is added a text about the
Antichrist.
Farther south, the supreme ruler of China
(CATAYO on the map) is identified as Kublai
Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan: "The most
powerful prince of all the Tartars is named
Holubeim [i.e., Kublai Khan], which means
Chief Khan. The emperor is far wealthier than
any other monarch in the whole world. This
emperor is guarded by 12,000 horsemen/'64 The
Catalan Atlas contains the names of various
towns placed apparently at random, some of
them mentioned twice; this reflects the fact that
the map was evidently composed with the help
of various sources. It emphasizes the importance
of the capital, Chanbalik, the modern Beijing, in
an account once more based on Marco Polo's
text: "This town [Beijing] has an extent of 24
miles, is surrounded by a very thick outer wall
and has a square ground-plan. Each side has a
length of six miles, the wall is 20 paces high and
10 paces thick, has 12 gateways and a large
tower, in which hangs a great bell, which rings

at the hour of first sleep or earlier. When it has

finished ringing, no one may pass through the
town, and at each gate a thousand men are on
guard not out of fear but in honor of the
sovereign." The description emphasizes the
richness and urbanity of the Chinese capital at
the edge of the civilized world.65 This contrasts
strongly with the people of the islands farther
east who are described as savages living naked,
eating raw fish, and drinking sea water.66 They
are obviously to be identified with the Ichthyophagi, one of the fabulous races traditionally
placed in Asia or in Africa.67
Farther south is the island of Trapobana
already found on maps attributed to Ptolemy.
For Pliny and classical authors it was evidently
Ceylon,68 but it was later associated with Sumatra, as it is here, described as "the last island
towards the east."69 Altogether, we are told,
there are 7,548 islands in the Indian Ocean;
they are rich in gold, silver, spices, and precious
stones, so much so that "great ships of many
different nations" trade in their waters. Here
again the information is from Marco Polo, who,
however, spoke of 7,448 islands.70 There
Cresques placed some of the fabulous and monstrous races legendary in classical antiquity and
the Middle Ages: "On this island are people
who are very different from the rest of mankind. In some of the mountain-ranges... are
people of great size, as much as 12 ells, like
giants, with very dark skins and without intelligence. They eat white men and strangers, if
they can catch them." The reference is to giants
familiar from the medieval Alexander legend,
specifically defined here as Anthropophagi.71 To
these far-distant waters are also relegated mermaids, some of them probably the traditional
half-woman and half-fish, the others more
siren-like half-birds. The one illustrated has two
fishtails, in accordance with one of the most
common medieval conventions.72
At the center of the world is Jerusalem, more
or less as in the tradition of medieval mappaemundi.73 But in contrast with the mappaemundi, Europe and the Mediterranean form
only the western half of the world. To the east
is an enormous region whose importance is
clearly understood but whose exact form is to a
large extent still unknown. This is the world of
spices, of precious wares, of silver and gold that
Marco Polo so tantalizingly described. This is
the world that Columbus had in mind when he
conceived his "Enterprise of the Indies," and
that he set out to reach by the western path.

NOTES
1. See especially El Atlas Catalan de Cresque Abraham.
Primera edition completa en el sexcentesimo aniversario de su realization 1375-1975 (Barcelona, 1975);
H.-C. Freisleben, Der katalanische Weltatlas vom
Jahre 1375 (Stuttgart, 1977); G. Grosjean, Mappa
mundi. Der katalanische Weltatlas vom Jahre 1375
(Zurich, 1977) (The quotations are based on Grosjean's translations of the texts found on the Catalan
Atlas). For serious doubts about the identification of
the author of the Catalan Atlas see Campbell 1981,
116.
2. For its provenance see Jean Alexandre C. Buchon
and }. Tastu, "Notice d'un atlas en langue catalane
manuscrit de Pan 1375," Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du Roi 14 (1841), 3: Franc.ois Avril, Jean-Pierre Aniel, Mireille Mentre, Alix
Saulnier, and Yolanta Zaluska, Bibliotheque nationale. Manuscrits enlumines de la peninsule iberique
(Paris, 1982), 97-98.
3. For these sheets see Grosjean 1977, 35-50; also
Atlas Catalan, 1975, 23-36.
4. For portolan charts see Tony Campbell, "Portolan
Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500,"
in [eds. J. B. Harvey and David Woodward,] The
History of Cartography i (Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the
Mediterranean) (Chicago and London, 1987), 371463; for a more general account see Michel Mollat
du Jourdain and Monique de La Ronciere, Sea Charts
of the Early Explorers, ijth to iyth Century (Fribourg, 1984).
5. For medieval mappaemundi see David Woodward,
"Medieval Mappaemundi" in Harvey and Woodward 1987, 286-370.
6. For this conclusion see Campbell 1987, 373.
7. For the making of portolan charts see Campbell
1987, 428-438. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, "A Contract
for World Maps at Barcelona, 13991400," Imago
Mundi 22 (1968), 107-113, discusses the division of
work between the maestro di charta da navichare
and the dipintore.
8. Grosjean 1977, 75. For the Armenian kingdom see
Gerard Dedeyan, Histoire des Armeniens (Toulouse,
1982), 307-339.
9. For medieval maps of Palestine and the Near East see
Kenneth Nebenzahl, Maps of the Bible Lands.
Images of Terra Sancta through Two Millennia
(London, 1986), 8-69, especially 46-49 on the Catalan Atlas.
-LO. Grosjean 1977, 78. Parrots first appear on the
Ebstorf map; see Wilma George, Animals and Maps
(London, 1969), 30 (also 35 and 42);Atlas Catalan,
1975, 46-47.
11. Grosjean 1977, 52
12. Grosjean 1977, 52-53. For the authors mentioned in
the Catalan Atlas see Pliny, Natural History, vi,
xxxvu. 202-204 (also iv, xxn. 119) and Isidore of
Seville, Etymologiarum libri, xiv, vi:8~9; also
Thomas Johnson Westropp, "Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North Atlantic: Their History and
Fable. A Contribution to the 'Atlantis Problem/"
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 30 (1912),
223-260 and William Henry Babcock, Legendary
Islands of the Atlantic. A Study in Medieval Geography (New York, 1922). For Isidore's sources see
Hans Philipp, Die historisch-geographischen Quellen
in der Etymologiae des Isidorus von Sevilla, 2 vols.
(Berlin, 1912-1913), 2:135.
13. Armando Cortesao, History of Portuguese Cartography, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1969-1971), 2:72. For the map-

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

31

ping of the Atlantic islands see Cortesao 1969-1971,

2:5560; see also Charles Bourel de La Ronciere, La
decouverte de I'Afrique au moyen age. Cartographes
et explorateurs, 2 vols. (Cairo, 19241935), 2:141.
For an up-to-date account, Campbell 1987, 410-411.
14. See Campbell 1987, 410; see also Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America. The
Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600 (Oxford, 1971),
81-111.
15. Grosjean 1977, 53.
16. For this part of Africa see Grosjean 1977, 62-63.
17. Grosjean 1977, 62-63. For the discovery of Africa
see La Ronciere 1924-1935.
18. For the representation of unknown lands in cartography see Wilcomb E. Washburn, "Representation
of Unknown Lands in xiv-, xv-, and xvi-century
Cartography/' Revista de Universidade de Coimbra
2
4 (i97i)> 35-32219. For the Val de Sus or Val de Durcha on portolans see
Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae
et Aegypti, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1926-1953), 4.4:14741475. On the depiction of Africa on Catalan maps
see La Ronciere 1924-1935, 1:129-141 (for the
Catalan Atlas, see also 121-129, pi. xi). On the
characteristic form of the Atlas Mountains, Campbell
19^7'39320. Grosjean 1977, 63.
21. For Mansa Musa, see Basil Davidson, Old Africa
Rediscovered (London, 1959), 90-95; Raymond
Mauny, "Le Soudan occidental a 1'epoque des grands
empires/' in Histoire generale de I'Afrique noire, ed.
Hubert Deschamps, i (Paris, 1970), 193195; Nehemia Levtzion, "The Western Maghrib and Sudan/' in
The Cambridge History of Africa, ed. Roland Oliver,
3 (Cambridge, 1977) 380-382. He is also shown on
various portolans: Kamal 1926-1953, 4.4:1475.
22. For a map of his empire see Mauny 1970, 194, map
8. For the control of gold, Levtzion 1977, 488491.
23. Grosjean 1977, 53. For Angelino Dulcert's chart of
1339, Mollat du Jourdin and La Ronciere 1984, 201,

33. Grosjean 1977, 82; Pliny, Natural History, x, 11.3-4,

already linked the phoenix with Arabia; for this tradition see Heimo Reinitzer, "Vom Vogel Phoenix.
Uber Naturbetrachtung und Naturdeutung," in
Natura loquax. Naturkunde und allegorische Naturdeutung vom Mittelalter bis zur fruhen Neuzeit,
eds. Wolfgang Harms and Heimo Reinitzer (Mikrokosmos. Beitrage zur Literaturwissenschaft und
Bedeutungsforschung 7) (Frankfurt, 1981), 17-72,
and Christoph Gerhardt, "Der Phonix auf dem
diirren Baum (Historia de preliis, cap. 106), in
Harms and Reinitzer 1981, 73-108.
34. Isidore, Etymologiarum librixu, 7:22.
35. For European accounts of Mecca and Medina in the
Middle Ages, see Kammerer 1929-1952, i:esp.
136-144.
36. Grosjean 1977, 79, 81. For Jani'-Beg see J. A. Boyle,
"Dynastic and Political History of the Il-Khans," in
The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. J. A. Boyle, 5
(Cambridge, 1968) 408, 420; for Tauris and its king
see Hallberg 1906, 518-522; Paul Pelliot, Notes on
Marco Polo, 3 vols. (Paris, 1959-1973), 2:847-848;
and Alfons Gabriel, Marco Polo in Persien (Vienna,
1963), 69-76.
37. Grosjean 1977, 81; see also 8485; Atlas Catalan,
1975, 52-53. For Marco Polo's Description of the
World see Marco Polo, The Description of the World,
eds. Arthur Christopher Moule and Paul Pelliot, 2
vols. (London, 1938), 1-2. For an Aragonese version
see Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Aragonese Version of
the Libro de Marco Polo (Madison, 1980). For various studies see Leonardo Olschki, L'Asia di Marco
Polo. Introduzione alia lettura e allo studio del
Milione (Venice and London, 1957) and Pelliot 19591973; also the various articles in Oriente Poliano.
Studi e conferenze ...in occasione del vn centenario
della nascita di Marco Polo (1254-1954) (Rome,
38.

Pi. 7.

24. Grosjean 1977, 70.

25. Grosjean 1977, 78. For the Kings of Organa and
Nubia on portolan maps see Kamal 1926-1953,
A.A:-iA7S-iA76.
26. Kamal 19261953, 4.4:1476. He is also sometimes
placed in Asia; for his location there on maps see
Ivar Hallberg, L 'Extreme-Orient dans la litterature
et la cartographie de I'Occident des xme, xive et xve
siecles (Goteborg, 1906), 281-285. On Prester John,
see, for example, Robert Silverberg, The Realm of
Prester John (New York, 1972).
27. On Prester John in Ethiopia see Silverberg 1972,
163-192.
28. For the importance of camels for African trade see
Richard Williams Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel
(Cambridge, Mass., 1975), esp. 7-27 and 111-140;
Philip D. Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984), 21.
29. Grosjean 1977, 54. For the camel and the elephant
on the Catalan Atlas, see George 1969, 42-43;
Atlas Catalan, 1975, 46.
30. Grosjean 1977, 76; Atlas Catalan, 1975, 35, n. 19;
see also Kamal 1926-1953, 4.4:1475.
31. For the importance of Quseir, Albert Kammerer, La
Mer Rouge, I'Abyssinie et I' Arable depuis I'antiquite.
Essai d'histoire et de geographie historique, 3 vols.
(Cairo, 1929-1952), 1:81-82. On the whole area of
the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Arabia in the Middle
Ages see Kammerer 1929-1937, i.
32. For Sheba and its queen in geographical literature
see Hallberg 1906, 437-440.
32

CIRCA

1492

39.

40.
41.
42.

*957)For Hormus in the Persian gulf, Pelliot 1959, 1:576582; for Quilon see 399-402. The Periplus of the
Erythrean Sea, a Roman text written in Greek c. 50
A.D., lists the towns on the coast of India from the
Indus to the Ganges: see Wilfred Harvey Schoff,
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Travel and Trade
in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century (London, 1912).
Grosjean 1977, 84. For the boat see Joseph Needham
with collaboration of Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-Djen,
Science and Civilisation in China 4.3 (Civil Engineering and Nautics) (Cambridge, 1971), 4.3:471473, fig. 977b; I have used their description verbatim. For Marco Polo's description of Chinese ships
see Polo 1938,1:354-357 (chap. 158).
Curtin 1984, esp. 109-135, for example.
For a summary of the early explorations, John
Horace Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (London,
1963), 131-145.
For information on these figures see Grosjean 1977,

84.

43. Polo 1938, 1:113 (chap. 31) specifies that it is from

Sava that "the three Magi set out." And it is in that
city that they "are buried in three sepulchres or
tombs very great and beautiful." For Sava and its
association with the Magi, Hallberg 1906, 438-440;
Pelliot 1959-1973, 2:826; Gabriel 1963, 86-88.
44. Grosjean 1977, 80: for the source of this account see
Polo 1938, 1:148-150 (chap. 57).
45. Hallberg 1906, 316-318; for the identification of the
town, Pelliot 1959-1973, 2: 7746. See, for example, Donald F. Lach, Asia in the
Making of Europe. The Century of Discovery, 2
vols. (Chicago and London, 1965), 1.1:5-19. On the

47.

48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.

54.
55.

56.
57.
58.
59.
60.

61.
62.
63.
64.

65.

relations of the Roman world with the Far East see

John Ferguson, "China and Rome," Aufstieg und
Niedergang der romischen Welt, eds. Hildegard
Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, 2.9.2 (Berlin and
New York, 1978), 581-603, and Manfred G. Raschke,
"New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East,"
in Temporini and Haase 1978, 6041378.
For Marco Polo's travels see n. 37, above. For a short
account see Lach 1965, 1.1:34-38. On the Silk Road
see, for example, Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Die
Seidenstrasse. Handelsiveg und Kulturbrucke zwischen Morgen und Abendland (Cologne, 1988).
For a history of the Mongols see Boyle 1968,
303-421.
For the various references to Amazons in the Far
East see Hallberg 1906, 20-23; fr tne Island of
Women see also Pelliot 1959-1973, 2:671-725.
Grosjean 1977, 88-89.
Grosjean 1977, 89; Pelliot 1959-1973, 2:771-773,
830. On the Catalan Atlas Malao is shown, a second
time on the Island de Trapobana: Grosjean 1977, 93.
Pelliot 1959-1973, 2:787-788.
For the tomb of Saint Thomas in India see Hallberg
1906, 355-356; Leslie Wilfried Brown, The Indian
Christians of St. Thomas. An Account of the
Ancient Syrian Church of Malabar (Cambridge,
1956), 54-59. For early European reactions to Indian
art, Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters. History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford,
*977)Grosjean 1977, 87. For Kebek Khan of the C/iag/zatai
Khanate see Boyle 1968, 405, 408, 421.
Grosjean 1977, 88; Atlas Catalan, 1975, 53. See
Pliny, Natural History, vi, xxn.jo, vn, 11.26, and x,
xxx.58; for classical and medieval texts see Hallberg
1906,418-421.
Grosjean 1977, 86; At las Catalan, 1975, 53. Megasthenes was the first to mention this practice.
Polo 1938, 1:387 (chap. 174).
Grosjean 1977, 87-88; Atlas Catalan, 1975, 52.
Polo 1938, 1:396 (chap. 175).
Grosjean 1977, 86; also Atlas Catalan, 1975, 51-52.
For Gog and Magog and Alexander's gate see
Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander's Gate, Gog
and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge,
Mass., 1932); Hallberg 1906, 225230, 260265. fr
this subject on maps see Jorg-Geerd Arentzen,
Imago mundi cartographica. Studien zur Bildlichkeit
mittelalterlicher Welt-und Okumenekarten unter
besonderer Beriicksichtigung des Zusammenwirkens
von Text und Bild (Munich, 1984), 180182, 215
216.
Grosjean 1977, 86, for the inscription. For the various accounts of the legend, Anderson 1932, esp. 8385, 101.
For that scene see Grosjean 1977, 86.
Grosjean 1977, 90.
Grosjean 1977, 90; Polo 1938,1:216-217 (chap. 86):
"his... honor has himself guarded day and night
with twelve thousand paid horsemen." We are also
told, as on the Atlas, that they are led by four captains each commanding three thousand of them. For
the Far East in the Catalan Atlas see also Henri
Cordier, "L'Extreme-Orient dans 1'Atlas Catalan de
Charles v, Roi de France," Bulletin de geographie
historique et descriptive 1895 (1896), 19-63. For
Kublai Khan see Pelliot 1959-1973, 1:565-569.
Grosjean 1977, 90-91; see Polo 1938, 1:212 (chap.
85). For Cambaluc (Beijing) see Hallberg 1906,102106, and Pelliot 1959-1973,1:140-143. For Christians in China in the Middle Ages see Arthur Christopher Moule, Christians in China Before the Year

1550 (London, 1930).

66. Grosjean 1977, 92.
67. Hallberg 1906, 257-258. "Ichthyophagi piscibus
tantum aluntur et salsum mare bibunt" was how
they were described on the Ebstorf world map; see
Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi. Die attest en Weltkarten, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1895-1896), 5:49. See also
the many references in John Block Friedman, The
Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought
(Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1981).

68. For example, Pliny, Natural History, vi, xxiv. 82-91;

for Trapobana according to Ptolemy, Andre Berthelot, L'Asie ancienne centrale et sud-orientale d'apres
Ptolemee (Paris, 1930), 357371.
69. Grosjean 1977, 92. For Trapobana in the Middle
Ages see also Hallberg 1906, 509-514 and MarieTherese Gambin, "L'ile Trapobane: problemes de
cartographic dans 1'ocean Indien," in Geographie du
monde au Moyen Age et a la Renaissance, ed.
Monique Pelletier (Paris, 1989), 191-200.

70. Grosjean 1977, 92; Polo 1938, 1:365 (chap. 161).

71. Grosjean 1977, 92. On Anthropophagi in the east
see Hallberg 1906, 30-32; for giants see 220. See
also various references in Friedman 1981.
72. For mermaids see Georges Kastner, Les sirenes
(Paris, 1858), 1-83; also Gwen Benwell and Arthur
Waugh, Sea Enchantress. The Tale of the Mermaid
and Her Kin (London, 1961).
73. For Jerusalem on medieval world maps see Arentzen
1984, 216-222.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

33

PORTUGUESE NAVIGATION: ITS HISTORICAL

DEVELOPMENT
Luis de Albuquerque

I avigation made spectacular progress in

Europe during the fifteenth century. In the
course of that period, it became a technique
rather than an art. This change was brought
about not through any conscious decisions made
by its leading practitioners, but rather by their
responses to the external conditions with which
they had to contend.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century,
the European navigators who sailed the longest
routes were exclusively Mediterranean peoples,
the Genoese and Venetians in particular, and
also the Aragonese. Their vessels followed the
existing trade routes, from termini in the Near
East all the way to the coast of Flanders, the
location of the large European spice fairs which
were the main incentive for this trade. This
maritime traffic had taken a major step forward
at the end of the thirteenth century, when the
ships plying the route had begun regularly to
sail around the Iberian Peninsula and to unload
their goods at the ports of Flanders, rather than
ending their voyage in southern France and
consigning their cargoes to overland transport
to their final destination. This change had dramatic economic consequences, for it brought
irremediable decline to the principal crossroads
of the land route, such as Cahors, which had
previously been an important financial center.
It had little effect on methods of navigation,
however, since the ships still kept as close as
possible to the coastline from the point they
entered the Atlantic until they reached the
English Channel.
Sailing conditions in the Mediterranean had
made it possible to use coastal routes, and this is
what had been done in most cases. There were
clearly some navigators who did not hesitate to
sail in a north-south directionthe frequency
with which ships traveled to Cyprus and to
Malta proves thisbut one could almost say
that the Mediterranean was a landlocked sea
"especially navigated lengthwise/' In fact the
difference in latitude between any two points
on the Mediterranean coast never exceeds six
degrees.
It is clear that the new practice of sailing
around the Iberian Peninsula to Flanders did
not significantly change the art of navigation,

which remained coastal. This is demonstrated

by the fact that ships, especially Italian vessels,
would often stop on the way to and from
Flanders at Portuguese ports, principally Lisbon. The Portuguese ports were practically en
route, and stopping there enabled captains and
merchants to open up additional opportunities
for trade. The continued increase of these visits
led to the enactment of legislation in Lisbon to
regulate the life of foreigners, their rights, their
trade, and the taxes they were required to pay.
There was some conflict with locals who were
interested in the same activities, but the royal
government knew how to handle these difficulties
so as not to frighten away the foreigners; they
provided a good income for the royal coffers.
Not all the ships in the Mediterranean sailed
from Genoa, Venice, or Aragon; there were of
course others engaging in maritime trade, including the Portuguese. However, the routes
sailed by these other vessels were not as long,
and they knew the art of navigation only by
adoption. The Genoese, the Venetians, the
Aragonese and perhaps navigators from other
Italian provinces had created the art of navigation to suit the requirements of their own
shipping; the others applied the techniques as
best as they could.
A primary tool for navigation was the portolan,
a written description of the course along which
the ships sailed, indicating bays, capes, coves,
ports, magnetic rhumb-lines, and the distances
between these places. These writings had their
antecedents in the so-called peripli of classical
antiquity, some of which are still known, the
principal one being the periplus of the Red Sea.
One essential difference between the classical
periplus and the medieval portolan is that the
information in the former was mainly commercial whereas in the latter it was primarily nautical. Today more than ten portolans survive, all
written in Italian. Motzo published and studied
the most important, which circulated under the
name of // Compasso daNavigare (The Navigational Compass), Kretschner analyzed and
edited the rest, almost all of which are known
now by reference to the collection or library to
which the particular manuscript belongs. The
texts employ a direct and little-varied language

and provide no commentary beyond the nautical information for which they were used.
I believe that the idea of representing maritime information graphically can be traced back
to the written portolans. They gave rise to
nautical charts, which in the nineteenth century came to be called portolan charts. The
oldest known portolan chart is the anonymous
Carta Pisana of the late thirteenth or early
fourteenth century, so called because it was
found in Pisa. It is in the collection of the
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, but is not wellpreserved. Motzo related it to the particular
portolan he published; however, a portolan can
always be related to a chart, since the chart is
simply the graphic equivalent of the written text.
What is certain, however, is that the nautical
charts inevitably improved in tandem with the
improvement of the textual portolans. We even
have written proof that there were nautical
charts before the familiar portolan chart; the
pilots were able to mark their location when
they were in open sea. The gradual improvement of the nautical charts is particularly obvious when one examines the progress of the
representation of northern Europe or the
Canary Islands on the portolan charts. These
eventually emerged fully indicated, with their
relative positions very accurately depicted. The
Canaries, along with Cape Bojador on the African coast, virtually to their east, marked the
southern limit of the area of the Atlantic which
was represented. Some charts continued the
African coast to the south of that cape, sometimes giving it a different name ("river of
gold/' for example), but the coastline is shown
as being so even that it soon becomes obvious
that no navigator had ever seen it. So when
Gomes Eanes de Zurara wrote in his Chronicle
of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea,
dated 1453, of the addition beyond Cape Bojador
made to the traditional nautical chart by order
of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), he
indicated specifically that this addition corresponded to the truth as "something that had
been seen."
Even before the nautical chart, however, the
so-called mariner's needle (the magnetic needle
or compass) had been introduced into naviga-

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

35

{/

f c ,

"1

\j
C

u T ti
i Tsr

jLI'L'ATsrT'id
o

ti

A >

o
\

z>
d

i A ~V

A >

PORTUGUESE VOYAGES TO 1498

1434

tion. The magnetic properties of iron when

rubbed against natural magnets was a phenomenon that had long been known. At about the
time the needle was introduced, there are various written references to it, the most important
of which is that of Pierre de Maricourt (or
Petrus Peregrinus). The needle was first used
on ships in a rather rudimentary manner: after
36

CIRCA 1492

Date of Portuguese arrival

being dipped in oil it was set to float in a pan of

water. Over the years this elementary device
was greatly modified, and when the pilot Joao
of Lisbon described it in 1514, it had already
become an effective nautical instrument. The
origin of the magnetic needle and its introduction to navigation are still obscure. A dubious
and late suggestion, repeated by Father Fran-

cisco da Costa in the seventeenth century in his

Arte de Navegar (Art of Navigation), is that its
use in navigation originated with an Italian
from Amalfi named Flavio Gioia. The origin of
the device may be Chinese (although when
historians do not know the origin of a technical
innovation in the Middle Ages they show a
great tendency to attribute it to distant China!).

There are thirteenth-century Arab texts that

refer to the magnetic needle, and it is therefore
very probable that it reached Europe through
the Islamic world.
Whatever the history of the magnetic needle
itself, the rhumb-lines mentioned in the portolans and later represented graphically on the
nautical charts were magnetic and not geographical. The phenomenon later known as magnetic
declination (that is, the angular deviation of the
compass needle in relation to the meridian line,
which changes from place to place) was then
unknown, and observers believed that the line
indicated by the compass needle was identical to
the geographic one. This is proved irrefutably
by the nautical charts themselves, since they
always distort, for example, the shape of the
Mediterranean basin, because the magnetic
declination varies from place to place. It is
noteworthy, nonetheless, that the nautical charts
of the Mediterranean remained unaltered until
the eighteenth century; this is to be expected,
because recent studies of magnetism in earlier
periods show that the degree of magnetic declination itself was practically unchanged for about
four centuries.
This, then, was the knowledge and equipment to which a pilot in the early fifteenth
century had access. Alfonso X of Castile
(r. 1252-1284), in his Partidas (Ships' Crews),
required of the pilot some additional knowledge, such as an understanding of maritime
currents. He did not refer to the traverse board,
which allows a pilot to return to the straight
course if he has had to leave it because of winds,
currents or natural obstacles such as islands or
shoals. Its invention has been attributed, without sufficient foundation, to Ramon Llull of
Majorca. If it was Llull's contribution to the art
of navigation of his time, it is the only one he
made. The Aragonese did have a school of
cartography partly under the influence of
Majorcan Jews, and in documents mentioning
the fifteenth-century Aragonese court, there is
reference to an Arte de Navegar (Art of Navigation), a text which unfortunately has since
been lost.
****** *

The growing nautical traffic in the Atlantic

in the course of the fifteenth century did not
completely change the methods of navigation
described above. Since Prince Henry encouraged navigation beyond Cape Bojador, his ships
having reached Sierra Leone at the time of his
death, it is often stated that he surrounded
himself with scholars of different origins, who
came together at some kind of academy at
Sagres at the southwestern tip of Portugal,
where he set up some sort of meteorological

observatory. There, it is said, he resolved all the

problems posed by the navigation of the Atlantic.
Although the idea of the "School of Sagres"
is widely accepted, it must be a fallacy for
several reasons. First, neither Prince Henry nor
any European, Arab, or Jewish scholar could
foresee the geophysical conditions that would
be encountered in the Atlantic and find adequate solutions for them in advance. Second,
there is no evidence of any such group of
scholars having been assembled, except for Jaime
of Majorca, who was simply a cartographer, the
son of Abraham Cresques (see cat. i). Moreover, it would not have been possible to set up a
meteorological observatory at Sagres, as the
science itself did not exist in the fifteenth century. Furthermore, we know that Prince Henry
did not spend much time in Sagres until the last
two years of his life, when decisive progress in
the new techniques of navigation had already
been made as a response to the demands of
Atlantic navigation. Until 1458 he visited Sagres
only occasionally and did not stay long enough
to direct a school. The idea of the "School of
Sagres," which is as fallacious as it is famous,
goes together with the idea that advanced studies in astronomy were necessary to develop a
new manner of navigation, as well as the idea
that the Prince took a great personal interest in
these studies. The romantic historian Oliveira
Martins even hypothesized that he had read the
works of the German astronomers Peuerbach
and Regiomontanus, which were not in print
until 1460, the year Prince Henry died!
While extremely important, the fifteenthcentury change in the art of navigation did not
require specialized scientific training, and the
little astronomy that was necessary was so
simple that pilots were able to find the solutions
by their own means. When this was not possible, they consulted astrologers, who had no
difficulty in responding because the required
information was recorded in a variety of books.
We can still speak of a "school of navigation"
metaphorically, because it was the navigators
who departed from the Algarve who contributed their experience to resolving the difficulties
in an unprecedented way, thereby bringing
about the developments in technique. In this
school, so to speak, each pilot was both apprentice and master. As Luciano Pereira da Silva
wrote: "the school of Sagres was the planks of
the caravels"the practice of navigation rather
than theory dictated the nautical solutions the
pilots developed.
Let us look at the essential points of this new
method of navigation. Sailors returning to the
Algarve and later to Lisbon from their voyages,
which reached increasingly farther south along
the African coast, met with serious difficulties

because of unfavorable currents and winds.

Since it was not easy to overcome these obstacles, even when they used ships such as caravels
that were able to sail close to the wind, the
pilots tried out new ways of dealing with them.
They would sail out into the Atlantic until, at
about the latitude of the Azores, they encountered winds that would take them home to
Portugal. This maneuver, which took more
time the farther south the point of departure
was, meant that for several weeks, sometimes
for up to about two months, the ships had to
navigate in open sea without any land as a point
of reference. The pilots therefore needed to
establish their approximate location so that
they could proceed with some security, a process that led to increasingly more effective
navigation techniques.
Initially, the navigator would estimate his
north-south distance from a place of reference
based on the difference in altitude of the polestaror any other easily identifiable staron
the transit of the same meridian. The result
would be the number of leagues, counted on a
meridian, that separated the parallel of the
observer's location from the parallel passing
through the place of reference. For example, if
the navigator took as his point of reference the
parallel of latitude passing through Lisbon,
where the upper meridian passage of the polestar was at the astronomical altitude of 42, and
at sea he measured the equivalent transit of the
polestar at 35, he could conclude that the
parallel of his location was separated from that
of Lisbon by 7 (that is, the meridian distance
between these two parallels was 7 times 16 2/3
leagues, the value then used for the unit of one
degree of latitude).
This idea must have originated through the
influence of Joannes de Sacrobosco's thirteenthcentury treatise Da Esfera (The Sphere). This
book was well known in Portugal and served as
an instruction manual for pilots. In a passage at
the end of Chapter I the cosmographer gives
instructions on how to measure the distance
encompassed by one meridian degree of the
earth by measuring the distance separating two
points along a single meridian, and more precisely by observing the altitude of the polestar
at points one degree apart from each other. In
the context of Da Esfera this information was
merely theoretical, because it required measuring the distance between the two points without
the observer's leaving the meridian where he
happened to be, which made the technique
impracticable.
The instrument used in these observations
was the quadrant, and we know from a remark
made by Diego Gomes that it was customary to
write the name of the place where the star was

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

37

observed on the altitude marked on the graduation of the instrument. Since it was not always
possible to observe the polestar's meridian
transitsometimes, for example, clouds darkened the sky at the moment of observation
it was then noted that other positions in the
polestar's movement could be used. The star
appears to trace a circular movement around
the pole (the angular distance of the star to the
pole was then estimated at 3 30'). In addition
to the two transits of the meridian, the positions chosen for observations corresponded to
the other two main cardinal points (east and
west) and also to the intermediate cardinal
points (northeast, southeast, southwest, and
northwest). Of course only altitudes observed
under the same conditions could be compared.
At this stage it was not possible to engrave
directly on the quadrant the eight altitudes of
the polestar to be used. Instead, their values for
Lisbon and other places of reference were written at the end of the radii of a circle corresponding to the eight bearings indicated, so that the
circle would thus represent the apparent daily
movement of the star in the sky. This manner
of calculating was then known as the "Polaris
Wheel/' and such wheels are reproduced in
early sixteenth-century nautical texts. This procedure was of decisive importance for the development of navigation. Knowing the latitude of
Lisbonthen estimated at 39 northit was
not difficult to conclude that it would be sufficient
to add or subtract certain quantities to the
altitudes marked on the wheel for Lisbon in
order to obtain the latitude at a particular place;
and it was believed that what was valid for
Lisbon would always be valid. With the value
of these constants properly applied, the altitude
of a star was no longer simply observed, but
rather the latitude of a place was calculated
directly by making the corresponding proportionate adjustment.
This ability to determine the geographical
coordinates of latitude on board ship was the
major step toward the modern art of navigation.
Naturally the longitude of a place still had to be
calculated, and a practical shipboard technique
for that calculation was not developed until the
second half of the eighteenth century, even
though several astronomical processes, including procedures based on the movement of the
moon, were previously known for determining
the coordinate. In observations made by some
of these astronomical processes, however, even
as practiced by navigators of great skill, errors
of up to 20 or more are common. The rules
that indicate those constants (constituting the
so-called "rule of the north") were also often
represented in "wheels" (not with altitudes, but
by indicating the correct numbers of the eight

38

CIRCA 1492

36

3,5 ,

35>5

37/5

40,5

39,5

42,5
42

fig. i. "Polaris Wheel'' based in Valentim

Fernandes, Reportorio dos Tempos (1518)

rules). In an analysis to which Pedro Nunes

(who was appointed cosmographer-major of Portugal in 1547) submitted this rule, he wrote that
the regulatory numbers varied with the latitude. While this is true, Nunes did not calculate
this variation. Had he done so, he would have
found that within the latitudes of 45 north and
45 south (limits that the navigators of the
fifteenth century rarely exceeded and frequently
did not reach), the variation was insignificant,
particularly in view of the much greater and
inevitable errors of observation on shipboard.
The three early phases of navigation, leading
to the measurement of latitude by solar observation, probably began around 1455 and concluded in 1485. It was in the latter year that the
groundwork was laid for determining latitude
by means of the sun, as can be seen in a note in
the margin of a book that was said to belong to
Christopher Columbus. This note was written
in an impersonal manner, and today serious
doubts have been expressed as to whether it was
actually written by Columbus, but the information is consistent with other sources and should
be accepted.
The southward progress of the Portuguese
voyages made it necessary to find a replacement
for the polestar, for when ships began to approach the equator, it became impossible to
observe the polestar. While navigators evidently
tried to use other stars for their observations,
they clearly preferred the polestar, for they
tried unsuccessfully to find a star that fulfilled
an equivalent role in the southern hemisphere;
this is clear from a letter to the Portuguese king
Dom Manuel n written in Brazil on i May 1500
by Mestre Joao, a member of Pedro Alvares
Cabral's fleet.
The solution was at hand in astrological
writings. Since at least the ninth century, astrologers had rules for determining latitude

based on the altitude (or zenithal distances) of

the sun at its meridian transit (the moment
when it reaches its highest point in the sky).
These frequently appeared in treatises dealing
with the use of the astrolabe (less frequently,
the quadrant), but they were generally incomplete. The authors lived in latitudes north of
the Tropic of Cancer and were interested only in
rules of observation that applied to their own
situations. They did not consider the case of an
observer situated between the tropics and the
equator, or observing the sun to the north of his
zenith. These cases were of interest to the
maritime navigators, and so it was necessary to
enlarge upon the traditional rules and then try
them out in practice. For this reason, Dom Joao
n, as we know from a letter that is still generally attributed to Columbus, decided to send his
physician Mestre Jose (doubtless the Jewish
scholar Jose Vizinho) to Guinea to observe the
altitude of the sun and thus verify in practice
the effectiveness of the rules that he himself
had established. One of these "rules of the
sun" survives in its entirety; it is found in the
Livros del Saber de Astronomia (Books of Knowledge of Astronomy), which also contains a
second incomplete version.
Unlike the stars, whose altitudes remain fixed
throughout the year, the declination of the sun
changes from day to day. To find their latitude
on the basis of solar observations, therefore,
navigators needed to know the sun's declination
on the day in question. Abraham Zacuto, a
Jewish astronomer, had prepared a set of solar
tables before he left Spain in 1492. In Portugal
Zacuto's tables were put into use while he was
still living in Spain; they were published in
Latin in 1496 at Leiria after he had arrived in
Portugal. The determination of the declination
of a celestial object using this work was a task
which presented some difficulties. In the first
place, the book includes monthly tables for
four consecutive years, which it calls a complete
revolution of the sun. In one of these tables
one could read the "place of the sun" in the
determined number of degrees, minutes, and
seconds covered from the sun's entrance into a
given zodaical sign. The place tables of Zacuto
were calculated for the period 1473-1476 (1472
was said to be its "root year"); for dates later
than 1476 it was necessary to add i' 46" to the
value given in the tables for each complete
revolution beyond that period of four years.
This reflects the fact that the true tropical year
did not coincide with the average year of 365
days and 6 hours of the Julian Calendar then in
use, with the result that the sun advanced and
the value of the coordinate would have to be
corrected, once the correct place was obtained;
reference was made therefore to a fifth table,

where, based on that coordinate, the solar declination was read. But this table of Zacuto referred only to entire degrees of ''places/' which
he subjected to mathematical operations that,
given the ignorance of adequate logarithms at
that time, were complex and certainly beyond
the understanding of a pilot.
Therefore, mathematicians already able to
undertake such calculations were commissioned
to provide tables with solar declinations for the
use of pilots at sea. At first they were prepared
roughly and for only one year at a time (only
one of these tables is known). Later they were
prepared for four-year periods, that is, for complete revolutions of the sun, and with greater
accuracy. Such quadrennial tables of solar declinations existed in the fifteenth century, of
which some remains are found in the Livro de
Marinharia (Book of Seamanship) by Andre
Pires, which includes a series of tables covering
the period 1497 to 1500. These must have been
used by Vasco da Gama's pilots. It is not known
who calculated these tables, but Caspar Correia
suggests in the Lendas da India (Legends of

India] that it was Abraham Zacuto himself.

The most famous and most widely disseminated quadrennial tables of solar declinations
cover the period 1517 to 1520. These were
published (with printing errors) in the so-called
Guia Nautico de Evora (Nautical Guide of
Evora), and later copied many times. It is
known that Caspar Nicolas calculated them,
because Valentim Fernandes so states in his
1518 edition of the Repertorio dos Tempos
(Repertory of the Times), which contains a
transcription of the tables. Caspar Nicolas was
the author of the first treatise on arithmetic
published in Portugal, in 1519.
* X * **

This historical summary of the development of

the art of navigation during the second half
of the fifteenth century leads us well into the
realm of modern navigation. This progress was
widely recognized as such throughout Europe.
Indeed, at least since the beginning of the
sixteenth century, it was recognized within
nautical circles in Lisbon that it would be useful

to combine rules to be used by mariners with

the Portuguese version of Sacrobosco's treatise
Da Esfera, to shed some light on elementary
cosmography. At least two known publications
did just this, the second constituting an improvement on the first. These pamphlets, each
known from a unique copy, are today called
Guia Nautico de Munique (Nautical Guide of
Munich) (ist edition, copy in the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich) and the Guia Nautico
de Evora (znd edition, Biblioteca Publica e
Arquivo Distrital de Evora); some believe that
the Munich edition is in fact a reprint. It is
certainly surprising that this pamphlet, which
does not bear a date but can be dated to 1509,
presents only a one-year solar table, when
better quadrennial tables with the declinations
of the sun had already been calculated. The
material in these Portuguese pamphlets was
translated or adapted into Spanish, French,
Italian, English, Flemish, and German. The
knowledge they contained was recognized as
new and was widely disseminated.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

39

SPAIN IN THE AGE OF EXPLORATION: CROSSROADS

OF ARTISTIC CULTURES
Jonathan Brown

sabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon,

the Catholic Monarchs, are best remembered
today as the sponsors of Christopher Columbus'
daring enterprise of 1492.l However, they loom
even larger in world history as the founders of a
Spanish empire whose territories were to encircle the globe. In keeping with this potent historical role, Isabella and Ferdinand are given
credit for opening the way to the golden age of
art that was soon to dawn over their Spanish
realms. Indeed, a special term arte or estilo
Isabelhas become a conventional way to
describe Spanish art of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries.2 However, although
Isabella was a major patron (Ferdinand was a
negligible figure in the arts), she was only one
player in the drama of Spanish art during this
crucial phase of its development.
The practice of naming artistic styles after
reigning monarchs first seems to have been
applied to French art of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, when much artistic production was centered in the royal workshops.
This form of systematic patronage, a byproduct
of the absolute monarchy established by Louis
xiv, could not be achieved by the less powerful
monarchs of the late medieval and Renaissance
period who bartered with their subjects for
power. Thus in Spain, as elsewhere in fifteenthcentury Europe, uniformity was the exception
in art as in politics. The artistic mixture in the
Isabelline period, moreover, was exceptionally
rich, reflecting three influences: a late Gothic
style from Germany and the lowlands, a classicizing style from Italy, and an Islamic style from
the Muslim (mudejar) and morisco (Muslim
converts to Catholicism) populations of the
Iberian Peninsula. Often coexisting in the same
monuments, these stylistic traditions were utilized in the creation of complex, idiosyncratic
works of art.
The late Gothic style characterizes the
patronage of Isabella, although it was by no
means unique to her. In fact, Isabella's patronage might be called "adoptive/ in the sense that
she appropriated a fully developed model and
applied it to her own ends. During the fifteenth
century the crown of Castile had rested upon
the indecisive heads of the Trastamara dynasty,

whose members were manipulated by ambitious

noblemen eager to expand their wealth and
influence at the expense of the king. A singular
expression of the rising power of these aristocrats is the group of sumptuous funerary
chapels they constructed to proclaim their fame,
perpetuate their memory, and promote the
redemption of their souls. Two important
chapels exemplify the phenomenon and set a
standard for what might be called conspicuous
salvation.
One of these is the chapel of Alvaro de Luna
in the Toledo cathedral.3 Luna, like many of his
powerful peers, was a recent arrival to the ranks
of the nobility. In 1420 he became the favorite
of the father of Isabella, Juan n, who ruled from
1419 to 1454, during much of which time Luna
actually held the reins of power. However, he
finally reached too far and fell victim to a rival
faction, which persuaded the king to order his
execution in 1453.
Luna may have died in disgrace, but he was
buried in splendor. At the height of his career
he had appropriated three chapels in the
cathedral of Toledo, the primatial see of Spain,
which he converted into a large-scale family
funerary monument. The work began in 1430,
but was partly destroyed a decade later when
the populace rose up against Luna and vented its
wrath on this symbol of his glory (proof that its
intended meaning was widely understood). By
1448 the monument was rising again with the
participation of an architect newly arrived from
the north, Hannequin of Brussels, who designed
one of the earliest examples of flamboyant tracery in Spain in the spaces above the cornice.4
The present tombs, the originals of which were
destroyed in the uprising of 1440, were not
completed until 1489. By its sheer size and rich
ornamentation the Luna chapel established the
criteria for new-rich opulence and, as such, was
bound to inspire competition.
The undoubted winners in the race for
earthly glory were Pedro Fernandez de Velasco,
who bore the title of constable of Castile, and
his wife, Mencia de Mendoza. Around 1482 the
constables took possession of a chapel in the
Burgos cathedral and commenced the construction of a sizable edifice known as the Capilla del

fig. i. Chapel of the Count of Luna. Toledo

Cathedral

Condestable.5 The architect was Simon de Colonia (Simon of Cologne), whose father, Juan, had
come from Germany in the 1440$ and been
appointed master of works of the cathedral. Juan
introduced a German late-Gothic style into the
region, which was perpetuated by his family
workshop well into the sixteenth century. The
interior of the constable's chapel is an unabashed exercise in aristocratic ostentation.
Flanking the altarpiece (which was executed,
after the constable's death, between 1522 and
1532) are the coats of arms of husband and wife,
repeated twice on a mammoth scale to remove
every doubt about the identity and importance
of those interred within the marble tombs at the
foot of the altarpiece. Outsize family escutcheons are also displayed on the exterior of the
chapel. The Velasco, like certain egocentric
American billionaires of the 19805, spared no
expense in trumpeting their wealth and position
of power over lesser mortals.
Rich chapels required rich furnishings, and
here again the constables were equal to the
occasion. They acquired numerous devotional

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

41

fig. 2. Capilla del Condestable. Burgos Cathedral

paintings, which were displayed in the sacristy,

and also donated dozens of liturgical vessels
made of gold and silver and decorated with precious stones. Most of these have vanished over
the centuries, their high intrinsic value having
tempted impecunious institutions and unprincipled individuals. But while intact the chapel
constituted a brilliant display of the family's
power.
These late Gothic chapels were the principal
models available to Queen Isabella when she
began her career as a patron of the arts, and
would determine her involvement with the arts
of architecture and sculpture. The goals of royal
patronage were manifold. Isabella and Ferdinand needed to assert their hegemony over the
nobles, and of course they were equally concerned with displaying their zeal as defenders of
the Christian faith. They were also preoccupied
with an issue that was especially charged during
this period dynastic legitimacy and continuity. A final desire was to signal the dominant
presence of the monarchy throughout the kingdom. All these elements were conjoined in
42

CIRCA 1492

fig. 3. Gil de Siloe, Tomb of Juan n and Isabella of Portugal. Cartuja de

Miraflores, Burgos

what was to become the characteristic Isabelline

foundation, the funerary chapel, examples of
which were built in the prevailing Gothic idiom
by the same artists already employed on important projects for patrons in the nobility.
The earliest of the queen's commissions was
the church of the Carthusian monastery of
Miraflores, on the outskirts of Burgos.6 Miraflores was founded in 1442 by her father, who
had intended to be interred at the site, but he
died before much work had been done. After
assuming the crown of Castile in 1474, Isabella
at once turned her attention to Miraflores,
undoubtedly with the idea of shoring up her
claim to legitimacy as a monarch as well as honoring the memory of her parents. Establishing
what would become her usual pattern, she
sought out the leading local masters to complete
the building and to provide the tombs and the
adjacent altarpiece. Thus Simon de Colonia
became the architect in succession to his father
and brought the building to completion in 1488,
even while still engaged in finishing the Capilla
del Condestable in the cathedral.

Colonia's severe design, a prerequisite of

churches built for the Carthusian order, makes
an effective foil for the extravagant sculptural
ensemble in the major chapel, where Juan n and
Isabella of Portugal are buried in a freestanding
tomb that is complemented by the wall tomb
of the queen's brother, Alfonso.7 These tombs,
completed in 1493 and carved in alabaster, are
the work of Gil de Siloe, who also designed the
altarpiece, executed in polychromed wood and
finished in 1499.8 Like Simon de Colonia he was
employed by the Burgos cathedral and thus was
on hand when Isabella required the services of a
sculptor for the monastery.
The tombs and the altarpiece are among the
masterpieces of late Gothic sculpture and constitute a worthy reply to the Capilla del Condestable. Gil de Siloe's aesthetic is akin to a
medieval goldsmith's and depends on the accretion of finely wrought details to produce the
sensation of overwhelming magnificence. Splendor, achieved by intricate surface effects, is the
byword of the Isabelline period, and here it is
proclaimed loud and clear.

The next significant architectural project

sponsored by the queen was again prompted by
a mixture of religious, political, and dynastic
considerations. This is the chapel of San Juan de
los Reyes in Toledo, which was founded in the
first instance to commemorate the victory at
Toro in 1476.9 San Juan, however, was also
intended to serve another purpose, the funerary
chapel of the Catholic Monarchs. Therefore
every effort was made to endow the edifice with
grandeur and majesty.
As at Miraflores, Isabella once more chose an
architect and a sculptor employed by the nearby
cathedral. Juan Guas, the designer, and Egas
Coeman, the sculptor, were both connected to
Mannequin of Brussels, who had become master
of works at the Toledo cathedral following his
participation in the reconstruction of the Luna
chapel. Coeman was Mannequin's brother and
Guas, a native of Brittany, had begun his career

as a member of Mannequin's team of sculptors.

San Juan, which was substantially complete
by 1496, was never to fulfill its destiny as the
royal funerary chapel. After the conquest of
Granada in 1492, Isabella changed her mind and
decided to be buried in the city where the
reconquest of Spain from Islam reached its glorious conclusion. Isabella then dedicated San
Juan to the service of the Franciscans and
installed the order there. However, by that time
the seal of royal patronage had been stamped
everywhere on this building. A dedicatory
inscription in stately Gothic lettering runs
along the cornice of the nave and proclaims the
glory of "Ferdinand and Isabella, king and
queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon and Sicily, who,
through blessed matrimony, united the said
realms/' The program reaches a resounding
climax on the walls of the transept, where the
royal shield, held in the talons of an eagle

fig. 4. Gil de Siloe, Altarpiece. Cartuja de Miraflores, Burgos

(symbol of Saint John the Evangelist), is repeated five times on each side in monumental
high relief, heralding the royal presence in this
key city of Castile.
The final building project of the monarchs
was their ultimate place of burial, the royal
chapel of Granada.10 By a royal decree of 13 September 1504, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered
that their remains be interred in the city that,
according to Ferdinand's testament, was "conquered and taken from the power and subjugation of the faithless Moors, enemies of our holy
Catholic faith." The queen died two months
later (26 November 1504), but the work proceeded as if she had been alive to direct it. The
architect, Enrique Egas, was the nephew of Mannequin of Brussels and the son of Egas Coeman.
He had also worked with Juan Guas at San Juan
de los Reyes and became his successor as master
of the works at the cathedral at Toledo. Conse-

fig. 5. Interior. San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

43

quently his design for the chapel follows the

norms of the Toledan late Gothic favored by the
queen. Construction began in 1506 and terminated in 1519, by which time the emperor
Charles v, grandson of the Catholic Monarchs,
had ascended the throne of Spain. He was
decidedly unimpressed by what he saw, dryly
characterizing the chapel as a "meager sepulcher for the glory of my grandparents/'11 His
remark reflects the major change in artistic taste
from Gothic to Renaissance that began in the
early sixteenth century, and his orders to adorn
the chapel paid little heed to the existing style.
Although Isabella was to die without seeing
her final resting place, she was concerned from
the start that it be suitably decorated with
impressive liturgical objects and devotional
paintings. Ferdinand respected her wishes and,
in due course, transferred numerous objects to
the royal chapel. These objects came from the
extraordinary art collection that the queen had
accumulated during the thirty years of her
reign, a collection that was one of the most
important in Europe at the time.
Isabella's collection comprised four parts:
illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, paintings,
and decorative objects including gems and
jewelry.12 Although only a small percentage of
the collection has escaped destruction and
depredation, numerous inventories evoke the
impressive size and extent of her holdings.
In assessing the queen's collection it may
seem perverse to focus initially on its size and
not on its contents. By modern criteria, which
are highly selective and emphasize exemplary
works, a large collection is not necessarily a
great collection. But in Isabella's period, art was
a means to display magnificence, the unmistakable hallmark of powerful rulers. It was also
a time when the intrinsic value of objects
precious metals, rare gemstones, expensive
cloths counted at least as much as exquisite
craftsmanship or artistry. Thus Isabella owned
impressive quantities of gold and silver objects
and tapestries which, to her contemporaries,
would have overshadowed her nonetheless significant collection of paintings.
Isabella's taste in tapestries, paintings, and
illuminated manuscripts, as in architecture and
sculpture, leaned heavily toward the Netherlands. The important commercial ties between
Castilian sheepherders and Flemish cloth manufacturers furnished the perfect conduit for
works of art, especially tapestries.13 Isabella may
have owned as many as 370 of them, a truly
enormous collection for the time. She acquired
some of them from merchants involved in the
cloth trade.14
The importance of this sizable accumulation
is difficult to overestimate. In this period
44

CIRCA 1492

tapestries were the most esteemed and valued

medium of the pictorial arts, far surpassing
paintings as treasured objects. Collectors
admired not only the intricate workmanship but
also the sumptuous effect produced by what
were actually portable mural decorations capable
of transforming even the humblest surroundings into appropriate settings for royal majesty.
For an itinerant court tapestries were an indispensable component of political stagecraft.
Unfortunately their inherent fragility made
them susceptible to damage, and all but a few
panels of this enormous collection have
disappeared (see cat. 33).
The illuminated manuscripts have fared
somewhat better, although again only a small
portion of the original holding survives.
Isabella, who had a serious interest in languages
and learning, amassed a library of some 393
books and manuscripts, mostly kept in the Alcazar of Segovia.15 The majority were religious
texts, but there were several grammars as well
as romances, chronicles, histories, and juridical
treatises. Her small but choice collection of illuminated manuscripts featured several exquisite
examples from Flemish workshops, notably, in
addition to the manuscript from Cleveland in
this catalogue (cat. 34), the Book of Hours of
Isabella of Castile (Biblioteca de Palacio,
Madrid) and the Breviary of Isabella of Castile
(British Library, London), the latter being one
of the richest manuscripts produced in the late
fifteenth century. In addition the queen patronized Spanish miniature painters such as Juan
de Tordesillas, who illuminated the text of the
Missal of Isabella the Catholic (Capilla Real,
Granada). The royal account books list a
number of illuminators, both Spanish and foreign, who illustrated books for the library.
The northward bias of the queen's taste
naturally extended to the art of painting.
During the middle years of the fifteenth century Castile virtually had become an artistic
province of Flanders. As early as 1428-1429,
Jan van Eyck, renowned as the artist who had
renewed late Gothic painting in the lowlands,
had visited the Iberian Peninsula and been
received by Juan n. Copies after his works are
known to have existed in Spanish collections of
the period. Thereafter each new wave of Flemish painters found markets and imitators in
Castile, giving rise to the distinctive adaptive
style known as Hispano-Flemish.
Isabella inherited several important works by
northern masters and avidly acquired others,
and these composed the majority of her collection of more than two hundred paintings. Fate
has been somewhat kinder to them. A representative sample is preserved in the royal
chapel, Granada, where some were sent in

response to a stipulation in the queen's last will

and others later by her family.16 Paintings by or
attributed to Rogier van der Weyden, Hans
Memling, and Dirk Bouts attest to Isabella's
refined taste in Flemish painting.
Such was her admiration of this art that she
hired two excellent Flemish masters to work at
her court. In 1492 Michel Sittow, a native of
Estonia trained in the Ghent-Bruges school, was
appointed court painter at the elevated salary
of fifty thousand maravedis, which placed him
fifth on the pay scale of all court servants.17
Sittow had an excellent reputation as a portraitist, a skill apparently lacking among his Spanish
contemporaries. The survival rate of his portraits is fairly low, but the few extant works bespeak his excellence in the genre.
Four years later Sittow was joined by an artist
known as Juan de Flandes, who was also a product of the Ghent-Bruges school.18 A painter of
exquisite sensibility, he collaborated with Sittow
on what has become the best-known work of
the Isabelline period, the so-called Polyptich
Altarpiece of Queen Isabella (cats. 43-46). This
ensemble was left unfinished at Isabella's death,
at which time it consisted of forty-seven small
panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ
and the Virgin. Sittow is thought to be the
author of some of the extant panels, including
the Assumption of the Virgin (cat. 45), a work
of great refinement and delicacy. Juan de
Flandes, who did the major share of the work, is
no less an artist, even surpassing his colleague
in the creation of limpid light effects that wash
gently over the landscape.
Sittow and Juan de Flandes ceased to work
for the Spanish court after the death of Isabella,
further proof that she was the driving force
behind the monarchs' artistic policy. While
Sittow returned to the north, Flandes decided to
remain in Castile and worked for a succession of
ecclesiastical patrons until his death in 1519.
Sittow and Flandes were undoubtedly the
most refined painters in Isabelline Spain, but
their activities account for only a tiny part of
the pictorial production of the period, most of
which was in the hands of Spanish artists. The
demand for paintings from the ecclesiastical
sector was far greater than from the court, and
this demand was satisfied by practitioners of
the Hispano-Flemish style.19 These masters have
fallen into oblivion, in large measure because
the quality of their work pales compared to
their models, the masters of fifteenth-century
Flanders. The problem is further complicated
because the most successful of these painters
tended to take an artisanal approach to their
practice, establishing workshops that absorbed
their personal identities.
The problems in assessing these artists are

exemplified in the work of Fernando Gallego, a

painter from Salamanca who was a leading Castilian painter from about 1475 to around 1507.20
Gallego's stock in trade was the retablo, a large
ensemble of panel paintings set within an architectural framework and erected behind the altar.
Retables lent themselves to corporate execution;
the master designed the compositions and then
delegated much of the execution to his assistants. The collective labor of these works and
the patrons' apparent indifference to the master's personal touch need to be kept in mind,
even if they make a mockery of our concern for
the division of artistic responsibility. This
approach was taken because retables did not
invite or permit close inspection of their constituent parts; the distance between viewer and
object was too great, the illumination too marginal for this sort of studied contemplation.
Thus the painters had to simplify and exaggerate their models in order to ensure a modicum
of legibility for the worshipper. The term legibility is intentional, for these images were
meant to be read: to provide instruction to the
faithful and not to be admired solely as aesthetic objects. With these considerations in
mind Gallego's intentions become obvious. He
set out to remake his sources of inspiration,
which were mainly works by Rogier van der
Weyden, Dirk Bouts, and their followers.
This process can be observed in Gallego's
Pieta, datable perhaps to around 1470, which
can be compared to a version of the composition
by Rogier van der Weyden executed some thirty
years earlier and owned by Isabella of Castile. It
is immediately evident that Gallego was thoroughly indebted to his Flemish model for his
pictorial vocabulary: the bony, angular bodies,
the studied, chiseled drapery, the composition of
foreground figures set against the expansive
landscape all are appropriated from this source.
However, Gallego systematically schematized
Rogier's composition, compressing the space,
exaggerating the expression, and heightening
the linearity of the Virgin's drapery. The colors
are also transposed into a different key, with
tawny yellows and dusky tans replacing the rich
reds and lush greens employed by Rogier. Finally, the landscape is altered to conform to
local conditions and building styles. Thus the
delicacy of emotion and execution in Rogier's
work is converted into a sterner, starker image.
Gallego stripped away the adornments of simulated architecture and sculpture and focused
attention on the image of the dead Christ and
his grieving mother.
This hardy, emphatic interpretation of Flemish painting spread into every corner of Castile,
where it remained dominant until the second
decade of the sixteenth century. However, in

fig. 6. Fernando Gallego, Pieta.

Museo del Prado, Madrid

the 1480$ it was enriched by the addition of

Italianate elements introduced in the work of
Pedro Berruguete.21 Berruguete was born at an
unknown date in the agricultural town of
Paredes de Nava, near Palencia, and was trained
in the Hispano-Flemish tradition. It is almost
certain that he traveled to Italy in the 1470$,
although the trip is not recorded. In 1483 he
was employed in the cathedral of Toledo executing a work in fresco, a technique he could only
have learned in Italy. From then until his death
in 1503 he received important commissions in
Toledo and Avila, including three altarpieces in
Santo Tomas, Avila, which was patronized by
Ferdinand and Isabella and was the site of the
tomb of their son, Prince Juan.
Berruguete represents the leading edge of
Italianism in Castilian painting, although he is
clearly a hybrid artist. His experience in Italy
imposed a veneer of Renaissance style on his
panels, but at the core he was faithful to his
Hispano-Flemish origins. In the splendid series
of portraitlike biblical prophets executed for an
altarpiece in his native Paredes de Nava (cat.
46), Berruguete aligned himself with the vigorous realism of northern European art.
Throughout much of the fifteenth century,
Castilian artists and patrons were little
informed or inspired by the renascent classicism
and innovative naturalism of Florentine art,
which came into being as a response to the ideas
of Italian humanism. The lack of interest in

Italian art at the Spanish court is particularly

baffling because the queen did patronize Italian
scholars, notably Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who
was brought to Castile from Milan to establish
a school of humanistic studies. Yet Isabella
remained faithful to her northern artists until
her dying day.
However, toward the end of her reign and
especially during the regency of Ferdinand
(which ended with his death in 1516), the Italian
Renaissance style began to make itself felt in
Spain. Some of the principal sponsors of this
importation were members of an important
noble family, the Mendoza, who deserve to be
counted among the great European art patrons
of the fifteenth century.
The Mendoza family originated in the province of Alava and came to prominence in Castilian politics after around 1400.22 A few years
earlier they had been granted privileges in Guadalajara, which became the family seat and the
locus of some of their most important artistic
enterprises. They negotiated their way through
the turbulent politics of fifteenth-century Castile with shrewdness and agility, culminating in
somewhat tardy but nonetheless effective support of Ferdinand and Isabella. Under the rule
of the Catholic Monarchs they enjoyed royal
favor and grew exceedingly rich and powerful.
The rise of the Mendoza to political prominence was attended by their increasing presence
in the world of arts and letters. Inigo Lopez de

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

45

Mendoza, first marquis of Santillana (13981458), is renowned as one of the important

Spanish poets. He initiated a family literary
tradition that reached its pinnacle in Garcilaso
de la Vega (1501-1536), the first important
Italianate poet in Castile.
As patrons of the visual arts the Mendoza
were even more conspicuous. Much of their
patronage was centered in Guadalajara, where
they sponsored building projects that dominated
the city and its surrounding territory. Of these
the most important is the Palacio del Infantado,
built for Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, the second
duke of Infantado (d. 1500).
In its original state the Palacio del Infantado
was a building of unstinting magnificence.23
(The structure was extensively remodeled in the
later sixteenth century, and then gradually fell
into disrepair. It was seriously damaged in the
Spanish Civil War and has since been reconstructed.) With a prodigality accessible only to
the very rich, the duke decided to demolish the
existing palace and build anew. A lapidary
inscription in the courtyard explains his purpose. "The illustrious Senor don Inigo Lopez de
Mendoza [his several titles follow] in 1483,
having [inherited] a sumptuous house, built at
great expense by his ancestors, destroyed it
entirely, and to increase the glory of his forebears and of himself, ordered a new one built to
honor the greatness of his line/' The palace was
completed thirteen years later.
Infantado was unencumbered by modesty,
and in his palace he left no stone undecorated.
The architect was Juan Guas, who designed the
facade in the manner of a conventional late
Gothic townhouse,24 but turned the courtyard
into a decorative fantasy emblazoned with the
escutcheons of the duke and his wife, Maria de
Luna. Richer still were the principal rooms,
adorned with carvings and crowned by intricate
gilt ceilings in the Moorish style (artesonado).
As the construction documents show, numerous artisans of Muslim origin participated in
the decoration, executing ceramic tilework,
fountains, and decorative carvings. The exotic
blend of Hispano-Flemish Gothic and Islamic
elements was in fact a commonplace in Castilian
architecture. Christian patrons were understandably impressed by the inventive designs
and superb craftsmanship of Islamic architecture, which were perfectly suited to enhance
the intricate surface effects considered indispensable to the expression of magnificence.
This architecture of ostentation reached new
heights in the Infantado Palace.
Infantado, in this display of visual magnificence in the service of the glory of the Mendoza, seems to have been rivaled by his brother,
Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, cardinal of Santa
46

CIRCA 1492

Croce and archbishop of Toledo (1428-1495).25

Although the youngest of the ten children of
the marquis and marchioness of Santillana, Cardinal Mendoza became the head of the family
and with true dynastic instinct provided money
and position for the numerous members of his
clan as well as for his three illegitimate sons.
Mendoza owed his fortune not so much to
inheritance as to political acumen. At just the
right moment he threw his support to Ferdinand and Isabella and was rewarded with a
series of dignities, culminating with the archbishopric of Toledo, the richest see in Spain.
Part of the wealth derived by Cardinal Mendoza from ecclesiastical rents was spent on art.
He appears to have been a voracious collector,
although only the inventory of his precious
objects has come to light.26 The line between art
and investment was almost entirely eradicated
in this part of the cardinal's collection. The
inventory lists some 3,844 coins and medals,
sixty-one cameos, and precious stones almost
beyond measure. At his death he owned more
than nine thousand pearls, not to mention
impressive quantities of gems and gold- and
silversmith's work.
His sponsorship of architecture is more difficult to assess, although much has been claimed
for it.27 Cardinal Mendoza had a superficial
knowledge of central Italian architecture, probably obtained from his nephew, the second
count of Tendilla. As his architect the cardinal
employed Lorenzo Vazquez, who was versed in
the ornamental vocabulary of the new classicism
but almost completely ignorant of its syntax.
The only important remains of their collaboration, the central panel of the facade of the Colegio de Santa Cruz, Valladolid (1486-1492),
was altered in the eighteenth century and in
any case was superimposed on an existing
Gothic structure. The entrance portal affords a
good idea of how Vazquez spoke the language of
the Renaissance with a thick Gothic accent. Cardinal Mendoza, then, is at best a transitional
figure in the introduction of the Italian Renaissance to Spain.
The true protagonist of this momentous story
is the aforementioned second count of Tendilla
(1442-1515) who, as if to confound historians,
was one of at least a dozen members of the family to be called Inigo Lopez de Mendoza.28 Even
to his contemporaries Tendilla was the perfect
gentlemanwise, witty, brave, and cultured. In
1458 he accompanied his father to Rome on an
embassy to Pope Pius n, and the experience left
him a devoted admirer of Italian art and culture.
He returned to Italy in 1486 as an emissary of
Ferdinand to Pope Innocent vm, stopping first
in Florence where he initiated a friendship with
Lorenzo de' Medici. Then he traveled to Rome

and successfully completed his mission. Tendilla returned for good to Spain once his work
was done, but managed to keep informed about
artistic developments in his beloved Italy.
Tendilla's sponsorship of Renaissance style is
associated with a group of funerary monuments
for his own and the royal family, which were
executed in Italy and assembled in Spain. The
first of these is the tomb of Cardinal Mendoza,
which was erected in the major chapel of the
Toledo cathedral in 15O3.29 The history of this
monument, much but not all of which was made
in Italy, is beset with problems that becloud
the identity of both the sculptor and patron,
although the latter in all probability was either
Tendilla or the cardinal's son Rodrigo, marquis
del Cenete (c. 1466-1523).
A second Mendoza tomb clarifies the pattern
of Tendilla's patronage. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the cardinal of Seville who died in 1502,
had nominated Tendilla, his brother, to provide
a suitable funerary monument in the cathedral.
For this purpose the count contracted with the
Tuscan sculptor Domenico di Alessandro Fancelli (1469-1519) to carve the tomb of Carrara
marble in Italy and then send it to Spain where
he assembled it.30 This was soon to become
established procedure. It explains how a firstclass work of Italian sculpture came to be situated in the cavernous Gothic setting of the
Seville cathedral.
Presumably with Tendilla's backing Fancelli
obtained a new and even more prestigious commission, the tomb of Prince Juan, the only son
of Ferdinand and Isabella, who had died suddenly in 1497 just months after his marriage to
Margaret of Austria. In July 1511 the sculptor
was in Granada for consultations with Tendilla,
after which he returned to Italy to carve the
tomb. The work was finished by December 1512
and was shipped to Avila for installation by the
sculptor in Santo Tomas the following year.
Prince Juan's tomb is a horizontal monument
executed in Carrara marble and modeled on the
bronze tomb of Pope Sixtus iv, which had been
executed by Antonio Pollaiuolo for the basilica
of Saint Peter's in Rome.
The procedure was repeated a third and final
time for the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella,
which were commissioned in 1513. Fancelli
returned to Carrara and worked on the tombs
until the spring of 1517. He then packed up his
sculptures and sent them along to the Royal
Chapel, Granada, supervising their placement
in the summer of 1518. The indefatigable
sculptor was given yet another set of tombs
to execute those of Philip the Fair and Joanna
the Madbut the hardships of his career as a
commuter-sculptor finally took their toll. He
died in Zaragoza in 1519, en route to his native

fig. 7. Salon de Linajes. Palacio de Infantado, Guadalajara

Italy. As far as is known the tomb sculptor par

excellence was buried in an unmarked grave.
The arrival or outbreak as it has suggestively been called of the Renaissance in Spain
is an extraordinary phenomenon. In central
Italy the Renaissance evolved over time from a
body of theoretical concepts; in Spain the Renaissance arrived in wooden crates. And not
only tombs but entire architectural ensembles
were sent, the most notable of which is the
magnificent courtyard of the Castle of la Calahorra, ordered by Cardinal Mendoza's son
Rodrigo and largely executed by the Genoese
workshop of Michele Carlone between 1509 and
1512.31 Such works must have seemed like
extraterrestrial beings to the artists and patrons
of Spain, who slowly and only with difficulty
began to assimilate their novelty.
Yet these new arrivals from Renaissance Italy
had to be given a home, and home was a Gothic
structure with Gothic furnishings. This phenomenon is by no means unique to Spain. The
Genoese workshop of Pace Gagini, which also
fabricated Renaissance tombs for Spanish clients, produced, for instance, the double sepulcher of Raoul de Lannoy and Jeanne de Poix
(1508-1509), which was installed in a Gothic
niche in the parish church of Folleville in Picardy.32 A more renowned example is Pietro Torrigiano's tomb of Henry vn and Elizabeth of York
(i5i2-i5i9),33 which is set in the Lady Chapel of
Westminster Abbey, famous for its extravagant
fan vaults.
In Spain, however, a third ingredient was
added to the brew, the Islamic style, resulting in
creations of awe-inspiring heterogeneity. The
best-known examples of these hybrid combinations are found in the Toledo cathedral and are
associated with the name of Cardinal Mendoza's

fig. 8. Domenico Fancelli, Tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella. Capilla Real, Granada

successor, Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros (c.

1436-1517),34 Cisneros' ascent to power in the
religious and political life of Castile was secured
in 1492, when he became the queen's confessor.
By then Cisneros, who had entered the Franciscan order in 1464, had acquired a considerable
reputation for austerity and devotion and
become a leading advocate for the reform of
Spanish monasticism. However, following
his elevation to the see of Toledo in 1495, he
became increasingly enmeshed in the affairs of
state. He twice served as regent of Castile (Ferdinand could not inherit the crown of Castile)
and personally led a military campaign against
the Muslims in Oran, Morocco, in 1509.
Historians are currently debating the legitimacy of a special term estilo Cisneros that
was coined to describe the cardinal's artistic
patronage (see cat. 35).35 He sponsored several
important buildings in Alcala de Henares,
including its famous university as well as the
Franciscan convent and church of San Juan de la
Penitencia in Toledo. Most of these works combine Hispano-Flemish Gothic with Islamic elements, and this has been taken to be the
hallmark of the style Cisneros preferred. Yet
there is nothing distinctive about this aspect of
his patronage; he simply appropriated the prevailing aristocratic fashion (as in the Infantado
palace) and adapted it to ecclesiastical foundations. This said, it would be a mistake to dismiss
Cisneros as a mere imitator of the secular elite.
As his taste and his career developed he came to
feel increasingly comfortable with the exercise
of power and with the employment of the Italian Renaissance style as the appropriate way of
emphasizing his position.
Cisneros' first significant project was the
monumental high altar of the Toledo cathe-

dral.36 In 1498 a design competition was won by

an otherwise unknown French master called
Peti Juan, who produced a standard if elaborate
late-Gothic plan. Most of the carving was done
by established local masters of northern origin.
Yet even as this Gothic extravaganza was taking
shape, Cardinal Mendoza's Renaissance tomb
was being erected right in front of it, much to
Cisneros' displeasure. As one of Mendoza's
executors he proposed substituting a tomb of
Gothic design for the Renaissance creation, but
was overruled by the queen. Thus to this day
Mendoza's Italianate effigy gazes on the lacy
pinnacles and spiky gables of Peti Juan's
altarpiece.
Fortunately Cisneros' taste was not immutable, and little by little he integrated the Italian
Renaissance style into his choices, although not
always abandoning his earlier preferences. From
1508 to 1511 he undertook the renovation of the
chapter room of the cathedral, where Italianate
and Islamic features are improbably but unselfconsciously mixed. The chapter room is a rectangular space with an impressive fresco cycle
by Juan de Borgona, a northern painter who is
first recorded in Toledo as an assistant of Pedro
Berruguete.37 He continued to be employed at
the cathedral until 1504, when in all probability
he traveled to central Italy for a stay of some
three years. Upon his return his style had been
transformed from that of a Burgundian to that
of an Italianate painter, fully in tune with an
artist like Pinturicchio (1454-1513), who worked
in Rome at the time of Borgona's supposed visit.
Borgona's frescoes, with their elaborate, sophisticated perspectives, sculpturesque figures, and
measured compositions, represent a drastic
break with the prevailing Hispano-Flemish
style. Yet the ceiling above them is a typical

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

47

fig. 9. Juan de Borgona, Anteroom of Chapter

Room. Toledo Cathedral

example of artesonado, carved in a geometric

pattern and covered with gilding and bright
colors. The anteroom, executed slightly later, is
another inspired melange of two cultures. The
frescoes, designed by Borgona but executed by
assistants, represent an illusionistic landscape of
fruit trees and flowers populated by fluttering
birds. However, the door leading to the chapter
room is framed by a low-relief Islamic design
carved in plaster (yeseria).
In the final work commissioned by Cisneros
for the cathedral his transformation into a Renaissance prince of the church is complete. This
is the Mozarabic Chapel, so-called because it is
reserved for the celebration of the mass according to the medieval Mozarabic rite. In 1514 Borgona executed three frescoes of the battle of
Oran, in which the saintly prelate Cisneros is
depicted as a victorious military commander.
On the vault Borgona painted the illusion of a
coffered ceiling in correct antique form, making

fig. 10. Juan de Borgona, Mozarabic Chapel. Toledo Cathedral

48

CIRCA 1492

no concession to the Gothic or the Islamic.

By the time of Ferdinand's death in 1516 the
Renaissance style had established a beachhead in
Castile, although a few more decades would pass
before it conquered Spanish art. The triumph of
classicism was secured by Philip n (1.15551598), the great-grandson of Ferdinand and
Isabella, who grasped the potential of harnessing the style to express the formidable power
and faith of his Catholic monarchy. Before the
middle of the sixteenth century, however, Spanish art was caught up in the play of contradictory forces that were shaping the society
itself. As the geographical frontiers of Spain
expanded, its mental world began to turn
inward. In that elastic moment many kinds of
artistic expression, both traditional and innovative, native and imported, were possible. The
resulting heterogeneity makes the period one
of the most fascinating in the history of European art.

NOTES
1. The present discussion is limited to the geographical
region of Castile. A complete survey would encompass the equally rich provinces of Aragon, Valencia,
and Andalusia.
2. The term estilo Isabel was introduced by Emile Bertaux, "I/Art des rois catholiques," in Andre Michel,
Histoire de I'art, vol. 4, part 2 (Paris, 1911), 821852, where it is used to describe the fusion of northern late Gothic and Islamic art, which the author
considered to be the essential characteristic of the
style. It is still employed in this sense by Jose M. de
Azcarate, "Sentido y signification de la arquitectura
hispano-flamenca en la corte de Isabel la Catolica,"
Boletm del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia 37 (1971), 210-233. As will be seen below, I
regard the Islamic element (usually called mudejar
by Spanish art historians, although the religious
convictions of the practitioners are not always easy
to discover) and the northern late Gothic style as
parallel, not convergent phenomena. The art of the
Isabelline period has been little studied in the last
twenty-five years and is badly in need of new thinking and research.
3. For the chapel and tombs, see C. Gonzalez Palencia,
"La capilla de don Alvaro de Luna en la catedral de
Toledo/' Archive Espanol de Arte y Arqueologia 5
(1929), 109-122, and Beatrice G. Proske, Castilian
Sculpture: Gothic to Renaissance (New York, 1951),
181-182.
4. See G. Conrad von Konradsheim, "Mannequin Coemans de Bruxelles, introducteur de Part flamand du
siecle XV dans la region toledane," Melanges de la
Casa de Velazquez 12 (1976), 127-140.
5. For a summary history of the chapel, see Teofilo
Lopez Mata, La catedral de Burgos (Burgos, 1950),
227-255.
6. See Francisco Tarfn y Juaneda, La Real Cartuja de
Miraf lores (Burgos, 1925). I am grateful to Ronda J.
Kasl, who is preparing a doctoral dissertation on
Miraflores, for sharing her information and insights
on the project.
7. See Harold E. Wethey, Gil de Siloe and His School
(Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 24-55.
8. A contemporary document published by Teofilo
Lopez Mata, El barrio y la iglesia de San Esteban de
Burgos (Burgos, 1946), 102-106, refers to a certain
Gil de Urliones as sculptor of the main retable (no
longer extant) of San Esteban, Burgos, and reasonably suggests that he is Gil de Siloe. Although "Urliones" is thought to be a corruption of the French
city Orleans, I believe that it refers to the town of
Lens. The same word is used in the documentation
(1591) of the Hall of Battles, El Escorial, where it
unmistakably refers to this town.
9. See Jose M. de Azcarate, "La obra toledana de Juan
Guas," Archive Espanol de Arte 29 (1956), 11-31.
10. See Antonio Gallego Burin, La Capilla Real de Granada (Granada, 1931), and "Nuevos datos sobre la
Capilla Real de Granada/' Boletm de la Sociedad
Espanola de Ecursiones 57 (1953), 9-16.
11. "Estrecho sepulcro para la gloria de mis abuelos
" Cited by Gallego y Burin 1931, 23.
12. Isabella's collection requires a new study. The
inventory is published by Francisco J. Sanchez
Canton, Libros, tapices y cuadros que colecciono
Isabel la Catolica (Madrid, 1952). However, as is
pointed out by Roger van Schoute, La Chapelle
Royale de Grenade, Les Primitifs Flamands I, 6
(Brussels, 1963), 2-7, Sanchez Canton based his

13.

14.

15.
16.
17.

18.
19.

20.
21.

22.
23.
24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

transcription on faulty copies of the original documentation. I am grateful to Natalia Majluf for assistance on this discussion of the queen's collection.
See Valentin Vazquez de Prada, "Les relations commerciales hispano-flamandes et 1'importation de
tapisseries en Espagne," in Tapisserie de Tournai en
Espagne. La tapisserie bruxelloise en Espagne au
XVIe siecle (Tournai, 1985), 54-87.
This estimate is provided by Juan J. Junquera,
"Le gout espagnol pour la tapisserie," in Tapisserie
de Tournai 1985, 22.
See Sanchez Canton 1952, 17-38.
See Van Schoute 1963.
See Jazeps Trizna, Michel Sittow. Peintre revalais de
I'ecole brugeoise (1468-1525/6) (Brussels, 1976), and
Fernando Marias, El largo siglo xvi (Madrid, 1990),
151-156.
See Juan de Flandes [exh. cat. Museo del Prado]
(Madrid, 1986), and Marias 1990,156-160.
The standard work by Chandler R. Post, A History
of Spanish Painting. Vol. iv, The Hispano-Flemish
Style in Northwestern Spain (Cambridge, Mass.,
1933), is fundamental but out of date.
In addition to Post 1933, 4:87-147, see R. M.
Quinn, Fernando Gallego and the Retablo of Ciudad
Rodrigo (Tucson, 1961).
In addition to Chandler R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting. Vol. ix, part i, The Beginning of the
Renaissance in Castile and Leon (Cambridge, 1947),
17-161, see Marias 1990,171-181. A new monograph on this important painter is long overdue.
See Helen Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350-1550 (New Brunswick, 1979).
See Francisco Layna Serrano, El Palacio del Infantado en Guadalajara (Madrid, 1941).
See Jose M. de Azcarate, "La fachada del Infantado y
el estilo de Juan Guas," Archivo Espanol de Arte 24
(1951), 307-3*9For his biography see Nader 1979,118-123. His
artistic patronage is summarized by Rosario Diez
del Corral Garnica, Arquitectura y mecenazgo. La
imagen de Toledo en el Renacimiento (Madrid,
1987), 19-47.
See Jose M. de Azcarate, "El Cardenal Mendoza y la
introduction del Renacimiento," Santa Cruz 17
(1962), 7-16.
The case for Cardinal Mendoza as protagonist in the
Spanish Renaissance is made by Manuel GomezMoreno, "Hacia Lorenzo Vazquez," Archivo Espanol
de Arte y Arqueologia i (1925), 7-40. For another
vision of the question, see Marias 1990, 254-257.
For his biography see Nader 1979,150179. His role
in the transmission of the Italian Renaissance to
Spain was first signaled by Elias Tormo, "El brote del
Renacimiento en los monumentos espanoles y los
Mendoza del siglo XV," Boletm de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones 25 (1917), 51-65,114-121; 26
(1918), 116-130.
See Rosario Diez del Corral, "Muerte y humanismo:
la tumba del Cardenal don Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza," Academia 64 (1987), 209-227.
The tombs by Fancelli discussed below are described
by Jesus Hernandez Perera, Escultores florentinos en
Espana (Madrid, 1957), 10-11 (Cardinal Hurtado de
Mendoza); 11-12 (Prince Juan); 12-13 (the Catholic
Monarchs). A new study of Fancelli's career would
be welcome.
Miguel Angel Zalama, El Palacio de la Calahorra
(Granada, 1990).

32. See Hanno-Walter Kruft, "Genuesische Skulpturen

der Renaissance in Frankreich," in Evolution Generale et Developpements Regionaux en Histoire de
I'Art, Actes du xxne Congres International d'Histoire de 1'Art (Budapest, 1972), 1:697-704, and "Pace
Gagini and the Sepulchres of the Ribera in Seville,"
in Espana entre el Mediterrdneo y el Atldnticof
Actas del xxm Congreso Internacional de Historia
del Arte (Granada, 1977), 2:327-338.
33. See John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London, 1958), 320-321.
34. There is no recent biography of Cisneros. For a summary of his life and references to the earlier literature, see Diez del Corral Garnica 1987, 4959.
35. For a lucid summary of Cisneros' career as a patron,
see Diez del Corral Garnica 1987, 60-77. Also
important is Miguel Angel Castillo Oreja, "La proyeccion del arte islamico en la arquitectura del
primer renacimiento: el estilo Cisneros," Anales del
Instituto de Estudios Madrilenos 12 (1985), 55-63.
36. See Proske 1951, 202-210.
37. Much remains to be learned about the career of Juan
de Borgona, especially the problematic early years.
See Post 1947,162-234; Diego Angulo Iniguez,
Juan de Borgona (Madrid, 1954); Adele Condorelli,
"II problema di Juan de Borgona," Commentari 11
(1960), 46-59; and Charles Sterling, "Du nouveau
sur Juan De Borgona: son tableau le plus ancien
connu," L'Od/4oi (1988), 24-31.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

49

SCULPTURE IN CASTILE c. 1492

/. /. Martin Gonzalez

JL he Age of Exploration, a great historical

era for the Spanish nation, coincides with a
fascinating period in the history of Spanish art.
The Gothic style, which remained a dominant
influence in Spain right up to the very end of
the fifteenth century, began to lose ground to
the emerging Renaissance manner, which was
imported from Italy. And yet there was also a
marked conservatism on the part of some patrons: Gothic could still be considered "modern," and Renaissance thought of as "ancient"
or "Roman."
The demand for sculpture in the later fifteenth
century was high and fueled both by religious
patrons cardinals, bishops, and cathedral
chapters and by the crown and the powerful
nobility. Much of this sculpture was created by
artists from northern Europe. Importing works
of art from abroad or bringing in foreign sculptors was an obvious sign of the patron's wealth.
Most of the Gothic sculptors were Flemish,
while others came to Spain from Germany. As
Spanish taste shifted to the Renaissance style,
Italian sculptors, or Spanish artists who had
trained in Italy, came to the forefront.
Political and economic power in Spain in this
period centered in the great cities of Burgos,
Toledo, Seville, and Barcelona, which were also
the principal centers of the visual arts. The
selection of Spanish sculpture that has been
assembled in this exhibition (cats. 46-51)
centers on works from Castile, which is also
the focus of this essay. It should, however, be
understood that parallels to the developments
outlined here can be found elsewhere in Spain
at this time and that it is impossible to do justice
to the many different strands of this history in
a brief survey.
Egas Cueman (active c. 1450-1495) and his
brother Hanequin, both from Brussels, brought
the Flemish sculptural style to Toledo.1 Shortly
before 1454 they were commissioned to execute
the choir stalls of the cathedral of Cuenca (now
in the Colegiata of Belmonte), with Hanequin
responsible for the architectural framework and
Egas for the carving. These were the first stalls
to be executed in Spain in the Flemish style.
The Lion's Door of Toledo Cathedral was
built under Hanequin's supervision after 1452.2
The inner part of the door portrays the Tree of
Jesse; the outer part includes works by several

different hands, one of whom can be identified

from documents as Juan Alernan or Juan "el
Aleman (the German)," whose drapery is clearly
in the Germanic style.3
Egas Cueman executed several tombs for the
Monastery of Guadalupe which had been
built under royal patronage including the
magnificent tomb of Alfonso de Velasco and his
wife Isabel de Cuadros, commissioned in 1467.
Egas also participated in the architectural projects of Juan Guas, including the Palace of the
Infantada in Guadalajara of about 1483, the
transept of the church of the Monastery of San
Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, and the screen
around the nave of Toledo Cathedral (1490-1493).
Egas' workshop continued after his death under
the direction of his sons Anton and Enrique.
Sebastian de Toledo has been called the finest
tomb sculptor in Spain in the late fifteenth
century.4 He created the lavish tombs in Toledo
Cathedral for Don Alvaro de Luna and his
wife Dona Juana de Pimentel, countess of Montalban,5 which were commissioned from this
"entallador de imagineria" in 1489. Don Alvaro,
at that time Grand Master to the Order of
Santiago, had endowed a funerary chapel in the
cathedral and had the chapel built to exalt that
Order. A kneeling knight is shown at each
corner of the free-standing tomb.
The great tomb in Sigiienza Cathedral of "El
Doncel de Sigiienza" has been convincingly
attributed to Sebastian de Toledo.6 This masterpiece honors Don Martin Vazquez, known as
"El Doncel," a knight of the Order of Santiago
who died on the battlefield near Granada at the
age of twenty-five. It was inspired by the design
of Egas Cueman, Sebastian's master, for the
tomb of Don Alfonso de Velasco. At El Doncel's
feet is a weeping page holding his helmet. The
young knight is shown leaning on one elbow
and reading a book, a new kind of image inspired by Etruscan and Roman funerary models.7
Rodrigo Aleman of Toledo (active between
1489 and 1512) is celebrated for the series of
choir stalls he carved. Though his surname
suggests Germanic ancestry, he must have come
from the Lower Rhine region, and his style is
clearly Flemish.8 The choir stalls he carved for
Toledo Cathedral between 1487 and 1489 celebrate the Spanish military offensive against
Granada. The program was probably devised by

Cardinal Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo and a

close adviser to the Reyes Catolicos, who actively participated in the campaign. Each scene
portrays a siege or a surrender, although the
compositional variety maintained is remarkable.
Its purpose was propaganda for the crown.
Maestro Rodrigo subsequently worked on the
choir stalls of Plasencia (Caceres), a royal commission awarded in 1497 with the stipulation
that Egas Cueman would first approve the models.9 The stalls are remarkable for the considerable number of secular themes they contain,
some erotic in nature, evidently intended to
represent sins and vices, some of which are
quite amusing.10 The Plasencia stalls show the
influence of the choir stalls of Seville Cathedral
and indicate that Rodrigo had been there. In
1498 Rodrigo contracted to execute the stalls for
the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca),
which were not finished until after 1503. It is
clear that by this time a sculptor's fame could be
quite widespread and that important masters
could travel far from their places of origin in
connection with their work.
The most important sculptural work in Toledo during this period was the retablo mayor,
begun in 1498,n which was the work of a team
of artists. Peti Juan, probably a French carver,
an ensamblador, contributed to the design,
worked on the architectural frame, and probably executed some of the sculptures.12 Rodrigo
Aleman worked on the predella reliefs, while a
certain Diego Copin "de Holanda," clearly of
Dutch origin, together with Sebastian de Almonacid, executed most of the reliefs. The project
even involved Felipe Bigamy from Burgos, a
major Renaissance sculptor who will be discussed later in this essay, who in 1500 was paid
to carve a figure of Saint Mark and to design
historias.
Burgos' fame as an artistic center in this
period rests with the achievements of two families of foreign artists: a German family from
Cologne (Colonia) and the Siloe family from
Flanders. Juan de Colonia, the earliest of these
artists, is supposed to have come to Burgos in
the service of archbishop Alonso de Cartagena
in 1436, when the latter returned from the
Council of Basel. Juan is reported to have been
at work on the towers of Burgos Cathedral in
1442, serving as chief master.13 His Spanish

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

WORLD

5!

wife, Maria Fernendez, bore him a son named

Simon, who also became a gifted architect and
sculptor. Juan de Colonia supervised the building of the towers of the cathedral and the
sculptural program of the west facade. He died
in 1480.
Other works of sculpture executed in Burgos
during this period indicate that there was a
flourishing local school. Archbishop Alonso de
Cartagena died in 1456, and his tomb is an
extravagant example of the florid Gothic style.14
Although the sculptor is unknown, the work
seems to have been executed in Burgos, since
several saints especially venerated in the province of Burgos are included in the program.
Moreover, the numerous tombs from this
period in Burgos Cathedral which differ in
manner and style from those executed by Gil
de Siloe the most important of which is the
tomb of Alonso Rodriguez de Maluenda15
record the presence of masters working outside
his sphere of influence.
Simon de Colonia, Juan's son, was born in
Burgos, and his style developed under the
influence of the sculptors with whom he worked
in Burgos and Toledo. In 1481 he was appointed
chief master of the works at Burgos Cathedral.
He was in charge of building the great Capilla
del Condestable, sponsored by Don Pedro
Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile and
husband of Maria de Mendoza, the daughter of
the marquis of Santillana. The sculptural decoration includes statues at the entrance to the
chapel and, on the walls, wild men holding
coats of arms. The manner of these works is
tranquil, the drapery elegant, though rather
stiff, and the whole suggests the participation
of Simon's workshop.
Simon is also responsible for the facade of the
church of San Pablo in Valladolid, completed in
1500.16 Although the contract no longer exists,
it is referred to in a document dated 1501:
"contrato sobre la portade que se habia de hacer
en el dicho monasterio... entre el obispo de
Palencia Don Alonso de Burgos y Maestre
Ximon, vecino de la dicha ciudad de Burgos. //17
Another document of 1503 indicates that Simon
de Colonia and his son Francisco had carved
several statues for the monastery of San Pablo.
The available documents show that Simon was
in charge of the construction of the facade and
of the inner doors, and we know that it was he
who set up the workshop for the project. There
is no way of determining, however, how much
of the sculpture is directly attributable to him.
It is clear that special care was taken with the
execution of the central relief of the Coronation
of the Virgin, which includes the patron, bishop
Don Alonso de Burgos, portrayed kneeling in
prayer. The facade was constructed like a retablo,
52

CIRCA 1492

and the sculptural decoration was essential to it.

We can better appreciate Simon's style on the
inner doors. The entrance to the funerary chapel
of Don Alonso (in the adjacent Colegio de San
Gregorio) depicts San Ildefonso receiving the
chasuble from the Virgin, with the bishop
shown, as in the facade, kneeling in prayer.
Francisco de Colonia assisted his father in the
works in San Pablo and also executed the high
altar of the church of San Nicolas in Burgos, in
polychromed marble, between 1503 and 1505.
This retablo, with its small-scale figures, is
related in design to the facade of the church of
San Pablo. Its completion marks the end of the
Gothic style in Burgos; it is contemporary with
Felipe Bigamy's earliest Renaissance works in
the cathedral.
Gil de Siloe headed the other great family of
sculptors in Burgos. There are two hypotheses
with regard to his origins. One identifies him
with a certain "Gil de Emberres (Antwerp)"
mentioned in a lawsuit concerning the Monastery of San Pablo in Valladolid.18 Another
proposal is that he is to be identified with the
"Gil de Urliones" (perhaps a reference to
Orleans),19 who is referred to in the contract
commissioning the retablo of the church of San
Esteban in Burgos. We know that Gil de Siloe
lived in Burgos, where he married a Spanish
woman, who bore him four children; one of
them, Diego, himself became a prominent
architect and sculptor.
Gil de Siloe's first known work was the
altarpiece for the chapel of the Colegio de San
Gregorio in Valladolid, since destroyed. Old
descriptions of it emphasize its quality. He also
created marvelous works in the monastery of
Miraflores outside Burgos, a building under
royal patronage. Between 1496 and 1499 he
executed the high altar, which presents an
allegory of the Eucharist, a polychromed wooden
retablo which still shines like a jewel. Its geometrical composition, with a great circle at the
center surrounded by a number of smaller ones,
recalls the German Rosenkranzaltaren (Rosary
altars). King Juan n and his wife, Isabel of
Portugal, appear on the retablo, kneeling as
donors.
Gil de Siloe also executed the high altar of the
Chapel of Santa Ana in Burgos Cathedral,
which was commissioned by bishop Don Juan
de Acuria, who appears kneeling in prayer in
one of the reliefs. The central motif is the Tree
of Jesse. Gil also worked on a second altar
dedicated to Santa Ana, this one in the Capilla
del Condestable, Flemish rather than Spanish in
type and similar to altarpieces actually executed
in Flanders and then brought to Spain. In its
present form it combines sculptures by Gil with
others by his son Diego (cat. 50), creating vivid

contrasts between their respective Gothic and

Renaissance styles.
The facade of the Colegio de San Gregorio in
Valladolid displays some of the principal features that characterize Gil de Siloe's style.20 It is
a posterlike composition, symbolizing royal
power. Wild men appear near the door. At the
very top, surrounded by a pomegranate emerging from a fountain that symbolizes the Tree
of Life, is the coat-of-arms of the Catholic
monarchs. It has been suggested that the pomegranate is intended as a reference to the conquest of Granada in 1492. It is equally possible
that it is meant to symbolize theology, a discipline of central importance to the Colegio de
San Gregorio.
Gil de Siloe's talent achieves its highest
expression in his funerary monuments. King
Juan n had very generously endowed the monastery of Miraflores, where Henry in had previously erected a palace adjoining the church. 21
The church itself was built at the command of
Queen Isabella, who commissioned tombs to be
erected for her parents, Juan n and Isabel of
Portugal. Gil de Siloe's preliminary sketch for
the tombs dates from i486.22 Isabella, who
visited Miraflores in 1483 to view the body of
Juan n, had doubtless heard of Gil quite
possibly from bishop Alonso de Burgos, who
was her confessor before commissioning such
an important work. There is a key precedent
for Gil de Siloe's free-standing composition
in the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy,
originally in the Carthusian monastery of
Champmol at Dijon. With the help of several
assistants, Gil de Siloe completed the alabaster
tomb in 1493. It is one of the great masterpieces
of Gothic funerary sculpture in Spain (see
cat. 48). He did not hesitate to draw heavily on
the mudejar style of ornament. The effigies are
in a recumbent position, although they are
sculpted as though standing. Isabel of Portugal
is portrayed reading a book, resting on a lavishly embroidered pillow. The garments are
shown richly brocaded and bejeweled. The tomb
is an important document of official court taste
and the sense of luxury and wealth that were
favored in its commissions. The tomb of the
Infante Don Alfonso, which shows him kneeling in prayer, is located in a wall niche in the
church. The garments are again richly embroidered, with an openwork collar. The carving
shows great technical virtuosity and is clearly
the work of Gil de Siloe himself.
Gil de Siloe also carved the tomb of Juan de
Padilla, a page in the royal service who was
killed in 1491, at the age of twenty, in a battle
fought near Granada. This tomb was created at
the request of the monastery of Fresdelval and
is now displayed in the Museo Arqueologico

Provincial in Burgos. The quality of the carving

is as fine as that of the Infante Don Alfonso; the
youth's face is idealized, and his garments are
sumptuously embroidered.
Palencia, Valladolid, and Leon also developed
sculptural workshops, but none comparable to
those in Burgos and Toledo. When an important work was required, patrons in Valladolid
did not hesitate to invite artists from the more
important centers. This was the case with Juan
Guas' work at the chapel of San Gregorio and
with Simon de Colonial work on the facade of
the monastery of San Pablo.
In 1505 the cathedral chapter of Palencia
commissioned Alejo de Vahia to carve statues of
Mary Magdalene and of Saint John the Baptist for
the high altar.23 The document refers to him as
"Alejo de Vahia, imaginero, vecino de Becerril."
The Gothic statue of Mary Magdalene is still in
place on the altar, and Alejo's manner is discernable in many other figures in the cathedral,
suggesting that he had set up his own shop. His
style is archaic, belonging to the final stage of
Gothic art. Alonso de Portillo was a tomb sculptor who worked in the Flemish style, signing
his works "Portillo me fecit/'24 Valladolid also
had a local workshop, which produced the wooden
doors of the Collegiate church that are displayed
in the exhibition (cat. 41), richly ornamented
with branches twined around scrolls and the
figures of wild men. The Master of San Pablo
de la Moraleja, author of the Lamentation
(cat. 49) was also a sculptor of distinction of this
period.
Another important category of Gothic carvings consists of choir stalls. Exotic figures
appear amid the vegetal ornamentation of the
stalls in Santa Maria de Duerias.25 The choir
stalls of the cathedrals of Zamora, Leon, and
Oviedo are the work of Flemish carvers. We
know that Zamora Cathedral commissioned its
stalls from Juan "de Bruselas (Brussels)/' who
lived in Leon.26 Juan de Malinas, another Flemish
sculptor, was the author of the stalls of Leon
cathedral between 1476 and 1481 and afterward
carved the stalls at Oviedo Cathedral.
X * ** ***

The introduction of the early Renaissance into

Spain was brought about by the actual import
of Italian sculpture, by works executed in Spain
by Italian and French sculptors, and by those
created by Spanish sculptors trained in Italy.
Tombs were an especially important category
of patronage; symbols of eternity and of earthly fame, they were usually commissioned by
forward-looking patrons. Thus Cardinal Mendoza had his Renaissance-style tomb erected in
the presbytery of Toledo Cathedral, following a

design created in 1494; the work was finished

in 1504 and is thought to be by the Florentine
sculptor Andrea Sansovino. The tomb's formal
inspiration is a Roman triumphal arch. 27 Other
tombs were carved in Italy and then shipped to
Spain, like those commissioned in 1520 by Don
Pedro Enriquez and his wife Catalina de Rivera
from Antonio Maria Aprile and Pace Gaggini,
now in the University church in Seville. Other
examples are the tomb of Don Francisco Ruiz,
bishop of Avila, in the church of San Juan de la
Penitencia in Toledo, commissioned in 1524
from Giovanni Antonio Aprile and Pier Angeli
della Scala,28 and the tomb of Ramon de Cardona,
viceroy of Naples, executed by Giovanni Merliano
da Nola in Naples in 1524 and then shipped to
the church of Bellpuig (Lerida),29 which like
Cardinal Mendoza's tomb follows the form of a
Roman triumphal arch. Various tombs executed
by Domenico Fancelli of Florence are discussed
by Jonathan Brown in his essay in this catalogue.
In Burgos the starting point of the Renaissance style was marked by the arrival of the
French sculptor Felipe Bigamy, who came from
Langres in Champagne. His Spanish name appears to be an adaptation of his French surname,
Bigarne,30 and he may well have been born in
Marmagne. His training appears to have taken
place in Dijon, and his Renaissance style could
well have been formed in France, which was
already deeply influenced by the Italian manner; it certainly does not require us to hypothesize an actual trip to Italy. Bigamy was in
Burgos by 17 July 1498, as is indicated by the
document in which he agrees to execute reliefs
of the "trasaltar" in Burgos Cathedral: "Tomo
asiento Felipe Bigamy, Borguinon, diocesis
Lingonen."31 He had been recommended by
Simon de Colonia, who thereby, as the scholar
Proske put it, "signed the death warrant for his
own kind of art."32 Bigamy's work shows clear
Renaissance elements, like the city gate that
appears in the relief of Christ bearing the Cross,
designed in quattrocento-style perspective. His
work quickly won acceptance not only in Burgos,
but also in Toledo, in Salamanca, where in 1503
he was requested to execute an altarpiece for
the chapel at the University, and in Palencia,
where the cathedral chapter in 1505 asked him
to execute the sculpture for the high altar. This
marked the end of Alejo de Vahia's style of
sculpture.33
The Mendoza family were especially noted
patrons of the Renaissance style; the facades of
their family palaces were richly ornamented
with Italianate forms and subjects, among them
the Palace of Santa Cruz in Valladolid and the
Castle of La Calahorra (Granada), whose sculpture was designed by Michele Carlone for Rodrigo
de Vivas y Mendoza, marquis of Zenete. The

doorway of the "Salon de las Marquesese" in

the castle is decorated with marble reliefs made
in Genoa in 1509. The Mendoza family were
also the patrons of the Hospital of Santa Cruz
in Toledo; the tympanum over its main doorway contains a relief showing the Cardinal
kneeling before Santa Elena.
In Burgos Diego de Siloe, son of Gil, and
Bartolome Ordonez, both trained in Naples,
worked in the Renaissance style. Diego returned
to Burgos in 1519, where he was commissioned
to execute the tomb of Bishop Don Juan de
Acuna in Burgos Cathedral. It was modeled
after the tomb of Pope Sixtus IV in the Vatican
by Antonio Pollaiuolo. Diego also added several
statues to the altar of Santa Ana in the Capilla
del Condestable, including the splendid Lamentation displayed in this exhibition (cat. 49).
A key figure in the development of Renaissance style in Castile was Alonso Berruguete,
son of the painter Pedro Berruguete (see cat. 46).
Alonso was born in Paredes de Nava around
1488 and trained in Italy. Vasari tells us that
around 1510 Bramante ordered Jacopo Sansovino
to model in wax the classical sculptural group of
Laocoon, which "Alanso Berugetta Spagnuolo"
and other sculptors were also modeling.34
Berruguete brought back with him to Spain the
influence of such classical masterpieces as the
Laocoon, as well as that of Renaissance masters
like Ghiberti, Donatello, and Michelangelo. In
1523 he was commissioned to execute the
altarpiece of the Monastery of La Mejorada,
now in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in
Valladolid.35 On 8 November 1526 he received
the commission to carve the altar of the church
of the monastery of San Benito of Valladolid.36
It is also preserved in the Museo Nacional de
Escultura and is his most famous work; the
impressive Sacrifice of Isaac in this exhibition
(cat. 51) forms a part of this masterpiece. In the
altarpiece architecture, sculpture, and painting
form a unified ensemble, and all are the work of
Alonso Berruguete.
The years around 1492, then, marked the
conclusion of one important stylistic phase in
the history of Spanish sculpture and the successful launching of another. In both phases
artists of the most diverse national origins
the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France,
in addition to Spain made important contributions to a cultural heritage that was to become uniquely Spain's own.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

53

NOTES
1. Jose Maria de Azcarate, Arte gotico en Espana
(Madrid, 1990), 243; Maria Gonzalez Sanchez
Gabriel, "Los hermanos Egas, de Bruselas, en Cuenca.
La silleria de coro de la Colegiata de Belmonte,"
Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia de la llniversidad de Valladolid, V (19361939), 32.
2. Jose Maria de Azcarate, "Analisis estilistico de las
formas arquitectonicas de la Puerta de los Leones de
la catedral de Toledo/' in Homenaje al professor
Cayetano de Mergelina (Murcia, 1961-1962),
97-122.
3. Manuel R, Zarzo del Valle, Datos documentales
para la historia del arte espanol, //, Documentos de
la catedral de Toledo, i (Madrid, 1916), 3, 4.
4. Azcarate 1990, 245.
5. Jose Maria de Azcarate, "El Maestro Sebastian de
Toledo y el Doncel de Sigtienza," in Wad-al-Hayara,
* (W4)> 7-346. Azcarate 1974, 33.
7. Fernando Checa, Pintura y escultura del Renacimiento en Espana, 1450-1600 (Madrid, 1983), 48.
8. Hector Luis Arena, "Las sillerias de coro del
Maestro Rodrigo Aleman," Boletin del Seminario
de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia de la Universidad
de Valladolid, xxxn (1966), 89-123.
9. Jose Ramon Melida, Catdlogo Monumental de
Espana, Provincia de Cdceres (Madrid, 1924), 284.
10. Isabel Mateo Gomez, Temas profanos en la escultura
gotica, las sillerias de coro (Madrid, 1979); Dorothy
and Henry Kraus, Las sillerias goticas espanolas

54

CIRCA 1492

(Madrid, 1989), 149.

11. Zarzo 1916, 30-68.
12. Beatrice Gilman Proske, Castilian sculpture: Gothic
to Renaissance (New York, 1951), 203.
13. Manuel Martinez Sanz, Historia del Templo Catedral
de Burgos (Burgos, 1866), 186.
14. Proske 1951,11.
15. Maria Jesus Gomez Barcena, Escultura funeraria en
Burgos (Burgos, 1988).
16. Filemon Arribas Arranz, "Simon de Colonia en
Valladolid/' Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de
Arte y Arqueologia de la Universidad de Valladolid,
H (1933-1934), 165.
17. Julia Ara Gil, Escultura gotica en Valladolid y su
provincia (Valladolid, 1977), 259-286.
18. Arribas 1933-1934,157.
19. Proske 1951, 83.
20. Ara Gil 1977, 239-251.
21. Fernando Chueca, Casas reales en monasteries y
conventos espanoles (Madrid, 1982), 99.
22. Harold E. Wethey, Gil de Siloe and his School: a
Study of Late Gothic Sculpture (Cambridge, Mass.,
1936), 122.
23. Ignace Vandevivere, "L'intervention du sculpteur
hispano-rhenan Alejo de Vahia dans le Retable
Mayor de la Cathedrale de Palencia (1505)," in
Melanges d'Arqueologie et d'histoire de I'Art offerts
au Pro)"esseur Jacques Lavalleye (Louvain, 1970),
305318; Clementina Julia Ara Gil, En torno al
escultor Alejo de Vahia (1490-1510) (Valladolid,
1974)-

24. Clementina Julia Ara Gil, "El taller palentino del

entallador Alonso de Portillo (14601506)," Boletin
del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia de
la Universidad de Valladolidfuu (1987), 211-242.
25. J.J. Martin Gonzalez, "La silleria de la iglesia de
Santa Maria de Duerias (Palencia)," Archivo Espanol
de Arte, xxix (1956), 117-123.
26. Guadalupe Ramos de Castro, La catedral de Zamora
(Zamora, 1982), 594.
27. Maria Jose Redondo Cantera, El sepulcro en Espana
en el siglo XVI: Tipologia e iconografia (Madrid,
1987), 112.
28. Marques de Lozoya, Escultura de Carrara en Espana
(Madrid, 1957).
29. Redondo Cantera 1987,111.
30. Maria Isabel del Rio de la Hoz, "Felipe Bigamy:
origen y formacion," Archivo Espanol de Arte, 57
(1984), 89-92.
31. Martinez Sanz 1866, 282.
32. Proske 1951, 224.
33. J.J. Martin Gonzalez, "La introduccion del Renacimiento en la escultura de Castilla la Vieja," in
Actas do Simposio Internacional "A introdugao da
arte da Renascenga na Peninsula Iberica" (Coimbra,
1981), 53-77.
34. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vitef edited by Gaetano Milanesi,
7 (Florence, 1881), 489.
35. Jose Maria de Azcarate, Alonso Berruguete: Cuatro
ensayos (Valladolid, 1963).
36. Isidro Bosarte, Viaje artistico (Madrid, 1804), 359-

THE SPAIN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA

Richard L. Kagan

y his own account, Christopher Columbus

left Portugal and arrived in Spain sometime in
1485. He came in search of royal support for
what he later described as the "enterprise of the
Indies/'1 Columbus' enterprise was to journey
to India, China, and Japan by sailing westward
from the Canary Islands into the Atlantic. This
scheme was both risky and expensive. For one
thing, Columbus' cosmographical calculations
challenged traditional notions about the size
(if not the shape) of the world. He believed
that the circumference of the globe was much
smaller than geographers generally accepted.
Furthermore, he had an exaggerated notion of
the extent of the Eurasian landmass and was
convinced that the "ocean sea" separating
Europe from Asia could be easily crossed.
Born in the Italian maritime republic of
Genoa in 1451, Columbus already had a decade's experience sailing in the Atlantic by 1485.
Under Portuguese auspices he had ventured as
far south as the Cape Verde Islands and the
coast of Guinea and as far west as Madeira. Columbus had proposed his enterprise to John v,
king of Portugal, but had generated little interest. The Portuguese had already established
important trade links with southern Africa and
were seemingly committed to reaching India via
what would soon be named the Cape of Good
Hope. Columbus also may have explored the
possibility of English and French backing for his
seaborne adventure, but as we now know, the
mariner's future actually lay with the Spanish
monarchs, Isabella i of Castile (1474-1504) and
Ferdinand v of Aragon (1482-1516).

stretching along Iberia's northern coast: Galicia,

Asturias, and the Basque country, all of which
owed allegiance to the crown of Castile. Each of
these kingdoms maintained its own identity, a
situation that the union of Isabella and Ferdinand did not alter. The monarchs had no intention of constructing a unified realm and even
rejected a suggestion to adopt the title of king
and queen of Spain. Instead they called themselves in traditional fashion: "King and Queen
of Castile and Leon, Aragon, and Sicily, Toledo,
Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca, Seville, Sardinia,
Corsica, Murcia, Jaen, Algarve, Algeciras,
Gibraltar, Count and Countess of Barcelona,
Lords of Vizcaya and Molina, Dukes of Athens
and Neopatria, Counts of Rousillon and
Cerdagne."
Within the monarchs' extensive domains, the
kingdom of Castile and Leon enjoyed pride of
place. Its five million inhabitants outnumbered
the population of the crown of Aragon by
almost five to one. Castile's economy was also
the most dynamic of all the Spains. Its economic

strength derived from the production of wool.

Its arid climate and mountainous terrain were
ideal for grazing, and sheep raising had dominated the economy of Old Castile since the
eleventh century, when Berbers from North
Africa introduced the merino, a species known
for its fine, long-staple wool. Most of these
sheep estimated at more than three million in
1492were herded in flocks whose long annual
migrations from winter to summer pasture and
back again were conducted under the supervision of the Mesta, the royal sheepherders'
guild. Wool from these flocks was then shipped
to northern Europe in exchange for finished
textiles and other manufactured goods. The
wool trade was Castile's golden fleece, enriching
various sectors of society: the nobles and
monasteries owning large flocks; the merchants
of Burgos, the commercial capital of Old Castile; the shippers of Bilbao, the Cantabrian port
through which much of this cargo moved; and
the crown, which taxed the transhumant flocks
as well as the trade fairs in Medina del Campo

fig. i. Felipe Bigamy, Ferdinand the Catholic. Polychromed wood. Capilla Real, Granada Cathedral

fig. 2. Felipe Bigamy, Isabella the Catholic. Polychromed wood. Capilla Real, Granada Cathedral

The Spains
Strictly speaking, Spain did not exist in the fifteenth century except as a geographical reference to the ancient Roman province of Hispania.
Columbus himself addressed Ferdinand and
Isabella as "king and queen of the Spains,"
a term that referred to the crown of Castile
and Leon, Isabella's domain, and the crown of
Aragon, an amalgam comprising the inland
kingdom of Aragon, the principality of Catalonia, the Levant kingdom of Valencia, and the
Balearic Islands, together with Aragonese
dominions in the south of Italy. "The Spains"
also encompassed the small Cantabrian states

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

55

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

where foreign merchants gathered annually to

buy Spanish wool.
The economy of Andalusia in southern Spain
was even more prosperous. The former Islamic
caliphate of al-Andalus had been incorporated
into the crown of Castile following the conquests of Ferdinand in in the mid-thirteenth
century. The region's principal city, Seville,
with a population of almost forty thousand in
1492, was a major entrepot with trade links to
North Africa and the Mediterranean as well as
northern Europe. Its principal exports were
olive oil and wine, along with hides, soap, salt,
and pickled tuna produced in one of the many
fisheries lining the coast around Cadiz. Andalusia also had an important offshore economy
that extended far into the Atlantic, as fishermen
from Palos, Sanlucar de Barrameda, and other
ports plied the waters as far south as Cape
Bojador and the Canaries. It was this important
maritime tradition, much of it financed by
Genoese merchants in Seville, that attracted
Columbus to Andalusia and encouraged him to
present his enterprise to the king and queen of
the Spains.
Ferdinand and Isabella
"Although they are monarchs, they are human
beings/'2 Such was the judgment of Fernando de
Pulgar, one of several chroniclers employed by
Ferdinand and Isabella. Such platitudes aside,
contemporary descriptions of the two monarchs
depict them as paragons of Christian virtue:
56

CITIES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

Kingdom of Aragon
Kingdom of Castile and Leon
Kingdom of Valencia
Principality of Catalonia
Asturias(Cantabrian States)
Basque Provinces
Galicia
Granada

C I R C A 1492

pious, charitable, prudent, temperate in both

food and drink. This image actually better suits
Isabella than Ferdinand, who was something of
a philanderer known to have fathered at least
four illegitimate children, including two after
his marriage. Yet Isabella had her weaknesses
too, including a fondness for fine clothing and
jewels and a love of luxury partly conditioned
by her elevated notion of monarchy and her
desire to endow the Castilian throne with the
dignity and majesty it previously lacked. In Pulgar's words, "She was a woman who was very
ceremonious in her dress and adornments, in
the choice of her daises and thrones, as well as
in the service of her person; she only wanted
great men and nobles to attend them and then
with humility and respect. One has never read
about any previous monarch who had so many
great men as their servants/'3 Unlike most
women of her era, Isabella learned to read and
write, and even studied Latin. She carefully
cultivated an image of piety and chastity, going
so far, it was said, as to sleep surrounded by
chambermaids whenever Ferdinand was away
in order to preserve her reputation.
Isabella was born in 1451, the third child of
Juan ii (d. 1454). She was raised by her mother
in Arevalo, a small town in Old Castile. Her
older brother Henry inherited the crown in
1454, but as a child Isabella had only limited
contact with the royal court. Henry iv was a
weak, unpopular monarch whose alleged impotence prompted rumors that Juana (b. 1463), his
infant daughter and designated heir, was in fact

Juana "la Beltraneja," fruit of an illicit union of

Henry's queen with Beltran de la Cueva, a
prominent courtier. Whatever the truth of this
rumor, it placed the royal succession in doubt.
The infante Alfonso, Isabella's younger brother,
was supported by one noble faction, Isabella by
another. Alfonso's premature death at the age of
fifteen in July 1468 favored Isabella's cause, and
in a treaty signed later that year King Henry
finally agreed to name Isabella his successor on
the condition that she marry his ally, Alfonso v
of Portugal. The independent Isabella, afraid
that Henry might change his mind, preferred an
Aragonese alliance and arranged to marry Ferdinand, the young son of John n of Aragon. Born
in 1452 and one year her junior, Ferdinand, the
very model of a Renaissance prince, cut a dashing figure. Isabella's choice of a husband was not
primarily dictated by affection, but by politics.
Isabella needed Aragonese support against
Henry and his Portuguese allies. For his part
the ambitious Ferdinand hoped to utilize
Castile's resources in order to defend traditional Aragonese interests in Italy and the
Mediterranean.
The young couple's marriage, celebrated secretly in Valladolid, immediately plunged Castile into a bitter war of succession involving the
intervention of French and Portuguese troops
loyal to Henry iv. Ferdinand and Isabella had a
number of powerful allies, including Alonso
Carrillo, archbishop of Toledo and primate of
the Spanish church, but most of the Castilian
nobility held aloof. Henry iv's death in Decem-

her 1474 marked the beginning of the new

regime, and Isabella deliberately used the occasion of the deceased monarch's obsequies to
demonstrate her new authority. Immediately
after the funeral ceremony she changed out of
black mourning clothes into a richly jeweled
dress and proceeded to the cathedral, riding
majestically on horseback and attended by noble
footmen who held her train and elevated a canopy above her head. At the forefront of this
stately procession one of Isabella's courtiers
brandished an unsheathed sword, a symbol of
royal authority and a sign that the new queen
would no longer tolerate opposition to her rule.4
Despite this charged symbolism, critics
alleged that the queen had no business displaying attributes that rightfully belonged to her
husband. Such reservations exemplified the
new monarchs' continuing lack of support, and
in fact the couple remained relatively isolated
until February 1476, when Ferdinand defeated
the Portuguese at a battle near Toro. Interpreting this victory as a sign of divine favor, the
monarchs later celebrated it by founding the
monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo,
an imposing structure whose church they designated as their tomb. The victory at Toro also
helped Ferdinand and Isabella to persuade Castile's representative assembly, the Cortes, in
April 1476 to create the Santa Hermandad, an
urban league that provided them with both
money and troops. Even more important for the
monarchs' prospects was the birth of a male heir
in June 1478. The Infante Juan promised the
continuity of the double monarchy created by
Ferdinand and Isabella's union and reassured
Castile's anxious nobility that their kingdom
would not be ruled by Ferdinand, a "foreigner,"
in the event of Isabella's death. One by one,
previously hostile noblemen pledged their support, enabling Ferdinand to defeat enemies both
foreign and domestic. In 1479 the Treaty of
Alcagovas ended hostilities with Portugal, and
by 1480 Ferdinand and Isabella had begun to
consolidate their regime and to restore royal
authority. Their new monarchy, as Ferdinand
himself later acknowledged, would be "constituted in the service of God" and dedicated to
the "increase of our realms."5
"The Increase of Our Realms"
Scholars tend to describe Ferdinand and Isabella
as two of the fifteenth century's "new monarchs," rulers who increased their power at the
nobility's expense. In addition, they have been
credited with the creation of new governing
institutions that represented the nucleus of the
modern bureaucratic state. Actually, Ferdinand
and Isabella were rulers of a traditional stripe

whose principal policy the assertion of royal

authority differed little from that of earlier
Trastamara monarchs, the ruling dynasty to
which Isabella herself belonged. What distinguishes Ferdinand and Isabella is the determination and the skill with which they pursued this
traditional program.
Both rulers made the dignity of their office a
prime concern. Ferdinand and Isabella cloaked
themselves in an aura of majesty, spending
unprecedented sums on court entertainments,
the foundation of new churches and monasteries, the construction of a royal pantheon, as
well as the patronage of artists, poets, and various men of letters. The distinguished Castilian
grammarian Antonio de Nebrija was a member
of their court, as were various Italian scholars,
including Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, a Milanese
whose palace school helped to establish an
important tradition of humanist learning in
Castile. Their entourage lacked the glitter of
contemporary Italian Renaissance courts, but
Ferdinand and Isabella won praise for cultivating what were generally described as the "arts
of peace." Moreover, contemporaries generally
regarded them as rulers who had initiated a
period of unprecedented peace and prosperity,
and this particular memory serves to explain
why they are commonly credited with the
inception of Castile's golden age in both literature and art.
Yet no fifteenth-century ruler, not even the
pope, could hope to govern by artistic patronage
alone. The assertion of royal authority also
required money lots of it. In fifteenthcentury Castile most of the crown's ordinary
revenues came from a sales tax known as the
alcabala. Owing to the kingdom's buoyant
economy, the income Ferdinand and Isabella
derived from this tax tripled during the course
of their reign, but their spending, most of
which was earmarked for war, grew at an even
faster rate. The monarchs' search for additional
revenues began at the Cortes of 1476 when the
cities of Castile voted to establish the Santa
Hermandad and continued at the Cortes of
1480, when the cities voted additional support
in exchange for promises of certain governmental reforms. The king and queen also used
this gathering to recover certain royal rents
alienated by previous rulers along with others
usurped illegally by the nobility during the war
of succession. Historians have interpreted this
particular episode as if Ferdinand and Isabella
won a great victory over the nobility, but in fact
the monarchs were anxious to avoid a confrontation with the nobles, particularly the sixty or
so magnates who controlled much of the Castilian countryside. Ferdinand and Isabella successfully worked out a compromise that allowed

the nobles to retain most of their landed income

together with other privileges but also
increased the crown's revenues.
The rulers struck a similar deal with the
church. Not all of Castile's clergymen were as
wealthy as the archbishop of Toledo, a prelate
whose income far exceeded that of any Castilian
grandee. But together the clergy constituted a
privileged group whose income, derived principally from tithes paid by the faithful, was
largely exempt from royal taxation. Ferdinand
and Isabella, however, skillfully used the crusade they launched against the Moorish kingdom of Granada in 1482 to ask the clergy for
additional financial support. After considerable
prodding, the church agreed to a special subsidy
of a hundred thousand gold florins in 1483 and
was subsequently persuaded to provide similar
grants in later years. Similarly, the monarchs
used the war in Granada to obtain a papal bull
granting them revenues derived from the sale of
indulgences. In theory, the cruzada was a voluntary contribution to be employed solely in
the struggle against Islam, but it quickly
evolved into a tax the monarchy used for other
purposes. The money Ferdinand and Isabella
invested in Columbus' 1492 voyage, for example, came from this particular levy.6
Ferdinand and Isabella's continuing search for
new sources of revenue was complemented by
various governmental reforms, particularly in
the realm of finance and the administration of
justice. The latter was essential/to their policy
of reasserting royal authority because justice
was considered the highest/of the monarchy's
temporal prerogatives. During the civil war,
however, royal justice had deteriorated considerably, prompting the Cortes to complain
about the independence and quality of the
crown's magistrates. In theoryx rulers were
expected to render important decisions personally, and Ferdinand and Isabella attempted to
live up to this ideal by holding regiilar weekly
audiences as they moved their courtv in traditional fashion, from town to town. Yet they also
recognized the need for competent judges and
consequently reorganized the Royal Council,
formerly an aristocratic preserve, into a body
composed principally of university-trained
jurists. Meanwhile, other legal tribunals, notably the Real Chancillena de Valladolid, the
monarchy's principal court of appeals, were
reformed and expanded and new ones established in order to make royal justice more
accessible. Efforts were likewise made to
improve the education of magistrates and to
make royal law more comprehensible and easier
to use. Compared to the administrative programs of previous monarchs, these reforms
were not particularly innovative and served

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

57

only to make marginal (and in some cases temporary) improvements in the overall quality of
royal justice. Yet the reforms helped Ferdinand
and Isabella establish a reputation for being just
rulers who successfully ended the "anarchy"
and "tyranny" of previous regimes.
Even more important for the monarchs' reputation was their success at what contemporaries
labeled the "arts of war." Like other medieval
rulers, Castile's were expected to be warriors,
and for all practical purposes this meant personal participation in the liberation of the peninsula from Islam. Muslims first entered Iberia
in A.0.711, when combined Arab and Berber
armies toppled the weak regime of the Visigoths and conquered the whole of the peninsula
with the exception of some small Christian
enclaves in the north. What is generally called
the reconquest began in the late eleventh century as the westward leg of the Crusades and
culminated in the conquest of Seville in 1248.
Following the capture of Gibraltar in the midfourteenth century, however, a combination of
weak kings and civil war brought the progress
of the reconquest to a virtual halt. Granada, the
last Moorish stronghold, survived by paying
a regular tribute, usually in gold, to Castile's
rulers, its nominal overlords. Hostilities continued along the frontier, but in the course of a
century the two states developed a workable
modus vivendi partially reflected in Castile's
taste for Islamic decoration in architecture, pottery, and the minor arts, the so-called mudejar
style. Yet the dream of completing the reconquest and restoring Hispania to Christianity
remained.
Ferdinand and Isabella revived this dream in
January 1482 by announcing the start of a crusade to liberate Granada from the clutches of
Islam. Granada's rulers had provided the monarchs an excuse for this war with a raid on the
Christian enclave of Zahara, but the motivations
for the crusade actually went deeper. Granada, a
prosperous silk-producing region, was a tempting prize. The war also provided an opportunity
for Ferdinand and Isabella to unite their kingdoms under the banner of a crusade. Religious
considerations also played a part in their decision to restart the reconquest. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 had
sparked growing fear of Islam throughout much
of Christendom, and there were calls for a new
crusade after the Turks captured the southern
Italian town of Otranto in 1480. In view of Aragonese interests in the region, many looked to
Ferdinand as their savior, and he responded by
sending a fleet to Italy the following year. Thus
Ferdinand had already emerged as the champion
of Mediterranean Christendom when the monarchs announced the beginning of a "just and
58

CIRCA

1492

holy war" against Granada.

Contemporaries considered Granada's surrender ten years later, on 2 January 1492, as
Ferdinand and Isabella's greatest achievement,
certainly one far surpassing their sponsorship
of Columbus' voyage. Congratulations poured
in from across Europe. Calling Ferdinand and
Isabella "athletes of Christ," a grateful pope
bestowed on the rulers the title of Catholic
Monarchs. Others called Ferdinand a "new
Charlemagne" and claimed that he should now
embark on the liberation of North Africa and
Jerusalem from Islam. "This triumph is reserved
for you," wrote Hieronymus Miinzer, a German
traveler who urged the monarchs to follow in
the footsteps of Louis ix of France and King
Richard of England and to add "this jewel to
your diadem."7 Ferdinand never attacked Jerusalem, but his aspirations to increase his realms
in North Africa were manifest, starting in 1493,
in a series of crusades directed against Oran. In
the end Ferdinand's imperial ambitions were
thwarted, but his dream of a universal Christian
empire under Spanish dominion lived on in
the person of his grandson and heir, Emperor
Charles v (1500-1556).

A Catholic Monarchy
Ferdinand and Isabella's idea of a monarchy
"constituted in the service of God" did not end
with the reconquest and the war against Islam.
It accounts for Isabella's particular interest
in monastic reform, a policy that led to the
appointment of Fray Jimenez de Cisneros, her
confessor and a member of the reformed or
"spiritual" branch of the Franciscan order, as
archbishop of Toledo in 1495. Once installed in
this powerful office, Cisneros instituted a series
of measures aimed at improving monastic discipline, and founded the University of Alcala de
Henares, an institution designed expressly to
improve the clergy's education. Yet Cisneros
was also a prelate whose intolerance for other
faiths led to the forced conversion of the Muslims of Granada in 1498.
The idea of a monarchy dedicated to God also
helps to explain why Ferdinand and Isabella
sought to establish an inquisition to investigate
heresy among Castile's converted Jews (converses). The monarchy's so-called converse problem began after a series of violent pogroms had
swept across Castile and Aragon during the
summer of 1391. In the decades that followed as
much as half the Jewish population-estimated
at two hundred thousand in 1391 underwent
baptism. Many Jews did so sincerely, one of the
more famous New Christians being Salomon
Ha-Levi (13507-1435), chief rabbi of Burgos,
who, after having been baptized Pablo de Santa

Maria, subsequently became archbishop of the

same city. Thousands of other Jews converted
solely to escape persecution and continued to
practice Judaism secretly. Clergymen viewed
them with increasing alarm and used their pulpits to denounce these marranos as dangerous
heretics and apostates who threatened to subvert the faithful. Most Old Christians, however,
failed to distinguish the judaizers from other
converses, and by the middle of the fifteenth
century the entire population of New Christians
in many cities was subjected to increasing discrimination and armed attack.
In order to resolve this particular dilemma
King Henry iv in 1461 had asked for papal permission to establish an inquisition under royal
control. This request represented a departure
from the medieval inquisition, which was subject to episcopal jurisdiction, and the papacy
refused. Ferdinand and Isabella renewed this
request in 1477 after a visit to Seville, a city
with a large converse community, convinced
Ferdinand that a new inquisition was absolutely
essential. Isabella's initial commitment to the
inquisition is not entirely clear. Fernando de
Pulgar, a converse himself, counseled the queen
that education was the best way to resolve the
converse problem since he believed that most
judaizers were ignorant souls lacking basic
instruction in the rudiments of Catholicism.
But Ferdinand, a firm believer in religious
orthodoxy, was determined to make religion the
business of state. He pressed the issue, and in
November 1478 Pope Sixtus iv authorized what
is now known as the Spanish Inquisition.
This new inquisition began operation in
Seville late in 1481. News of its coming spread
panic among the city's converses. Those who
could four thousand by one estimate fled,
but by 1486 six hundred heretics had been
burned at the stake. By this date tribunals were
functioning in other Castilian cities as well as
in Aragon, where Ferdinand forcibly managed
to overcome opposition to their establishment.
In 1483 the monarchs also had named Fray
Tomas de Torquemada as Spain's first inquisitor
general.
The purpose of the Holy Office is frequently
misunderstood. By law its authority extended
only to Catholics; neither Jews nor Muslims
were subject to its authority. In the sixteenth
century its jurisdiction encompassed a variety of
religious crimes, but initially the inquisition
had only one mission: to try converses suspected of judaizing and to reconcile these "heretics" to the faith at the auto da fe, the public
ceremony at which the inquisitors solemnly
pronounced penances that ranged from whipping and public humiliation for repentant
judaizers to death by fire for those who proved

fig. 3. Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Presiding at an Auto da Fe.

Oil on panel. Museo del Prado, Madrid

recalcitrant. At one such auto, staged in Toledo

on Sunday 12 February 1486, the local inquisitors, working diligently before what the event's
chronicler described as a "great number of spectators/' managed to dispatch the cases of no
fewer than 750 male and female penitents in the
course of a single morning.8 Similar autos were
held with terrifying frequency throughout most
of the 14805; nevertheless, many converses
escaped unharmed and were assimilated successfully into Castilian society. In 1484 one
Polish traveler even reported that Isabella "has
greater confidence in baptized Jews than in
Christians. She entrusts them with her rents
and revenues. They are also her counsellors and
secretaries, and so are those of the king."9 But
the tendency to equate New Christians with
heresy enabled overzealous inquisitors to perse-

cute thousands of innocent converses and to

confiscate their goods. In Aragon these abuses
were so flagrant that even the papacy complained about the inquisitors' "love of lucre"
and lack of concern with the salvation of souls.
For Ferdinand the Holy Office was a means of
increasing royal authority and there was no
turning back: "no cause or interest, however
great, will make us suspend the Inquisition."10
Ferdinand and Isabella's decision to expel the
Jews from their kingdoms in 1492 represents
yet another part of their effort to protect what
they sincerely believed to be the true faith. By
law, Jews belonged to the royal patrimony. "All
the Jews in my kingdom are mine," Isabella once
remarked, "and they are my Jews, and they are
under my help and protection, and mine is the
obligation to defend, help, and maintain them in

justice."11 The Jews' survival, however, depended

totally on the monarchy. Royal sufferance
alone guaranteed their existence and then only
by virtue of a special concession granted in
exchange for certain taxes and other services.
Notwithstanding the inherent precariousness
of their situation, Jews came to occupy a relatively important place throughout the Spains.
Most were small merchants, itinerant traders,
small moneylenders, and shop owners; others
worked as physicians; some even owned land,
despite prohibitions to the contrary. On the
other hand, Jews did not figure prominently
either in industry or international commerce,
although a few did manage to occupy high
offices of state. Isabella, for example, named
Abraham Seneor, grand rabbi of the Jewish
alhamas (ghettos), treasurer of the Santa
Hermandad in 1486.
Generally speaking, Jews in the Spains were
tolerated, if not exactly loved. For all practical
purposes they constituted a separate community, subject to their own law and officials.
In the wake of the pogroms of 1391, however,
Jews met with growing intolerance, much of it
sparked by preachers belonging to one of the
mendicant orders. Christians complained about
the Jews' special legal position, pointing to their
exemptions from imprisonment for debt, from
serving in the militia, and the like. Municipalities enacted new and more restrictive
measures against Jews, including limits on proselytizing (1455), prohibitions against the construction of new synagogues (1465), insistence
that Jews wear special clothing (1476), as well as
the requirement they live in walled ghettos
(1480). The last measure was designed to minimize communication between Christians and
Jews and was specifically aimed at separating
converses from their former brethren.
Ferdinand and Isabella generally attempted to
protect "their" Jews from discrimination, but
the monarchs' support began to waver shortly
after the inquisition commenced operation. In
January 1483 Seville's inquisitors expelled the
Jews from that city on the grounds that their
continued presence contributed to heresy and
apostasy among local converses. The Jews protested, but the monarchs did little to rescind the
order. Nor did they intervene in subsequent
years when other cities, again citing Jews as the
source of apostasy among converses, expelled
their Jewish populations.
Similar reasoning may be found in the royal
edict of 31 March 1492 that ordered the wholesale expulsion of the Jews from both Castile and
Aragon. The document specifically faults "close
communication between Christians and Jews"
as the primary cause of "bad Christians [conversos] who judaize and apostatize." It also

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

59

blames Jews for attempting "to subvert and to

reduce Our Holy Catholic Faith" by instructing
converses in Jewish rites and laws. The edict
stipulated that Jews had four months (or until
31 July 1492) to leave the kingdom. In the
meantime they were guaranteed full legal rights
and entitled to sell or otherwise dispose of their
property. The Jews were further entitled to take
with them all their possessions except gold,
silver, and other items prohibited by royal law.12
Such an edict was by no means unprecedented; French monarchs and several Italian
states had previously ordered the expulsion of
their Jewish subjects on similar grounds. In the
Spanish case, however, the edict, a product of
euphoria created by the conquest of Granada in
January 1492, represented the continuation of
the monarchs' determination to unite their
kingdom under one religion or law. Isabella
may have hoped that the edict would spark a
general conversion among "her" Jews, and by
publicly celebrating Abraham Seneor's conversion on 15 June 1492 as a great victory it was
probably hoped that others would follow the
example of this prominent Jew. In the end,
however, the edict had the opposite effect, serving to unite a Jewish community previously
divided by sharp differences in religious outlook. Rabbis described the forced exile as a new
Exodus comparable to the Jews' departure from
Egypt, and one Christian chronicler left behind
the following emotional description of the
actual event.
The Jews left their birthplaces, children and
parents, young and the old, on foot, riding on
burros and other beasts, as well as in carts.
They travelled to the ports of embarkation to
which they were assigned, by way of the designated roads and places. They journeyed
with great suffering and misfortune; some
falling, some getting up, some dying, some
being born, and some getting sick. There was
hardly a Christian who did not feel sorry for
them and wherever they went the Jews were
invited to be baptized. Some converted and
stayed behind, but very few. Instead, the
rabbis went among them, urging them on and
making the women and boys sing and play
drums and tambourines to raise their spirits.
Thus they left Castile.13
How many left? No precise figures exist, but a
minimum of forty to fifty thousand Jews
departed, primarily for destinations in Portugal
(from which they would be expelled in 1496),
North Africa, Italy, and Turkey. Some of the
exiles converted and returned to reclaim their
property, but most of these Sephardim abandoned their Iberian homeland for good.
The economic consequences of this exodus
60

CIRCA 1492

have been frequently exaggerated, particularly

among scholars who tend to regard the Jews as
the nucleus of Castile's incipient bourgeoisie.
Only a few Jews had actually been involved in
large-scale economic enterprise. As in the case
of Abraham Seneor, moreover, some of the
kingdom's most prominent Jews opted for conversion rather than exile. The edict did not
result in an economic windfall for the crown nor
did it substantially diminish Castile's entrepreneurial skills, thus assuring, as often alleged,
the kingdom's economic backwardness in subsequent decades. It is also a commonplace to
attribute the expulsion to antisemitism, but the
edict probably represents less an attack on Jews
as an ethnic minority than a desperate attempt
to defend Christianity against Judaism. As
reprehensible as this decision now appears, it is
best understood within the context of Ferdinand
and Isabella's efforts to create a monarchy dedicated to the "servicio de Dios."

Columbus, God, and the Millennium

Is there a connection between these events and
the monarchs' decision in April 1492 to sponsor
Columbus' "enterprise of the Indies"?
At the beginning of Columbus' journal of his
voyage to the New World appears the following
entry:
This present year of 1492, after Your Highnesses had brought to an end the war with
the Moors who ruled in Europe and concluded the war in the very great city of Granada . . . [on] the second day of the month
of January I saw the royal standards of Your
Highnesses placed by force of arms on the
towers of the Alhambra, which is the citadel
of the city, and I saw the Moorish king come
out of the gates of the city and kiss the royal
hands of Your Highnesses and the Prince,
My Lord.14
Later in January Columbus claimed to have
given the Catholic Monarchs information about
India together with the "Great Khan's" interest
in learning about Catholicism. He then wrote
that the monarchs decided to send him to India
to report on those lands and to see how "their
conversion to the Holy Faith might be undertaken." The journal states: "So, after having
expelled all the Jews from all of your kingdoms
and dominions, in the same month of January
Your Highnesses commanded me to go, with a
suitable fleet, to the said regions of India."15
Columbus' chronology is confusing, but he
clearly linked the expulsion of the Jews to the
monarchs' decision to support his enterprise.
As it turns out, little is known about the negotiations leading to the Capitulations of Santa Fe,

the agreements of April 1492 that stated the

terms and conditions under which Columbus
was to set sail.16 Columbus had attempted to
secure royal backing for his voyage as early as
January 1486 but had been rebuffed, partly
because of the royal preoccupation with the
Granada campaign then approaching its final
stages. Meanwhile Ferdinand and Isabella
demonstrated their interest in Columbus with
subsidies and grants of cash. After the fall of
Granada Columbus renewed his request,
appealing directly to the monarchs' messianic
aspirations and particularly to Ferdinand's
vision of himself as a great Christian champion.
It is now known that Columbus was a profoundly religious man much influenced by the
Spiritual Franciscans, the order to which Cisneros, Isabella's influential confessor, also
belonged.17 In the late Middle Ages, Franciscan
prophetic tradition envisioned the spiritual conquest of Islam, the liberation of Jerusalem, and
the conversion of the Jews as preludes to the
millennium and the second coming of Christ.
Columbus' fascination with these subjects is
demonstrated in his Book of Prophecy, written
around 1498, a treatise in which he calculated
the millennium as imminent, only several decades away. For Columbus, therefore, it appears
that the fall of Granada and the expulsion of the
Jews from Castile and Aragon appear to have
marked the beginning of the millennial scenario
that the prophecies outlined. His enterprise also
belongs to this scenario, and should be interpreted, at least in part, as a spiritual quest
pointing toward the millennium.
What is certain is that Columbus harbored
messianic ambitions of his own. After 1493, for
example, he regularly signed his letters "Christopher Columbus, Christ Bearer." In 1498 he
even referred to himself as a messiah: "God
made me the messenger of the new heaven and
the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John after having spoken of it
through the mouth of Isaiah; and he showed me
the spot where to find it."18 To be sure, Columbus had other, more worldly desires including
aspirations to nobility as well as to high office
and honor. His letters also demonstrate his fascination with gold, a metal he clearly invested
with spiritual meaning. "Gold is most excellent," he wrote. Yet Columbus also stated:
"Gold constitutes treasure, and he who
possesses it may do what he will in the world,
and may so attain as to bring souls to Paradise."19
According to Columbus, Ferdinand and
Isabella's view of this precious commodity was
strikingly close to his own. On 26 December
1492, still aboard ship in the Caribbean, Columbus recalled in his journal having instructed
Ferdinand and Isabella that they should spend

the gold to be derived from his voyage on "the

conquest of Holy Places/7 The text reads: "I
urged Your Highnesses to spend all the profits
of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem, and Your Highnesses laughed and said
that it would please them, and that even without this profit they had that desire/'20
Historians have traditionally explained Ferdinand and Isabella's support for Columbus as the
logical outcome of their interests in exploration
and colonization. Competition with the Portuguese, and specifically the desire to profit from
the spice trade of India and South Asia, are
viewed as an additional rationale. Yet if Columbus is to be believed, royal support for his
voyage was also predicated upon the monarchs'
image of themselves as messianic rulers with
a divine mission to conquer Jerusalem, release
Asia and Africa from the grip of Islam, and
establish universal Christendom as a prelude
to the millennium. The adventure undertaken
by Columbus led to what one of the monarchs'
chroniclers would later describe as a New
World. For Ferdinand and Isabella, however,
Columbus' "enterprise of the Indies" heralded
something even more momentous, the end of
time itself.

NOTES
-L. Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed. Cecil
James (New York, 1988), 2:2.
2. In Andres Bernaldez, Historia de los reyes catolicos f
ed. Cayetano Resell y Lopez, Biblioteca de autores
espanoles 70 (Madrid, 1931), ch. 13. The original
reads: "lo que mas grave se siente en los reales, es
mengua estrema de las cosas necesarias." The translation is that of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Ferdinand and Isabella (New York, 1975), preface.
3. Fernando de Pulgar, Cronica de los Reyes Catolicos,
ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid, 1943), 1:78.
4. Alonso Fernandez de Palencia, Cronica de Enrique
iv, ed. A. Paz y Melia (Madrid, 1975), 2:154.
5. Cited in Fernandez-Armesto 1975, 187.
6. Popular legend asserts that Queen Isabella was so
committed to Columbus' voyage that she was willing to sell her jewels to pay for it, but the truth is
that the monarchy contributed only a little more
than one half the expedition's cost, with the balance
coming from various Sevillian merchants as well as
Columbus himself. Juan de la Cosa provided the
flagship, the nao Santa Maria, while the caravels
Nina and Pinta belonged to the port of Palos.
7. Jose Garcia Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por
Espana y Portugal (Madrid, 1959), 1:405.
8. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition (New York,
1965), 189.
9. Nicolas de Popielovo in Garcia Mercadal 1959, 1:319.
10. Cited in Henry Kamen, Spain 14691514: A Society
in Conflict (New York, 1983), 41.

11. Letter of 12 August 1490 cited in Luis Suarez Fernandez, Los Reyes Catolicos: La Expansion de la Fe
(Madrid, 1990), 75.
12. For the complete Spanish text of the edict, see Luis
Suarez Fernandez, Documentos acerca de la expulsion de los judios (Valladolid, 1964), 391-395.
13. Bernaldez 1931, 653.
14. Journal of Christopher Columbus, ed. Oliver Dunn
and James E. Riley, Jr. (Norman, 1989), 17.
15. Dunn and Riley 1989,19.
16. The full text of Columbus' capitulations with the
monarchs may be consulted in The Spanish Tradition
in America, ed. Charles Gibson (New York, 1968),
27-34. The monarchs agreed to name Columbus
'Admiral in all those islands and mainlands which
by his hand and industry shall be discovered or
acquired." He was also appointed perpetual viceroy
and governor general with full authority over "all
the said islands and mainlands," although the monarchs later revoked this particular privilege as the
full extent of Columbus' discoveries became known.
17. For Columbus' spirituality, see Pauline Moffitt
Watts, "Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual
Origins of Christopher Columbus's 'Enterprise of
the Indies,'" American Historical Review 90 (1985),
73-102. For his connection to the Franciscans, John
L. Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley, 1970), 17-28.
18. Voyages of Columbus 1988, 2:48.
19. Voyages of Columbus 1988, 2:104.
20. Dunn and Riley 1989, 291.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

6l

THE ART OF WESTERN AFRICA

IN THE AGE OF EXPLORATION
Ezio Bassani

. he age of European maritime expansion

J.he
coincided with an extraordinary period in the
history of west African art. The brass sculptures
cast in Benin (cats. 60-65) are the most famous
of the works produced at this time, but that
kingdom was by no means the only major
center of artistic creativity in this part of the
continent, as the works included in this exhibition indicate. Moreover, the late fifteenth
century also marked the first direct contact
between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, as the
Portuguese sailed down the west African coast
on the route that was ultimately to take them
to India in 1498. An early consequence of this
encounter was the creation of the remarkable
corpus of works known as Afro-Portuguese
ivories (cats. 68-78), created for trade with
Europe.

Mali
The successive empires of Ghana, Mali and
Songhay, on the south flank of the Sahara, were
inland civilizations. All their important cities
Niani, Walata, Jenne, Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao
were located in the interior of the continent,
and their connections with North Africa and
the Mediterranean were through the caravan
routes that had long crisscrossed the desert.
The initial nucleus of Mali was a small kingdom of Mande population that took shape in the
region of the present-day Guinea following the
dissolution of the empire of ancient Ghana at
the end of the eleventh century. It was only
around 1230, with the reign of the legendary
emperor Sundiata, that Mali began to make its
mark as a great power. Because its ruler (known
as Mansd, or king) controlled the gold of
Bambuk and Bore and the trans-Saharan trade,
he accumulated vast wealth. The empire's elite
soon adopted Islam as its religion. The ruler's
fame spread throughout the Arab world and
reached Europe after the spectacular pilgrimage
to Mecca undertaken in 1324 by Mansa Musa,
with an imposing escort of courtiers and servants and a seemingly limitless supply of gold
that was used for both expenses and gifts, in
such measure as to make the value of the precious metal plummet in the markets of Egypt.1

It was from that point on that European maps

began to include Mali as a place name. On the
1339 world map of Angelino Dulcert, a Genoese
mapmaker active in Mallorca, "rex Melli" identifies the figure of an enthroned king, and on
the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (cat. i), drawn by
another Mallorcan, Abraham Cresques, "Musse
Melly" (that is, Musa of Mali) is identified by
name.2 Mali's empire at its peak in the midfourteenth century extended from the capital of
Niani in the upper Niger valley westward to the
coast, and eastward along the Niger valley to
the borders of Hausaland. Its government was
much admired by the famous traveler Ibn Battuta of Tangier, who visited the area in 13521353.3 By the next century, however, its power
was in decline. The vassal states of Mali
included the strategically located kingdom of
Songhay, which in the reign of Sonni cAli
(c. 1464-1492) was finally able to defeat the
emperor of Mali and begin to create an empire
of its own. The Songhay empire ultimately
became even greater than that of Mali.
Sonni cAll's successor, Askiya Muhammad
(1493-1528), who overthrew the former's son
to establish the Askia dynasty, was a faithful
Muslim (like Mansa Musa he made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1495-1497) and an enlightened
and tolerant ruler. He permitted the populations
of his empire to preserve their traditional religions. As the emperors of Mali before him
had already done, he encouraged an influx of
learned Muslims from North Africa and the
Middle East into his domains, promoting cultural exchange and the formation of a lively and
complex civilization. Timbuktu, at the bend of
the Niger River, became one of the most important marketplaces of sub-Saharan Africa. It was
not only the point of arrival and departure of
caravans to and from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
Libya, and Egypt, but also a great center of
Islamic culture, said to house as many as 180
schools of Koranic learning.4 Leo Africanus, a
learned and wide-ranging Arab traveler who had
converted to Christianity, wrote about 1523 that
at Timbuktu there are "great store of doctors,
judges, priests, and learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king cost and charges.
And hither are brought divers manuscripts or

written bookes out of Barbarie, which are sold

for more money than any other merchandize."5
If Timbuktu was the gateway to the Sahara,
Jenne on the inland delta of the Niger was the
center to which were brought the continent's
products gold, ivory, skins, pepper, kola,
rubberto be exchanged for goods from the
North: fabrics, salt, glass beads, iron, copper,
and manuscripts. In 1943 the French archaeologist Theodore Monod brought to light, in the
vicinity of Jenne, along with numerous other
archaeological finds, a terra-cotta human figure.
In the course of the following years, other terracottas were found between Jenne and Mopti, in
the triangle defined by the courses of the Bani
and Niger Rivers, and in a few sites farther
south, in the environs of Bamako. The corpus of
terra-cottas from the inland Niger delta region
of Mali is often called Jenne, after the site of the
first discoveries, and those from around Bamako
are often called Bankoni, after the village in
which they were first found.
For the most part the terra-cottas are human
figures portrayed in different positions, some
apparently depicting mother and child, others
horsemen (cat. 58), and others representations
of serpents. According to the results of thermoluminescence testing, the terra-cottas were produced over a long period of time, stretching
from the tenth to the sixteenth century.6
Morphologically they differ a good deal among
themselves, and stylistically they can be divided
into two large groups based on the principal
sites of the diggings: one from the Jenne-Mopti
region, the other from the Bamako region. The
figures in the second group are characterized by
an exceptional elongation of the trunk and
limbs.
In the absence of archaeological data for most
of the terra-cottas, however, definitive elements
for making stylistic distinctions are still limited.
For the same reason we remain uncertain, at
present, of the function of these works and of
the culture within which they were created.7
The ruling elite in this area had adopted Islam
and clearly would not have used representations
of the human figure in religious ceremonies,
although traditional religious practices continued to be tolerated.8 The reports of the Arab

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

63

fig. i. Seated figure, Sapi peoples, Sierra Leone.

i6th century? steatite. Carlo Monzino collection.

travelers to Mali make no mention of any such

terra-cottas. These uncertainties notwithstanding, the quantity and the artistic quality of the
terra-cottas from Mali permit us to consider the
region one of the great centers of early production of African earthenware, along with Chad,
Ghana, and, above all, Nigeria.
Sapi
The earliest Portuguese accounts of what is now
Sierra Leone suggest a social organization without the cosmopolitan character that prevailed in
the large Sudanic cities. The Sapi or (Tapes the
inhabitants of the coastal region and the immediate hinterland lived in villages governed by
chiefs who, more nominally than in fact, were
subject to the authority of rulers of small kingdoms which, in their turn, formed a kind of
confederation.
The Sapi were the ancestors of the Bullom,
Temne, and Kissi peoples now living in this
region. According to Walter Rodney, they constituted a loose community with a common
culture more than a true ethnic entity or a unified state.9 Early Portuguese accounts described
the Sapi as a cultivated and peaceful people,
64

CIRCA 1492

"given to feasts and pleasures"10 and extremely

gifted in the arts. The latter trait quickly led to
trade with the European visitors, as we know
from the reports written by Duarte Pacheco
Pereira and Valentim Fernandes as early as the
first years of the sixteenth century.11
It was around the middle of that century that
the lands of the Sapi are thought to have been
invaded by a warlike people of Mande stock, the
Mani or Manes, who came down from the
northeast. According to a late sixteenth-century
account, the Mani "committed so many vexations on the indigenous peoples that the latter
have become less and less concerned and have
given up the exercise of their arts/'12 On the
basis of thoroughgoing enthnolinguistic analyses, P. E. H. Hair has expressed doubts that a
Mani invasion ever took place, at least on the
scale and with the disastrous effects reported in
the Portuguese chronicles which, in any case,
were written several decades after the purported events.13 Whatever the truth may have
been, there seem to be grounds for thinking
that the Sapi carvers ceased to produce ivory art
objects on Portuguese commissions of the type
discussed later in this essay sometime before
the middle of the sixteenth century, an indication that some kind of traumatic event may
indeed have occurred in the area.
In addition to these ivories that shall be considered later on, the corpus of Sapi art includes
a relatively large number of sculptures in soft
stone (steatite), the first of which were discovered by chance in the course of farming,
while additional examples were unearthed
through systematic explorations. For the most
part these are human figures, in a few instances
associated with animals, mostly the elephant or
crocodile. There are also heads of considerable
size, great expressive power, and notable sculptural quality.
The scholars who have researched these
sculptures agree that they were produced at a
time preceding and immediately following the
arrival of the Portuguese.14 The obvious formal
analogies with the figures carved on the SapiPortuguese ivories support this hypothesis, and
there is contemporary confirmation in the chronicle of Valentim Fernandes, written in the first
decade of the sixteenth century, who noted that
the inhabitants of Sierre Leone "love to make
idols of wood and stone."15

Ife, Benin, Owo

Farther south, in what is now Nigeria, an
extraordinary corpus of works of art, the most
important in both quantity and quality in all of
Africa during this period, records the existence
of complex and highly developed civilizations.

These centered in Ife, Benin, and Owo, three

great city-states surrounded by a large tributary
territory.16
Ife, situated in the southwest of the country,
some 90 miles from the coast, is the oldest of
these cities. Its first settlement appears to date
to the eighth century, but little is known for
certain about how it developed. Although Ife
has remained the most important religious
center of the Yoruba people, its political power
began to decline in the fifteenth century.
The known corpus of Ife sculpture some
thirty works cast in metal and a large quantity
in terra-cotta attests to an artistic production
of extremely high quality that, as is indicated by
the thermoluminescence analysis of some of the
works, lasted from the twelfth to the sixteenth
century. The dates for the terra-cottas appear
relatively earlier than those for the works in
metal and suggest that the artists of Ife may
have worked in clay initially and only later,
when artistic production had already developed
and been refined, turned to metal. The metal, a
copper alloy, is often generically called bronze,
although since the copper is alloyed with zinc
rather than tin, brass is the correct term.
Virtually the only subject of Ife art is the
human figure and, in particular, the head, which
is rendered with a sublime fusion of realism and
idealization. It was precisely the exceptional
formal perfection and the aristocratic realism of
the facial features unique in African art that
led the German scholar Leo Frobenius, who in
1910 discovered a group of Ife heads in terracotta and bronze, to propose the notion that the
culture of Ife was to be linked to a hypothetical
Mediterranean colony that settled in ancient
times on the Atlantic coast of Africa.17 The idea,
of course, reflects the prejudices of the period
and is entirely without basis in fact. More
recently Frank Willett has discovered, through
careful comparisons, a number of relationships
between the art of Ife and that of the Nok culture which flourished between 500 B.C. and 200
A.D. on the upland plain of Jos in southern
Nigeria, helping to confirm that the art produced in Ife was completely African in both
origin and character.18
South of Ife was the kingdom of Benin, which
had its capital, Benin City, some fifty miles
inland. The origins of that kingdom are
shrouded in myth. According to the Nigerian
historian Jacob Egharevba, the first king of the
Yoruba derived dynasty acceded to the throne of
Benin, whose people belong to the Edo ethnic
group, in the thirteenth century. R. E. Bradbury dates that event a century later.19 What is
certain is that at the time of the arrival of the
Portuguese in 1485 there was a highly organized society in Benin, wealthy and militarily

powerful and governed by an absolute monarch,

the Oba, supported by a court aristocracy and
an efficient bureaucracy. Artists and craftsmen,
such as the metal casters and ivory carvers,
were organized into guilds and worked exclusively for the king, living in separate neighborhoods set aside for them.
Despite the transformations that came inevitably through contact with the Europeans, this
system of organization lasted until 1897, when
Benin City was occupied, sacked and destroyed
by a British punitive expedition sent to avenge
the death of an English consul who had been
murdered, with his escort, en route from the
coast to the capital for a visit to the Oba. It
must be remembered, however, that the ruler
had at the time been absorbed with ceremonies
in honor of his ancestors, which rendered him
unapproachable to foreigners, and he had explicitly forbidden the visit.
The booty from Benin, comprising thousands
of works of art, was for the most part put up for
sale in London in order to recover the costs of
the expedition, and most of it found its way into
the major museums of Europe. There were
sculptures in ivory and terra-cotta but chiefly in
brass, both figures in the round and plaques in
relief that had decorated the pillars of the inner
courts in the royal residence. The unexpected
arrival of so many works of art of exceptional
formal and technical quality (the works from Ife
and Mali were not yet known) made an enormous impression in European cultural circles.
According to one oral tradition, the technique
of metal casting was introduced into Benin by
masters from Ife toward the end of the fourteenth century. Whatever its origin may have
been, no other African artistic production is as
well known as that of Benin; hundreds of studies have been devoted to it. William Fagg, the
eminent specialist in Nigerian art, has divided
the art of Benin into three broad periods. The
first period is typified by the commemorative
heads, which reveal a degree of naturalism
which may have been derived from Ife art, and
is thought to have extended from the end of the
fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth. The production of the middle period,
from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of
the seventeenth, includes the cast plaques,
which often contain figures of Portuguese. The
late period, marked by an increasing decline, ran
from the eighteenth century until the sack of
Benin in 1897. Scholars have debated the chronology of the Benin sculpture at great length,
without any consensus having yet emerged.20
The art of Benin is a court art, whose principal aim is the glorification of the ruler. For all
its extraordinary formal perfection, it lacks the
moving humanity of the art of Ife. That human

quality also comes to the fore in the art of Owo,

the Yoruba city-state located midway between
Ife and Benin. Owo sculpture, as Frank Willett
has shown, has points of contact with that of the
two other capitals and shows the influence of
both their cultures.
It was only with the excavations conducted by
Ekpo Eyo between 1969 and 1971 that the terracottas of Owo were brought to light.21 Although
the works are still being studied, they have
already shown their importance not only as
major documentary materials of Owo culture
but also as works of art of an intense expressiveness. Dating obtained through thermoluminescence tests indicates the fifteenth century as the
period of manufacture.

Kongo
At about the time the Portuguese arrived in
Benin they also established contact with
another great African state, the kingdom of the

Kongo. At that time it occupied roughly the

strip running from the Atlantic to the Kwango
River, bordered on the north by what is now
Gabon and on the south by the course of the
Kwanza. This area was inhabited chiefly by
Bantu populations of the Kongo group. At the
close of the fifteenth century much of the kingdom, divided into provinces, was directly governed by the Manicongo, the king of Kongo,
through a hierarchy of chiefs and subchiefs,
while a few vassal states flanking the kingdom
were in the process of removing themselves
from domination by the Manicongo or were
striving to do so. The king kept a firm grip on
the wealth of the country, on the activity of the
mines and on commerce. He collected tribute
from his subjects, and he was served by a monetary system, judged functional by the first
European chronicles, which was based on a particular type of shell over whose gathering, on
the island of Luanda, he held the monopoly.22
Between 1482 and 1488 Diogo Cao carried
out three voyages into the region. On his

fig. 2. Crowned Head of an Oni from Wunmonije Compound, Ife, Nigeria, Yoruba
peoples. I2th-i5th century, zinc brass. Museum of the Ife Antiquities, Ife.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

65

AFRICA AND THE WORLD OF ISLAM

return from the second of these he brought

with him as hostages a few local chieftains who
were received in Lisbon with the honors due
their rank. In 1487 they were sent home bearing greetings from the Portuguese monarch to
their own king, along with an offer of friendship and an invitation to convert to Christianity. As a positive response the king of Kongo
sent an embassy to Portugal headed by the
noble Nsaku, one of the hostages who had been
sent home, and a large cargo of gifts. In 1491,
on the occasion of a new Portuguese expedition,
the Manicongo and his family converted to
Christianity and had themselves baptized,
although as soon as the Portuguese left, the
king resumed his traditional religious practices.
The case was different, however, with his
eldest son, Nzinga Mvemba. Baptized as Afonso
in 1491, he reigned as a Christian from 1507
until his death in 1543. His commitment to
Christianity was sincere and profound; he
changed the name of his capital to Sao Salvador,
ordered the destruction of all the "idols/' called
insistently for missionaries to be sent to him,
66

CIRCA 1492

and even sent his son Henrique to study in

Lisbon. It was his wish to remodel his kingdom
along European lines.
The Portuguese responded with an ambivalent policy to the African ruler's faith and
eagerness to modernize his country. They
interpreted the right of "patronage" over the
African lands that Pope Alexander vi had
granted to King Manuel i of Portugal in 1499
not as a privilege and a responsibility to spread
the Christian faith but as a sort of exclusive
right to exploit the lands included in the Act of
Patronage. The Regimento the rules for gov-

erning that the Portuguese king sent to his

counterpart in the Kongo in 151223 suggested
a model of European organization for the
African state but at the same time explicitly
requested that the Portuguese ships returning
to Lisbon be loaded to the maximum with
slaves, copper, and ivory ("asy descrauos como
de cobre e marfim") to compensate for the costs
of spreading the Christian faith. It was thus
inevitable that the relations between Portugal
and the Kongo would soon degenerate.
Although there are no Kongo art works or
craft objects known that can be attributed with

any certainty to the period before the arrival of

the Portuguese, there is considerable support
for the conclusion that artistic creation and a
high level of artisanry flourished in the kingdom prior to contact with Europe. The Portuguese chronicles, in fact, record among the gifts
received from Kongo in 1488 "objects in ivory
well worked and many garments in palm fiber
well woven and with delicate colors/'24 Such
fabrics and ivory objects found their way into
the European princely collections and curiosity
cabinets in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Two splendid ivory oliphants, with their surfaces covered by an exquisite geometrical decoration using typical Kongo motifs, were among
the possessions in 1553 of Grand Duke Cosimo i
de' Medici, ruler of Florence (cat. 78). It can
reasonably be supposed that these were gifts
sent by the Kongo monarch, a convert to Christianity, to a pontiff of the great Florentine family, perhaps even Giovanni de' Mediciwho
was Pope Leo x from 1513 to 1521 and who
appointed the Kongo prince Henrique bishop
of Uticain 1518.25
The first explicit mention in a European
source of palm fiber fabrics worked like velvet,
using the same geometrical decoration that was
carved on the ivory horns, is found in Duarte
Pacheco Pereira's invaluable account, Esmeraldo
de Situ Orbis, which is thought to have been
written between 1506 and 1508. There the
author states that "in this kingdom of Kongo
they make fabrics with a nap like velvet, some
of them worked in velvety satin, so beautiful
that nothing finer is made in Italy/'26 no mean
compliment at that time.
The passage quoted is intriguing, as is the
listing of some Kongo fabrics in the inventory
of the estate of a Portuguese colonist who died
in Sao Tome in 1507,27 where they are specified
as avjlotados, "velvety/' These demonstrate
beyond any doubt that the procedure for making
palm fiber textiles similar to velvet was an
independent African achievement, the product
of a textile industry that must have had roots
far in the past, if it could produce cloth of such
refinement. The chorus of European admiration
for these textiles runs through the centuries.
For example, in 1664, Paolo Maria Terzago
noted that the Kongo textiles in the Museo Settaliano in Milan reflected "an art so great as to
surpass our cloth of worked silk/'28

figurative arts at that time: the creation of

works of art for export, those now known as
Afro-Portuguese ivories.
The term, coined in 1959 by William Fagg,29
covers a group of saltcellars, pyxes, spoons,
forks, knife and dagger handles, and oliphants
that were carved within the span of a few decades beginning at the end of the fifteenth century, either commissioned directly by the
Portuguese visitors or created to be sold to
them. Elements native to the two cultures are
harmoniously integrated in these ivories, of
which a corpus of about two hundred works has
thus far been identified. 30 European models are
particularly recognizable in the decoration of
the saltcellars and liturgical vessels, and in many
cases it is possible to identify the probable
source of the designs (see Fagg and Bassani,
1988).
The records from 1504-1505 of the treasurer
of the Casa de Guine, the Portuguese administrative headquarters for overseas commerce,31
along with statements from Portuguese chroniclers of the time, like Duarte Pacheco Pereira
and Valentim Fernandes, are evidence that such
ivory objects were indeed sent to Portugal from
Africa. The chronicles are in accord in their
admiration for the African carvers' skill. Fernandes, in his description of West Africa written between 1506 and 1510, states that "in
Sierra Leone, men are very clever and make
extremely beautiful objects as spoons, saltcellars, and dagger hilts."32
For the ivories from Benin, on the other
hand, we have only a single and considerably
later account. The English navigator James
Welsh, in the report of his voyages that he
wrote in 1588, stated that the inhabitants of
Benin produce "elephant tooth spoons, curiously carved with different kinds of birds and
animals on them."33 It is clear, however, that the

production of these ivories began before, for as

early as 1560 five spoons from Benin figured
among the possessions of the Florentine Grand
Duke Cosimo i de' Medici (cats. 72-76).34
The reason such precious objects were producedworks destined in some cases for the
kings of Portugal and Spain, as we know from
the coats of arms carved on some of the saltcellars and oliphants (cats. 70 and 77)35 is readily
explained by the abundance of ivory available at
this time and by the proven professional capacity of the local carvers. It is inconceivable that
objects of such sophistication and technical perfection could have originated only in response
to a sudden demand from abroad. In any case,
the ultimate proof that the origin of these
works is connected to local artistic traditions
lies in the stylistic characteristics we have
described that relate the Afro-Portuguese
ivories to works of art that do not presuppose
contact with Europe, to the stone sculptures in
the case of the Sapi and to the indigenous
ivories and bronzes in the case of Benin.
This brief survey is meant to serve simply as
an introduction to a broad and complex subject,
as is the selection of objects included in the
exhibition. The cultures described and represented are by no means the only art-producing
cultures of the period. The Age of Exploration
did not bring about this period of extraordinary
artistic production. As we have seen, in each
cultural area the indigenous roots of the techniques and styles are clear. Even the Afro-Portuguese ivories are a logical outgrowth of local
traditions, although they also reflect the opportunities presented by the new European market.
Taken as a whole, these West African works
remind us of the exceptional artistic vitality that
prevailed in the world around 1492, all the more
extraordinary in that its manifestations were so
often independent of one another.

Afro-Portuguese Ivories
In Sierra Leone, Benin, and perhaps Zaire, the
encounter and resulting cultural interchange
between the Portuguese and Africans produced
a phenomenon unique in the history of African

fig. 3. Raffia cloth, Zaire or

Angola. Seventeenth
century. Nationalmuseet,
Copenhagen
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

67

NOTES
1. See Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali
(reprint ed., New York and London, 1980), 6566.
2. See Massing essay "Observations and Beliefs: The
World of the Catalan Atlas" in this catalogue.
3. See N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, Corpus of early
Arabic sources for West African history (Cambridge,
1981), 289-297.
4. See The Cambridge History of Africa, 3 (Cambridge,
1-977)' 415~4625. Leone Africano, "Delia descrizione dell'Africa e delle
cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Africano/' in Primo volume delle navigationi et viaggi nel
qual si contiene la descrittione dell'Africa, et del
paese del Prete lanni, con vari viaggi..., ed. Gio.
Battista Ramusio (Venice, 1550); and Leo Africanus,
The history and description of Africa and the notable things therein contained done into English in
the year 1600 by John Pory, Robert Brown, ed.
(London, 1846), 3:825.
6. Roderick J. Mclntosh and Susan Keech Mclntosh,
"Terracotta Statuettes from Mali/' African Arts xn 2
(February 1979), 51-53; Bernard de Grunne, Terres
Cuites Anciennes de I'Quest Africain (Louvain-laNeuve, 1980); Susan Keech Mclntosh and Roderick
J. Mclntosh, Prehistoric Investigation in the Region
of Jenne, Mali (Oxford, 1980); Bernardo Bernardi
and Bernard de Grunne, Terra d'Africa, Terra d'Archeologia La grande scultura in terracotta del MaliDjenne vn-xvisec. (Rome, 1990).
7. Roderick L. Mclntosh, "Middle Niger Terracottas
before the Symplegades Gateway," African Arts xxn
2 (February 1989), 74-83.
8. Rene A. Bravmann, Islam and Tribal Africa (Cambridge, 1974).
9. Walter Rodney, "A Reconsideration of the Mane
Invasions of Sierra Leone/' Journal of African History, vni 2 (1967), 218.
10. A. Alvarez de Almada, "Tratado Breve dos Rios de
Guine do Cabo Verde desde o Rio do Sanaga ate aos
Baixos de Sant'Anna" (Lisbon, 1594), in Rodney
1967, 238.
11. Valentim Fernandes, Description de la Cote Occidentale d'Afrique (Senegal au Cap de Monte, Archipels), T. Monod, A. Teixeira da Mota and R. Mauny,
eds. and trans. (Bissau, 1951), 96; Duarte Pacheco
Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, Augusto Epifanio
da Silva Dias, ed. (Lisbon, 1905), 96.
12. Alvarez 1594, in Rodney 1967, 240.

68

CIRCA 1492

13. P. E. H. Hair, "From language to culture: some

problems in the systematic analysis of the ethnohistorical records of the Sierra Leone Region," in The
Population Factors in African Studies, eds. Rowland
P. Moss and R. J. A. R. Rathbone (London, 1974),
71-83; P. E. H. Hair, "An Ethnolinguistic Inventory
of the Lower Guinea Coast before 1700: Part i," African Language Review 7 (1968), 47-73.
14. Kunz Dittmer, "Bedeutung, Datierung und Kulturhistorische Zusammenhange der 'prahistorischen'
Steinfiguren aus Sierra Leone und Guine," Baessler
Archiv, N. F. xv (1967); Aldo Tagliaferri and Arno
Hammacher, Fabulous Ancestors (Milan and New
York, 1974); Frederick J. Lamp, "House of Stones:
Memorial Art of Fifteenth-Century Sierra Leone,"
Art Bulletin LXV 2 (1983), 219-237; Aldo Tagliaferri,
Stili del Potere, Antiche sculture in Pietra dalla
Sierra Leone e dalla Guinea (Milan, 1989).
15. Fernandes 1951, 75.
16. Ekpo Eyo and Frank Willett, Treasures of Ancient
Nigeria: Legacy 0/2000 Years [exh. cat., Detroit
Institute of Arts] (New York, 1980).
17. Leo Frobenius, The Voice of Africa (New York, 1968),
1:323-349.
18. Frank Willett, Ife in the History of West African
Sculpture (New York, 1967), 110-118; Frank Willett,
"A missing millennium? From Nok to Ife and
beyond," in Arte in Africa Realta e prospettive
nello studio della storia delle arti africane, ed. Ezio
Bassani (Modena, 1986), 87100.
19. Jacob Egharevba, A Short History of Benin, 3d ed.
(Ibadan, 1980); R. E. Bradbury, Benin Studies, ed.
Peter Morton-Williams (Oxford, 1973); Henry John
Drewal and John Pemberton in, with Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Nine Centuries of African Art and
Thought, ed. Allen Wardwell (New York, 1989).
20. See inter alia, William Fagg, Divine Kingship in
Africa (London, 1970), 12-20; Babatunde Lawal,
"The Present State of Art Historical Research in
Nigeria: Problems and Possibilities," Journal of African History, xvm 2 (1977), 193-216; and P. T.
Craddock and J. Picton, "Medieval Copper Alloy
Production and West African Bronze Analyses
Part n," Archaeometry 28, i (1986), 3-32.
21. Eyo and Willett 1980, 14-17.
22. Georges Balandier, La Vie Quotidienne au Royaume
de Kongo du xvf au xviif Siecle (Paris, 1965); Teobaldo Filesi, "Le relazioni tra il regno del Congo e la

23.

24.

25.
26.
27.

28.
29.

Sede Apostolica nelle prima meta del xv secolo,"

Africa xxn 3 (1967), 247-285; Teobaldo Filesi, "Le
relazioni tra il regno del Congo e la Sede Apostolica
nel xvi secolo," Africa xxn 4 (1967), 413-460.
The manuscript is preserved in the Archive nacional
da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Leis, mac,o 2, 25, and is
reproduced in Antonio Brasio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, Africa Ocidental, 14711531, i
(Lisbon, 1952), 228-246.
Rui de Pina, Chronica d'El Rey Dom Jodo n (Lisbon,
1792), 148. The same words are used by Garcia de
Resende and Jeronimo Osorio in reports from the
same period as Rui de Pina's chronicle.
Ezio Bassani, "Antichi Avori Africani nelle collezioni
medicee," Critica d'Arte, 143 (1975), 68-80 and 144
(1975), 6-23.
Pacheco Pereira, 1905, 134.
Archivo nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Corpo
Cronologico, II, 15-77. The author is grateful to the
late Admiral Avelino Teixeira de Mota for making
this document available.
Paolo M. Terzago, Musaeum Septalianum Manfredi
Septalae Patritii Mediolanensis industrioso labore
constructum (Tortona, 1664), 131.
William Fagg, Afro-Portuguese Ivories (London,

*959)30. Ezio Bassani and William Fagg, Africa and the

Renaissance Art in Ivory (New York, 1988); see
also Kathy Curnow, The Afro-Portuguese Ivories:
Classification and Stylistic Analysis of a Hybrid Art
Form (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1983).
31. Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Nucleo
Antigo, 799, reproduced in A. F. C. Ryder, "A note
of the Afro-Portuguese Ivories," Journal of African
History v 3 (1964), 353-365 and in A. Teixeira da
Mota, "Gli avori africani nella documentazione portoghese dei secoli xv-xvn," Africa xxx 4 (1975), 580589.
32. Fernandes 1951, 96. See also Pacheco Pereira 1905,

96.

33. James Welsh, "A voyage to Benin beyond the countrey of Guinea made by Master James Welsh, who
set forth in the yeere 1588," in The Principal Navigation Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the
English Nation, ed. R. Hakluyt (London, 1904), 252.
34. Bassani 1975.
35. Bassani and Fagg 1988, 109.

'THE GORGEOUS EAST': TRADE AND TRIBUTE IN

THE ISLAMIC EMPIRES
/. Michael Rogers
The Ottomans and Constantinople

. n 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman

Sultan Mehmed n, "the Conqueror" (cat. 107).
To Europe it appeared to be a catastrophe, but
the city was in fact no great prize, little more
than a collection of villages and virtually "the
dead centre of a dead empire/'1 Mehmed n, who
aspired to conquer all the lands that the Byzantines had formerly ruled, chose it as a fitting
capital. To restore its economic prosperity he
transferred populations from the provinces
wealthy Muslim merchants, skilled craftsmen,
and notables from Bursa; Greeks from the
Morea (1460-1462); Muslims and Armenians
from central Anatolia and Karaman (14681474); and Armenians, Greeks, and Jews from
the former Genoese colony of Caffa in the
Crimea (1475) simultaneously converting
the city into a Muslim capital by encouraging
the building of mosques and other pious
foundations.
Already at the accession of Bayazid n in 1481,
Constantinople/Istanbul had regained its status
as a great metropolis. The conquest of Constantinople turned the Ottoman sultans' attention
more than ever towards Europe. Beneath the
city walls in 1452 Mehmed had discoursed on
history and empire with the Italian antiquarian
Ciriaco dAncona.2 Mehmed's library3 contained
European classics as well as Arabic, Persian, and
Turkish literature. He summoned to his court
Italian medalists and portrait painters,4 the most
famous of whom was Gentile Bellini in 1479.
And from the monasteries and churches of
Constantinople, the Balkans, and Anatolia5,
Mehmed collected, not altogether impiously,
remarkable Christian relics. His successor, Bayazid n, had no use for his father's Italian pictures, and the Italian merchant Angiolello, who
wrote a history of Bayazid's reign, says that
they were sold off in the bazaar and collected by
Italian merchants.6 The great Jewish diaspora
following the fall of Granada in 1492, however,
further strengthened the Ottomans' links to
Europe, for, in addition to the fact that a community of Sephardic Jews settled at Salonike
(transforming it into the most important commercial city of the eastern Mediterranean),
Bayazid took as his physician Joseph Hamon,
a Jewish refugee from Andalusia.7

Mehmed n did not neglect the East, however.

Within ten years Trebizond, the last Byzantine
stronghold, had fallen (1461) to his troops, and
the capture of Caffa and other Genoese trading
colonies on the Crimean coast in 1475 made
the Black Sea an Ottoman lake. Mehmed's campaigns in Anatolia, on the other hand, brought
him up against a complex mosaic of ruling
dynasties of almost kaleidoscopic confusion.
The Mamluks, in a last flash of glory under the
Sultan Qa'it Bay (r. 1470-1496) (cats. 85, 86,
95) controlled Egypt, Syria, and Southeastern
Turkey; Baghdad to Tabriz was under the sway
of the tribal confederation of the Aqqoyunlu
(White Sheep) Turcoman, whose notable ruler,
Uzun Hasan (d. 1478) appears, anachronistically, in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the
Great; and while the rest of Iran, up to the
limits of Transoxania, was ruled by Timurid
epigones in full decline, the court at Herat
rivaled in splendor those at Tabriz and Istanbul.
Within a decade, however, the Timurids had
fallen to a new Turkish confederation, the
Uzbeks; the Aqqoyunlu had fallen to the Safavids (Turks, but champions of Iranian nationalism); and in two decades the Mamluks were
absorbed into the Ottoman empire.
The activities of Mehmed n's successor, Bayazid n (r. 1481-1512), on the European front
were hampered by his younger brother, Cem8
(cat. 91), with whom he had disputed the succession. Cem was defeated and fled straight to
Cairo, but on his return to southeastern Turkey
in 1482 Bayazid stood firm. Cem then turned to
the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes, to whom
Bayazid agreed to pay a lavish annual subvention to keep him captive. He remained a prisoner of the Knights in France for seven years
but in 1489 he reached Rome, where Matthias
Corvinus of Hungary and Qa'it Bay of Egypt,
who had been at war with Bayazid since 1485,
contended for his support. Bayazid was forced
to buy off the pope with further largesse and
some choice specimens from his father's collection of relics.9 Notwithstanding, Cem was
released into the hands of Charles vn of France,
who took him off to Naples in 1493, where he
died two years later. Further gifts of both relics
and cash, as well as copious threats, were

fig. i. Sinan Beg, Portrait of Mehmed. Topkapi

Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, Library JR-K

required before his body was returned to Bursa

for burial. Cem's potential value in an antiOttoman crusade was in fact never realized, but
Bayazid was made to regret bitterly that he had
survived so long. The code of laws promulgated
by Mehmed n had provided that, to avoid civil
strife, a sultan on his accession should have his
brothers killed. Selim i, who gained the throne
in 1512, did not repeat Bayazid's mistake.
In the East, Bayazid n continued his father's
campaigns against the Mamluks but with indifferent success. To counter this threat to their
trade, Venice and Genoa had pursued alliances
with the Aqqoyunlu ruler, Uzun Hasan, in
Tabriz, but these initiatives came to nothing
because the essential artillery from Venice had
failed to reach Uzun Hasan in time to prevent
his defeat by Mehmed n at Bakent near Erzincan in 1473. Although the Mamluks were favorably disposed to such an alliance, Uzun Hasan
had been no less anti-Mamluk than antiOttoman. The struggle with Iran continued

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

69

under the Safavid Shah lsmacil, who seized the

throne in 1501, but by Bayazid's death in 1512
most of eastern Anatolia was definitively under
Ottoman control.
In conquering these new and largely tribal
provinces the Ottomans invoked the traditions
of the great Turkish conqueror and destroyer,
Tamerlane, whose legendary exploits had
inspired the Aqqoyunlu no less than his numerous descendants, both in war and, paradoxically
perhaps, in learning and the arts. Tamerlane had
outdone his predecessors in despoiling the lands
he conquered of artists, craftsmen, and scholars
to adorn his capital, Samarkand, though, as with
the workers of enameled glass he deported from
Aleppo and Damascus, sometimes without any
practical result. His successors followed his
example, and the booty of the later fifteenthcentury Turkish states from victorious campaigns was henceforth not merely of luxuries,
heirlooms, and cash but also of craftsmen and
scholars.
Not all the Eastern scholars who reached
Istanbul had been conscripted.10 Some were
attracted by the growing reputation of the Ottoman sultans as patrons of learning. After Ulugh
Beg's death in 1449, cAli Qushji, the head of his
observatory in Samarkand where a new, radically revised set of star tables had been compiled, found his way to Istanbul after some
years at the court of Uzun Hasan at Tabriz. On
his arrival there in 1471 he was appointed, at
the colossal stipend of 200 akge (rather more
than 4 ducats) per diem, to the staff of the

fig. 2. Master of the Vienna Passion. Il Gran Turco.

engraving. Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi, Istanbul

70

CIRCA 1492

mosque of Ayasofya. On his death in 1474, the

bequest of his large library, which included
works from the observatory at Samarkand,
completely transformed Ottoman astronomy.
The earlier works of the great Herati poet,
c
Alishir Neva7!, who singlehandedly transformed the local Turkish dialects of Central Asia
into classical Chaghatay,11 were in Mehmed n's
own library. And on his arrival in Istanbul in
1474-1475 the jurist cAli b. Yusuf Fenarizade,
who had studied at Samarkand, Bukhara, and
Herat and who was to reach high office under
Bayazid n, brought with him a copy of the
famous early Turkish work of counsel for kings,
the Kutadgu Bilik, executed in Uyghur script at
Herat in 1439-1440.
These scholars were welcomed, and the works
they brought with them to Istanbul made a fundamental contribution to Ottoman learning and
literature. But Mehmed n and his successors
actively acquired artists and their works from
the East as well as from Europe. In 1472
Mehmed captured the Aqqoyunlu prince Yusufcha Mirza and demanded as part of his ransom
albums of prized drawings, paintings, and calligraphy from the Aqqoyunlu collections in the
Royal libraries of Tabriz, Shiraz, and Herat.
These are still for the most part in the libraries
of Istanbul. More of this material came to Istanbul after Mehmed's victory at Bakent in 1473
and after Selim i's sack of the Hasht Bihisht
palace at Tabriz in 1514. Although some of the
albums were already bound,12 they were
reviewed in Istanbul and Ottoman heirlooms
were added, including a portrait of Mehmed
after Costanzo da Ferrara and a miscellaneous
collection of Florentine engravings dating from
the 14605 and 147OS.13 Among these was a
hand-colored male portrait in profile wearing a
tournament helmet, now attributed to the
Master of the Vienna Passion after Antonio
Pollaiuolo and in later states entitled, picturesquely but groundlessly, II Gran Turco
(actually "The Sultan").
Palace registers state that many of the
Muslim painters working for Siileyman the
Magnificent in the 1520$ were conscripted from
Tabriz14 by Bayazid n, while the Tabrizi painters
sent to Istanbul after Selim i's victory at aldiran in 1514 included a certain Shahquli15 (d. c.
1556), who was to become the head of Siileyman the Magnificent's studio. Bayazid n, who,
according to the historian Spandugino,16 inaugurated pomp at the Ottoman court, conscripted
other craftsmen, prisoners of war, and slaves for
his palace workshops,17 including embroiderers
in gold thread, swordsmiths, boot-makers,
tailors, and furriers, but above all jewelers and
goldsmiths. These were divided into two
groups, Rumi (Anatolian) and cAcemi (Persian),

not on the basis of their origins but by their

styles and the materials in which they worked.
Menavino,18 who himself had been a slave of
Bayazid n, states that they numbered seventy.
In their virtuoso work the fashions of Herat
and Tabriz were brilliantly adapted to
Ottoman taste.
Recruitment of foreign craftsmen by conscription presupposed a careful check of their
qualifications, but since an important function
of the Ottoman palace workshops was to
furnish gifts for the sultan on the great feasts
of the Muslim year, inferior work would not
go undetected. In any case, the benefits of conscription far outweighed the disadvantages.
Conscription on a massive scale was the means
used to provide the skilled labor for Bayazid's
occasional building works such as his great
foundations at Edirne (inaugurated 1487-1488)
and in Istanbul (inaugurated 1505).
The Mamluks and the India trade
Trade with India placed the Mamluks in a
pivotal position in the Mediterranean world in
the waning years of the fifteenth century. From
the India trade the Mamluks acquired luxuries
primarily for their own consumption Chinese
porcelains, Indian cottons, ivory and ambergris,
gemstones and pearls. Far more important economically, however, was the export trade for the
northern Mediterranean in spices, drugs such
as Indian opium, preservatives, incense from
Somalia and Oman, and Indian dyestuffs, particularly lac, which gave the finest crimson for
the velvets of northern Italy.19 Sultan Barsbay
(d. 1432) had transformed the export trade into
a state monopoly, and although the Italian documents inveigh against its extortions the monopoly also protected European merchants from
piratical exactions and corsairs in the Red Sea
and off Alexandria.20
Immensely profitable as the monopoly was
to the Mamluks, they were, like all middlemen,
highly vulnerable, requiring enormous amounts
of silver for the settlement of accounts in India
and a large and efficient seagoing fleet. Egypt,
however, depended abjectly upon imports of
both raw metals, including copper and brass,
and of timber, down to the minutest details of
naval equipment, though contraband largely
frustrated the periodic papal embargoes on
timber exports to Egypt from the northern
Mediterranean. In the later fifteenth century
the supply of silver, which came in payment by
European merchants for spices, was threatened
by growing demand in the sea trade with India
and by a growing shortage of silver resulting
from Ottoman control of the Bosnian silvermines in the hinterland of Dubrovnik. Critical

disturbances to shipping in the northern Mediterranean also occurred. Venetian hostilities

with Bayazid n in the 14905 led to the virtual
suspension of the spice trade: in 1500 so many
ships had been diverted to the defense of the
Venetian possessions in the eastern Mediterranean that only three ships to Beirut and three to
Alexandria could be raised, and that only on
condition that the Serenissima, already almost
bankrupted by the cost of equipping galleys,
provide armed convoys at its own expense. In
Mamluk Egypt the increasingly heavy commitments in the east and the shortage of silver
from the north brought catastrophic inflation,
which was an obvious cause of Mamluk weakness21 that made Egypt such an easy prey to the
Ottoman Sultan Selim i in 1516.
The Mamluk spice monopoly confined foreign merchants to Alexandria,22 and only exceptionally did foreign embassies reach Cairo.
Among these were embassies from the Bahmanids, the Muslim rulers of the Deccan, who
also maintained diplomatic relations with the
Aqqoyunlu and the Ottomans.23 The purpose
of the Bahmanid embassy received at Tabriz in
147124 was evidently commercial, for from the
Bursa archives25 we learn that in 1479 the Bahmanid vizier, Mahmud Gavan Gilani (executed
1481) had three agents in Bursa and that in 1481
there were another six. Some of these were
from Gilan, a principal producer of raw silk for
export to Europe on the Bursa market, and may
well have been wholesale merchants; but some
had come from the Hijaz, where they had
doubtless traded at the great fairs attending the
annual pilgrimage to Mecca. This may well
explain Ludovico di Varthema's observation26
that the Hijaz in 1503 abounded in cottons, as
well as the appearance of fine Indian cotton
stuffs in early sixteenth-century Ottoman
palace inventories.
Mamluk relations with the Indian subcontinent were, however, much stronger with
Gujarat, an important entrepot and textile manufacturing center. Abundant finds of Gujarati
block-printed cottons at Fustat and Qusayr alQadim on the Red Sea also argue for large-scale
imports for a mass market, and popular Gujarati
figural scenes also evidently found a ready
sale.27 In the general panic in the Mediterranean
following the Portuguese discovery of the Cape
route to India, which briefly united the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and the Italian trading
republics, embassies from Cambay in Gujarat
were also received in Cairo,28 and in 1505 Sultan
Qansuh al-Ghawri dispatched an expeditionary
force to drive the Portuguese out of Gujarat. On
its annihilation by the Portuguese he ordered
munitions and timber from Turkey, and in
i5ii29 Bayazid n presented him with three hun-

fig. 3. Fragment of Printed Cotton. The Textile Museum, Washington

dred pieces of artillery, and powder, ropes, oars,

and rigging to re-equip the fleet. Strangely, the
Mamluks did not think to use this arsenal in
their own defense against Selim i in 1516, and it
remained to be used by the Ottoman governors
of Egypt, who continued the Mamluks' antiPortuguese struggle in the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean.30
For the Italian trading republics diplomatic
relations with the Mamluks and Ottomans were
no sham, for they guaranteed the security of
their shipping, which had a virtual monopoly in
the eastern Mediterranean and was the mainstay of their economies, and of the Italian factories at Alexandria and Beirut, Damascus, and
Aleppo. War, like the sixteen-year Venetian
War with Mehmed n (1463-1479), was a catastrophe, permanently weakening Venetian power
overseas and fatally depriving the Republic of
European allies, who had always piously reprehended its accommodations with the Infidel.31

Magnificent diplomacy: from Italy to China

Despite the Muslim threat, the East in the Italian Renaissance remained the land of the Magi,
of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Long after

Marco Polo, whose account of his travels was, as

Paul Pelliot demonstrated, an attempt to follow
the legendary journeys of Alexander the Great
in the Alexander Romance, the persistence of
books of travelers' tales and marvels of the East,
the science fiction of the time, demonstrates the
extreme disinclination of the Renaissance public
to abandon its view of the East as a source of
entertainment.
Reality also nourished fiction. The magnificence of Qa'it Bay's embassy to Florence in
148732 with a draft treaty was still vividly
remembered when Vasari depicted it sixty years
later in the Palazzo Vecchio. It brought balsam,
musk, benzoin, and aloeswood; finer porcelain
than any hitherto seen in Florence; colored
stuffs, cottons, and muslins; sweetmeats, myrobalans, and ginger; and a grand ceremonial tent.
Lorenzo de' Medici's secretary, Pietro di Bibbiena,33 also lists a bay horse, long-haired goats,
and a fat-tailed sheep, to which Landucci34 adds
animals that even the Mamluks would have
found exotic, a lion and a giraffe. Although, to
judge from the final text of the treaty, it was
not intended as a move against the Ottomans,
the lavishness of the gifts certainly might have
suggested an ulterior motive, and it was the

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

7*

animals on which the Commune of Florence

prudently chose to dwell in its report of the
embassy submitted to Bayazid n.35
Such dazzling embassies were, however, a
commonplace of Muslim diplomacy. That from
the Safavid Shah lsmacil to Qansuh al-Ghawri
in Cairo,36 in a last-minute attempt to bring
the Mamluks into an anti-Ottoman coalition,
brought seven cheetahs with silk jackets; horses
and horse-trappings; fine arms and armor; gold
cups and silver basins and ewers; gold brocades
and satins from Bursa; Turkish prayer rugs
and runners; and fine cottons and velvet robes.
The Bahmanid embassy of 1471 to Aqqoyunlu
Tabriz described by the Venetian Josafa Barbaro37 brought a whole menagerie a lion, a
tiger, a giraffe, civet-cats, and parakeets; as well
as fine muslins and calicoes; sandalwood, aloeswood, and gems; and porcelains to add to Uzun
Hasan's already fine collection. A charming
scroll fragment in the Topkapi Saray Library38
showing a gamboling giraffe in a deep blue
embroidered jacket may be a record of this
embassy. Nor were the Ottomans excluded.
Among the gifts of the Bahmanid embassy of
1485 to Istanbul were elephants and a giraffe.
While at Tabriz Barbaro also learned, from an
ambassador of "Tartarie" (probably from Farghana),39 of an overland route to Cathay, eastward from Tana on the Sea of Azov. This was
the route traveled by Western merchants and
missionaries during the "pax mongolica" of the
first half of the fourteenth century, and by it
Europe obtained chinoiserie silks from IIKhanid Iran, as well as Chinese silks, which
strongly influenced the design of northern Italian silks of the later fourteenth century. By the
early fifteenth century the sea route had taken
over, when the great Ming naval expeditions
reached Arabia and the Gulf 40 with enormous
war junks in which celadons and blue and white
porcelains evidently formed a substantial element of the ballast.
Overland trade with China was from Central
Asia: Barbaro's informant rightly gave him to
understand that Western merchants would not
get beyond Samarkand if they got even that
far. This trade was, moreover, much complicated
by the fact that in Chinese eyes trade was tribute. In the Confucian tradition the emperor
was the divinely appointed ruler of the world,
graciously accepting the humble tribute of his
vassals and their ambassadors, even if the "diplomats" were actually merchants. This elaborate
make-believe perhaps gave the Chinese court
a better pick of merchandise than if foreign
traders had sold their wares on markets at the
frontier, and counterfeit embassies with counterfeit credentials were thus continually welcomed in Beijing. Provision for them was
72

CIRCA 1492

lavish, for the system admitted only those foreigners whom the Chinese court was prepared
to impress, while tribute intervals could, theoretically at least, be adjusted to suit its own
demand.41
By the mid-fifteenth century, however, this
pseudo-diplomacy was getting out of hand.
Faced with an annual horde of merchants from
Central Asia, the Ming administration in 1456
reduced the official scale of exchanges to four
pieces of variegated silk and eight garments of
cheap silk for each Turcoman horse (the most
highly prized steeds in the Ming cavalry); ten
garments of cheap silk for three camels; and
for each Tatar horse only a piece of hempen
cloth and eight pieces of cheap silk.42 The exotic
animals presented by foreign embassies, even
when they were from foreign rulers, were much
more critically received. When an embassy
from Sultan Ahmad (1468-1493),43 the Timurid
ruler of Samarkand, arrived with two lions, it
was objected that lions were useless beasts that
were expensive to keep but which could neither
be sacrificed nor even, bizarre thought, be
harnessed to a carriage. In 1489 when another
embassy arrived from Samarkand with parrots
and a lion, the emperor, quite against the
Confucian imperial tradition, declared that he
disliked both rare birds and strange beasts. The
following year yet another lion and an Asiatic
lynx were brought by an embassy from Turf an.
Their pictures were drawn at the northern
capital and sent to the emperor who this time,
though against his ministers' advice, deigned
to accept them.44
The lists of gifts and the commodities
exchanged for them clearly show that unless
merchants surreptitiously succeeded in striking
profitable bargains in the Chinese cities they
passed through on their way to or from Beijing,
trade was small-scale and rather trivial and
could scarcely have been the basis of a Chinese
export trade westward from Samarkand. In the
early sixteenth century the Ottomans were nevertheless informed of the overland route to
China, though their political concerns probably
reached no further eastward than the Uzbeks
in Transoxania. In 1516 a certain Sayyid cAli
Akbar presented a work on the China trade, the
Khitdyndme45 to Selim i, though his advice to
offer gifts of cheetahs, lions, and lynxes suggests that he was unaware that for decades the
Ming court had been suffering from a glut
of unwanted animals. Though the Ottoman
sources say nothing of any embassies to China,
the Chinese annals mention two embassies
from "Rum" (Anatolia) that could conceivably
have been official.46 One in 1524 arrived with
a lion and a Western ox, but the envoy was
arrested as a spy. The second embassy arrived

in 1526, but when the envoy claimed twelve

thousand gold pieces for his expenses it was
indignantly dismissed.
The menageries that the Muslim rulers of
India and the Middle East presented to each
other, and the lions and other animals that they
believed were acceptable to the Ming court at
Beijing, make exotic animals a surprisingly
important item of international trade across
Asia. How the trade worked is unknown, but
the animals may have been obtained as a byproduct of the enormous traffic in thoroughbred
horses exported annually from the Gulf ports47
for the cavalries of the warrior states of northern India and East Africa. Albuquerque's
rhinoceros, which was to be commemorated in
Diirer's famous woodcut (cat. 206), may have
added a new dimension to Renaissance pageantry, but it was in a well-established Muslim
diplomatic tradition.
An oriental obsession
The spectacle of Muslim embassies fueled the
Venetian idea of the East as the source of all
benefits and luxuries, to the exclusion of northern and western Europe. Unfortunately, the
Venetians wilfully ignored the most conspicuous drawback of trade with the East, bubonic
plague. For more than a century after the Black
Death first arrived, it reappeared annually48
with the galleys from Alexandria, whose crews
were constantly reinfected through the Mamluks' importation of slaves from the Crimea and
the fur trade from the Black Sea and the Volga
to Cairo.
An Eastern import that added conspicuously
to the comfort and splendor of Renaissance
furnishing was the carpet. Those that reached
the northern Mediterranean were for the most
part nomad weaves from western Anatolia
and large carpets from Cairo.49 The "Holbein"
pattern of small Turkish carpets used to cover
tables (tappeti di tavola), not for the floor, goes
back to the 145OS.50 The pattern was most probably traditional, uninfluenced either by Italian
demand or by the Ottoman court.51 They were
exported by Italian merchants resident at Altoluogo, the medieval port of Ephesus, and by
merchants on Rhodes who acquired them from
agents in the hinterland.
Carpets from Cairo arrived via Alexandria
and Damascus, in such numbers that there must
have been a large, uncontrolled market in them,
though they were much prized by the Mamluk
Sultans and later by the Ottomans too. They
were also large, sometimes enormous. In 1515
the Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri rode in state
through Cairo to the Citadel, and the whole
way from the entrance of the Hippodrome at its

base to the great tent erected for him, a distance

of at least a hundred meters, was spread with
silk carpets.52
In Venice too, the Signoria had a collection
of Cairene and other carpets (Marino Sanuto
[1466-1535] more than once describes them as
caiarini et cimiscasachi, the latter evidently
from (Jemigezek on the Upper Euphrates53) for
state occasions: they appear in pictures of processions in the Piazza San Marco, thrown over
the balconies of the Ducal Palace and the Procuratorie Vecchie. Cairene and Turkish carpets
were also, though briefly, woven in northern
Italy. A letter from Barbara of Brandenburg
dated 1464 asks for a Turkish slave to weave
carpets for her at Mantua, and Rodolfo Signorini's recent publication of the Camera Dipinta in
the Ducal Palace there suggests that the carpet
Mantegna painted was the work of this slave.
From 1490 onward, there was a carpet workshop
at the ducal court at Ferrara, run by a Muslim
from Cairo, Sabadino Moro.54 Though the
Ferrara workshop remained active until c. 1530,
these initiatives did not lead to the establishment of any permanent carpet manufacture in
Renaissance Italy.
Many of the objects in the Treasury of the
Cathedral of San Marco in Venice were also
believed to have come from the East. Such was
definitely the case with some of the rockcrystals from the Fatimid Treasury (cat. 13)
which reached Venice via Acre or Jerusalem in
the mid-thirteenth century. These were, evidently, diverted booty from the sack of Constantinople in 1204 though this was not
demonstrated until the nineteenth century.55 It
was not the actual provenance but the Venetian
belief that objects coming from the East thereby
gained glamor that is so striking, and this
remains as strong as ever.56 One of the more
remarkable cases is a bowl of heavy opaque glass
of Fatimid type in the Treasury of San Marco,
with molded lobes and panels of stylized hares
datable to c. 1000 AD, which is almost certainly
also from the Fatimid Treasury. This has long
been believed to be a gift to San Marco from the
Aqqoyunlu ruler, Uzun Hasan, in Tabriz, even
though that is ruled out by the mounts, which
include Byzantine cloisonne enamels and northern Italian medieval filigree plaques of far too
early a date to be connected with that ruler.57
Though the Venetians were not to know it,
however, Uzun Hasan, or one of his immediate
predecessors, must have owned Western hardstones, notably the famous classical sardonyx
cameo made for Ptolemy Philometor of Egypt,
known as the Tazza Farnese, now in the Museo
Nazionale in Naples. This was acquired by
Lorenzo de' Medici in 1471 from Pope Sixtus iv,
to whom it had been bequeathed by Paul u. The

piece appears in an accurate drawing attributed

to Muhammad Khayyam in an album of fifteenth-century graphic material from Herat and
Tabriz, which was presented to Johann Gottfried
von Diez, the Prussian ambassador at the Sublime Porte in the i/jos.58 The absence of modeling gives the drawing a misleadingly
neoclassical appearance, but Muhammad b.
Mahmudshah (al-)Khayyam is known from
signed drawings in Berlin and Istanbul that are
attributable on the basis of their style to Tabriz
c. 1460, and stylistically the Tazza Farnese
drawing fits with these very well. The Tazza
Farnese must thus have come from Tabriz: how
and when it reached that city is unknown, but
the drawing of it shows that if it was a chance
acquisition it was a highly esteemed curiosity.
Classical cameos, improbably perhaps, are
nevertheless not difficult to fit into an Aqqoyunlu context. A developed taste among Tamerlane's successors for vessels in eastern Asiatic
jade brought with it a fashion for objects in
agate, onyx, and chalcedony, all of which materials were readily procurable from the Deccan
and are listed in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Ottoman Palace inventories: of
these an agate cup survives, dated 1470-1471,
made for the Timurid Sultan Husayn Bayqara,
ruler of Herat.59 The jades subsequently traveled
westward, as well as toward India, where their
Timurid associations made them prized by the
Mogul emperors. A cup60 bearing the name of
Tamerlane's grandson, Ulugh Beg, has a silver
plug at the rim with an Ottoman Turkish
inscription indicating that at some time, very
probably in 1514 (a partial inventory of booty
from Tabriz in the Topkapi Saray archives, D.
10734, lists jade vessels, without however
describing them in detail), it came into the
Ottoman Treasury: if, as suggested here,
it came from Tabriz it may well have been in
Uzun Hasan's Treasury as well. And a dark
green jade pot inlaid in gold with scrollwork and
the name of the Safavid Shah Ismacil, now in
the Treasury of the Topkapi Saray61 and clearly
booty from Tabriz as well, is so similar in profile to a white jade jug bearing the name of
Ulugh Beg62 that it too must also have been of
Timurid origin, appropriated by Shah Ismacil
and elaborated to his own taste when he seized
the throne in 1501. The histories of these pieces
and the list of treasuries through which they
passed are thus remarkably similar to the history of the Tazza Farnese, and to those of many
of the Antique hardstones in the great Italian
Renaissance collections. In that at least, East and
West were one.

NOTES
1. Halil Inalcik, "The Policy of Mehmed n Towards
the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine
Buildings of the City/' in Dumbarton Oaks Papers
23-24 (1969-1970), 231.
2. Julian Raby, "Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman
Sultan Mehmed n," in Journal of the Warburg &
Courtauld Institutes 42 (1980).
3. Julian Raby, "East & West in Mehmed the Conqueror's Library/' in Bulletin du Bibliophile 3 (1987).
4. Julian Raby, "Mehmed n Fatih and the Fatih
Album/' in Between China and Iran. Paintings from
Four Istanbul Albums, ed. Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims (Percival David Foundation, London,
1985); Julian Raby, "Pride and Prejudice: Mehmed
the Conqueror and the Italian Portrait Medal," in
Studies in the History of Art, ed. Graham Pollard
(National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1987), no. 21.
5. Franz Babinger, Reliquienschacher am Osmanenhof
im XV. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1956).
6. The pictures appear to be mentioned in a partial
Treasury inventory, dated 1505, of objects that were
evidently to be donated to, endowed upon, or disposed of for the mosque of Bayazid in Istanbul,
which was inaugurated in that year. J. Michael
Rogers, "An Ottoman Palace Inventory of the Reign
of Bayazid n," in CIEPO, VIe Symposium, Cambridge, ist~4th July, 1984, ed. Jean-Louis BacqueGrammont and Emeri van Donzel (Istanbul, Paris,
Leyden, 1987). Angiolello's report, which has often
been dismissed as ill-informed gossip, is thus very
probably true.
7. Uriel Heyd, "Moses Hamon, Chief Jewish Physician
to Sultan Siileyman the Magnificent/' in Oriens 16

(1963).

8. "Djem," Encyclopaedia of Islam2, 6 vols. (Leyden,

1960-1990), vol. 2.
9. Babinger 1956.
10. Hanna Sohrweide, "Dichter und Gelehrter aus dem
Osten im Osmanischen Reich," in Der Islam 46
(1970).
11. Osman F. Sertkaya, "Some New Documents Written
in the Uigur Script in Anatolia," in Central Asiatic
Journal 18 (1974); Eleazar Birnbaum, "The Ottomans and Chagatay Literature. An Early i6th Century Manuscript of Nava'i's Divan in Ottoman
Orthography," in Central Asiatic Journal 20 (1976).
12. Filiz gagman, "On the Contents of the Four Istanbul
Albums, H. 2152, 2153, 2154 and 2160," in Between
China and Iran. Paintings from Four Istanbul
Albums, ed. Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims (Percival David Foundation, London, 1985); Zeren
Tanindi, "Some Problems of Two Istanbul Albums,
H. 2153 and 2160," in Between China and Iran.
Paintings from Four Istanbul Albums, ed. Ernst J.
Grube and Eleanor Sims (Percival David Foundation,
London, 1985).
13. Raby 1985 suggests that they may have reached
Istanbul with the Florentine Benedetto Dei, but they
could equally well have been brought from Tabriz.
14. Ismail Hakki Uzuncarih, "Osmanli saray' inda ehl-i
hiref 'sanatkarlar' defterleri," in Belgeler 11 (Ankara,
1986), 26-32.
15. Banu Mahir, "Saray nakkahanesinin iinlii ressami
ah Kulu ve eserleri," in Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi.
Yilhki (Istanbul, 1986).
16. Nicola lorga, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs
(Gotha, 1909), 2:440.
17. Uzunc.ars.ili 1986, 29-61.
18. Giovanni Antonio Menavino, I costumi, et la vita de'
Turchi (Florence, 1551), 121.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

73

19. Frederick C. Lane, "The Mediterranean Spice Trade:

Its Revival in the Sixteenth Century/' in id. Venice
and History. Collected Papers (Baltimore, 1966).
20. Frederick C. Lane, "Pepper Prices before Da Gama,"
in Journal of Economic History 28 (1968).
21. J. Michael Rogers, "To and Fro. Aspects of Mediterranean Trade and Consumption in the i5th and i6th
Centuries," in Villes au Levant. Hommage a Andre
Raymond, ed. Jean-Paul Pascual (Aix-en-Provence,
1990).
22. Eliyahu Ashtor, "La decouverte de la voie maritime
aux Indes et les prix des Epices," in Melanges en
I'honneur de Fernand Braudel i (Toulouse, 1973).
23. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des
Osmanischen Reiches (Pest, 1828), 2:289-291.
24. Charles Grey, ed., A Narrative of Italian Travels to
Persia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
(Hakluyt Society, London, 1873), 57.
25. Halil Inalcik, "Bursa and the Commerce of the
Levant," in Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient (1960) 3:2; Halil Inalcik,
"Osmanh idare, sosyal ve ekonomik tarihiyle ilgili
belgeler: Bursa kadi sicillerinden segmeler. II. Sicil i
Safar 883Muharrem 886," in Belgeler 13 (Ankara,
1988).
26. Ashtor 1976.
27. Mattiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World:
Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton
Textiles (Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., 1982);
G.M. Vogelsang-Eastwood, Resist-Dyed Textiles
from Quseir al-Qadim, Egypt (Paris, 1990).
28. Ibn lyas, Bada'ic al-Dhuhur, trans. Gaston Wiet in
Journal d'un bourgeois du Caire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1955,
1960), 1:81, 1:176.
29. Ibn lyas 1955, 1960, 1:195.
30. Cengiz Orhonlu, "xvi. asnn ilk yansinda
Kizildeniz'de Osmanhlar," in Tarih Dergisi (1962),
12, no. 16.
31. Victor L. Menage, "Seven Ottoman Documents
from the Reign of Mehemmed n," in Documents
from Islamic Chanceries, first series, ed. Samuel M.
Stern (Cassirer, Oxford, 1965).
32. John Wansbrough, "A Mamluk Commercial Treaty
Concluded with the Republic of Venice 894/1489," in
Documents from Islamic Chanceries, first series, ed.
Samuel M. Stern (Cassirer, Oxford, 1965).
33. A. Fabroni, Eaurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita (Pisa,
1784), 2:337.
34. L. Landucci, Diario fiorentino 1450-1516 (Florence,
1883), 52-53.
35. Giuseppe (Joseph) Miiller, Documenti sulle relazioni
delle citta toscane coll'Oriente cristiano e coi Turchi
fino all'anno 1531 (Florence, 1879), 237, n. 202.
36. Ibn lyas 1955, 1960, 1:249.
37. Grey 1873, 57.
38. H.2153, f. 95b.
39. Grey 1873, 75.
40. Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan. The Overall Survey
of the Ocean's Shores, ed. J.V.G. Mills (Hakluyt
Society, Cambridge, 1970). The quantities in which
they arrived in the Gulf explain the remarkable fact
that Middle Eastern demand for Chinese porcelains
long remained fixated on the products of the Yuan
and the early Ming dynasties. In the late fifteenth
century the Jindezhen kilns even manufactured
copies of these earlier pieces specially to satisfy
Middle Eastern demand.
41. Joseph F. Fletcher, "China and Central Asia, 13681884," in The Chinese World Order, ed. John K.
Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
42. E. Bretschneider, 2 vols. Mediaeval Researches from

74

CIRCA 1492

Eastern Asiatic Sources (London, 1888; 1967),

2:263.
43. Bretschneider, 2:265.
44. Bretschneider, 2:266.
45. Charles Schefer, "Trois chapitres du 'Khitay
Nameh/ Texte persan et traduction franchise," in
Melanges Orientaux (Paris, 1883); Yih-Min-Liu, "A
Comparative and Critical Study of Ali Akbar's Khitaynama with Reference to Chinese Sources," in
Central Asiatic Journal 25 (1983), no. i, 2. It is a
compilation from earlier sources, some of them out
of date, which leads Liu to question its authenticity.
The perennial Muslim tradition in geographical literature has, however, invariably been to draw on
earlier sources, not to compile Baedeker's guides;
and many widely used contemporary Italian merchants' guides and trading manuals were based on
out of date sources too.
46. Bretschneider, 2:306-330.
47. Simon Digby, War-Horse and Elephant in the Dehli
(sic) Sultanate. A Study of Military Supplies
(Oxford-Karachi, 1971); Jean Aubin, "Le royaume
d'Ormuz au debut du XVIe siecle," in Mare LusoIndicum 2 (Geneva, 1973).
48. Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle
East (Princeton, 1977).
49. A contemporary Italian description of the shortlived Aqqoyunlu ruler Yacqub Beg's palace at Tabriz,
the Hasht Bihisht (Grey 1873,175) describes a great
round carpet placed beneath the dome of the central
audience hall, which may well have been of local
manufacture. But mentions of Persian carpets in late
fifteenth century Italian inventories or depictions of
them in contemporary Italian paintings are extremely
rare; nor do they figure conspicuously in early sixteenth century Ottoman palace inventories.
50. John Mills, "Near Eastern Carpets in Italian Paintings," in Carpets in the Mediterranean Countries
1400-1600, ed. Robert Pinner and Walter B. Denny
(London, 1986).
51. There were carpet weavers, mostly Balkan, on the
Ottoman palace staff as early as the reign of
Mehmed n (Bige (^etintiirk, "Istanbul'da xvi asir
sonuna kadar hassa hah sanatkarlan. i. Turk san'at
eserleri ve hah hakkinda mutalealar," in Turk san'ati
tarihi. Aratirma ve incemeleri, i [Istanbul, 1963])
who could have been weaving Holbein pattern
rugs too, though scarcely to cover tables, while
embroidered or applique felts, or even rich silk
brocades, not carpets, remained the most highly
esteemed floor-coverings at the Ottoman court until
well into the sixteenth century. But the manufacture
of very much larger carpets in the Uak area, with
designs based on bookbindings of the period 1470 to
1490 (Julian Raby in Pinner and Denny 1986) was
an initiative of the Ottoman court, since it involved
both a radical change in design and redesigned
looms too. Such Uak carpets were reaching Italy by
the 15305, but they may have been made for the
Ottomans as much as three or four decades earlier.
52. Ibn lyas, 1:393.
53. Marino Sanuto, 58 vols. Diarii (Venice, 1881-1901),
13:131, 21:46; (J. Michael Rogers in Pinner and
Denny 1986).
54. Alberto Boralevi in Pinner and Denny 1986.
55. Le Comte Riant, Depouilles religieuses enlevees a
Constantinople au xnf siecle par les latins, off-print
from Memoires de la Societe Nationale des Antiquaires de France 36 (1875); Le Comte Riant, "La
part de 1'eveque de Bethleem dans le butin de Constantinople en 1204," in Memoires de la Societe

Nationale des Antiquaires de France 46 (1885).

56. Until very recently, for example, it has been maintained that the Lion of Venice, which is most probably Romanesque and from northern Europe, had
been brought from Tarsus in southeastern Turkey
(Bianca-Maria Scarfi, The Lion of Venice. Studies
and Research on the Bronze Statue in the Piazzetta
[Venice, 1990]).
57. Tesoro 140. Margaret Frazer and Carolyn Kane
(in The Treasury of San Marco [exh. cat. British
Museum] (London, 1984), 29) needlessly complicate
matters by their assumption, for which there is
little evidence, that the glass is of early medieval
Persian manufacture. The base of the bowl bears an
undotted Kufic inscription the letters of which,
HRSAN, can be vocalized in numerous ways, none
of them giving, however, an appropriate sense. The
final two letters AN are either an Arabic dual, giving
two of some masculine noun, or possibly a Persian
plural in -an, which may or may not be significant.
Conceivably some Venetian antiquarian misread the
inscription, omitting the r, which would then have
given a posible reading of Hassan not Hasan
however, and therefore nothing at all to do with
Uzun Hasan. If so the wish to attribute it to him
was obviously father to the error.
58. Now Berlin, Staatsbiblothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Diez A Fol 72, Seite 3:2; Horst Blank, "Eine
persische Pinsel-Zeichnung nach der Tazza Farnese,"
in Archdologischer Anzeiger (1964); H.-P Biihler,
Antike Gefasse aus Edelsteinen (Mainz, 1973), 41
43; Nicole Dacos, A. Giuliano and U. Pannuti, II
Tesoro de Lorenzo il Magnifico i. Le gemme (Florence, 1973), 69-72.
59. Now A. Soudavar collection. Armenag Sakisian, "A
propos d'un coupe a vin en agate au nom du sultan
timouride Hussein Baicara," in Syria 6 (1925);
Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and
the Princely Vision. Persian Art and Culture in the
Fifteenth Century [exh. cat. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution] (Washington, 1989), 150.
60. British Museum, OA 1959 11-20 i (36), Brooke
Sewell Fund. Washington 1989,124.
61. Hazine 1844. Cengiz Koseoglu, The Topkapi Saray
Museum. The Treasury, ed. J. Michael Rogers
(London, 1987), 196, no. 48.
62. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, no. 328.

PICTURING THE LEVANT

Julian Raby

n 1492 two paintings that were to depict

scenes set in the eastern half of the Old World,
in the Levant, were commissioned in Italy. Both
paintings were to take as their subject a saint
associated with the city of Alexandria in Egypt,
both used oriental figures in an attempt to
convey an Egyptian setting, and both based
their depictions of Muslims from studies drawn
from life. In this sense the two paintings reflect
a fundamental change and significant development; for the first time, Europeans had begun
to acquire realistic images of the Muslim world.
In most other respects the two paintings differed greatly, and their differences can tell us
much about how Europe had acquired these new
images of the East and how it reacted to them.
One was Gentile Bellini's Saint Mark Preaching
in Alexandria (Brera, Milan), for the Scuola di
San Marco in Venice, to which we shall return
later. The other was Pinturicchio's fresco of the
Disputation of Saint Catherine in the Sala dei
Santi in the Borgia Apartments in Rome.1
Pinturicchio's fresco was painted for Rodrigo
Borgia, Pope Alexander vi. As a saint of Alexandria, who is said to have disputed the mysteries of the faith with fifty philosophers so

successfully that they converted to Christianity

and were prepared to die for their new belief,
Saint Catherine became the protectress of those
with the name Alexander. She is also the protectress of bastards, and, in Corrado Ricci's
words, 'Alexander had good reason to commend
his sons to her.//2
Such explanations trivialize, however, the
role that the Disputation plays in the program
of the frescoes of the Sala dei Santi. The frescoes depict instances of how the Lord rescued
His saints in times of need. The saints are
emblematic of the Church, and the Disputation,
which is the culminating scene, appears to refer
to Pope Alexander's concern at the threat that
the Church faced from the Muslims. As a Spaniard himself, Pope Alexander perhaps made the
particular choice of Saint Catherine because it
was on her feast day that the capitulation of
Granada, the last Moorish Kingdom of Spain,
took place.
But above all Rodrigo Borgia, like his uncle
Pope Calixtus in before him, was concerned
with the threat to Christianity from the Ottoman Turks, and he had long advocated a crusade
against them. This helps explain why Turkish

figures are so prominent in Pinturicchio's

fresco: several members of the crowd wear
quasi-oriental outfits that look no more convincing than fancy dress, but there are also
three more accurately attired oriental figures,
who can be identified as Ottoman Turks, one of
them wearing the tall felt hat of the Janissaries.
Pinturicchio thus conveyed the contemporary
concerns of his patron rather than an historicist
interest in conveying an idea of Alexandria,
where the disputation took place. In this respect
his approach differed fundamentally, as we shall
see, from that of Gentile Bellini. Pinturicchio
made no attempt to indicate an Alexandrian
locale for the incident. The major element of
architecture was a triumphal arch based on the
Arch of Constantine, but it served not as an
indication of place, but as a symbol of Constantine's victory, which took place a few years after
Saint Catherine's supposed disputation.3
Pinturicchio was better able to convey Pope
Alexander's Ottoman concerns because he had
recently acquired realistic depictions of Turks.
Two Turkish figures are depicted flanking the
Tetrarch Maximinus' throne. That they are
borrowings is clear because the accuracy of their

fig. i. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria, c. 1504-1507, oil on canvas. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

77

fig. 2. Pinturicchio, Disputation of Saint Catherine. Fresco. Sala dei Santi, Appartamenti Borgia, Vatican

costume, their solid presence, and the directness

of gaze contrast with the winsomeness of Pinturicchio's customary figures. Pinturicchio's
source is traditionally thought to have been
Gentile Bellini, who visited Istanbul between
1479 and 1481, but the models are more likely
to be by another artist who was in Istanbul in
the 14705, Costanzo da Ferrara (cat. 108).
Another Turkish figure is the rider on the
extreme right of the scene. He is probably to be
identified as a historical figure whom Pinturicchio could have seen in Rome the Ottoman
Prince Cem Sultan (cat. 91), son of Mehmed the
Conqueror, who spent his last years as a fugitive
in the West and arrived in Rome in 1489.4
As the first Renaissance artists to work in the
Muslim East, Gentile and Costanzo were able to
bring back the earliest empirically observed
studies of the Levant, and their visits mark the
beginning of Europe's pictorial documentation
of the East. We can best appreciate their importance and the reason why they visited Ottoman
Turkey if we take a brief glance backward.
In the early fourteenth century painters such
as Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Giotto had made
attempts at realistic depictions of orientals, but
the figures were mostly Mongol in derivation,
who were easily distinguished by their facial
characteristics as well as apparel. The Mongol
type survived into the second half of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century
as a symbol of cruelty and anti-Christian
beliefs. Stereotypes of turbanned Muslims with
less well-defined racial features but identifiable
apparel and accouterments also abounded.
78

CIRCA 1492

These stereotypes were the visual counterparts

of the literary fictions of eastern travel then in
vogue, of which the most popular was Sir John
Mandeville's travel fantasy (cat. 124) .5
In fifteenth-century painting, the Muslim
figure expressed three traditional conceptions
of the East its wealth, its cruelty, and its
wisdom. Quasi-Muslim figures did service in
the retinue of the Magi, conveying the notion
of eastern luxury in paintings such as Gentile
da Fabriano's Strozzi Adoration (Uffizi, Florence) and Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes in the
chapel of the Medici Palace.6 Others served as
pagans in scenes of the Crucifixion or Christian
martyrdom. Often, particularly in northern
Europe, the warrior pagan was identified with
a scimitar and pointed hat;7 in Italy the eastern
sage Avicenna was characterized by a turban,
kaftan, and long beard.8
These exotic types were based on longstanding exempla and literary images, and bore
little relation to reality. New models based on
studies from life became available only around
the middle of the fifteenth century, as one
reflection of a growing concern in European art
with empirical observation. The earliest instance was not, however, of Muslim Arabs or
Turks but of Byzantine Greeks. In 1438 the
Byzantine emperor John vm Palaeologus visited
Italy for the Councils of Florence and Ferrara.
John vm himself cut a striking figure: he wore
a tall Timurid hat with pointed brim, and his
robe was apparently embroidered with an
inscription in the name of an Egyptian sultan.9
His entourage was equally picturesque: his

ecclesiastics wore huge stove-pipe hats and

shovel-hats, and he was accompanied by a Tatar
or Kalmuck, possibly his groom, whose Mongol
features, exotic costume, and weaponry caught
the eye of Pisanello. Pisanello used the Tatar
figure in his fresco of Saint Anastasia (San
Zeno, Verona). This was not a continuation of
the fourteenth-century topos of Tatar images
but the reworked gleaning from an actual
incident.10
Pisanello also produced a portrait of Emperor
John vm that served as the basis for the first
portrait medal of the Renaissance. The visit of
the Byzantines to Italy was commemorated by
other artists such as Filarete, and Byzantine
figures continued to appear in works of art for
several decades, whether for political commentary, as in Piero della Francesca's Flagellation, or
as classical figures, as in the work of Apollonio
di Giovanni.11 The costume of the Byzantines
appealed to an observer such as Vespasiano da
Bisticci on two counts: it was grand in appearance and antique in origin, unchanged, or so he
believed, for 1500 years or more. In reality Vespasiano was mistaken, because late Byzantine
costume was under strong influence from the
Muslim world to the East.12

fig. 3. Pisanello, Portrait of John vm Palaeologus.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection

The Byzantine image, however, was doomed

by the advance of the Ottomans. Like a balance,
Christendom's push down against Islam in the
West, in Spain, was matched by the rise of the
Ottomans in the East, as they drove into the
Balkans and Hungary. The Ottomans' military
impact should have been clear to the West at
least as early as 1396, when Ottoman forces
routed a combined Crusader army at the battle
of Nicopolis. But it was with the conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 that they entered into
the consciousness of all of Europe. The year
marks a turning point in European images of
the Levant for several reasons.
Following 1453, Ottomans replaced Byzantines as the principal Near Eastern type in
European visual imagery. The change can be
summarized by comparing Pisanello's medal of
John vin, the penultimate emperor of Byzantium, with Costanzo da Ferrara's medal of
Mehmed the Conqueror, first Ottoman Sultan
of Istanbul (cat. 107). It represented more than
a mere change of costume. Whereas the image
of the Byzantine emperor resulted from John
vm's visit to Italy, the figure of the Ottoman
was based upon sketches by Italian artists who
had visited Istanbul. However, it must be
stressed that these visits to the Levant were not
occasioned by a European spirit of enquiry but
by the patronage of a Muslim potentate,
Mehmed the Conqueror. The artists traveled
East because they had been invited, and the
scope of their work in Istanbul was dictated by
their patron's interests.
The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 made
the twenty-one-year-old Mehmed n master of
an empire that straddled East and West, giving
political justification to interests he shared with
the humanist princes of Italyin geography
and cartography, for example, in military matters from advances in artillery to star-shaped
fortresses, and, most pertinently, in history and
portraiture. Mehmed sustained an interest in
medallic portraiture throughout his life so that
he became, in quantitative terms at least, the
most active patron of Italian medalists in the
Quattrocento. He was depicted by a greater
number of medalists than any other patron,
though he was never, as far as we know,
depicted more than once by the same artist.13
The most famous Italian artist to visit Mehmed's court was Gentile Bellini. When he
arrived back in Venice, dressed in Ottoman costume, he was greeted on the quayside by the
Doge, as well as his brother Giovanni, and "half
the populace of the city/'14 The legend of his
oriental adventure had already begun. Although
Gentile Bellini benefited greatly from this visit,
receiving fame and official honors in his lifetime and being credited by scholars as the father

of late Quattrocento orientalism, the truth is

more complicated.15 In the first place, Gentile
Bellini was not the only artist of talent to visit
Mehmed's court. The mistake has been to credit
him uncritically with each and every late-fifteenth century portrait of an oriental. His influence has been exaggerated and the contribution
of his fellow visitors underestimated. Bellini's
influence, as we have seen, was believed to have
spread beyond his native Venice, for he was
thought to be the source of the Ottoman types
in Pinturicchio's frescoes in Rome and Siena. As
a consequence, the artist to whom this group of
drawings of Ottomans is here attributed, Costanzo da Ferrara, has languished in obscurity,
even though his talent should have been obvious
from the quality of his medal of Mehmed the
Conqueror, which Hill justly described as one of
"the finest portrait medals of the Renaissance."16
Gentile Bellini's Ottoman studies had far
greater impact outside Venice than in his native
city. By influencing the young Diirer during his
first trip to Venice in 1494-1495, Bellini even
achieved an influence, by proxy, in northern
Europe. Ever receptive to exotica, Diirer seems
to have responded with enthusiasm to the Ottoman figure studies he saw in Venice in 1495. He
copied a group of Three Orientals (cat. no)
after Gentile Bellini's model either from a now
lost preparatory drawing or directly from the
background of Gentile's Procession in Saint
Mark's Square (Academia, Venice), a painting
that is dated 1496 and which was presumably in
progress during Diirer's visit. Diirer made other
copies of Turkish figures, as well, and in the
decade between his first and second visits to
Venice his graphic work was filled with Ottoman types wearing either the turban wound
around a ribbed cap or the tall felt hat of the
Janissaries.17
Diirer transformed the northern European
visual platitude of a Muslim into a more specific
Ottoman image that mirrored contemporary
reality. In almost all cases, though, Diirer's
Ottomans continued to fill the traditional role
of the oriental in European art, as the epitome
of despotism the emperor Domitian ordering
the torture of Saint John in one of the images
from his woodcut Apocalypse, for example or
as a symbol of corruption kneeling before the
Sea Monster of the Apocalypse.18 Diirer also
placed Ottomans in attendance on the Three
Kings. This was appropriate since, according to
a tradition that began in Cologne, the coat-ofarms of the Magus Caspar was the Crescent and
Star, and Europe associated that symbol with
the Turks in particular.19 Diirer used other Ottoman types for sages of the East such as the
astrologer al-Sufi ("Azophi Arabus") (cat.
118).20 Only rarely did he depict them specifi-

fig. 4. Attributed to Gentile Bellini, Seated Scribe.

Pen and gouache on paper. Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, Boston

cally qua Ottomans.21 In short, Diirer affected

the appearance rather than the function of the
oriental in northern European art.
Gentile Bellini can take credit for being one
of the main sources of the "Ottoman mode" in
European art of the late fifteenth century, but,
as we have seen, he was not the only direct
source. Moreover, the "Ottoman mode" was not
the only expression of orientalism in European
art of the period. Another drew not on the
world of the Ottomans but on that of their great
rivals, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. The
"Mamluk mode" is evident in the other painting that was commissioned in 1492, Bellini's
Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria.
For the Mamluk figures in this painting,
Bellini had to rely on someone else's models,
because Gentile himself never visited Egypt
or Syria. In 1492 Gentile agreed with his confraternity, the Scuola di San Marco, to renew
the paintings of the life of Saint Mark that had
been destroyed in a fire of 1485, though in fact
the cycle was not completed until long after his
death in 1506.22 Saint Mark had been the first
Bishop of Alexandria, which made an Egyptian
setting for the paintings appropriate.
Gentile's concern with place was greater
than Pinturicchio's. His primary concern was
to suggest Alexandria. His method was, first,
to provide a synopsis of the city's best-known
monuments, producing a pictorial equivalent
of the literary encomium. His church, based
on the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice, would

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

79

stand for the Church of Saint Mark in Alexandria, his pillar, for the Pillar of Pompey, his
obelisk for the "needles of Cleopatra/' and
so forth.23 Second, the inhabitants of Bellini's
Alexandria were not Pinturicchio's motley
crowd, but rather based upon the actual
inhabitants of fifteenth-century Alexandria,
the Mamluks.
The Mamluk elite could easily be distinguished from the Ottomans by their costume.
The most distinctive contrast was in turbans. As
portraits of Mehmed the Conqueror show, late
fifteenth-century Ottoman taste ran to turbans
wound horizontally around a red, gadrooned
hat; the Mamluks, on the other hand, favored
turbans with a distinct vertical emphasis. These
were often extravagantly tall and sometimes
equipped with "horns/'24 Such differences
explain why Bellini and his colleague Giovanni
Mansueti made limited use of Bellini's Ottoman
studies for the Scuola di San Marco cycle. If the
city was to be Alexandria, its inhabitants should
be Egyptians.
Gentile Bellini's work thus parallels Pinturicchio's in adopting both Ottoman and Alexandrian themes, but in contrast to Pinturicchio,
Gentile does not combine the two. In general
Venice had a greater understanding than other
European cities of cultural differences in the
Levant, and such distinctions were deemed
important in the context of history paintings,
because the Venetians regarded the historical
testimony of the visual arts as equivalent to that
of the written word. As a record of an historical
event in Alexandria, Gentile's painting, by
Venetian standards, should convey the peculiarities of at least the place. What enabled Gentile
and his colleague Giovanni Mansueti to observe
this principle was the arrival in Venice in the
mid-i49os of a painting that accurately portrayed the Mamluk world.
The importance of this painting the Reception of the Ambassadors (cat. 106) transcended
its novelty appeal. It was the first realistic European portrayal of Mamluks, but more than that,
it was the first European attempt to depict an
exotic locale in all its detail, from the fauna and
flora to the architecture and inhabitants.
Accustomed as we are to photography, it is
difficult for us to imagine the impact that this
panorama must have had on contemporaries.
Artists such as Gentile Bellini and Costanzo da
Ferrara had brought back portraits and figure
studies from their sojourns in Istanbul, but
these were characters abstracted from their
environment. The Reception depicted not just
Mamluks, but Mamluks in a Mamluk habitat.
The military elite and a handful of common
folk, including women, were shown against a
backdrop of the Damascus skyline, dominated
80

CIRCA 1492

by the Great Umayyad Mosque. The details

were rendered exactly from the black and
white marble decoration of the arches and
minarets to the blazon of the Mamluk sultan
Qa'it Bay.
The Reception of the Ambassadors spawned
derivatives in painting and in tapestry, and elements were freely plundered by artists such as
Carpaccio and Mansueti. On his second trip to
the city in 1505, Diirer adopted the Mamluk
type the Reception had introduced to Venice and
for a few years he abandoned Ottoman figures
in his graphic work in favor of Mamluk, though
the change was cosmetic, not functional. The
Reception's greatest influence, however, was in
inspiring the "Mamluk" setting of Gentile's
Scuola di San Marco cycle which represented a
new consciousness in the use of oriental figures
for Christian themes.25
The Reception seems also to have encouraged
the use of oriental settings for comparable
cycles commissioned by other scuole. Carpaccio's series of paintings for the Scuola di San
Giorgio was ostensibly set in North Africa,
but he had no single source comparable to the
Louvre Reception and resorted to a composite
Near East drawn from a variety of sources. One
was the Louvre Reception; another the first
printed travel book with illustrations, the record
of a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Holy Land by
Bernhard von Breydenbach, Bishop of Mainz,
which was published in 1486. The woodcuts in
this volume provided Carpaccio with models for
human and animal figures, as well as architectural ideas. Carpaccio combined these disparate
sources with such an easy grace that he has
deceived many into believing that he had visited
the Near East.26
To return to the comparison between Bellini
and Pinturicchio's paintings of 1492, we may
note that the artists conveyed their eastern
themes in different ways and with differing
intentions. Pinturicchio's effort was directed to
contemporary concerns at the expense of geographical accuracy: the Ottomans were not to be
masters of Alexandria for another twenty-five
years. Vice versa, Bellini's concerns were historical, which led him to emphasize topography
and regional costume. Pinturicchio's orientalism
was excerptive; Bellini's was more sustained and
better informed. The paradox was that it drew
on another Italian painting, the Louvre Reception, rather than the artist's firsthand experience in Istanbul. Geography was the main
factor, but there was also a marked contrast in
the character of Gentile's Istanbul oeuvre and
the Louvre Reception. The manner in which the
artist of the Reception combined a historical
scene with a panorama was designed to satisfy a
Venetian patron. Gentile's work in Istanbul,

however, was circumscribed by Mehmed's

tastes. As Mehmed's patronage focused on portraiture, there were limitations to the range of
images brought back from the East by artists
such as Costanzo da Ferrara and Gentile Bellini,
which in turn affected the way their models
could be employed in Europe. Bust portraiture
could only be adapted with difficulty to a figural
scene; full-length studies were more easily
included but they were not placed in an architectural or environmental setting that was Eastern.
In the 14905, as Europe made its first contact
with the Americas, Europe or rather Venice
"the eye of all the West" produced the first
dispassionate record of an exotic locale. Yet this
did not lead immediately to similar records. In
concept, style, and historical connections the
Louvre Reception was peculiar to the Venice of
the 1490s. In historical terms it reflected the
close mercantile and political ties between
Venice and the Mamluks in this decade, but the
"Mamluk mode," like the Byzantine fashion
before it, was doomed by the Ottoman advance.27 The first two decades of the sixteenth
century were not propitious times for European
artists and travelers in the Levant.
The Louvre Reception owed its conception to
the fact that the Venetians believed that paintings had a testimonial value analogous and
equal to that of the written word. Stylistically,
the studied realism of details in the Louvre
Reception, such as the body harness of the monkey or the wooden armature of the adobe housing, expressed and confirmed the painting's role
as attesting to a historical event. This style of
"inventory" painting was the visual equivalent
of the chronicle style of Venetian historical
writing, but both were to be superseded in the
early sixteenth century. Just as Giorgione and
Titian displaced the generation of "inventory"
istorie painters led by Gentile Bellini, Giovanni
Mansueti, and Carpaccio, so the last great
example of Venetian chronicle writing was
Marino Sanuto's Chronache.28
These are some of the factors that explain
why the precedent of the Louvre Reception
was not taken up by Venetian artists until well
into the sixteenth century. The next phase in
Europe's visual documentation of the Levant
was in the 1530$, but then the initiative came
as it had under Mehmed the Conqueror from
the Ottoman court rather than from Europe
itself.29 It was only in the late 15505 that a European artist Melchior Lorck of Flensburg
working for a European patron, produced a
comprehensive record of Istanbul that ranged
from portraits to costume studies and from city
views to architectural and archaeological studies.30
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 provoked
many reactions in Europe, but for a decade or so

scholars such as Nicholas de Cusa and Aeneas

Sylvius attempted to view the world of Islam
with reason and clarity. Sir Richard Southern
has termed it "The Moment of Vision/'31 The
drawings of Costanzo da Ferrara and the painting of the Reception of the Ambassadors lacked
the intellectual horizons of such scholarship, but
they were based on experience and dispassionate in tone, devoid of Christian or Classical
glosses, and free of the emotional overtones of
popular illustration; mutatis mutandis, they
can be regarded as "a moment of vision/' By the
end of the fifteenth century, however, Europe
was becoming increasingly concerned with
apocalyptic visions. It was a fitting commentary
on Europe's perception of the Levant that, in
Dtirer's woodcut series of the Apocalypse of
1496-1498, it was the Ottomans who served as
the Emissaries of the Bottomless Pit.32

NOTES
1. Corrado Ricci, Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto of
Perugia), His Life, Work and Times, trans. Florence
Simmonds (London, 1902), 103-119.
2. Ricci 1902, 111.
3. N. Randolph Parks, "On the meaning of Pinturicchio's Sala dei Santi" in Art History 2 (September
1979), 291-317.
4. Ricci 1902 expresses severe doubts about the value
of such identifications, but the identification of Cem
is much older than Ricci realized, and was given credence by Paolo Giovio, who put together his portrait
collection in the 15305 and 15405: Gli Uffizi. Catalogo Generate (Florence, 1979); compare to Franz
Babinger, "Dschem-Sultan im Bilde des Abendlands/ in Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst. Festschrift fur Ernst Ktihnel zum yj.Geburtstag am
26.10.1957 (Berlin 1959), 254-266. On Giovio and
the Turks, Linda Klinger and Julian Raby, "Barbarossa and Sinan: A Portrait of Two Ottoman
Corsairs from the Collection of Paolo Giovio/' in
Venezia e I'Oriente Vicino. Primo Simposio Internazionale sull'Arte Veneziana e I'Arte Islamica, Ateneo
Veneto (Venice, 1989), 47-59.
5. An example is Lorenzo Monaco's Adoration of 14201422 in the Uffizi; Gustave Soulier, Les Influences
orientales dans la peinture toscane (Paris, 1924),
166, pi. xi. In general, Donald F. Lach, Asia in the
making of Europe. II. A Century of Wonder, Book
One: The Visual Arts (Chicago and London 1970);
Maria G. Chiappori, "Riflessi figurativi dei contatti
Oriente-Occidente e dell'opera poliana nell'arte
medievale," in Marco Polo. Venezia e I'Oriente, ed.
Alvise Zorzi (Milan, 1981), 281-288; Gotz Pochat,
Der Exotismus wahrend des Mittelalters und der

Renaissance, Voraussetzungen, Entivicklung und

Wandel eines bildnerischen Vokabulars, Stockholm
Studies in History of Art 21 (Stockholm, 1970),
chapter 4.
6. Soulier 1924, 161-174, 274-281; Sylvia Auld "Kuficising Inscriptions in the Work of Gentile da Fabriano," in Oriental Art 32 (1986), 246-265; on the
Magi, Hugo Kehrer, Die Heiligen Drei Konige in
der Legende und in der deutschen Kunst bis Albrecht
Diirer (Strassbourg, 1904); H. Zehnder, Die Heiligen Drei Konige. Darstellung und Verehrung [exh.
cat. Wallraf-Richartz-Museums] (Cologne, 1982).
7. For example, Martin Schongauer's engraving of The
March to Calvary, c. 1475-1480, in Bartsch VI, 21:
R.A. Koch, in "Martin Schongauer's Christ Bearing
the Cross," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton
University 14 (i955)/ 2230; on the Figural Alphabet of the Master E.S., Pochat 1970, 142-144.
8. For example, Europa und der orient 800-1900, ed.
Ge-eon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde [exh. cat.
Berliner Festspiele] (Berlin, 1989), 131, pi. 149;
compare pi. 153.
9. Michael Vickers, "Some Preparatory Drawings for
Pisanello's Medallion of John vm Palaeologus," in
Art Bulletin 60 (September 1978), 417-424. A textile origin seems more likely than Reich's proposal
that the inscription was derived from an enameled
lamp: S. Reich, "Une Inscription mamlouke sur un
dessin italien du quinzieme siecle," in Bulletin de
I'lnstitut d'Egypte 22 (1940), 123-131; compare to
Josef von Karabacek, Abendldndische Kunstler zu
Konstantinopel im 15. und 16. Jh. (Vienna, 1918),
37-42.
10. George F. Hill, Pisanello (London, 1905), 87, 92.
G.A. DellAcqua and R. Chiarelli, Uopera completa
del Pisanello (Milan, 1972), pis. 18-19, 26. On the
steppe origin of the Emperor's horses, Vickers 1978;
Leo Olschki, "Asiatic Exoticism in Italian Art of
the Early Renaissance," in Art Bulletin 26 (1944),
95-106.
11. Vickers 1978; Roberto Weiss, Pisanello's Medallion
of the Emperor John vm Palaeologus (London,
1966); Soulier 1924,168. For Apollonio, Ernst Gombrich, "Apollonio di Giovanni. A Florentine Cassone
Workshop Seen Through the Eyes of a Humanist
Poet," in Norm and Form. Studies in the Art of the
Renaissance (London, 1966), 11-28, reprinted from
the Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes
(1955); Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974); compare to
Olschki 1944, 101-102.
12. Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di Uomini Illustri del
secolo XV, ed. Paolo D'Ancona and Erhard Aeschlimann (Milan, 1951), 1416.
13. Julian Raby, "Pride and Prejudice: Mehmed the
Conqueror and the Italian Portrait Medal," in Italian
Medals. Studies in the History of Art, ed. J. Graham
Pollard (Washington, DC. 1987), no. 21, 171-194.
14. Klinger and Raby 1989.
15. Louis Thuasne, Gentile Bellini et Sultan Mohammed
ii. Notes sur le sejour du peintre venitien a Constantinople (1479-1480) d'apres les documents originaux

en partie inedits (Paris, 1888); Josef von Karabacek

1918; compare to Jiirg Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile
Bellini (Stuttgart, 1985), 87-102; Klinger and Raby
1989.
16. George F. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the
Renaissance before Cellini (London, 1930), 80, cat.
nos. 321-322. On Costanzo, Maria Andaloro, "Costanzo da Ferrara. Gli anni a Costantinopoli alia corte
di Maometto n," in Storia dell'Arte 12 (1980), 185212 and Andrea S. Norris "Costanzo," Dizionario
Biografico degli Italiani 30 (1984), 394396.
17. Julian Raby, "Venice, Diirer and the Oriental Mode,"
in Hans Huth Memorial Studies I, ed. Ernst J.
Grube and David Revere McFadden (London, 1982).
18. In his woodcut Apocalypse of 1496-1498: Willi
Kurth, The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Diirer
(London, 1927; reprinted New York, 1963), pi. 106,
117, compare to pis. 119,122123.
19. Kehrer 1904, no; Zehnder 1982, 101-105, cat.
no. 112.
20. Diirer made Plato wear the headgear of an Ottoman
Janissary in his woodcut illustration to Konrad
Celtis' Quatuor libri amorum, Nuremberg 1502:
Fedja Anzelewsky, Durer-Studien (Berlin, 1983),
119.
21. Compare to Washington 1971, 113-114, cat. no. 4
("Five Soldiers and Turk on Horseback," 14951496).
22. P. Paoletti, La Scuola Grande di San Marco (Venice,
1929), 137142; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, 2426,
87-94,112-113.
23. Phyllis W Lehmann, Cyriacus of Ancona's Egyptian
Visit and its Reflection in Gentile Bellini and
Hieronymus Bosch (New York, 1977); Meyer zur
Capellen 1985, 87-94.
24. Raby 1982.
25. Raby 1982. The Renaissance architecture of Giovanni
Mansueti's paintings may seem to contradict the
idea of an Alexandrian setting; but Mansueti repeated the Mamluk blazon in his paintings as a clear
reference to the Mamluk domains. On western
interpretations of Qa'it-Bay's blazon, O. Kurz,
"Mamluk Heraldry and Interpretatio Christiana,"
in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. M.
Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), 297-307.
26. Raby 1982.
27. Raby 1982.
28. Patricia F. Brown, "Painting and History in Renaissance Venice," in Art History 7 (1984), 264-294.
29. Klinger and Raby 1989.
30. Maria-Magdalena Miiller-Haas, "Ein Kunstler am
Bosporus. Melchior Lorch," in (Berlin, 1989), 239244.
31. Richard W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1962;
second printing 1978), 67-109.
32. Kurth 1927, 1973, 20-21, pi. 119; Washington 1971,
171, cat. no. 105; W. Waetzoldt, Diirer and his
Times (London, 1950), 37-38; compare to Kenneth
M. Setton, "Lutheranism and the Turkish Peril," in
Balkan Studies (Thessalonica) 3, (1962), 133-168.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

WORLD

8l

MAPS AND THE RATIONALIZATION

OF GEOGRAPHIC SPACE
David Woodward

.odern historians have emphasized that

both the abruptness and significance of the
change from the medieval to the modern world
have been grossly exaggerated.1 Rather than
focusing on the fifteenth century as a time of
dramatic transition between the two ages, as
earlier historians had done, they point backward
to the several renaissances that took place in the
Middle Ages and forward to the medieval and
occult character of much sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science. Although this caution
is also appropriate when discussing the specific
case of the conceptual shift between medieval
and Renaissance cartography, the overwhelming
conclusion is still that a rapid and radical change
in the European world view took place during
the fifteenth century.
In retrospect we can see that in the late
Middle Ages there were several fundamentally
different ways of looking at geographic space
and representing geographic reality. One relied
on the concept of consistent physical measurement and scale, another on the notion of varying scale depending on perceived importance or
the affective qualities of iconography, and
another stressed qualitative topological relationships of adjacency and connectedness rather
than those of measured distance and area. It is
not unusual to find side by side, and often in
the same manuscript, maps drawn on different
structural frameworks and with widely different
functions. In many fifteenth-century world
maps, the various structures appear even within
the confines of the same map: a frame and
center of an iconographical medieval mappamundi (world map), the configuration of a measured nautical chart for the Mediterranean, and
towns, rivers, and regions topologically fitted in
between.
The medieval mappaemundi were derived
from two fundamentally different sources. On
the one hand, there were the maps of the known
world (sometimes known as T-in-O maps, from
their layout), derived from Roman sources in
which the world was divided into the three
known continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe.
This concept was readily adapted by the Christian church to accommodate the biblical notion
of the world as divided among the three sons of
Noah Shem, Ham, and Japheth and thus to

illustrate the three great races of the world

the Semitic, hamitic, and Japhetic. These T-in-O
maps, of which early typical examples appeared
in the Encyclopedia of Saint Isidore of Seville
(seventh century), were, with important exceptions, usually circular, oriented to the east, and
centered on the Holy Land. Well-known large
examples based on this model included the
Ebstorf map (1239) and the Hereford map
(c. 1290). The frame and center of these maps
are rigidly predetermined, and the scale naturally changes in proportion to the relative familiarity of the area being represented. These maps
reflect a blending of history and geography, a
projection of history onto a geographical framework, emphasizing the spiritual rather than the
physical world. On them could be represented
the symbols of the deepest Christian truths: the
earth as a record of divinely planned historical
events from the Creation of the world through
its salvation by Jesus Christ in the Passion to
the Last Judgment. Mappaemundi were themselves epitomes of the earth and the cosmos,
showing the physical relationships among earth,
man, and God.
Similar in function, but quite different in
structure, were the zonal maps, in which the
medieval church adopted the Hellenistic Greek
model of the earth divided into five climatic
zones. This concept, which can be traced back to
the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and
Parmenides, postulated two temperate and
habitable zones (the oikoumene and the antipodes), a torrid uninhabitable zone at the equator and two frigid uninhabitable zones at the
poles. It was transmitted to the medieval world
largely through manuscripts of Macrobius'
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (fifth century) and dramatically illustrated the Christian
dilemma of incorporating into Christ's flock a
potential fourth race of people to the south in
the antipodean temperate zone that could not be
reached through the impassable equator. The
zonal maps were circular, like the T-in-O maps,
but were usually oriented to the north. Combinations of the two types appeared in many
forms.
In the thirteenth century, a completely different kind of map appeared, based on maritime
measurements of distance and direction. The

Mediterranean sea charts the so-called portolan charts are technological marvels whose
origin has still not been fully explained. They
seem to have been based on books of sailing
directions (statements of sailing distances with a
traditional wind direction). The earliest surviving example is the Carte Pisane (c. 1275). Their
structure could therefore be said to be routeenhancing. Their frames result from the natural
shape of the sheepskin that was the source of
the vellum, and their centers are arbitrary,
based on the geometry of the radiating directional lines. Although at first confined to the
Mediterranean and Black seas, the scope of such
maps was soon expanded to encompass the
known world, as in the Catalan Atlas of c. 1375
(cat. i).
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, a
new concept of ordering geographic space was
introduced to the Christian West. Although
Roger Bacon in his Opus mains (c. 1265), had
already proposed mapping the earth with coordinates of latitude and longitude, it was a cen-

fig. i. Simon Marmion, World Map (T-in-O Map).

From Jean Mansel, Fleur des Histoires, MS 9231.
Bibliotheque Royale Albert ier, Brussels

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

83

10,000

20.000

30,000

<0,000 Stades

fig. 2. Ptolemy's Second Projection. From History

of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient,
and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, eds.
J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987),
1:187

tury and a half later, with the translation into

Latin of the Geography of the second-century
Alexandrian Greek geographer Claudius
Ptolemy, that abstract, geometric and homogeneous space began to be used for mapping. In
Greek mathematics, this concept had been necessary for the theorems of Euclidean plane
geometry, and without it the achievements of
Apollonius and Hipparchus on the concepts of
mathematical projection could not have taken
place. By plotting points of known location
from perpendicular axes intersecting at an artificial origin, the cartographer could fit existing
surveys into the synthetic whole; the measurements would thus be less subject to cumulative
errors. It was a shift in thinking away from
piecing together local surveys in order to create
a whole a change from inductive to deductive
cartographic thinking.
Ptolemy's Geography provided a coordinate
structure for such a synthesis. This work had
been part of the classical scholarly inheritance
in the Arab and Byzantine worlds, but its concepts had not been fully implemented there in
terrestrial mapping. As Byzantium was increasingly subjected to attacks by the Turks at the
end of the fourteenth century, the Greek scholar
Manuel Chrysoloras was sent to Venice to enlist
help. He and other scholars rumored the existence of the Geography and other manuscripts
that Italian humanists were eager to examine
and translate. The Latin translation of the Greek
text of the Geography was completed by Jacopo
dAngelo in Florence in 1406, and manuscript
and printed versions with and without maps
appeared throughout the fifteenth century
84

C I R C A 1492

(cats. 126, 127), establishing Ptolemy's prime

authority as a geographer.
The practical application of the idea of coordinates for geographical maps did not take effect
either in the Islamic or the western world until
sufficient observations had been gathered and a
clear need was felt. Thus, despite Bacon's impassioned plea that a framework of locations was
essential "for the conversion of unbelievers and
for opposing unbelievers and the Antichrist and
others," neither the data nor the demand were
ready for the concept.2
Ptolemy explained that his proposed scheme
of mapping places by their longitude and latitude was intended to preserve the correct proportion of small areas (chorography) to the
whole earth (geography), working as a painter
might sketch in the broad strokes before filling
in the detail. The abstract, numbered graticule
(that is, the network of lines of latitude and longitude) could thus theoretically be applied to
the whole earth as well as the known world. But
the map projections that he described to transform systematically the spherical surface of the
globe to the plane surface of the map could not
contain this global view. To show it all, he said,
an actual globe was necessary.
Ptolemy's second projection, which he regarded as his most advanced, curved the meridians to imply the sphericity of the earth but
only covered 180 of longitude. It was not conceived as a projection, in the sense of being geometrically projected from a model sphere onto a
developable surface, but was constructed to
preserve scale along certain parallels and meridians in an abstract coordinate space. Its geometry is thus unrelated to the projective geometry
of perspective.
The construction of Ptolemy's third projection, however, appears at first glance to be a
bona fide geometrical projection of the armillary sphere on a plane passing through the
earth's center. Upon closer inspection, however,
the graticule of the earth's surface is not drawn
on a true geometrical projection but is adjusted
so that it can appear unimpeded between the
rings of the equatorial and summer tropic on
the armillary sphere from an observer's viewpoint at a given distance from the earth. The
timing of the appearance of Ptolemy's manuscript in Italy in the early fifteenth century and
its similarity to Brunelleschi's concept of vanishing point perspective have led some scholars
to postulate that the map projection had a crucial role in forming the new ideas of how pictorial space could be ordered, but it is difficult to
establish any direct causal relationship.3
Even if precise associations between cartography and the emergence of perspective in its
early years cannot be proven, there was demon-

strably a community of scholarship and practice

that grew up later in the fifteenth century
around the idea of measured space. There was a
common interest in geometrically proportioned
representations of nature among artists and
engineers of the fifteenth century that is the
hallmark of the "universal man" of the Renaissance.4 Surveying and mapping the earth were
at the very heart of this activity. Similar instruments were designed for observing angles and
distances in astronomy (see cats. 120, 123),
artillery range finding, building construction,
land surveying, and navigation. Methods of
calculating the position of inaccessible points
using similar and congruent triangles were
developed as the precursors of triangulation.
One result for cartography of this infatuation
with measurement was the blending of cartographic traditions that had remained distinct in
the Middle Ages. The mappaemundi previously structured on a strictly religious and
symbolic space started to incorporate the
information and methods of Ptolemy: Andreas
Walsperger's mappamundi of 1448 bears the
note that it was "made from the cosmography
of Ptolemy proportionally according to longitude, latitude, and the divisions of climate" and
it bore a graphic scale as if to confirm this statement.5 Likewise, the portolan charts previously structured solely on a network of lines of
constant compass bearing for the aid of the
navigator also began in the early sixteenth
century to bear latitude scales derived from the
idea of Ptolemaic coordinates.6 Local maps and
town plans, too, saw a profound change in their
geometrical structure. The tradition of Roman
planimetric representations of land holdings,
buildings, and cities as demonstrated most

fig. 3. Ptolemy's Third Projection. Harley and

Woodward 1987,1:188

dramatically by the Corpus agrimensorum and

the Forma urbis Romaewas not apparently
sustained in the Middle Ages (although the
ninth-century Plan of Saint Gall is an obvious
exception). The rediscovered importance of representing cities in measured proportion is strikingly shown by comparing fourteenth-century
city views, in which the position of buildings is
shown topologically, with the scaled plan of
Vienna and Bratislava, the content of which
dates to 1421-1422.7
For geography, cartography, and the associated practical mathematical arts in the western
world, therefore, the fifteenth century was crucial in forming "the first coherent, and rationally cumulative pictures of the world since
antiquity/78 A key ingredient was that a transition took place in the way people viewed the
world, from the circumscribed cage of the
known inhabited world to the notion of the
finite whole earth. The transition began with
the concepts of the universality and interconnectedness of knowledge, neo-Platonic ideas
that the circle of thinkers that included Leon
Battista Alberti, Paolo Toscanelli, and Nicolas of
Cusa was to share. For geography, this meant a
movement away from local topological concepts
toward those of a finite, spatially referenced

fig. 4. Hermann Wagner, Reconstruction of Toscanelli's Map, "Die Rekonstruktion der Toscanelli-Karte vom
Jahre 1474
" From Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Phil. Hist. Kl.
(1894), 313

spherical earth, a tabula rasa on which the

achievements of exploration could be cumulatively inscribed. Robert Thorne, merchant and
geographer, boasted in 1527 that "there is no

lande inhabitable nor sea innavigable/'9 The circumnavigation of the world in 1522 had made
everything possible.
Columbus could not have made his voyage

fig. 5. Francesco Rosselli, Marine Chart, engraving. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

85

fig. 6. Cantino World Map. 1502. Biblioteca Estense, Modena. The anonymous Portuguese compiler of this portolan mappamundi refused to speculate about the
westward extension of the lands reached by Columbus, Cabral, and Corte-Real

across the Western Ocean thirty years earlier

without such global thinking. Calculations of
the size of the earth, the disposition of its continents, and the distance westward from Europe
to Asia were necessary for the Enterprise of the
Indies, erroneous though Columbus' actual calculations were. Although he claimed that maps
were of no use to him in the execution of the
enterprise (how could they be?), it is believed
that maps as well as written descriptions of the
width of the Western Ocean influenced his decision. A copy of a letter dated 1474 from Paolo
Toscanelli intended to urge Afonso v, king of
Portugal (r. 1438-1481), toward the goal of
westward exploration came into Columbus'
hands. It described an accompanying map: 'And
although I know from my own knowledge that
the world can be shown as it is in the form of a
sphere, I have determined... to show the same
route by a chart similar to those which are made
for navigation
The straight lines which are
shown lengthwise on the said chart show the
86

CIRCA 1492

distance from west to east; the others which are

across show the distance from north to
south... "10 The map is lost, but it was clearly
intended to show the distance from Lisbon to
Quinsay in China (26 spaces of 250 leagues
each) using the coordinate space of parallels and
meridians. As Toscanelli himself suggests, a
globe would perhaps have provided even more
dramatic evidence of the modestly perceived
distance to be traversed on the Western Ocean,
but there are few references indeed to such artifacts in the late fifteenth century. There is not
even any solid evidence that Columbus saw the
famous globe which Martin Behaim had been
contracted to produce for the city of Nuremberg
in 1492. Nevertheless, clear references are made
to globes and large printed and manuscript maps
of the world in circulation during the 1480$,
such as those prepared by Henricus Martellus
for the Vatican Library.11 One of these maps
may have formed the model for Behaim's globe.
Martellus' large 1489 manuscript map is the

only extant example, although other smaller

world maps by him survive (cat. 129). It is quite
possible that Columbus saw such a globe or map
which was graduated in latitude and longitude
and implied that only 90 degrees needed to be
crossed between the Canary Islands and Japan.
The Martellus maps or at least those that
have survived did not show the whole earth.
But they explicitly extended the world beyond
the 180 of Ptolemy's second projection to 275.
Martin Waldseemtiller in 1507 extended it further to 360 in his Cosmographia universalis
(cat. 132), again using Ptolemy's projection as
the core, but did not extend it to both poles. The
process was taken to its logical conclusion in
1514 when Johannes Werner extended Ptolemy's projection to cover the globe.12 No maps of
the whole earth survive from the fifteenth century, but interest in the concept of showing the
earth as a globe was obviously present. The
references to globes before Behaim's globe of
1492 attest to it. It is curious, therefore, that the

rather modest map made around 1508 by Francesco Rosselli (cat. 133) graduated with 360
longitude and 180 latitude is the earliest
extant map of the world in the pure sense of
"map" and "world/7 It takes on special significance as being drawn on an oval projection into
which every point on earth could theoretically
be plotted and on which every potential route
for exploration could be shown. If ever there
was a geographical idea of elegant simplicity
since the realization that the earth was a sphere,
this was it.
Rosselli's coordinate world map was accompanied by a navigation chart on a rhumb-line
structure; the pairing of these two fundamentally different map structures symbolizes a
mathematical puzzle of how properly to represent the spherical world on a plane. Rosselli was
a commercial printmaker in Florence one of
the first to be independently successful and
although he was working in one of the most
active humanist centers, it is unlikely that he

was at the cutting edge of geographical knowledge. Representations of the world such as his
must have catered to the taste for mathematical
and cosmographical puzzles. There was a fascination with the notion of measurement and
measuring instruments; maps, globes, and
armillary spheres became graphic symbols of
scholarly learning. Later in the sixteenth century, manuals of surveying practice and instrumentation became fashionable for the educated
classes, long after such mundane pursuits had
become part of common life in the fifteenth
century.13 Likewise, the survival of Rosselli's
simple map may well reflect an earlier broad
and pervasive interest in representations of the
whole earth.
In fifteenth-century Europe, therefore, a fundamental change took place in geographical
thinking. The ideas for a measured, coherent,
global map presented in Ptolemy's Geography
were not new, but they were received in a scholarly climate that valued the universality and
interconnectedness of knowledge. Despite the
potential of the Ptolemaic coordinate system, it
was not always fully understood at the practical
level and was certainly viewed with much suspicion by navigators hardened by experience.
Even after Gerardus Mercator showed in 1569
that geographical coordinates and straight compass courses could be reconciled in the same
map, the suspicion continued.14 But cosmographical scholars had by then long admired and
accepted the elegance of the global system.
Navigational practice was ultimately to catch up
with the great hypothesis of looking at the
world in global terms.
The record presented by the maps shows an
emergence from the medieval center/periphery
frame of mind, in which places in the world
were accorded widely different levels of importance. As the ideas in Ptolemy's Geography
took hold, the more abstract notion developed
that space could be referenced to a geometrical
net of lines of longitude and latitude and could
thus everywhere be accorded the same importance. The idea of a finite globe was implicit in
Ptolemy's Geography, but the projections he
proposed could not explicitly show it. In the
course of the fifteenth century, the map frame
expanded little by little and at times literally
burst to accommodate a discovery, such as the
rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in Martellus' maps. A map projection such as Rosselli's,
intended to solve the puzzle of showing the
globe on a flat piece of paper, apparently had to
wait until the early years of the sixteenth century. Such an image of the whole earth allowed
the idea of a finite world over which systematic
dominance was possible, and provided a powerful framework for political expansion and
control.

NOTES
1. Joan Kelly Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti: Universal
Man of the Early Renaissance (Chicago, 1969), 200201, usefully summarizes the debate among historians such as Lynn Thorndike, Pierre Duhem, Leo
Olschki, Ernst Cassirer, and Alexander Koyre.
2. David Woodward, "Roger Bacon's Terrestrial Coordinate System," in Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 80(1) 1990, 109-122.
3. Here is not the place to enter into this complex
question in detail, but Ptolemy's third projection is
superficially similar to vanishing-point perspective,
as Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., "From Mental Matrix to
Mappamundi to Christian Empire: The Heritage of
Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance," in Art
and Cartography: Six Historical Essays, ed. David
Woodward (Chicago, 1987), 10-50, has argued,
although the plane on which the image is projected
is not between the viewer and the object, as in Leon
Battista Alberti's velum, but passes through the
object. Svetlana Alpers is correct to claim that "what
is called a projection in this cartographic context is
never visualized by placing a plane between the
geographer and the earth" (see Alpers, "The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art," in Woodward 1987, 5196, especially p. 71), but there are plenty of examples of azimuthal projections in which this plane is
visualized as touching the earth or passing through
it. There is a danger in pressing the similarity of
Ptolemy's projection to vanishing point perspective
and inferring a cause-and-effect relationship because
other azimuthal projections, such as the stereographic, had already been in common use for astrolabes throughout the Middle Ages without a similar
causal effect (J. V. Field, "Perspective and the Mathematicians: Alberti to Desargues," in Mathematics
from Manuscript to Print, 1300-1600, ed. C. Hay
[Oxford, 1988]).
4. Gadol 1969, 143-211, especially 157-195.
5. David Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi," in
History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric,
Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, eds. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987), 286-370, especially 316.
6. Tony Campbell, "Portolan Charts from the Late
Thirteenth Century to 1500," in Harley and Woodward 1987, 371-463, especially 386.
7. Paul D. A. Harvey, "Local and Regional Cartography
in Medieval Europe," in Harley and Woodward 1987,
464-501, especially 474.
8. Gadol 1969, 201.
9. Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent, ed.
John Winter Jones (London, 1850), 50.
10. From Columbus' copy of Cardinal Piccolomini's Historia rerum ubique gestarum, now in the Biblioteca
Colombina, Seville.
11. Jozef Babicz, "The Celestial and Terrestrial Globes of
the Vatican Library, Dating from 1477, and Their
Maker Donnus Nicolaus Germanus (c. 1420-c.
1490)," Der Globusfreund 35-37 (1987), 155-168.
12. Johannes Keuning, "The History of Geographical
Map Projections until 1600," Imago mundi 12
(1955), 1-24.
13. Gadol 1969, 171.
14. W. G. L. Randies, "From the Mediterranean Portulan Chart to the Marine World Chart of the Great
Discoveries: The Crisis in Cartography in the Sixteenth Century," Imago mundi 40 (1988), 115-118.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

87

TRADITION AND INNOVATION:

COLUMBUS' FIRST VOYAGE AND PORTUGUESE
NAVIGATION IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Francis Maddison
6 mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
Sao lagrimas de Portugal!

Pero nada que toque a Colon puede ser simple

y diafano.
Varela2

Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena

Se a alma nao e pequena.
Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele e que espelhou o ceu.

So viele Berichte.
So viele Fragen.
Pessoa1

The Manueline architecture of Lisbon and

Coimbra uses, as a motif, an armillary sphere;
the same instrument appears on the meia esfera
(half sphere), a gold coin minted for Portuguese
India during the reign of King Manuel i (r.
1495-1521). It was often depicted in medieval
and Renaissance art as a symbol of astronomy
as for instance to identify the fine limewood
bust of the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius
Ptolemy, set up around 1470 by Jorg Syrlin the
Elder on a choirstall in Ulm cathedral.4 The
armillary sphere was an appropriate device to be
given to Dom Manuel by his uncle, King Joao n
(r. 1481-1495),5 because it was during the
reigns of these two kings of Portugal that navigation developed from almost pure seamanship,
which has its limitations, into a practice that, as
Fontenelle recognized in 1699, "hath a necessary connection with Astronomy/'6 The armillary sphere could not have been of much direct
use to seamen, except as a model from which to
learn cosmology and elementary astronomy:
"the figure of the [celestial] sphere, because
mathematicians represent [with it] the form of
the machine of the sky, and the earth, with all
the other details/ as the sixteenth-century historian Damiao de Gois described it.7 Rather, it
was an appropriate device because it was an
astronomical instrument, which derived from
the same conceptual, historical, and technological sources as the essential instruments on
which an astronomical navigation had to rely.
When, on 3 August 1492, Columbus sailed
with a nao (the Santa Maria) and two caravelles
(the Pint a and the Nina) from the port of Palos
de Moguer (Huelva), on the Atlantic side of
the Pillars of Hercules, on his first voyage a
voyage westwards in order to reach the East
he was aware of furthering the expansion of
Castile. At the beginning of the previous Janu-

Brecht3

ary, the Castilians had completed the Christian

Reconquista of Spain by the capture of the
Moorish city of Granada, an event Columbus
had witnessed. He was not ill-equipped for his
journey across a scarcely explored ocean,
because his career, from his childhood in Genoa
to his present service under the Spanish crown,
encompassed training as a Portuguese seaman,
with knowledge and some application of the
new Portuguese astronomical navigation. In the
journal of his first voyage, he recorded: "I have
spent twenty-three years at sea and have not
left it for any length of time worth mentioning,
and I have seen everything from east to west,
[by which he means that he has been to the
north, that is, to England] and I have been to
Guinea".8 Though it was not until the latter part
of 1575 that the master of a Spanish ship was
required to keep a daily log book,9 Columbus
fortunately did so. We know from his journal
that he took with him marine compasses, quadrant, "astrolabio" and sandglass; also that most
ancient of nautical instrument, the lead and
line; and possibly some charts of the hither oceanic coastline, a traverse table, and some form of
solar declination table. Columbus was, in fact,
participating in the second of three important
revolutions in the technology of navigation,
even though his successful thirty-three-day
voyage to the island of Guanahani, whose identity is still debated, where he arrived on 12
October, no doubt owed much more to his seamanship than to accurate use of instruments.10
Much fantasy has been written about the use
of instruments (for example, the planispheric
astrolabe) by early navigators, and the value of
remembered observation of natural phenomena
often ignored. It is quite clear that in early
medieval times the Vikings traversed vast areas
of inhospitable and featureless ocean, with the

ability to return to their port of departure, and

there is little evidence that they made even
occasional use of any instrumental aid.11 The
Islamic navigators in the Indian Ocean, when
first encountered by Europeans at the end of the
fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, though equipped with a simple instrument, the kamal, relied on oral rutters. These
were long poems containing navigational
instructions, which the navigators could learn
and remember because of the meter and set
phrases, much like the epic poems recited by
Homer and later rhapsodes.12 More recently,
there is the evidence of the extensive skills of
Pacific peoples who navigate without charts or
instruments, using traditional lore concerning
star positions, waves, and birds.13
The direction of stars rising on the horizon
would hardly be of use in overcast northern
latitudes; and other geographical constraints
would have influenced the evolution of navigational procedures in different regions of the
world. Possible connections between navigational practices in the distant past are forever
obscure; even the medieval contacts between
the Atlantic sailors of northern and southern
Europe remain undetermined. However, this
substratum of inherited knowledge, passed on
from masters to apprentices, concerning seasonal variation of observed celestial bodies, of
winds, of the directions of bird flight,14 of the
saltiness or other flavors of areas of ocean, of
warm or cool currents, and of the nature of the
seabed, lies at the basis of all navigational activity from antiquity to the early medieval period
and even later when charts and nautical instruments had become available in Europe. Navigational practice off the Atlantic coast of southern
Europe and northwest Africa, the Maghrib, was
no doubt a combination of the experience and

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

89

folklore of two traditions, that of the westfacing Atlantic coast and that of the "inland
sea/' the Mediterranean, from which sailors
rarely ventured voluntarily into the Atlantic.
During antiquity and the early Middle Ages,
sailing in the virtually tideless Mediterranean
was concentrated in the summer months and
was mostly coastal or "island hopping/' It
required an ability to judge the speed of the ship
and to estimate distance,15 a knowledge of seasonal wind directions and their relationship to
ports of departure and destination, visibility and
identification of the polestar, and the use of lead
and line to avoid shoals and to sample the
seabed as a means of determining locations.16
A transformation of basically coastal navigation, whether in the Mediterranean or off the
Atlantic coasts of Europe, into a technique that
would permit venturing out of sight of land in
the open ocean, with the expectation of return
to the port of departure, requires an ability to
determine position on the globe accurately, in
modern terms, to be able to find the ship's latitude and longitude in a coordinate system. This
transformation is as much sociological as technological. Any early astronomer, for instance
Ptolemy of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150) or az-Zarqellu (Arzachiel) in eleventh-century Toledo,
could have instructed a sailor in the use of an
astrolabe to find his latitude at sea but, practical
difficulties apart, the question would not have
been asked, because sailors belonged to a craft
and so did not mingle with learned astronomers. The traditions of classical, Byzantine, and
Islamic craft navigation in the Mediterranean,
and the contemporary navigation on the Atlantic coast, were, in fact, eventually developed by
three infusions of "scientific" and "technological" knowledge. The first of these occurred in
the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries with
the introduction of the marine (magnetic) compass and the creation of sea charts,17 using a
network of lines that enabled courses to be set
using the compass to navigate by azimuth. The
second took place during the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, when a form of astronomical navigation was evolved, enabling latitude to be determined.18 The third important
development came in the eighteenth century,
when the invention of the marine chronometer
provided a practical method of finding a ship's
longitude.
The use of lodestone, or a needle magnetized
by it, to determine direction derives from
China, but how knowledge of its use was transmitted remains obscure, although presumably it
passed through Islam, to medieval Christian
Europe. A stage in the development of the
marine compass was the technique of floating a
magnetized needle embedded in a straw on a
90

CIRCA

1492

bowl of water. There is a thirteenth-century

Arabic description of the use of such a compass
on a voyage from Tripoli (Lebanon) to Alexandria, but by the end of the twelfth century, the
English writer Alexander Neckam had already
referred to the use of the compass at sea, and to
a needle placed on a pivot. He is followed in the
thirteenth century by references in the works of
Guy de Provins, Jacques de Vitry, and King
Alfonso x, the Wise (el sabio), of Castile, and
most notably in the famous treatise of Petrus
Peregrinus de Maricourt, the Epistola de magnete of 1269.
By the fifteenth century, the compass had
been greatly improved for nautical use by the
substitution of the "fly" for the simple pivoted
needle. A fly is a disk of pasteboard under
which is attached the needle (or a metal frame)
and its pivot cup; the diameter of the disk is
such as to make it move closely within the confines of the compass-box. The disk was painted
with the design and lines of the wind- and compass-roses familiar from early sea charts and
bore a circumferential scale of degrees and eight
"winds," subdivided into "quarter winds" of
eleven and one quarter degrees each. The transference of the scale from the rim surrounding
the needle to the fly made possible a direct
reading of a course to be set.19 Possibly the earliest detailed illustration of a compass with a fly
is the allegorical drawing by Leonardo da Vinci,
dated about 1515-1516 (cat. 189), in which a
wolf, seated in a sailing boat, is looking at a
fixed compass that clearly has a fly. The ship's
course would have been set first according to
"wind" directions given in written sailing directions,20 and later according to the rhumb lines
drawn on the sea charts, which were in use by
the end of the thirteenth century.21 The rhumb
lines radiated from wind- or compass-roses and
showed directions from port to port across the
Mediterranean. If, for example, a ship's master
wished to sail from Tunis to Genoa, inspection
of a chart would show that the angle from the
meridian (the north-south line) was so many
degrees or "quarter winds"; then, with the
compass placed in a case, called a binnacle, with
its north-south line aligned on the longitudinal
axis of the ship, the master would seek to sail
keeping the fly positioned so that the appropriate angle marked on it remained opposite the
fiducial mark on the compass box.
This combination of marine compass and sailing directions or sea chart constitutes the first
important technological advance in navigation
beyond the traditional Mediterranean techniques, scarcely changed since antiquity. The
French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese navigators who, from the late thirteenth
century, explored down the west coast of Africa

and its island archipelagos were equipped with

compasses and gradually with coastal sailing
directions and charts, as well. They would not
voluntarily have sought to sail far from land.22
The political, religious, and economic factors
that pushed the Europeans to explore the west
coast of Africa as a possible entry to the fabled
tropical Africa are beyond the scope of this
essay, but the distinction must be made between
fortuitous or involuntary discovery and deliberate voyaging for power or financial gain, implying colonization. The Portuguese, who
developed a fishing monopoly in the African
Atlantic, were backed by policies at home. "O
plantador de naus" (the planter of ships), the
poet Fernando Pessoa called King Diniz of Portugal (ruled 1279-1325), who around 1300
ordered the planting of the pine forest of Leiria,
which later supplied wood for the royal shipyards.23 In 1415, the Portuguese took Ceuta; in
1434, under Gil Eanes, they passed Cape Bojador, probably preceded by the Vivaldi brothers
in 1291 Genoese merchants who apparently
perished in the first recorded European voyage
to the Indies and others after them. From this
date the voyages there and beyond become regular, and that required a solution of the problems of returning to Portugal. These problems
arose from the nature of the winds and currents
in the Atlantic off the Guinea coast, which
forced returning ships to sail into the open sea
in a wide northwestward arc. To reach Lisbon,
or any other Portuguese port, while sailing
northwards, the mariners observed the altitude
(angle above the horizon) of the polestar until
its observed altitude matched that of the pole-

fig. i. Quadrant. Two sight-vanes are shown on the

top radial edge. Near the apex is a diagram of unequal
hours and possibly a solar declinations scale, which
enabled the quadrant to be used as a sundial. From
Valentim Fernandes, Reportorio dos tempos (Lisbon,
1563), 140

star at the port of destination; they then set

course eastward.
This technique was first adopted about 1460
and is associated with the Portuguese navigator,
Diogo Gomes. The navigators used a simple
altitude-measuring instrument known as a
quadrant, which consists of a small plate of
wood or brass in the form of a quarter disk with
a scale of degrees engraved along the curved
edge, a plumb-line and bob suspended from the
apex, and a pair of pinhole sight vanes attached
at either end of one of the radii.24 By sighting
the polestar through the pinhole sights, holding
the quadrant as near to the vertical as possible,
and letting the plumb-line hang freely, navigators could read the altitude of the star from the
degree scale. This was difficult on board a
moving ship, particularly in adverse weather,
although a series of observations made at short
intervals could be averaged to improve accuracy.
Furthermore, an overcast sky might render the
polestar invisible for long periods, and rough
seas and winds might make keeping a set course
impossible. In the fifteenth century, the polestar was not, as it is today, displaced from the
celestial pole by about a degree of arc; owing to
the constant shift of about one degree in
seventy years, it was several degrees off and
appeared, like the other stars, to rotate about
the pole. This problem was resolved by the use
of mnemonic diagrams, called rodas ("wheels'7),
giving the altitude in degrees of the polestar at
successive positions during this apparent rotation. To use a similar form of altitude navigation in daylight, it was necessary to measure the
altitude of the sun at noon and to use tables
giving solar declination (regimentos) throughout the year in a particular latitude. Because it
is not safe to look through sight vanes directly
at the sun, navigators measured its altitude by
holding the quadrant so that the sunlight passing through the pinhole in the foresight fell
exactly on that in the backsight (or so that the
shadow of the foresight fell squarely on the
backsight).25
The altitude in degrees of the celestial pole
above the horizon at a given place is, of course,
the latitude of that place. The primitive altitude
navigation was soon developed to "run down"
the latitude and use latitude data more generally; diagrams and tables were improved and
instruments specially devised for mariners. Possibly the earliest such instrument was the
mariner's astrolabe, although it is not known
exactly when it was first used; the earliest and
rather crude illustration occurs in Alessandro
Zorzi's letter of 1517, and the oldest surviving
mariner's astrolabe is Portuguese and dated
154O.26 The mariner's astrolabe resembles most
closely a simple circular altitude-measuring

fig. 2. Mariner's Astrolabe. Shown being used to

determine the meridian altitude of the sun. From
Pedro de Medina, Regimiento de navegacion (Seville,
1563), fol. 16

instrument, apparently used by medieval

astronomers, but is broadly inspired by the
shape and construction of the well-known planispheric astrolabe. In the mariner's astrolabe
this is reduced to a simple measuring device for
altitude (or zenith distance) suitable for shipboard use, and there is no stereographic projection of the celestial sphere, or rotatable star
map (rete). From the suspension rings hangs a
cast, wheel-shaped body, sections of which are
left open to offer the least wind resistance and
made heavy to help it hang vertically; there is
an alidade (sighting rule) movable over a scale
of degrees, with the sight vanes placed near the
center to facilitate solar observations.27
On the voyage which took him to India,
Vasco da Gama brought with him, as well as
small brass astrolabes of unknown type, a large
wooden astrolabe, which may have resembled
those used by medieval astronomers. This he
used for the determination of latitude in 1497 at
the bay of Saint Helena (southern Africa),
where it was suspended from a tripod on land
because of the difficulties in making accurate
solar observations at sea. From such rough
beginnings, commented the Portuguese historian Joao de Barros (c. 1496-1570), began the
technique that became so valuable for navigation.28 The following year, at Malindi on the
east coast of Africa, Vasco met a mu'allim
(ship's captain) from Gujerat who was to pilot
him across the Indian Ocean. Even if this
manner was not, as has often been claimed, the
famous navigator Ahmad b. Majid (fl. 14601550) himself, he had no doubt learned oral rutters (sailing directions) similar to those for
which Ahmad b. Majid is well known.29 Barros
described Vasco's encounter with the mariner.

And when Vasco da Gama showed him the

large astrolabe of wood that he had with him,
and others of metal with which he measured
the altitude of the sun, the Moor [that is, the
mu'allim] was not impressed, saying that
some navigators of the Red Sea used brass
instruments of triangular shape and quadrants with which they measured the altitude
of the sun, and especially of the star which
they most used in navigation. But he, and the
mariners of Cambay and of the whole of
India, because their navigation was by means
of certain stars, both of the north[ern] and of
the south[ern hemispheres], and other
important [stars] which moved along the
middle of the sky from east to west, did not
measure its distance [that is, the altitude of a
star] by instruments like those, but by one
which he himself used; which instrument he
took the opportunity to show, which was of
three tablets. And because we describe the
shape and use of these in our Geography, in
the chapter on instruments of navigation, it is
only necessary to know here that they use
them for the technique which among us is
now done with the instrument that mariners
call a cross-staff, which will also be explained
and [an account given of] its inventors in the
chapter we have referred to.30
This instrument "of three tablets" is now
usually referred to as a kamdl?1 It was a simple
altitude-measuring device consisting of three
small rectangular wooden boards of different
sizes, each with a central hole to which was attached a string. The string was knotted at intervals, the position of the knots representing
altitudes in isba' (finger [breadth]) or, alternaMeth&d'0fu*rin& the Instrument,

Fig. 8.

fig. 3. Instrument used to ascertain altitude. From

Gabriel Ferrand, Introduction a I'astronomic nautique
arabe (Paris, 1928), 26

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

91

tively, the altitude of the polestar in a particular

place. Choosing the most appropriately sized
board, the navigator held it so that the lower
edge appeared to lie on the horizon and the
upper to touch the celestial body to be observed,
then held the string taut against his nose or
between his teeth. The knot nearest to his face
indicated the altitude. The origin and history of
the kamal is obscure, but it may derive from a
similar Chinese device. Its importance in the
history of European navigation lies in its possible influence on the development of the crossstaff for nautical use. Kamdls were brought
back to Portugal and are mentioned, together
with conversions of the isba to degrees of arc,
in the sixteenth-century navigational treatises
of Andre Fires and Joao de Lisboa.32 The crossstaff was an old instrument; it was probably
invented by Levi ben Gersom (1288-1344), a
Jewish philosopher and scientist from southern
France, whose treatise was translated from
Hebrew into Latin in 1342. Although popular
with astronomers it was, for example, used by
Bernhard Walther, patron of the astronomer
Regiomontanus, for observations in Nuremberg
from 1476 to 1504 nothing suggests that it
was used at sea before the sixteenth century,
although it was certainly in use by 1524. The
cross-staff was usually of hardwood, sometimes
of brass, and consisted of a square-sectioned rod
(the "staff") with a sliding cross-bar (the
"transversary"). It could be used vertically or
horizontally to measure angular distances, by
holding the end of the staff to the eye and
sliding the transversary until its extremities
appeared to touch the objects between which the
angle was to be measured.33
By the end of the fifteenth century, then,
instruments were being adapted or invented for
the purposes of the new astronomical navigation. There was no nascent instrument-making
industry in Portugal or Spain, so the manufacture and certification of instruments for navigators was controlled by the cosmographers,
unlike in the Netherlands and in England.
There instrument-making workshops existed to
fill the demand that arose later in the sixteenth
century, when the navigators of those countries
came to adopt astronomical techniques and
instruments, first based on the Iberian experience and then on their own technical contributions. The appointment in 1529 of Pedro Nunes
(1502-1578) as royal cosmographer introduced
into Portuguese navigation a truly mathematical
overview of the colonial enterprise.34 Nunes
became professor of mathematics at Coimbra by
1544 and chief royal cosmographer in 1547;
among his pupils were the astronomer Christoph Clavius and also the naval commander Joao
de Castro, who tested Nunes' newly devised
92

CIRCA

1492

fig. 4. Cross-staff used for determining the altitude

of the Polestar, when the Guards are in a particular
position. From Pedro de Medina, Regimiento de
navegacion (Seville, 1563), fol. 36

"shadow instrument" (estormento de sombras)

during his voyage to Goa in 1538 a culmination, indeed, of the application of science to
navigation.35
The first voyage of Columbus in 1492 places
him at the midpoint in this technological development. He had with him a number of instrumental aids. Their value to him, as revealed in
the journal of his first voyage, appears ambiguous, his instinctive seamanship often in conflict
with the data he obtained from the instruments.
The journal includes many observations of
flocks of birds (and in one place notes that he
knew that the Portuguese had discovered most
of the islands they held by observing the flight
of birds) and records how Columbus changed
course because of these observations. Sticks
floating in the sea are also noted as evidence of
land, and the presence of rock weed and reeds is
mentioned; the lesser saltiness of the sea near
land is commented upon. Columbus' use of the
lead and line is evidenced by references to the
seabed being sandy, not rocky, at a depth of fifteen or sixteen fathoms; to the existence of a
good entrance to the mouth of a river found by
taking soundings; and to the sea bottom being
beyond a forty-fathom plumb-line.36 He
apparently used half-hour sandglasses: "Here
the Admiral measured the length of the day and
night in hours, and found that from sunrise to
sunset was 20 half-hour glasses, although he
says that there could be an error either because
they do not turn the glass soon enough or
because some of the sand has not passed
through"; and "he sailed for about 14 half-hour
sand-glasses or a little less until the end of the
first quarter watch, and made about 4 miles an

hour, which is 28 miles."37 Columbus had with

him more than one marine compass, and it is
possible that the peculiar behavior of these compasses recorded in an entry in the journal
resulted from his crossing the agonic line (line
of zero magnetic declination; the declination at
the time was about eleven and one quarter
degrees in northwestern Europe), and that other
problems Columbus had with his compasses
arose from his having brought with him Flemish and Genoese compasses whose makers
adopted different values for the declination in
setting the fly.38 For the early part of his voyage,
Columbus had some sort of chart, and he proposed to make a new navigational chart.39 To
this extent, he had not progressed beyond the
first technological revolution in navigation.
But Columbus did notice the apparent rotation of the polestar about the celestial pole, and
may have used a mnemonic diagram of the positions of a and (3 Ursae minor is,40 and he thus
joins his Portuguese contemporaries at the
beginnings of astronomical navigation. Of
astronomical instruments, we read that "he has
suspended the use of the quadrant until he
reaches land and can repair it"; later, that "he
found from his quadrant that he was 34 degrees
[in fact nearly 20 N] from the equinoctial line";
and then that the "north star seemed to him to
be as high as at Cape St Vincent... [but he]
could not measure its elevation with the astrolabe nor the quadrant because the waves would
not let him."41 What sort of astrolabe this was
remains unknown.
"The American," wrote the philosopher
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, sometime
between 1779 and 1783, "who first discovered
Columbus made a bad discovery."42 This awareness of the interaction and conflict of cultures
as a result of European mercantile and missionary expansion is a dominant theme of this
exhibition. This brief essay has not sought to
trace in time or space the stages of Portuguese
or Spanish colonial enterprise along the coast of
Africa, to farther Asia, or to the Americas, but
rather to consider the intellectual endeavor
engaged, to borrow the words of Borges, in
"deciphering the magical alphabet of the stars in
other latitudes."43

NOTES
i. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). "Mar portugues,"
Mensagem xxx: 'O salty sea, how much of your salt
/ Are tears of Portugal/ . . . Was it worth it? Everything is worthwhile / If the soul is not mean. /
. . . God gave the sea danger and depth / But in it
mirrored the sky", quoted from F. E. G. Quintanilba, ed. & trans., Fernando Pessoa. Sixty Portuguese Poems (Cardiff, 1971), 46-47.

2. Consuelo Varela, Cristobal Colon: Textos y documentos completes. Relaciones de viajes, cartas y
memoriales, ist ed. (Madrid, 1982), LII: "But nothing which concerns Columbus can be simple and
clear/'
3. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), "Fragen eines lesenden
Arbeiters": "So many reports. / So many questions.", quoted from Die Gedichte von Bertolt
Brecht, 6th ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), 656-657;
and John Willett, Ralph Maheim, and Erich Fried,
Bertolt Brecht, Poems, zd ed. (London, 1981), 2522534. Jorg Syrlin der A. (c. 1425-1491), Ulm. Ptolemy
holds a demonstrational armillary sphere in his left
hand, a measuring device in his right. The carving is
full-round, stained brown, height 44 cm.
5. See Francis Maddison, Medieval Scientific Instruments and the Development of Navigational Instruments in the xvth and xvith Centuries
(Agrupamento de estudos de cartografia antiga 30)
(Coimbra, 1969), 4 and note 2. To avoid expanding
unduly the footnotes, reference will be made, where
possible, to this publication, which has extensive
bibliographical references. Most of the instruments
mentioned in this essay are discussed and illustrated
in Anthony Turner, Early Scientific Instruments:
Europe 1400-1800 (London, 1987), which includes a
good up-to-date bibliography.
6. Maddison 1969, 4 and note 4. It was, however, King
Joao ii who rejected Columbus' project before the
Spanish court supported it.
7. Maddison 1969, 4 and note i; author's translation.
8. B. W. Ife, ed. and trans., with an essay on Columbus' language by R. J. Penny, Christopher Columbus: Journal of the First Voyage (Diaro del primer
viaje) 1492 (Warminster, Wiltshire, 1990), 25,
notes on 242-243, 142-145 (Friday, 21 December;
the gloss in italics is that of Bartolome de Las
Casas); Varela, 89.
9. Ife 1990, 243 n. 7.
10. References to instruments in Columbus' journal are
given below. The drawing of divisions on a trigonometrical quadrant in a manuscript of Pierre d'Ailly's
Ymago mundi, in the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville,
no. 3,122, may be evidence of Columbus' theoretical
interest in instruments, or merely a diagram for the
graphical determination of solar declination; the
drawing is conveniently reproduced in Bjorn Landstrom, Columbus, Eng. trans. (London, 1967), 30;
and compare Luis de Albuquerque, Cur so de historia
da ndutica, zd ed. (Coimbra, 1972), 123-125.
11. See G. J. Marcus, The Conquest of the North Atlantic (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980).
12. See G. R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian
Ocean Before the Coming of the Portuguese, Being
a Translation of Kitab al-Fawa'id fi usul al-bahr
wa'1-qawa'id of Ahmad b. Majid al-Najdi (Oriental
Translation Fund, n.s. vol. 42) (London, 1971).
13. See, for instance, Stephen D. Thomas, The Last
Navigator (London, 1987).
14. For instance, the seventeenth-century examples
from Alexander O. Exquemelin (Cayman Islands,
before 1678) and Martin Martin (Hebrides, before
1698) in Maddison 1969, 5-6, note 8. For references
to Columbus' observation of natural phenomena, see
below.
15. To ascertain the ship's position by "dead-reckoning,"
Vitruvius, the Roman engineer and architect, writing in 25 B.C. proposed an impractical version of his
hodometer, for use in ships; see A. G. Drachmann,
The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman
Antiquity (Copenhagen, 1963), 157-159.

16. See generally for the history of European navigation, E.G.R. Taylor, The Haven-Finding Art: A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook,
new ed. (London, 1971). For the background, see
J.R.S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe
(Oxford, 1988).
17. Often called portolan charts, but a thirteenth-century use of the word compasso means "sailing directions," comprising the portolano (the written guide)
and the nautical chart. On nautical instruments in
the time of Columbus, see the individual entries in
Silvio A. Bedini, ed., The Columbus Encyclopedia
(New York, forthcoming).
18. On the development of an astronomical navigation,
see Albuquerque 1972, and Vitorino Magalhaes
Godinho, "Navegacao oceanica e origens da nautica
astronomica," reprinted in his Ensaios (Lisbon,
1968), 1:179-227.
19. Columbus Encylopedia, forthcoming, under "Compass, Marine," where bibliographical references will
be found. See also J.J.L. Duyvendak, China's Discovery of Africa (London, 1949), 19-20, for the
Chinese use of the marine compass; and Taylor
1971, 91-92, 97, for the traditional association with
Amalfi of the development of the marine compass in
Europe. On twelfth-century science, see Tina
Stiefel, The Intellectual Revolution in Twelfth-Century Europe (London & Sydney, 1985), who mentions Neckam on page 101.
20. Compasso da navigare, in Italian.
21. See David Woodward's essay in this catalog.
22. For the political and economic background, see
Pierre Chaunu, L'Expansion europeenne du xine au
xve siecle, Nouvelle Clio 26 (Paris, 1969). The basic
study of the early African west coast voyages is Raymond Mauny, Les Navigations medievales sur les
cotes sahariennes anterieures a la decouverte portugaise (1434) (Lisbon, 1960). See also Luis de
Albuquerque, Introdugao a historia dos Descobrimentos (Coimbra, 1962).
23. Quintanilha 1971, 33: "D. Diniz/' Mensagem xx.
24. The quadrant was not a recent invention. Most
medieval quadrants were engraved with lines showing the planetary (unequal) hours and used for telling time in conjunction with an adjustable bead
sliding on the plumb line. See Columbus Encyclopedia, forthcoming, under "Quadrant."
25. The earliest illustration of a quadrant for use at sea
is comparatively late: in the 1563 (posthumous) edition of Valentim Fernandes' Reportorio dos tempos,
ist ed. (Lisbon, 1518); see figure i. Other mnemonic diagrams served to assist the determination of
the time at night by showing the midnight positions
throughout the year of ft Ursae minoris", see Maddison 1969, 32, 35.
26. See Nan Stimson, The Mariner's Astrolabe: A
Survey of Known, Surviving Sea Astrolabes vol. 4
of HES Studies in the History of Cartography and
Scientific Instruments (Utrecht, 1988). The planispheric astrolabe was not a mariner's instrument.
Its flat solid disk made it unsuitable for use on board
ship, it was fragile because of the delicate tracery on
the rete (star map) and separate latitude plates, and
its stereographic projection of the celestial sphere
made it a complex instrument to understand and to
use. See Columbus Encyclopedia, forthcoming,
under "Astrolabe"; Maddison 1969, 11-13; Turner
1987,11-16, 27-45.
27. Pedro de Medina, Regimento de navegacion (Seville,

1563).

29.
30.

31.

32.
33.

34.

35.

28. Joao de Barros, Asia... Dos fectos que os Portugueses

fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares et

terras do Oriente, i.a decada (Lisbon, 1552), livro 4,

cap. vi, folio 4iv.: "sayo em terra por fazer aguada
& assy tomar a altura do sol. Porgue como do vso do
astrolabio pera aquelle mister da nauegacam, auia
poco tempo que os mareantes deste reyno se
aproueitaua, & os nauios eram pequenos: nam confiaua muyto de atomar dentro nelles por causa do
seu arfar. Principalmente com hum astrolabio de pao
de tres palmos de diametro, o qual armauam em tres
paos a maneira de cabrea por melhor segurar a linha
solar, & mais verificada & distinctamente poderem
saber a veradeira altura daquelle lugar: posto que
leuassem outros de latam mais pequenos, tarn rusticamente comec,ou esta arte que tanto fructo tern
dado ao nauegar." The 1946 edition of Barros' massive history is now available on computer disk from
the Center for the Study of the Portuguese Discoveries, Linacre College, Oxford.
See Tibbetts 1971, generally; and, on the identification of Vasco's pilot, 9-12.
Barros 1552, fols. 46v~47v: "E amostrandolhe Vasco
da Gama o grande astrolabio de pao que leuaua, &
outros de metal com que tomaua a altura do sol, nam
se espantou o mouro disso: dizendo que alguuns
pilotos do mar roxo vsauam de jnstrumentos de
latam de figura triangular & quadrantes com que
tomauam a altura do sol, & principalmente da
estrella de que se mais seruiam em a nauegacam.
Mas que elle e os mareantes de Cambaya & de toda a
India, pero que a sua nauegacam era per certas
estrellas assy do norte como do sul, & outras
notauees que cursauam per meyo do ceo de oriente a
ponente: nam tomauam a sua distancia per
jnstrumentos semelhauces aquelles mas per outro de
que se elle seruia, o qual jnstrumento Ihe trouxe
logo amostrar, que era de tres tauaas. E porque da
figura & uso dellas tratamos em a nossa Geografia
em o capitulo dos jnstrumentos de navegacam, baste
aquy saber que seruem a elles naqwella operacam
que ora acerca de nos serue o jnstrumento aque os
mareantes chamam balhestilha, de que tambem no
capitulo que dissemos se dara razam delle & dos seus
jnuentores" (author's translation). Unfortunately,
Barros' Geography has apparently not survived.
This Arabic term, meaning "perfection, completion," is not attested before the nineteenth century;
perhaps better is khashaba (a piece of wood), used
by the Arab mu'allims Ahmad ibn Majid and Sulayman al-Mahri (first half of the sixteenth century).
See Tibetts 1971, 315-318; and Columbus Encyclopedia, forthcoming, under "Kamal." See figure 3,
reproduced from H. Congreve, "A Brief Notice of
Some Contrivances Practiced by the Native
Mariners of the Coromandel Coast, in Navigating,
Sailing and Repairing Their Vessels," in Madras
Journal of Literature and Science 16 (JanuaryJune
1850), 101-104, reprinted in Gabriel Ferrand,
Instructions nautiques et routiers arabes et portugais des xve et xvie siecles (Paris, 1928), 26.
See Albuquerque 1972,195-199.
Columbus Encyclopedia, forthcoming, under
"Cross-staff"; Albuquerque 1972,189-195. See figure 3, reproduced from Medina 1563.
See J. M. Lopez de Azcona, "Nunez Salaciense,
Pedro," in Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, 1974),
10:160-162.
Armando Cortesao and Luis de Albuquerque, eds.,
Obras completas de D. Joao de Castro (Coimbra,
1968), 1:115-179.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

93

36. For example, Ife 1990, 12-13 (Tuesday, 18 September) Varela 1982, 22; Ife 1990, 24-25 (Sunday, 7
October), but the passage is not in Varela 1982, 2728; Ife 1990, 26-27 (Thursday, 11 October) Varela
1982, 2829; Ife 1990, 1213 (Monday, 17 October)
Varela 1982, 21-22; Ife 1990, 82-83 (Thursday, 15
November) Varela 1982, 58; Ife 1990, 108-111
(Tuesday, 4 December) Varela 1982, 72; Ife 1990,
112-115 (Thursday, 6 December), compare also the
following Friday, 116-117 Varela, 73-77.
37. Ife 1990, 126-127 (Thursday, 13 December) Varela
1982, 81; Ife 1990, 200-201 (Thursday, 17 January)
Varela 1982, 119. Columbus uses the word for sand-

94

CIRCA 1492

38.

39.
40.
41.

glass, ampolleta, also to mean "the time which the

sandglass measures'' (Varela 1982, 338).
Ife 1990,10-11 (Thursday, 13 September) Varela
1982, 20; compare also Ife 1990,12-13 (Monday, 17
September) Varela 1982, 21. See Columbus Encyclopedia, forthcoming, under "Marine Compass/'
Ife 1990, 16-17 (Tuesday, 25 September) Varela
1982, 24; Ife 1990, 4-5; Varela 1982, 17.
Ife 1990, 20-21 (Sunday, 30 September) Varela 1982,
26.
Ife 1990, 88-89 (Wednesday, 21 November) Varela
1982, 61; Ife 1990, 126-127 and note 147 (Thursday,
13 December) Varela 1982, 81; Ife 1990, 208-209
(Sunday, 3 February) Varela 1982, 123.

42. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe,

ed. Franz H. Mautner, 4 vols. in 6, "Sudelbiicher /
Fragmente / Fabeln" (Frankfurt am Main, 1983),
1:359; "Der Amerikaner, der den Kolumbus zuerst
entdeckte, machte eine bose Entdeckung," 2:84,1;
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, ed. and
trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London, 1990), no, no. 42.
43. Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), "Susana Bombal," El
Oro de los tigres (1972), reprinted in Obras completas (Buenos Aires, 1974), 1094: " . . . descifrando el
magico alfabeto / de las estrellas de otras latitudes . . . "; trans. Arthur McHugh in Oxford Magazine 68 (1991), 16.

THE MEAN AND MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

Martin Kemp

JL he old and much criticized cliche that the

"spirit" of the Italian Renaissance can be identified with a new attitude toward man may still
possess some value in our quest to characterize
the arts of this period. The great humanist Leon
Battista Alberti, in his innovative dialogues on
private and public life entitled Delia famiglia,
which he composed between 1433 and 1441,
provided a classic formulation of what we have
come to see as the archetypal Renaissance attitude to man: "The Stoics taught that man was
by nature constituted the observer and manager
of things. Chrysippus thought that everything
on earth was born only to serve man, while
man was meant to preserve the friendship and
society of man. Protagoras, another ancient
philosopher, seems to some interpreters to
have said essentially the same thing, when he
declared that man is the mean and measure of
all things/'1 Alberti quotes the same tag from
Protagoras in his seminal treatise Delia pittura
(On Painting, 1435), when he explains how
the human figure provides the essential frame
of reference for the scale of all other forms
in a perspectival picture.2
Alberti's neo-Stoic ideas appear to reveal
a heightened and extended definition of man
as the "purpose" of nature as the being for
whom nature was created and through whom
the order of God's creation becomes apparent.
Without man as a rational observer, such order
would remain unseen. The perception of nature
and intellectual command over its rules place
human beings in a position of potential mastery
within the physical world, giving them the
means to make nature serve their purposes
even if these purposes are ultimately dependent
upon God's decrees. The exploitation of knowledge within the context of such admirable pursuits as scholarship and the various arts permits
human beings to cultivate virtu (worth, talent,
and will) as the means of combating fortuna
(the whims of fate).
The expression of such ideas in the writings
of Alberti and his fellow humanists provided the
basis for the famous characterization of "Renaissance man" in Jacob Burkhardt's Civilization
of the Renaissance in Italy, the classic study by
the great Swiss historian, first published in
1860. At the start of the key section, "The
Development of the Individual," Burkhardt
painted a beguiling picture of the new con-

sciousness. "In the Middle Ages both sides of

human consciousnessthat which was turned
within as that which turned withoutlay
dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil.
The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and
history were clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race,
people, party, family, or corporation only
through some general category. In Italy this veil
first melted into air; an objective treatment and
consideration of the State and of all the things
of this world became possible. The subjective at
the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual
individual, and recognized himself as such."3
His equally crucial section, "The Discovery of
the World and of Man," opens with a short
essay on the "journeys of the Italians," which
are epitomized by the adventures of Columbus.
In Burkhardt's view, the voyages of discovery
are prime symptoms of the Renaissance spirit.
"Freed from the countless bonds which elsewhere in Europe checked progress, having
reached a high degree of individual development
and been schooled by the teachings of antiquity,
the Italian mind now turned to the discovery of
the outward universe, and to the representation
of it in speech and form
Columbus himself
is but the greatest of a long list of Italians who,
in the service of Western nations, sailed into
distant seas. The true discoverer, however, is
not the man who first chances to stumble upon
anything, but the man who finds what he has
sought
Yet ever we turn again with admiration to the august figure of the great Genoese,
by whom a new continent beyond the ocean was
demanded, sought and found."4
Leaving aside the question of whether it was
accurate to say that what Columbus found was
the new continent he sought, modern historians
no longer accept Burkhardt's characterization of
the Renaissance enterprise even on its own
terms. The polarities of attitude he used to
demarcate the medieval and Renaissance periods
have been crucially blurred, both by a greater
understanding of medieval culture in its own
right and by a greater awareness of the amount
of medieval baggage carried by even the most
progressive Renaissance thinkers. Moreover,
there is a growing tendency to see the voyages
of exploration themselves as a continuation of

the travel and expansion that had begun to

characterize Europe's relationship to Asia and
Africa in the course of the preceding centuries.5
Even more seriously, the underlying assumptionthat "man" and "nature" were in some
sense waiting to be "discovered" can be
shown to be untenable, since every age has
articulated its own special relationship to the
world through selective perceptions that have
disclosed that period's own "man" and "nature."
This is not to say that we should necessarily
expect the full range of these perceptions to be
expressed in a transparent way in the works of
art from each age, since the functional contexts
for what we call the arts do not necessarily provide vehicles for their expression. Thus, the fact
that perceptions of man and nature may be less
striking in much of medieval art by no means
indicates that such perceptions were not present
in the consciousness of medieval thinkers.
Although we may no longer share Burkhardt's confidence in the picture he painted of
Renaissance man, his intuition that profound
changes were taking place in fifteenth-century
Europe has not been entirely superseded. In the
present context, it is worth emphasizing that
not the least important of these was the changing scope of the arts, which came to articulate
the relationship of man to nature in new ways
through the transformation of their communicative means. Nor is Burkhardt entirely wrong
in his conviction that shared aspirations can be
discerned behind the geographical ambitions of
those explorers who regarded the surface of the
earth as a space for conquest and behind the
representational endeavors of those authors and
artists who disclosed "real" people in "real"
space and "real" time. What may be outdated is
Burkhardt's notion that a shared spirit connects
artist with explorer. We should think instead of
a complex series of interlocking social, political,
imperial, religious, and cultural motivations, all
of which used related tools in the service of the
geographical and intellectual extension of the
scope of individuals and institutionstools like
the splendid scientific instruments included in
this exhibition and the more prosaic devices
used by architects such as Brunelleschi and
Alberti and which probably lay behind the
invention of perspective by Brunelleschi in or
before 1413. We can glimpse the shared motivations by considering the careers of some

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

95

fig. i. Unknown Italian artist,

Ideal City. c. 1500, oil on panel.
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

outstanding individuals. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius n, is a perfect
example and was recognized as such by Burkhardt. As a geographer and an ambassador, he
recorded vivid eyewitness accounts of people
and places in such distant lands as Scotland. As
a humanist, he wrote autobiographical Commentaries, in which he acts as a sober observer
of himself and others. As captain of the Church
and proud leader of the Sienese family of the
Piccolomini, he transformed his native village of
Corsignano into an exemplary new town of the
Renaissance, renamed Pienza in his honor. Yet
this exemplar of Burkhardt's Renaissance man
determined that the internal disposition of the
cathedral in Pienza should follow the medieval
pattern of a "hall church" with Gothic windows.6 In a sense, the human figures represented in the works of art in the section of this
exhibition devoted to the human body are
fleshly Pienzas amalgams of medieval and
modern, laid out according to the new measures
and in accordance with the empirical scrutiny of
forms and functions, yet deeply imbued with
Christian traditions about sin and grace, body
and soul.
Albrecht Diirer and Leonardo da Vinci are the
perfect Burkhardtian figures in the visual arts,
attesting in their closely related yet highly individual ways that genuinely new manners of
representing man and nature developed in the
years on either side of 1500. Both men played
exceptional roles in forging new tools of visual
communication tools that could illustrate the
known world with fresh analytical force and
summon up unknown worlds (whether the
96

CIRCA 1492

inner regions of the human body or the exotic

regions of the earth) with such illusionistic skill
that spectators suddenly became privileged eyewitnesses. This is not to say that the new techniques of representation automatically lifted
what Burkhardt called the medieval "veil... of
faith and illusion/' Indeed, the very illusionist
power of the new techniques could make the
completely imaginary seem to have been taken
from life. A case in point is Dtirer's famous
Rhinoceros (cat. 206), which for generations of
natural historians came to embody the essence
of "rhinocerosity" more truly than the beast
itself. Armor-plated and as the medieval bestiary required the constitutional enemy of the
elephant, Diirer's invention may be regarded as
another parallel of Pienza in the sphere of visual
representation, bearing compelling witness
both to the new visual techniques for the construction of a world of rational understanding
and to the necessary retention of important elements from established frameworks of meaning.
In its double-edged nature, the visual weapon
forged by the Renaissance revolution is perhaps
no different from any other truly revolutionary
agent. The direction in which any such weapon
cuts into the prevailing notions of reality can
only be determined by a complex series of
mutually reinforcing and sometimes contradictory motivations in the participants' mental and
political lives. The works gathered in this
exhibition under the general heading of "The
Mean and Measure of All Things" have been
selected to bear suggestive witness to some of
the more Burkhardtian of these motivations in
the period around 1492. These motivations also

provide the underlying theme of the following

discussion of the rationalization of space, the
human body, and Leonardo and Diirer.

THE RATIONALIZATION OF
SPACE: GEOMETRY AND THE
MAN-MADE ENVIRONMENT
Renaissance thinkers did not hesitate to connect
the ordering of space with the highest organizing principles of the universe. The humanist
Alberti, who was an architect and theorist of art
as well as a writer, wrote a Latin satire, Momus
(The Prince), in which Jove searches, at first
unavailingly, for a means to bring order into the
chaos of earthly existence. This chaos had been
orchestrated by Momus, the wayward son of
Night, who had been expelled from the heavens
and was now reveling in his capricious rule on
earth. The contradictory and sophistic opinions
of the philosophers Jove consults in his quest
provide him with no clear guidance on the best
model for a new world order. The first signs of
enlightenment come when he sees a stupendous
architectural creation, a great Colosseum-style
theater, whose harmonious design signals the
rational system that should underlie the cosmos
as a whole and its component parts. Jove laments
his own earlier stupidity in "not having turned
to the constructors of such an extraordinary
work, rather than the philosophers, to plan the
model of the world of the future/' 7
Alberti makes it equally clear in his short but
seminal treatise Delia pittura (On Painting),
written in Latin in 1435 and translated into
Italian a year later, that painters play no lesser a

role than architects in revealing the inherent

order of nature as created by God.8 The means
through which painters were to effect this revelation was the acquisition of rational understanding and systematic skills. Alberti considered these attributes essential if their
possessors were to have any hope of resisting
the vagaries of fortune in human affairs. The
kind of enlightenment that Alberti sought was
disinterested, in that the philosopher-creator
was to be detached from corrupting entanglements in the hurly-burly of politics and commerce, but it was not completely separate from
society, since it could be applied to the creation
of actual structures for the benefit of human
life. The vision of order formulated by Alberti,
founded on the neo-Stoic doctrines of the
Roman authors he admired, above all Cicero and
Seneca, was very much that of the new urban
intellectual class, for whom monastic withdrawal from society seemed as undesirable as
unreserved commitment to the unprincipled
outer world where human beings struggled for
supremacy.
The new visions of space that appeared in the
late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, above all
in Italy and most especially in Florence, arose
within urban societies and were expressed
through new conceptions of the human environmentnot only the environment that was
actually constructed for the conduct of human
affairs, but also the imagined worlds depicted
by practitioners of the figurative arts. Perhaps
in no other period were developments in constructed and depicted space more profoundly
united. If it is true to say in the final analysis
that the fourteenth-century developments in
the rendering of human space in painting, as in
Ambrogio Lorenzetti's superb depiction of the
well-governed city, were dependent upon actual
spaces in cities and the manner of their use, it
is nonetheless apparent that the depiction of
imagined space, especially after the invention
of linear perspective in or before 1413, played
an active role in transforming the fifteenthcentury vision of urban space.
This development appeared first in the
construction of actual urban spaces. The late
Middle Ages witnessed the building of planned
new towns in a number of European centers,
but those initiated in Tuscany from 1299
onwards by the government of Florence were of
special significance in the development of urban
geometry.9 The commission that reported in
1350 on the proposed new town of Giglio
Fiorentino made the following recommendations: "In the middle of the town shall be a
piazza ninety braccia [about 50 m] long and
seventy braccia [about 39m] wide. In the piazza
shall be a well. And flanking this piazza, on one

side, shall be a house of the comune [the local

government] with a loggia.... And on the other
side... shall be built the church of the parish
of St. Peter
Inside the town shall be nine
streets.... [There follows an account of the
widths of the streets and dimensions of the
properties, according to a carefully graded
mathematical order, diminishing in size from
the central axis. ] The main street shall run the
length of the town and another street, similar
to it, shall be made across it in the middle of
the town/'10
One of the best surviving examples of the
new towns is San Giovanni Valdarno, the birthplace of Masaccio, a town where axial streets of
calculated widths flow into and out of a fine
double square. At the center stands the Palazzo
Pretorio, the seat and symbol of civic rule, surrounded by places of worship and of business
and domestic life, arranged according to a carefully ordered hierarchy of functions. The visual
elements are controlled in a rigorous manner
through a series of calculated alignments and
vistas that make manifest the rationality of form
and function in the new urban settings for the
theater of life.
Such regular planning, which required skill in
practical mathematics, including surveying, lay
in the hands of sophisticated architect-masons,
who were drawn largely from the workshop of
the cathedral in Florence. In the city of Florence
itself, the scope for the establishment of systematic town spaces and proportional design

fig. 2. Piero della Zucca, Plan of San Giovanni

Val d'Arno. 1553, pen and ink.
Archivio di Stato, Florence

fig. 3. Church of San Giovanni viewed along the south arcade of the Palazzo Pretorio, San Giovanni Val
d'Arno. 1299 onwards
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

97

left: fig. 4. Diagrammatic Reconstruction of

Brunelleschi's Perspective Panel of the Baptistery
(zl, z2, are points of convergence of sides of Baptistery
at maximum possible width for the panel)

below: fig. 5. North-east side, main square, Pienza.

c. 1459-64

was limited by the piecemeal growth of the old

city and the multitude of private property interests, but during the course of the fourteenth
century the Florentine government made strenuous and largely effective efforts to reorder the
most important civic and religious-civic spaces.
The greatest effort was devoted to the creation
of the huge L-shaped piazza beside the Palazzo
dei Priori (or dei Signori, the current Palazzo
Vecchio), which grew in stages to reach its
present dimensions. The documents that record
the compulsory acquisition of properties and
the regulation of rebuilding lines reiterate the
social and aesthetic motives of the commissionersdefense and security, utility, regularity, prestige, and beautyin a way that
anticipates the principles Alberti was to enunciate in the next century. Considerable effort was
also devoted in 1389-1391 to the widening
and regularizing of the Via de' Calzaiuoli, the
main thoroughfare between the Piazza della
Signoria and the important space in front of the
cathedral in which the magnificent Baptistery
was located. It was from the vantage point at
which the Via de'Calzaiuoli opens onto the
Piazza della Signoria that Brunelleschi painted
his famous view of the Palazzo Vecchio in one of
the two panel paintings (now lost) which he
created to demonstrate his invention of linear
perspective. His other demonstration panel
showed the Baptistery from the central doorway
of the Cathedral, thus depicting another building that was a focus of civic pride in an orderly
urban space.11 Later in his career, Brunelleschi
himself would conceive projects to open up new
urban spaces in Florence.12
The humanist chancellor, Leonardo Bruni,
writing his Panegyric of the City of Florence
during the early years of the fifteenth century,
bears witness to exactly the kind of effect the
98

C I R C A 1492

fig. 6. Filarete, Geometrical City Plan from Trattato d'Architettura. c. 1464, pen and ink and wash. Biblioteca
Nazionale, Florence

city fathers intended the physical organization

of the city to convey: "This palace (the Palazzo
Vecchio) is so immense that it must house the
men who are appointed to govern the state.
Indeed it was so magnificently conceived that
it dominates all the buildings nearby/'13 This
nodal building is set in progressively broader
perspectives as Bruni, in his description, moves
away from the center of the city, until he sees
Florence, its surrounding walls, its corona of
villas, and its encircling hills and orbital towns
as a manifestation of a supreme spatial order.
In the middle of the century Alberti, in his
treatise De re aedificatoria (On the Art of
Building), laid down the ideal order as a set of
theoretical principles. The same combination of
social and aesthetic factors governed his axioms,
according to the premise that "the range of different works depends principally on the variations within human nature/'14 Thus, appropriate
provisionappropriate both functionally and
visuallymust be made for the various governmental, public, private, and religious activities
within the city. For example, different kinds of
rulers needed different kinds of buildings:
"Whereas a royal dwelling might be sited next
to a show-park, a temple or the houses of noblemen, that of a tyrant should be well set back on
all sides from any buildings/'15 Similar differentiations were to be made between types of religious buildings: "There are two main types of
temple: major temples where a great prelate
solemnly conducts established ceremonies and
sacraments, then those presided over by a lesser
priest, such as chapels in built-up areas Perhaps the most suitable site for the main temple
would be the centre of a town."16 The paintings
of ideal townscapes from later in the century,
particularly those now in Urbino and Baltimore
(cats. 147,148), can be analyzed in terms of
such functional and visual hierarchies. All the
diverse elements in a city should be held
together in a rational order: "The principal
ornament to any city lies in the siting, layout,
composition and arrangement of its roads,
squares and individual works; each must be
properly planned and distributed according to
use, importance and convenience. For without
order there can be nothing commodious, graceful and noble."17
The kind of order envisaged by Alberti's
immediate successors as architect-theorists,
Filarete and Francesco di Giorgio, was far more
complex and all-embracing than even that of the
fourteenth-century town planners.18 Everything
from the design of a capital at the top of a
column to the overall plan of the city was to be
governed by a rigorously proportional geometry. The visual effect of such calculation is as
apparent in the finest of the painted ideal town-

scapes, that now in Urbino, as in the appearance

of the most coherent piece of actual fifteenthcentury town planning from the middle of the
century, the main square of Pope Pius n's
Pienza.19 The various buildings around the
squarethe cathedral, the pope's family palace,
the residence of the archbishop, the seat of the
local government, and other, more modest
structures, including a beautifully designed
well are arranged in a highly coherent visual
and social ensemble.
The theorists, of course, could be even more
uncompromising in adopting geometrical plans
than the builders of actual projects, who had to
confront the range of practical problems connected with each individual site. When laying
out his imaginary city of Sforzinda for the duke
of Milan, Filarete uncompromisingly drops his
geometrical scheme for the city into a virgin
landscape one free of preexisting structures
and conflicting property rights. Such overarching geometrical designs drew their justification
not only from the cultivation of order for beauty's sake (or even for the sake of function), but
also from their symbolic associations.20 The
regular geometrical forms, particularly the socalled Platonic solids, were thought to correspond to the building blocks of the cosmos.21
These archetypal forms governed the design
of man, the microcosm, as much as they
determined the scheme of the heavens, the
macrocosm. In the Renaissance, this view of
man as the microcosm came to be associated
particularly with the so-called Vitruvian man,
based on a set of ideal proportions laid down by
the Roman architect Vitruvius and expressed in
the image of a human figure, arms outstretched,
inscribed in a square and a circle. Both Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo (see cat. 175)
made drawings of this subject.22
The later fifteenth century saw the flowering
of an appreciation of the regular geometrical
bodies in terms that can justifiably be called
aesthetic. The leading figures in this movement
were the painter Piero della Francesca and the
mathematician Luca Pacioli (cat. 143), the latter
of whom published an important work, De
divina proportione (On Divine Proportion), in
1509. The brilliant perspectival illustrations of
the regular geometrical bodies in their solid and
skeletal forms in the original manuscript were
designed by Leonardo da Vinci, Pacioli's colleague at the court of Milan in the late 14905
(see cat. 142).23 The ubiquitous "divine proportion" upon which the beauty of the bodies was
dependent was the harmonic division of a line
according to the ratio of the so-called golden
section (such that the ratio of the smaller part
to the larger equals the ratio of the larger part
to the whole). The attraction of these forms

fig. 7. Intarsia Decorations in the Studiolo in the

Palazzo Ducale, Urbino

in Renaissance theory was so compelling that

Pacioli prefaced his treatise with a verse hymn
in praise of their ubiquitous significance in the
construction of the world. For Leonardo, as for
Luca Pacioli, the cerebral abstractions of geometry corresponded to elements that were
embedded in reality rather than separate from
it. The conceptual spaces in the human mind
and the realized spaces in which Renaissance
man pursued his social and intellectual life
existed in a continuity. This continuity is perhaps best symbolized by the decoration of aristocratic scholars' studies (studioli), particularly
those designed for Federigo da Montefeltro in
his palaces at Urbino and Gubbio.24 The designs
of inlaid woodwork in the studioli and in other
items of domestic and church furniture (cat.
145) use the new science of perspective to evoke
the orderly disciplines of the liberal arts
through details such as books, mathematical
solids, and scientific instruments, and not infrequently include images of well-ordered townscapes akin to those on the painted panels. The
intellectual base underlying this vision of harmony was, in theory at least, formed by contemplative philosophers of the kind imagined
by Botticelli in his Saint Augustine (cat. 144),
depicted as a Renaissance scholar who sits in a
study equipped with a treatise on geometry, a
modern clock, and an armillary sphere that represents the design of the celestial orbits.25
In creating the images through which this
vision of geometrical order in space was disseminated, the artistic technique of perspective was
crucial. The close association between Brunelleschi's invention of perspective and the "squaring up" of Florence's public spaces has already
been noted. Indeed the techniques through
which the town planners achieved their ends,
involving precise techniques of mensuration,

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

99

fig. 8. Masolino, Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha. c. 1427, fresco. Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria
del Carmine, Florence

fig. 9. Vittore Carpaccio, Reception of the Ambassadors (Legend of St. Ursula), c. 1496-1498, oil on canvas.
Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice

are those Brunelleschi is most likely to have

used in achieving the perspectival projection of
the Palazzo Vecchio and Baptistery onto the flat
surfaces of his two demonstration paintings.
Although it is likely that the techniques of surveyingrather than the map-making methods
of Ptolemy, as has sometimes been suggested
provided the direct means for Brunelleschi's
achievement, the nature of his skills exhibits a
deep affinity with those pioneers who were
reviving Ptolemaic techniques for the charting
of the heavens and earth.26 It may even be that
charting land and sky presupposed the control
of space on a smaller scale, that the rational
mastery of local space in the man-made environment is a prerequisite for the systematic
exploration of spaces lying beyond man's immediate visual compass. Such a thesis is strongly
supported by Jacopo de' Barbaras remarkable
View of Venice (cat. 151), in which the systematic description of the city in space positively
invites speculation as to what lies beyond.
However close were the links between perspective and the new conceptions of civic space,
100

CIRCA 1492

these links do not on their own explain the

invention and development of perspective
within the art of painting. Brunelleschi's precocious townscapes could have remained as visual
curiosities, given that purely topographical representations were not required of painters in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His
invention could be taken up and even, I
believe, conceived only within an art whose
new functions made the basic techniques for the
depiction of realistic space relevant to the needs
of both painters and their audiences. The new
kind of narrative art, pioneered by Giotto and
his successors, was immediate, accessible,
human, and even anecdotal. It was further
developed in the 1420$ by Masaccio and Masolino in their frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel,
which depicted solid, highly individualized
human actors placed within convincingly
characterized spaces that make direct reference
to the urban environment. Most striking in this
respect is the large fresco that portrays Saint
Peter healing a cripple and raising Tabitha, in
which key elements in contemporary city plan-

ning the expansive piazza flanked by properties along a single building line, the wide roads,
and the open loggias provide a convincing
setting for the participants in the human drama.
The real climax of these painted civic dramas
occurred not in Florence but in Venice, where
painters and their patrons developed a largescale form of art in which the demands of religious narrative and triumphant civic ritual are
conjoined within panoramas of the teeming life
of the city27 It is with images of the maritime,
mercantile city-stage of Venice that we arrive at
one of the stepping-off points for the actual
exploration of the world. The city has become
a stage designed and depicted through the
rational mastery of techniques for the mensuration and control of space. On this stage a rich
human story is acted out, involving the ceremonies of civic business, the insinuation of
religious ritual into everyday life, and the
imperatives of expanding commercial and
imperial concerns. Of course, Venice, mistress
of the established eastern Mediterranean trading routes, did not herself sponsor the new voyages south to India and west to the Americas,
but the type of commercial organization the city
had pioneered was a prerequisite for the formation of the Portuguese and Spanish maritime
empires. In this commercially oriented urban
environment, abstract mathematics and practical
techniques go hand-in-hand. Perhaps it is worth
remembering that Luca Pacioli, the intellectual
author of On Divine Proportion, the book on
the "abstract" beauty of geometry, also played a
seminal role in the codification and dissemination of one of the practical necessities of European commercial expansion double-entry
bookkeeping.28

THE HUMAN BODY:

NEW ANATOMIES AND OLD IDEALS
The portrayal of the human body, naked or
semi-naked, assumed a central role in the ambitions of major artists in northern and southern
Europe during the Renaissance. By 1500 a
German artist like Durer felt compelled to
master the portrayal of the nude, just like his
Italian contemporaries, such as Leonardo. Not
since classical antiquity had artists accorded
such significance to the beauty, corporeal presence, and expressive power of the unadorned
human form. Although the art of ancient Rome
played a conspicuous part in firing the ambitions of Renaissance artists, the formal and
emotional range of images of the human body
around 1500 far exceeded anything achieved in
antiquity. Renaissance representations of the
body in a variety of private and institutional

contexts established a complex set of meanings,

of which we remain the heirs. Indeed, this range
of meanings is so great that it seems at first
sight to preclude the definition of any common
ground across the varied European traditions
within which the expressive potential of the
human body was reinvented or invented anew.
The extremes of this range are represented by
Antico's suave Apollo and the figure of Christ in
Griinewald's harrowing Crucifixion (cat. 152).
The one is luxurious, polished, idealizing,
hedonistic, entirely secular, and emotionally
bland, appealing to the connoisseur of classicizing beauty. The other is tortured, discomfiting,
terrible, graceless, and deeply expressive, functioning as a stark reminder to the believer of
Christ's suffering on behalf of a sinful mankind,
whose corrupt flesh is burdened with the guilt
of Adam and Eve. The comparison is almost a
reductio ad absurdum of the conventional contrasts of stylistic features in northern and
southern European art.
Between these poles are works of art that
combine classical form and Christian meaning,
like Mantegna's monumental Saint Sebastian.
Mantegna's heroic figure is deeply imbued with
the grandeur of ancient sculpture, from which
Antico, too, was drawing inspiration. It follows
in a tradition of Apollo-like Saint Sebastians
in Renaissance art, a reference that is clearly
appropriate for Sebastian as a Roman soldier in
Maximian's and Diocletian's First Cohort. But
Mantegna's saint, pierced with arrows, is primarily a Christian martyr whose bodily suffering makes him an ideal intermediary between
man and Christ. The story of the failure of the
arrows to kill Sebastian he was later clubbed
to deathled to his cult as the patron saint of
plague victims, who offered him their prayers in
hopes of relief. This meaning resides not only
in the obvious expressiveness of the image
Mantegna's striking depiction of the anatomy of
sufferingbut also in the presentation of the
saint as a devotional icon rather than as an actor
within an overtly narrative context. This meaning is underscored by the guttering candle, a
reminder that "nothing is stable other than the
divine; everything else is smoke," and by the
swags in the form of rosary beads, a reminder of
the ritualistic incantation of prayers.
Griinewald's great masterpiece, the Isenheim
Altarpiece, which was commissioned for an
Anthonite monastery devoted to healing, also
appropriately includes an image of Saint Sebastian. The Christ Child in another panel of this
altar fingers a rosary, a reminder that the rules
of the Order of St. Anthony stipulated that
"each patient be required for every canonical
hour to say twelve Our Fathers and as many
Hail Marys."29 In this instance, it is the German

artist who has created a Saint Sebastian who is

an image of calm piety, emphasized by the allusions to paradise conveyed by the figures of
angels, while the Italian Mantegna has vividly
portrayed painful emotion.
To understand this apparent paradox, we must
remember the differing functions of the two
paintings. Griinewald's Saint Sebastian, mirrored iixhis holy calm by the image of Saint
Anthony on the corresponding wing on the
right of the altarpiece, provides the suffering

inmates of the hospital with the hope of a

release which can be realized through Christ's
assumption of human sin and suffering, so
coruscatingly illustrated in the central image of
the altarpiece, a monumental predecessor of the
Crucifixion now in the National Gallery of Art,
Washington. This calming and intercessory role
was commonly assigned to images of Saint
Sebastian. Mantegna's saint, by contrast, dramatically assumes within his own person the
sufferings of our sinful world sufferings that

fig. 10. Andrea Mantegna, Saint Sebastian.

c. 1505-1506, tempera on canvas. Galleria Giorgio
Franchetti, Ca' d'Oro, Venice

fig. 11. Matthias Griinewald, Saint Sebastian. 15121516, oil on panel. Musee d'Unterlinden, Colmar
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

1O1

fig. 12. Antico, Apollo Belvedere, c. 1498, bronze.

Liebieghaus, Museum alter Plastik, Frankfurt

are a necessary prelude to salvation. This may

be a far more personal statement, and we can
well believe that this image was painted in
1505-1506, during an epidemic of plague at
Mantua, at a time when the great artist himself
was only months away from death.
The idea that there is a continuous spectrum
of meaning regarding the expressive potential
of the human body, within which one can place
images by artists belonging to very different
national schools, is also confirmed when one
looks at patronage and ownership of works of
art in the Renaissance. The same patron was
evidently capable of appreciating images that
stand at opposite ends of this spectrum. For
example, from a letter written by one of Mantegna's sons shortly after the artist's death, we
know that Mantegna intended the Saint Sebastian to be given to Cardinal Lodovico Gonzaga,
bishop of Mantua, who was also trying to obtain
Mantegna's painting of the Lamentation over
the Dead Christ (cat. 154). Both these images,
we may think, would be appropriate choices for
102

CIRCA 1492

a churchman, but we should remember that

Bishop Lodovico was also an important patron
of Antico. The series of bronzes by Antico that
Isabella d'Este sought to obtain in 1519 were to
be based on models and molds that had been
used by the artist twenty years earlier to cast
statuettes for Lodovico.30 When Mantegna was
in financial difficulties towards the very end of
his life and reluctantly decided to sell his prized
antique bust of Faustina, Bishop Lodovico was
considered to be a likely purchaser, since "he
delights in such things, and is a spender/'31 The
actual buyer was Isabella, who obtained an
expert opinion on its high valuation from none
other than Antico. Moreover, while Mantegna
painted the anguished Saint Sebastian during
this period, he continued to work right up to
the end of his life on elegant and erudite all'antica allegories for Isabella's studiolo.
Such patronage illustrates the elasticity of
the patrons' taste in responding to the different
frameworks for viewing the various types of
works, and the artists' virtuosity in responding
to such widely divergent demands. The full
range of possibilities for the naturalistic portrayal of the human figurefrom highly idealized to directly anatomical, from hedonistically
beautiful to brutally expressive, from classically
erudite to piously devotional could coexist in
infinitely variable permutations in works of art
associated with the same period, country, locality, building, patron, or artist, or even within an
individual image. It is this richness of potential,
rather than a single, easily definable quality,
that best characterizes the Renaissance discovery of the human figure.
In the course of the fifteenth century, theorists articulated the demand that the artist
must master the anatomical structure of the
human figure in order to realize its potential. In
his Delia pittura, Alberti recommends "when
painting living creatures" the draftsman should
"first contrive to lay in the bones, for, as they
bend least, they always occupy a certain definite
position. Then locate the tendons and muscles,
and finally clothe the bones and muscles with
flesh and skin."32 Lorenzo Ghiberti recommends
that the sculptor who wishes to make a statua
virile should "have witnessed dissection [veduto
notomia] in order... to know how many bones
are in the human body, what are the muscles in
the human body, and similarly the tendons and
sinews in it."33 When he refers to witnessing
anatomy, Ghiberti is probably alluding to the
formalized dissections performed under the
professor's eyes in a medical school, as illustrated in Johannes Ketham's book. Donatello's
bronze relief, The Miracle of the Miser's Heart
(Sant'Antonio, Padua) suggests that he had witnessed just such a set-piece dissection.34

fig. 13. Dissection of a Human Body. Woodcut.

From J. Ketham, Fasciculus medicinae, Venice, 1493

fig. 14. detail, Michelangelo, Anatomical Study.

c. 1505, pen and ink. Graphische Sammlung
Albertina, Vienna

Opportunities for artists to gain direct,

hands-on experience of dissection were strictly
limited in the fifteenth century, and there is no
unequivocal evidence that any painter or sculptor before Leonardo and Michelangelo conducted his own voyages of discovery into the

inner regions of the human body. The paintings

and engravings of Antonio Pollaiuolo from 1460
onwards reveal his ambition to become what
Leonardo was to call an "anatomical painter/'
but it is impossible to demonstrate that his
depictions depend upon any deeper knowledge
than that obtained by surface inspection of the
body and the making of casts. His understanding, which was considerable, appears to blend
direct scrutiny of living figures with the keen
adoption of certain conventions from Roman
sculpture. In his famous Battle of the Nudes
(cat. 160), he may also have drawn upon anatomical texts such as De usu partium by the
ancient philosopher, Galen.35
Sixtus iv's bull in 1482 helped to clarify the
Church's attitude towards dissection, and specifically sanctioned the dissection in medical
schools of the bodies of executed criminals.36 It
may have been within a climate of greater tolerance that Leonardo and Michelangelo were able
to receive their earliest direct experiences of
dissection in the monastic hospitals of Florence.
The best documented of the dissections is Leonardo's autopsy of a "centenarian" in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in the winter of 15071508.37 During the same period Michelangelo's
drawings exhibit an understanding of the surface configurations of the human body that
presupposes a developed understanding of the
attachments and course of each muscle. This
increased knowledge was accompanied by a
reexamination of the way in which the artist
should use anatomical information. Its overt
display in all circumstances, making every figure look like a "sack of nuts" (to use Leonardo's
term), was not to be sanctioned.38 Looking back
from his vantage point in the mid-sixteenth
century, Vasari criticized artists of the generation of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio for demonstrating their knowledge in too direct and dry a
manner; he praised Leonardo, Michelangelo,
and Raphael for showing how anatomical understanding could be placed in the service of the
overall character, motion, and emotion of each
subject. The revered works of classical antiquity,
such as the Apollo Belvedere and the Belvedere
Torso, provided some guidance, but the three
High Renaissance masters each achieved his
own particular way of integrating the fruits of
his study into the general framework of his
compositions. The contrast between the wiry,
calculated detail in the re-creation in bronze of
a Roman sarcophagus relief by Michelangelo's
master, Bertoldo di Giovanni (cat. 164), and the
rhythmic power of Michelangelo's own Battle of
the Centaurs (see essay by Argan in this catalogue) already signals the transformation in
figure style acclaimed by Vasari, even though
Michelangelo's relief was undertaken at the

fig. 15. Hans Holbein, Dead Christ. 1521, oil on panel. Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel Kunstmuseum

very start of his career when working under the

wing of the older sculptor.
One of the key requirements for Italian Renaissance artists was to use anatomical knowledge within the context of a system of
proportional beauty for the human figure. They
knew well enough that the revered Greek artist,
Polykleitos, had demonstrated the theory of
harmonic proportions by means of his Canon
(the name of both his treatise and one of his
statues).39 In the absence of detailed information about the Canon, however, Renaissance
theorists beginning with Cennino Cennini
looked both to the Roman scheme outlined in
Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture and to the
surviving legacy of a proportional system in
Byzantine art. Confirmation of the canon was
increasingly sought through direct measurement of the human figure. Typically, Alberti in
his De statua did not attempt to describe individual human specimens as such, but rather
tried to define the underlying ideal, searching
for "not simply the beauty found in this or that
body, but, as far as possible, that perfect beauty
distributed by nature, as it were, in fixed proportions in many bodies."40 His research
resulted in a head-length in a ratio of 1:7.5 to
the full height of a man, which departs both
from Vitruvius' 8-head norm and the Byzantine
9-face system. This program of research was
sustained and extended by Leonardo (cat. 177)
and Diirer (cat. 194), and the latter devised
alternative systems for figures of inherently
different types and ages. It is difficult to know
whether artists actually used specific proportional modules in the making of figures, or
whether their designs should be seen as
responding in a more general way to the idea of
proportional beauty. Diirer certainly thought
that the Italians owed the superior beauty of
their figure style to their adherence to precise
measures, and he keenly sought initiation into
the "secret" from his Venetian colleague, Jacopo
de' Barbari.41 On the other hand, a number
of artists raised their voices to caution that
proportional measures should not be used in a
mechanical, slavish way. Donatello, when asked
to demonstrate his "abacus," is reputed simply
to have made a freehand drawing, and Michelangelo was repeatedly credited with the injunc-

tion that the artist should have "compasses in

his eyes" rather than in his hands.42 This does
not mean that Michelangelo denied the ultimate
existence of musical proportions in the human
figure, and in fact his drawings show evidence
of his own research into modular systems.43
Rather, he wished to emphasize that the artist's
understanding should have become so naturalized as to transcend the need for laborious constructions. It was on this basis that he was so
critical of Diirer's elaborate formulas.
The sense of natural mastery of anatomy and
proportion in even the most complex poses,
which in the hands of Michelangelo looks so
easy, had been hard won by generations of
artists. Equally hard won had been the patrons'
own growing sense of ease and comfort regarding depictions of the nude human figure.
Paradoxically, the acceptance of nakedness in art
was harder to achieve in domestic than in religious settings. The portrayal of the naked body
(to draw upon Clark's distinction between the
"naked" and the "nude")44 had specific meaning
in certain religious subjects, such as the Expulsion of Adam and Eve. And the nakedness of the
Christ Child in Renaissance paintings of the
Madonna and Child was intended to emphasize
the idea that "the Word had become flesh."45
The near-naked dead Christs of Mantegna (cat.
154) and Holbein dramatically illustrate how the
new resources for the portrayal of the corporeality of the human body could be used to transform the impact of religious images. Using the
technique of foreshortening, Mantegna lays his
Christ on the unyielding stone of unction, composed of veined marble, which, according to
legend, was stained forever by the Virgin's
tears. His feet, the "lowest" part of Jesus, with
their open wounds, are thrust assertively into
our space and our view. The realism of their
wrinkled soles is precisely of the kind that
would disconcert Caravaggio's patrons over a
century later. Holbein, for his part, uses
resources of a realism that was no less uncompromising if different in emphasis. Whereas
Mantegna uses his sculptural synthesis of forms
in perspective to provide a selective assertion of
Christ's mutilation, every inch of Holbein's figure bears eloquent witness to the unbearable
strains to which Christ has been subjected. The

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

1OJ

fig. 16. Antieo, Venus Felix, c. 1519, bronze.

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

artist's skill in handling oil paint allows him to

achieve a sense of the reality of dead flesh over
ravaged muscles and tortured joints which none
of the Italian masters could rival. Both artists
use their varieties of realism fully to exploit the
resonant meaning of Christ's body for those
worshipers who celebrate the real presence of
his flesh in the wafer of the Eucharist.
In a secular context, by contrast, a naked figure had to become a nude, acceptable within a
changed framework of assumptions governing
the role of art. Only in the generation that
included Antonio Pollaiuolo, whose great Hercules cycle for the Medici was apparently
painted as early as 1460, and Botticelli, who was
working for the Medici in the last quarter of the
century, was the new figure style united with
classical subject matter on a grand scale, which
had not been seen since Roman times. These
images reveal a complex set of motivations on
the part of the patrons. At the center of the
aspirations of patrons like the Medici was the
desire to transform the styles and mores of
antiquity into forms relevant to contemporary
needs. Specially commissioned works of literature and the visual arts were intended to suggest that the patron shared in the valor of
ancient heroes (not least in deference to Florence's traditional devotion to Hercules) and to
shape a poetic ideal of womanhood as immaculate yet ultimately available to the hero. Botticelli's Birth of Venus, in which the emerging
goddess has been idealized to the point at which
she has become "de-anatomized," is an expression of hedonism, no less than Antico's Venus,
104

CIRCA

1492

fig. 17. Botticelli, Birth of Venus, c. 1485, tempera on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Since Antico's bronze was made for Isabella

d'Este, we should not necessarily think of such
images as exclusively oriented to the male, but
they clearly function most powerfully within
a social system in which a beautiful young
woman is expected to assume a role defined by
men. Large-scale pictures of nude or sensuously
attired female figures were often commissioned
to celebrate an event such as a betrothal or marriage and convey through their philosophical
allegories an ideal vision of transcendently
harmonious relationshipsin contrast to the
rougher realities of domestic life. Botticelli's
graceful Primavera (Uffizi, Florence), for example, appears to have been painted for the youthful Lorenzino de' Medici to perform just such a
function, conveying the hope in the words of
a letter Lorenzino received from the philosopher, Marsilio Ficino that "a nymph of such
nobility" should be "wholly given into your
power. If you were to unite with her in wedlock
and claim her as yours, she would make all your
years sweet and make you the father of fine
childen."46
In other contexts, however, the unclothed
female figure as an object of beauty bore less
comforting messages for male patrons, and it
could readily become charged with ambiguous
feelings and anxieties. A good example is Hans
Baldung Grien's Eve, the Serpent, and Death.
Baldung, who shared so many of his northern
contemporaries' fascination with the Italianate
Venus figure, could with the minimum of
adjustments transform the beloved ideal of the
Italian courts into a threatening temptress, the

fig. 18. Hans Baldung Grien, Eve, the Serpent and

Death, c. 1520, oil on panel. National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa

siren who haunts man's imagination and who as

Eve was the intermediate agent of man's fall
from grace.
This discovery of the evocative power of the
human body across such a broad range of functions in the secular and spiritual worlds has a
counterpart in Renaissance philosophy. Pico
della Mirandola, the philosopher who is often
taken as epitomizing the era of Lorenzo il Magnif ico, in a famous passage characterized the
diverse potential of the human spirit: "You shall
have the power to degenerate into the lower
forms of life, which are brutish. You shall have
the power, out of your soul's judgment, to be
reborn with the higher forms of life which are
divine."47
LEONARDO AND DURER:
MAN, NATURE, AND THE
ART OF UNDERSTANDING
When Albrecht Diirer was in Venice in 1506 on
the second and last of his trips to Italy, he sent a
series of letters to the learned humanist, Willibald Pirckheimer, his close confidant in their
native city of Nuremberg. Towards the end
of a long letter written that October, Diirer
responded to Pirckheimer's inquiry about the
date of his return to Germany: "I shall have
finished here in ten days; after that I should
like to ride to Bologna to learn the secrets of the
art of perspective, which a man is willing to
teach me. I should stay there eight or ten days
and then return to Venice. After that I shall
come with the next messenger. How I shall
freeze after this sun! Here I am a gentleman, at
home only a parasite."48 The last remark reflects
one of the most notable aspects of the Italian
Renaissance revolution in the visual arts,
namely the high social status attained by a
select group of major artists, who now expected
to be ranked with the gentlemanly practitioners
of the so-called liberal arts those arts (like
music) that could lay claim to an intellectual
basis in rational theory. Leonardo was prominent among the theorists who began to insist
that artists were not rude craftsmen but rather
intellectuals, deserving of high rank in society.
Hence the coupling in Diirer's mind of the
acquisition of theoretical knowledge in this
case, the painters' science of perspectivewith
the perception of his social standing. Although
there is evidence of criticism and jealousy
directed against Diirer by his fellow painters
in Venice, he was generally accorded the status
of a celebrity on his second visit. He shared a
mutual admiration with the aged Giovanni Bellini, the father of Venetian Renaissance painting, and he was greatly respected by the most
celebrated painter of northern Italy, Andrea

Mantegna, who was Bellini's brother-in-law.

Joachim Camerarius, another of Diirer's learned
German friends, tells a revealing story in the
preface to his Latin translation of Diirer's Four
Books on Human Proportion (cat. 194). "While
Andrea was lying ill at Mantua he heard that
Albrecht was in Italy and had him summoned to
his bed at once, in order that he might fortify
Albrecht's facility and certainty of hand with
scientific knowledge and principles. For Andrea
often lamented in conversation with his friends
that Albrecht's facility had not been granted to
him nor his learning to Albrecht."49 Unfortunately, much to Diirer's regret, before he could
reach Mantua Mantegna died, so he was unable
to pay direct homage to the artist who had provided him with some of his earliest knowledge
of Italian Renaissance style.50
Camerarius' anecdote, whose truth we have
no reason to doubt, precisely reflects Diirer's
conviction that natural gifts of hand should be
cultivated through the "science" of theory, so
that the full glory and rationale of God's creations might be demonstrated through art. The
typical young painter in Germany, Diirer
lamented, "has grown up in ignorance, like a
wild and unpruned tree," lacking access to the
theoretical principles through which he could
gain true "understanding" and become a kunstreicher meister (a master rich in artistry).51 To
rectify this deficiency, Diirer planned to write a
comprehensive treatise on art, embracing such
topics as the proportions of the human figure,
perspective, light and shade, colors ("how to
paint like nature"), and composition.52 His
unrealized ambition to write such a work
resembles that of Leonardo, and this resemblance is not coincidental. Not only were the
two masters looking toward the same sources,
such as the writings of the ancient Roman
architect Vitruvius and Alberti's Delia pittura,
but also there is ample evidence that Diirer had
direct knowledge of Leonardo's art and ideas.
There is no record of direct personal contact
between the two men, but neither is there any
shortage of possible intermediaries. Galeazzo
Sanseverino, son-in-law of Ludovico Sforza and
one of Leonardo's patrons in Milan, stayed at
Pirckheimer's house in Nuremberg in 1502.53
One of Leonardo's colleagues in the employ
of the Sforza, the military architect Lorenz
Behaim, returned from Milan to Nuremberg in
1503.54 Emperor Maximilian I, a notable patron
of Diirer, married the Milanese princess Bianca
Sforza, who was accompanied to Germany by
Ambrogio da Predis, a collaborator of Leonardo.
And whomever Diirer may have met in Bologna
to learn perspective, it was someone whose
ideas were closely associated with those of Luca
Pacioli, if not Pacioli himself. Pacioli had been

Leonardo's close companion in Milan and Florence and, as mentioned earlier, his geometrical
treatise, De divina proportione, was illustrated
by Leonardo with perspectival diagrams of
the Platonic solids and their derivatives. The
treatise would have been known to Diirer in
the Florentine edition of 1509 (cat. 142).55
Diirer's own works contain plentiful indications
that these or other contacts bore fruitnot
only echoes of Leonardo's creations in his own
works of art but also, more compellingly, direct
records in Diirer's notebooks of some of the
Italian master's artistic inventions and theoretical investigations. The most notable of these
occur in Diirer's so-called Dresden Sketchbook,
which contains drafts for his book of human
proportions.

fig. 19. Albrecht Diirer, Studies of the Hand, Arms

and Legs. c. 1517, pen and ink, fol. i3ov, Dresden
Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden

fig. 20. Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of the Neck, Legs

and Arms. c. 1489, pen and ink. Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth n, Royal Library, Windsor Castle

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

105

kuricus, whose treatise De sculptura of 1504 is

;nown to have been in Pirckheimer's library.58
Hirer also gained detailed knowledge of Leotardo's investigations. Some of the Dresden
tudies, such as that of the left leg of a man, are
o close to Leonardo's surviving drawings of the
49os as to indicate that they are based directly
ipon the kind of lost studies or engravings that
vere later copied by Carlo Urbino, the author of
he Codex Huygens.59 The system used by
3iirer expresses the widths of the limbs as
iliquot fractions of the total height of the figire, whereas Leonardo uses a system of fracrions of face-lengths. In both systems, the basic
ideathat there were fixed proportional relationships between each part of a human body
and the wholeis fundamentally similar, and
both men regarded such proportional harmonies as akin to those of music.60 Diirer also
shared Leonardo's belief that a single canon of
beauty was not adequate to reflect the varied
types of the human figure in nature. However,
he took this idea much farther than did Leonardo, conducting a painstaking analysis of the
different proportional systems in a wide range
fig. 22. Albrecht Durer, Study of the
fig 21. Albrecht Diirer, Proportion Study of Man with
of figures, from short and fat to tall and thin,
Proportions of the Left Leg of a Man.
Outstretched Arms, c. 1513, pen and ink, fol 123v, Dresden
and showing how the "mean" proportions of
c,
1513,
pen
and
ink,
fol.
1G2V,
DresSketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden
den Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbithose figures which he regarded as closest to
bliothek, Dresden
"true beauty" might be systematically compressed and stretched to produce other bodies
consistent within themselves,61 Diirer's system
operation
of
all
aspects
of
the
human
body,
The most surprising evidence of Diirer's
was accused, particularly by Michelangelo and
which he regarded as nature's supreme creation.
knowledge of Leonardo's drawings appears on
his followers, of being overly doctrinaire and
For Leonardo, a complete understanding of man
two folios of this sketchbook, which precisely
mechanical, but Diirer himself stressed that his
the microcosm, in whom the universal princicopy, in reverse, a group of Leonardo's anasystem was directed toward achieving a comples of natural order were mirrored, was necestomical studies devoted to the skeleton and
prehensive
understanding of the design princisary if the artist was to depict human beings in
nerves,56 There is no indication that the drawples
of
divine
nature rather than toward
his works of art in such a way that their appearings by Leonardo in question ever left his
providing
precise
formulae for the creation of
ance accorded perfectly with their characters
possession, and by the time Diirer made his
particular works of art: "If you have learnt well
and situations. Although Diirer was as keenly
versions in 1517, these particular studies had
the theory of measurements and attained
interested as Leonardo in the doctrine of the
been rendered obsolete by Leonardo's own far
understanding and skill in it, so that you can
four human temperamentssanguine, choleric,
more sophisticated later research. It is likely,
make a thing with free certainty of hand, and
phlegmatic, and melancholiche was more
therefore, that Diirer was copying rare, and now
know how to do each thing correctly, then it is
concerned with characterizing their effects on
lost, engraved "facsimiles" of Leonardo's drawnot always necessary to measure everything/'62
human appearance and behavior than with
ingshence the reversal of the images
Diirer also applied his method of progresinquiring into the mechanisms through which
perhaps made by the new process of "relief
sively
transforming the geometrical "mean" to
the four humors give rise to the temperaments.
etching," which Leonardo himself wrote of
the
human
head, with remarkable results. He
In one of their areas of mutual concern, the
using for anatomical illustration.57 Leonardo's
showed
how
the differential compression and
rules governing human proportion, Diirer sucstudies were part of an early series executed
skewing
of
the
geometrical modules of the ideal
ceeded in pursuing his research farther than
around 1490 in which he investigated the way
head could result in astonishingly varied physLeonardo. Diirer initially sought advice on the
the network of "hollow" nerves communicated
iognomies, giving systematic expression to the
"secret" of human proportions from Jacopo de'
with the ventricles of the brain, within whose
kind of grotesque heads that had become LeoBarbari, the Venetian painter who worked in
cavities the various faculties of mental activity
nardo's specialty. No picture better demonGermany beginning in 1500. However, Jacopo
were thought to occur (cat. 179), Diirer himself,
strates Diirer's ambition to emulate Leonardo as
did not offer him adequate guidance, so Diirer
in 1498, illustrated this traditional view of the
a kunstreicher meister in the field of physiogsubsequently turned to a variety of written
mental faculties in a woodcut of the caput phynomic expression than the Christ among the
sources. He went directly to Vitruvius, as had
sicum for a treatise by Pruthenius. These forays
Doctors in the Thyssen-Bomemisza Collection.
Leonardo, and to those theorists who had
into the inner anatomical and physiological
This is probably the picture he described to
worked variations on Vitruvian ideas. The latter
mechanisms of body and mind were exceptional
Pirckheimer in 1506 as a "Quadro [using the
surely included Alberti, whose writings were
in Diirer's work, in marked contrast to LeonarItalian term] the like of which I have never
certainly accessible to Diirer, and Pomponius
do's obsessive search for cause and effect in the
106

CIRCA 1492

painted before/'63 The piece of paper protruding

from the book of the doctor on the left indicates
that it was the opus cinque dierum (work of five
days). Diirer challenged the Italians, and especially Leonardo, on their own territory. He
employed facial expressions and manual gestures to convey the temperaments and "motions
of the mind" of each participant in what Alberti
would have called a historia. He consciously
enhanced Christ's youthful beauty in juxtaposition to the gnarled heads and hands of the older
disputants, precisely in the manner recommended by Leonardo: "I say that in narrative
paintings you should closely mingle direct
opposites, because they offer a great contrast to
each other, and the more so the more they are
adjacent. Thus, have the ugly next to the beautiful/' 64 To the "learning" of the Italians, Diirer
consciously added his own manual gifts, demonstrating his unmatched graphic facility with
descriptive and expressive line, the skill Mantegna had so envied.

lett:

fig. 23. Leonardo da Vinci, Five Grotesque Heads.

c. 1495, Pen and ink. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
n, Royal Library, Windsor Castle
above right:
fig. 24. Albrecht Diirer, Study of Fifteen Constructed Heads, c. 1513, pen and ink, fol. 9/r,
Dresden Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek,
Dresden
above left:
fig. 25. Albrecht Diirer, Christ among the Doctors.
1506, oil on panel. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,
Lugano
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

107

above left:
fig. 26. Leonardo da Vinci, Study of a Leaping
Horse, c. 1481, metalpoint. Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth n, Royal Library, Windsor Castle
center:
fig. 27. after Leonardo, Horse's Head.
Engraving. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n,
Royal Library, Windsor Castle
right:
fig. 28. Albrecht Diirer, Studies of Horses.
1517, pen and ink, fol. 175^ Dresden Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden

In Diirer's view, the artist with true "understanding" should not stop with a mastery of the
human figure; he was to comprehend all nature.
Like Leonardo, Diirer intended to extend his
studies of proportions to horses, and the Dresden Sketchbook again indicates his direct familiarity with Leonardo's designs. In this instance,
early engravings of Leonardo's horse studies
have survived and provide examples of the kind
of prototypes that were accessible to Diirer. The
result of his studies was to combine the kind of
proportional control exercised by Leonardo with
his own graphic vigor and with the remarkable
sense of surface detail exhibited in his masterengraving, Knight, Death, and Devil (cat. 196).
Diirer applied an equally intensive scrutiny to
the inanimate and most modest parts of God's
creation. He devoted no less an effort of concentrated attention to an apparently unprepossessing tuft of grasses and plants in his Piece of
Turf than to his own facial features in one of his
self-portraits. His intensity of observation
yields nothing to Leonardo's closely focused
studies of plants, such as the Star-of-Bethlehem
108

CIRCA

1492

(cat. 184), but the motivating forces behind the

portrayals are rather different. Diirer's analysis
is dedicated to describing the formal irregularities that arise in this particular corner of
nature, with its tangled stems, mingled roots,
and soggy mud. Leonardo, by contrast, characteristically uses his graphic representation as a
way of expressing the general laws of plant
structure and patterns of growth that lie behind
the effects visible in the particular specimen.
Diirer's studies of nature, whether of minute
details or complete scenes, speak of the artist
absorbed in the textures of nature, responding
with astonishing freshness to the transitory
beauties of the passing times of day and seasons. Leonardo was similarly fascinated by the
fleeting effects of atmospheric phenomena (cat.
169), but we can always sense his obsession
with the processes involved and with the optical
laws governing their appearance. For Diirer, the
ravishing effects speak eloquently of the "meaning" of the world, and the artist's role is to act
as an informed individual conduit for God's
painting of nature. For Leonardo, on the other

hand, the artist-scientist's role is to extract the

underlying causes of natural law behind the
effects and to remake nature according to these
absolute and impersonal principles,
Nowhere are the two artists' different views
of the role of the individual artist more vividly
apparent than in their representation of
"visionary" scenes. If we set Diirer's watercolor
of one of his "dreams" beside one of Leonardo's
so-called Deluge Drawings (cat. 188), the
divergence is clear. The signed note beneath
Diirer's drawing describes how he saw in his
sleep on Whitsunday night a terrifying vision
of "great waters" falling from heaven: "When
the first water that touched the earth had very
nearly reached it, it fell with such swiftness,
with wind and roaring, and I was so sore afraid
that when I awoke my whole body trembled and
for a long while I could not recover myself. So
when I arose in the morning I painted it above
here as I saw it. God turn all things to the
best."65 Diirer was much taken with the interpretation of natural phenomena as portents as
signs of God communicating through nature

and on another occasion he carefully recorded a

miraculous rain of crosses that was experienced
in Nuremberg in 1503, depicting a specimen
Crucifixion as a guarantee of the authenticity of
the miracle.66 He also, as was common at that
time, gave great credence to the doctrines of
astrology.
Leonardo, by contrast, was highly suspicious
of the extravagant fantasies of dreaming and
distrusted the attribution of natural phenomena
to the direct agency of the supernatural. His
deluges are no less "visionary" and apocalyptic
than the storm of Diirer's dream, but their fury
is described in the formal terms of a vortex
motion that is expressive of natural law.
Leonardo's instructions for how to portray a
deluge are couched in impersonal terms: "Let
there first be represented.... " And his account
leaves no doubt that the deluge is to be
described in accordance with the laws of dynamics and optics: "The waves that in concentric
circles flee the point of impact are carried by
their impetus across the path of other circular
waves moving out of step with them, and after
the moment of percussion leap up into the air
without breaking formation
The air was
darkened by the heavy rain that, driven aslant
by the crosswinds and wafted up and down
through the air, resembled nothing other than
dust, differing only in that this inundation was
streaked through by the lines that drops of
water make as they fall. But its color was tinged

fig. 29. Albrecht Diirer, Piece of Turf. 1503,

watercolor and body color. Graphische Sammlung
Albertina, Vienna

with the fire engendered by the thunderbolts

that rent and tore the clouds apart/'67
The two artists developed distinctively different conceptions of their own presence as subjective participant and objective observer in
relation to the subjects they portrayed. This
difference is reflected in their writings on the
theory of art. Both men subscribed to the view
that every painter tends to "paint himself" in
his own works, that is to say, to create images
that reflect his personal idiosyncrasies, physical
and mental.68 Both viewed this tendency as
undesirable, since the deformities of the individual lead the artist away from an understanding of true beauty. Diirer, however, was not
prepared to go as far as Leonardo in subordinating individual response and subjective impulse
to the rule of law. Leonardo disparaged inventions and ideas that "begin and end in the
mind," setting "experience" of the action of law
in nature above personal insight and far above
the kind of transcendental speculations on
divine truth that were characteristic of a certain
kind of neo-Platonism.69 He did not ignore the
artist's powers of invention; indeed, he gloried
in the ability of the artist's fantasia to devise
new forms through the infinitely variable compounding of natural features.70 But the artist's
inventions were no less subject to the necessities of natural law than were the creations of
nature. Although Diirer by no means approved
of an artist relying upon his unaided imagi-

nationwhich he believed must always be

nourished by the informed study of nature, as
Leonardo insisted he did delight in the
inherent ability of someone "naturally disposed" toward art to "pour forth and produce
every day new shapes of men and other creatures, the like of which was never seen before
nor thought of by any other man."71 He gives
social, theological, and philosophical justifications for this ability: "Mighty kings... made
the outstanding artists rich and treated them
with distinction because they felt that the great
masters had an equality with God, as it is written. For, a good painter is inwardly full of figures, and if it were possible for him to live for
ever he would always have to pour forth something new from the inner ideas of which Plato
writes."72 Such access to God-given (or "Platonic") ideas within the mind was not something that Leonardo sought.
It is consistent with the greater scope Diirer
permitted the artist's individuality, whether as
an impassioned observer of the signs of nature
or as a font of endless ideas, that he was prepared to acknowledge the special qualities of the
artist's "hand." Although we see Leonardo's
works, particularly his drawings, as full of his
personal "handwriting," just as they teem with
his individual powers of invention, his own theoretical injunctions left no room for the individuality of the artist's touch. But Diirer was
fascinated by the gifted artist's "hand," both as

fig. 30. Albrecht Diirer, Dream of Waters Descending from the Sky. 1525, pen and ink and watercolor
Ktmsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN W O R L D

109

fig. 31. Albrecht Diirer, Self-Portrait. 1500, oil on

panel. Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen-Alte
Pinakothek, Munich

a general concept and in individual cases. In his

view, a slight sketch, "roughly and rudely
done/' by a "powerful artist" will have its own
special value: "A man may often draw something with his pen on a half-sheet of paper in
one day or engrave it with his tool on a small
block of wood, and it shall be fuller of art and
better than another's great work on which he
has spent a whole year's careful labor."73 He
refers to this, earlier in the same passage, as the
ability of the artist "to make himself seen in his
work." This concern explains Diirer's wish to
acquire examples of the "hand" of other masters. Having obtained a drawing by Raphael, he
added an inscription that was clearly addressed
to posterity: "Raffahell de Urbin who is so
highly esteemed by the Pope made these naked
figures and sent this to Albrecht Diirer in
Nuremberg in order to show him his hand."74
The scope Diirer allowed to individuality was
part of his highly developed sense of his own
individual presence and his relationship to
others. In his diaries, notebooks, drawings, and
watercolors, he intentionally provided a greater
personal insight into his life (both circumstantial and emotional) than survives for any other
artist of his time, although he seems to have
resisted any detailed characterization of his
relationship with his wife, whom we largely
know through the ungenerous assessment of
Pirckheimer.75 The autobiography preserved in
his art even extends to a drawing of himself in
the nude to record a malady: "The yellow spot
which I point out with my finger is the place
where it hurts."76 Although Leonardo left a vast
HO

C I R C A 1492

legacy of notes, including numerous memoranda about his daily life, he never willingly
dropped the mask of objective recording and
analysis, and such personal insights as do
emerge either arise inadvertently or must be
discerned beneath the surface. Leonardo
recorded even his father's death dispassionately,
in a dry memorandum, whereas Diirer wrote
movingly about the illness and death of both his
father and mother.77 Not surprisingly, it is
Diirer who left behind a great series of drawn
and painted self-portraits, which reflect the
astonishing range of his physical, social, and
mental attributes. Although a degree of selfcharacterization has been discerned behind
some of Leonardo's portrayals of bearded
"seers," direct self-portraiture as such appears to
have been of little interest to him. Even the
famous red chalk drawing in Turin, generally
taken to be Leonardo's only authentic self-portrait, is probably an idealized type and not a
direct representation of Leonardo himself.78 It is
difficult to imagine Leonardo painting the
equivalent of Diirer's astonishing self-image of
1500 in Munich, in which the theological
injunction to "imitate Christ" is translated into
the specific terms of the artist who is inwardly
full of divine ideas.
Thus, for all their apparent affinities in establishing the most ambitious conception of the
artist as a man of universal "understanding," for
all their shared concerns as theorists, and for all
the common motifs in their art, the ultimate
targets of the two masters were distinctly different. Leonardo was interested in extending
absolute understanding into every corner of the
created world outside himself, searching for the
laws of form and function that would bring
nature's apparent diversity within the embrace
of common causes. Diirer's great concern was to
act as a visual spokesman for God's multitudinous signs in nature, and he exploited his full
measure of acquired learning and highly personal insight toward this divine end. In their
respective discoveries of man as an integral part
of nature's awesome system of cause and effect
and of men as the individual conduits for the
perception of God's creation, Leonardo and
Diirer embody the two Renaissance conceptions
of art that were to dominate future generations
of creators over at least the next four centuries.
NOTES
1. I Libri della famiglia, trans. R. N. Watkins, The
family in Renaissance Florence (Columbia, S.C.,
1969). i33-*342. Martin Kemp, ed., Leon Battista Alberti on Painting, trans. C. Grayson (Harmondsworth, 1991), 53.
3. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. Middlemore (London,
1960), 81.

4. Burckhardt 1960, 171-172.

5. J.R.S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe
(Oxford, 1988).
6. C. R. Mack, Pienzaf the Creation of a Renaissance
City (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987).
7. Leon Battista Alberti, Momo o del principe, ed.
R. Consolo (Genoa, 1985), 234-235.
8. Kemp 1991.
9. D. Friedman, Florentine New Towns: Urban Design
in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).
10. Friedman 1988, 341.
11. J. White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space,
zd ed. (London, 1967), 113-121; S. Y. Edgerton, Jr.,
The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective
(New York, 1975), 143-145; Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from
Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, 1990), 11-15,
344-34512. I. Hyman, "Notes and Speculations on San Lorenzo,
Palazzo Medici, and an Urban Project by Brunelleschi/' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 (1975), 98119.
13. Leonardo Bruni, Laudatio Florentinae urbis, trans.
B. Kohl, in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists
on Government and Society, ed. B. Kohl and R. G.
Witt (Manchester, 1978), 141. See also H. Baron,
The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, zd ed.
(Princeton, 1966), 199-211.
14. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten
Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach, and R. Tavernor
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 92.
15. Alberti 1988, 121.
16. Alberti 1988, 126.
17. Alberti 1988, 191.
18. For Filarete (Antonio Averlino), see J. R. Spencer,
ed. and trans., Filarete's Treatise on Architecture
(New Haven, 1965), and the edition by A. M. Finoli
and L. Grassi (Milan, 1972); for Francesco di
Giorgio, see Trattati di architectura civile e militare,
ed. C. Maltese and L. Maltese Degrassi, 2 vols.
(Milan, 1967).
19. M.G.C.D. Dal Poggetto, "La 'Citta ideale' di
Urbino," in Urbino e le Marche prima e dopo Raffaello [exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche]
(Urbino, 1983), 71-78; and Mack 1987.
20. P. Marconi, ed., La Citta come forma simbolica,
Biblioteca di storia dell'arte 7 (n.p., n.d.); E. Garin,
"La Cite ideale de la Renaissance italienne," and R.
Klein, "L'Urbanisme utopique de Filarete a Valentin
Andreae," in Les Utopies a la Renaissance (Brussels,
1963), 11-37, 209-230; and L. Gambi, "La Citta da
imagine simbolica e proiezione urbanistica," Storia
dfItalia: Atalante 6 (1976), 217-228.
21. M. Dalai Emiliani, "Figure rinascimentali dei poliedri Platonici: Qualche problema di storia e di autografia," in Fra Rinascimento, manierismo e realta,
ed. P. Marani (Florence, 1984); and Martin Kemp,
"Geometrical Bodies as Exemplary Forms in Renaissance Space/' in World Art: Themes of Unity in
Diversity, Acts of the 26th International Congress of
the History of Art, ed. I. Lavin, 3 vols. (London,
1989), 1:237-242.
22. R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of
Humanism, 3d ed. (London, 1962), 14-15, pis. 2-3.
23. Luca Pacioli, De divina proportione (Florence, 1509).
For Pacioli, see P. L. Rose, The Italian Renaissance
of Mathematics (Geneva, 1975), 143-144.
24. L. Cheles, The Urbino Studiolo (Wiesbaden, 1986).
For Federigo and mathematics at Urbino, see Rose
*975/ 54-5525. Martin Kemp, "The Taking and Use of Evidence;

26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

31.
32.
33.
34.

35.
36.
37.
38.
39.

40.
41.
42.

43.
44.

45.
46.

47.
48.
49.

with a Botticellian Case Study/7 Art Journal 44

(1984), 207-215.
Edgerton 1975, 91-123.
P. Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the
Age of Carpaccio (New Haven, 1988), especially
chap. 10.
B. Yamey, Art and Accounting (New Haven, 1989).
H. Chaumartin, Le Bal des ardents (Paris, 1946),
100. For the context of Griinewald's altarpiece, see
Andree Hayum, The Isenheim Altarpiece: God's
Medicine and the Painter's Vision (Princeton, 1989).
For the rosary, see G. Ritz, Der Rosenkranz
(Munich, 1963).
Umberto Rossi, "I Medaglisti del Rinascimento alia
corte di Mantova, II: Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi
detto 1'Antico," Revista italiana di numismatica i
(1888), 161-194, 433-438; and Anthony Radcliffe,
"Antico and the Mantuan Bronze/ in Splendours
of the Gonzaga [exh. cat., Victoria and Albert
Museum] (London, 1981), 46-49.
Paul Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna (Berlin, 1902),
577Kemp 1991;
Lorenzo Ghiberti, / Commentarii, ed. Julius von
Scholosser (Berlin, 1912), 6.
Bernard Schultz, Art and Anatomy in Renaissance
Italy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), 49-51, and more
generally for artists' involvement in anatomical
investigations.
Schultz 1985, 57.
Schultz 1985, 61-63.
Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous
Works of Nature and Man, zd ed. (London, 1990),
257Martin Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting, trans.
Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker (New Haven,
1989), 130, no. 333.
For the Canon and proportions generally, see Erwin
Panofsky, "The History of Human Proportions as a
Reflection of the History of Styles/' in Meaning in
the Visual Arts (Harmondsworth, 1970), 82-138.
Leon Battista Alberti, "On Painting" and "On
Sculpture" ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (Oxford,
1972), 132-135, citing Zeuxis as his precedent.
Hans Rupprich, Durer: Schriftlicher Nachlass,
3 vols. (Berlin, 1956-1969), 1:102.
Pomponius Gauricus, De scultura (1504), ed. Andre
Chastel and Robert Klein (Geneva, 1969), 183-187;
and David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton, 1981), 332-379.
Summers 1981, 380-396.
Kenneth Clark, The Nude (Harmondsworth, 1960),
i: "To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes and
the word implies some of the embarrassment which
most of us feel in that condition. The word nude
. . . carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable
overtone/'
Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (London, 1983),
141-143.
E. H. Gombrich, "Botticelli's Mythologies," in Symbolic Images (London, 1972), 42. The letter was
probably written c. 1477-1478 when Lorenzino was
fourteen or fifteen years old.
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of
Man, trans. Forbes, in The Renaissance Philosophy
of Man (Chicago, 1948), 224-225.
Rupprich 1956-1969,1:58; W. M. Conway,
trans., The Literary Remains of Albrecht Durer
(Cambridge, 1889), 58.
J. Camerarius, preface to Diirer's De symmetria parHum humanorum corporum (Nuremberg, 1532);

Rupprich 1956-1969, 1:307-308; Conway 1889, 139.

50. For Diirer's copies after Mantegna prints in 1494,
see W. Strauss, The Complete Drawings of Albrecht
Durer, 6 vols. (New York, 1974), vol. i, 1494/12 to
13; Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht
Durer (Princeton, 1971), 31-32; and F. Anzelewsky,
Durer: His Life and Art (New York, 1981), 50-51.
51. Underweysung der Messung (Nuremberg, 1525);
letter of introduction in W. L. Strauss, ed., Albrecht
Durer: The Painter's Manual (New York, 1977), 37;
Conway 1889,171,188.
52. British Library, MS Sloane 5229, 36v; Sloane 5230,
io2r; Rupprich 19561969, 2:92.
53. Leonardo was involved with architectural projects for
Galeazzo; see Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci:
The Royal Palace at Romorantin (Cambridge, Mass.,
1972), 16-18. Galeazzo was the dedicatee of the
major manuscript of Pacioli's De divina proportione
(Ambrosiana, Milan), which contains illustrations
designed by Leonardo. See Anzelewsky 1981,102104, for Galeazzo and Pirckheimer.
54. Anzelewsky 1981,104-106.
55. See Martin Kemp, in Leonardo da Vinci [exh. cat.,
Hayward Gallery] (London, 1989), 184.
56. The other Dresden drawing after Leonardo's
anatomical studies is fol. 133V, based on Windsor
12613^ See W. Strauss, ed., The Human Figure by
Albrecht Durer: The Complete Dresden Sketchbook
(New York, 1972), nos. 131-132; Kenneth Clark and
Carlo Pedretti, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at
Windsor Castle, 3 vols. (London, 1979), no. 12613^
v. Dresden 13ov contains four of the five drawings
from Windsor i26rjv and the hand from 12613^
while i33v contains three of the six drawings on
12613 r. Diirer's copies are not identical in size to
Leonardo's drawings, but the labored line of the
copies suggests that they were traced or directly replicated from Leonardesque prototypes. Dresden i3ir
is also clearly copied directly from Leonardo,
although the original has been lost.
57. L. Reti, "Leonardo da Vinci and the Graphic Arts.
The Early Invention of Relief Etching," Burlington
Magazine 113 (1971), 188-195.
58. Alberti's ideas were adapted in a book published in
Nuremberg in 1511, Das Buch von der Malerei, and
Durer himself acquired a manuscript of De statua
in 1523. See Strauss 1972, no. 85; also no. 31, for
Pirckheimer and Gauricus. For the adaptations
of the "Vitruvian Man," see F. Zollner, Vitruvs
Proportionsfigur: Quellenkritische Studien zur
Kunstliteratur im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert
(Worms, 1987).
59. For the knowledge of Leonardo's proportional studies
by Durer and the author of the Codex Huygens, see
Erwin Panofsky, The Codex Huygens and Leonardo
da Vinci's Art Theory (London, 1940), 115-122;
Panofsky 1971, 264-268; and F. Zollner, "Die
Bedeutung von Codex Huygens und Codex Urbinus
fur die Proportions- und Bewegungstudien Leonardos da Vinci," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 52
(1989), 334-351; and Zollner, "Leonardo, Agrippa
and the Codex Huygens," Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985), 229-234. There
is also evidence that Durer knew the new kind of
compasses for the drawing of ellipses that appear in
one of Leonardo's studies; see O. Kurz, "Diirer, Leonardo, and the Invention of the Ellipsograph," Raccolta Vinciana 17 (1960), 15-26.
60. Codex Urbinus, i6r-v, trans, in Kemp 1989, 34, no.
59; Sloane 5231, 114; Conway 1889, 250; included at

the end of Book 3 in the Vier Biicher von menschlicher Proportion (Nuremberg, 1528).
61. For Diirer's verkehrer (converter), see Dresden fols.
io6v, io3r-v; Strauss 1972, nos. 72-74.
62. Sloane 5231,114; Conway 1889, 249; Diirer 1528.
63. Letter of 23 September 1506; Conway 1889, 56.
64. Codex Urbinas, 6ir-v; trans, in Kemp 1989, 220,
no. 568.
65. Rupprich 1956-1969,1:214-215; Conway 1889,145.
66. In Albrecht Diirer, Gedenkbuch (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin); Rupprich 1956-1969,1:36;
Anzelewsky 1981,16, pi. 6.
67. Windsor i2665r and MS G 6v; trans, in Kemp 1989,
234, no. 583, and 237, no. 586.
68. Codex Urbinas, 44r-v, iO7r, 15 7r; trans, in Kemp
1989, 203, no. 529, and 120, nos. 306-307; Sloane
5230, i4v; Rupprich 1956-1969, 2:100-101;
Conway 1889,180,199. See Martin Kemp, " 'Ogni
dipintore dipinge se': A Neoplatonic Echo in Leonardo's Art Theory," in Cultural Aspects of the Italian
Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. C. Clough (Manchester, 1976), 311-323;
and Kemp, " 'Equal Excellences': Lomazzo and the
Explanation of Individual Style in the Visual Arts,"
Renaissance Studies i (1987), 10-12.
69. See particularly the texts in Kemp 1989,10,
nos. 4-8.
70. Martin Kemp, "From 'Mimesis' to 'Fantasia': The
Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration
and Genius in the Visual Arts," Viator 8 (1977),
376-384.
71. Sloane 5231; Conway 1889, 243.
72. Sloane 5230, 68; Rupprich 1956-1969, 2:109-110;
Conway 1889,177,197. See Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A
Concept in Art Theory, trans. J. S. Peake (New York,
1968), i23,-i25, for the classical sources of Diirer's
views. See also Martin Kemp, "The 'Super-Artist' as
Genius: the Sixteenth-Century View," in Genius,
ed. P. Murray (Oxford, 1989), 32-53.
73. Sloane 5231, 2or; Sloane 5321, i23r; Conway 1889,
244.
74. Albertina, Vienna, Bd. V. 17575, a drawing for two
figures at the left of the Battle of Ostia-, see P.
Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael (Oxford, 1983),
no. 371; Conway 1889, 33.
75. Pirckheimer, letter to Johann Tscherte on Diirer's
death in 1528; in Conway 1889, 38.
76. Kunsthalle, Bremen (now lost); Strauss 1974,
1519/2; see also the drawing, Self-Portrait as the
''Man of Sorrows," Kunsthalle, Bremen; Strauss
1974,1522/8.
77. Codex Arundel, 272r, 9 July 1504; in J. P. Richter,
ed., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 2
vols. (Oxford, 1970), 2:344, no- 1372' Conway 1889,
40-41, 77-79 (1504 and 1513 respectively).
78. A. E. Popham, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
(London, 1964), no. 154; Carlo Pedretti, ed., Disegni
di Leonardo da Vinci e della scuola alia Biblioteca
Reale di Torino (Florence, 1975), no. i. I am inclined
to date the Turin drawing to the later 14905, which
would exclude it as a self-portrait. The only reliable
image of Leonardo is the studio drawing in Windsor
12726; see London 1989, no. i.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

111

MICHELANGELO 1492
Giulio Carlo Argan

M,

. ichelangelo's debut has a date, 1492;

and his career was a long one, lasting beyond
the midpoint of the following century. We know
that he always worked with and for the highest
civil and religious powers; no other artist had
such authoritative influence on the dramatic
historical conditions of his time. Before him
Leonardo had thought to make of art the
method and instrument of knowledge, thus
opening for it new and unlimited horizons.
Michelangelo, twenty years younger, did not
follow in that progressive direction; radically
opposing Leonardo, he denied that the purpose
of art was the knowledge of the objective world
and devoted himself to the study of the thought
of the human being, its reason for existence,
and its final destiny. His aim was not progress,
but rather a return to that humanism which,
moving out from Dante and the great artists of
the fourteenth century, gave Florence a cultural
superiority that then became political supremacy. In 1492 he was seventeen years old and was
living in the palace of the Medici; he had studied sculpture technique with the older Bertoldo
and was in direct contact with Lorenzo il Magnifico, Botticelli, and Poliziano.
His activity in sculpture began with two
marble reliefs: the Madonna of the Stairs (cat.
168) and the Battle of the Centaurs and
Lapiths. His Madonna was an analytic and
methodical, almost philological study of the
projection of perspective in the rilievo schiacciato of Donatello. The Battle, done slightly
earlier, can be dated precisely: Condivi said that
it had just been finished when Lorenzo il Magnifico died in April 1492. From that moment
Michelangelo did no more reliefs.
Immediately after his De pictura (1436)
Alberti had written a brief treatise called De
statua. He did not discuss relief there: relief
represented actions (historiae) by projection
onto a plane, and for him its only difference
with painting lay in technique. This nature of
relief as historia concisely narrated on a perspectival plane is demonstrated paradigmatically
by Donatello's Banquet of Herod of 1437.
However, a statue in the round was not historia
but elogium, the superposition of an ideal
eternal figure onto an earthly mortal one. After
1492 Michelangelo did only statues, ideal figures, but they were imbued with a pathos that

fig. i. Michelangelo, Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths. c. 1492, marble. Casa Buonarroti, Florence

was the sublimation of human drama. His

unfinished modeling thus presupposed the historia of the relief: the moment of passage from
the relief on a plane to the statue and statuary
group is clearly evident in his Pieta in Saint
Peter's of 1498.
Vasari and Condivi agreed on the subject of
the 1492 relief, and their source was Michelangelo himself. Almost certainly it was suggested by Poliziano. No figure, however, shows
the features of a centaur, half man and half
horse: the relief is a tangle of nudes clinging to
each other in tight muscular knots. The subject
is ancient, but the energetic plastic idiom comes
directly from Giovanni Pisano: the ancient was
transmitted to the modern through the Tuscan

language of the fourteenth and early fifteenth

century, which restored its life and vigor.
Brunelleschi, Manetti recounted, thought that
in the Middle Ages the great culture of Rome
was providentially transposed to Tuscany: in
Rome the ancient had been handed down
through time. Florence had deliberately chosen
it as a model and was thus its legitimate heir.
Not the inert liturgical and curial Latin, but that
of the great ancient writers, was fused by Dante
and Petrarch with the lively Tuscan vulgate,
giving it literary dignity. What had happened in
the field of spoken language had also happened
in the field of art: shortly after theorizing about
the art of the masters of the early fifteenth century, Alberti became the sponsor of the Cer-

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N

WORLD

113

tame Coronario, which was to sanction the

literary dignity of poetry in the vulgate.
Events in Florentine culture in the last two
decades of the fifteenth century can seem to be
a movement backward, a sort of reaction to the
dissipation not only of the doctrine but also of
the moral force of early humanism: Savonarola
understood that Florentine liberty was ending
and blamed Lorenzo il Magnifico, but in the
Medici circle itself there was also a return to the
past, and precisely to Dante. Remember Landino's monumental edition and Botticelli's
illustrations of Dante's work. Later Michelangelo himself became enthusiastic about Dante
and, according to Vasari, Leonardo ridiculed him
for it.
Much earlier his dissension with Botticelli
had been one of the motives for which Leonardo
left the learned Florence for the more technological Milan: this polemic was at the origin of
Michelangelo's anti-Leonardism. Aiming
toward the direct and unprejudiced experience
of the real, Leonardo denied the authority of
history as a teacher. Michelangelo idealized
history, positing it as the necessary reference
for realizing his own modernity but excluding
any form of imitation. In his first relief, the
only thing taken from the antique is the theme;
the plastic text is in the Tuscan line of Giovanni
Pisano and Donatello. Similarly, around this
same time Botticelli was redoing a famous
painting by Apelles, Calumny, of which no
figurative memory existed. For the elderly Botticelli as for the young Michelangelo, history
was not something that was handed down, but
was a resurrection of the past. With his 1492
relief Michelangelo posited explicitly the problem of the relationship between ancient and
modern. He was still troubled by the experience, on one hand flattering and on the other
bitter, of his Cupid, which had been mistaken
for an ancient piece and sold as such. It was the
same problem that was being faced in language:
the ancient was Latin, the modern the vulgate.
This was a crucial problem from a political point
of view also, Machiavelli had explained. Michelangelo faced it by writing his Rime, which he
did as a way of integrating with the word his
formal investigations of art. The problem of the
language was political also because Italy was a

114

CIRCA 1492

group of states in conflict with each other and

threatened by France. The fulcrum for stronger
political cohesion, albeit not true unity, could be
furnished by Rome for its apostolic authority or
Florence for the cultural supremacy expressed
by its language. Tuscan speech, at the same time
noble and popular, would and in fact did become
the national language of Italy. In the Medici
circle at the end of the fifteenth century the
question of language was given highest priority
by Poliziano, the poet and philologist. He
showed that it was possible to write poetry in
the vulgate, in Latin, and even in Greek. Poetry
was therefore a vital value that took form
through language but went beyond it. This too
represented a return to an intrinsic vitality that
had been lost: Donatello inserted learned quotations from the ancient in his figurative plastic
realism, especially in the last phase of his work,
the two pulpits in San Lorenzo on which Bertoldo collaborated so extensively. And Bracciolini had warned that in poetry things "non
enarrari sed agi videantur" (things should not
seem to be narrated, but [made] to happen).
The deplorable deviation from the sources of
early humanism was blamed at least in part on
Leonardo: on his interest in knowing, his experimentalism, his religious scepticism, his lack of
interest in the ancient. In 1500, in his Nativity
now in London, Botticelli had greeted the new
century with apocalyptic invective. But already
in 1492, Michelangelo's relief had opposed to
the poetics of the universal harmony of nature a
violent realism that could not achieve catharsis.
Michelangelo had not yet met Leonardo and
therefore his opposition could not have been as
strong as it was, ten years later, to the Leonardo
who returned in triumph from Milan to Florence. But the antithesis was already clear from
that earliest moment: Michelangelo was fighting against what seemed to be a renewed and
more extensive feeling about nature, a new
spirit of investigation, a progressive and promising marriage between art and science.
Was Michelangelo's beginning, then, regressive or reactionary? The gravest problem facing
society between the end of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth century was not the
problem of a new image of the cosmos: it was
religious conflict, the crisis of the Church, the

rise of a new concept of Christianity. Even

before Luther's proposals regarding doctrine,
Savonarola's moral furor had troubled the young
Michelangelo as much as it had the elder Botticelli. Beyond condemnation of the corruption
of the clergy and the contrast between orthodoxy and heresy, an idea was gaining ground
that the ontological problem of human being
and action preceded the gnoseological problem
of knowledge of the objective world. The need
for a different basis for speculation about science did not arise for another century, with
Galileo, who to be sure strongly affirmed the
experimental nature of scientific research but
also understood that in order to give birth to a
new science it was necessary to define clearly
its relationship with religion. Galileo was aware
of what was going on in literature and art
certainly he knew of the opposing meanings
assigned to art by Leonardo and Michelangelo;
we could say paradoxically that for him Michelangelo's strength in speculation was a stronger
force than Leonardo's interest in knowledge.
Parronchi correctly considers the 1492 relief
not a later work, but slightly earlier than the
Madonna of the Stairs, a work that is in fact a
profound critical reflection on Donatello's
rilievo schiacciato. Everything is concentrated
into the limited depth between the plane of the
Madonna's chair and the gradually receding
planes of the steps. The relief of the Madonna is
minimal yet the matronly figure is statuesque,
in the ancient style. In the flattened space the
figures do not represent action but create
a rhythm; this is the same concatenation, but
more relaxed and open, as that seen in the 1492
relief. The crux of the problem is still the relationship between relief and statuary, that is
between action and figure. In the Madonna of
the Stairs the space has neither a real nor illusory depth; it is as though it were completely
contained within the figures. As in the Battle,
where the centaurs are not really centaurs, all
that is left of the historia, or action, is the
rhythm, the essence. From that moment on, the
statuary figure will absorb within itself the dramatic action and with it the spatiality of relief;
and its extraordinary intense pathos will depend
on just this absence of any complementarity,
that is of any reference to physical space.

THE QUEST FOR THE EXOTIC:

ALBRECHT DURER IN THE NETHERLANDS
Jean Michel Massing

A,

Jbrecht Diirer is the best-known artist/

traveler of the Renaissance. His two visits to
Italy, in 1494-1495 and 1505-1507, were essentially pilgrimages to the wellsprings of the
Renaissance, study trips for an artist who was
anxious to acquire a thorough grounding in
classical art theory and practice. His year-long
journey to the Netherlands, undertaken in the
last decade of his life, was quite different. The
principal purpose for the trip was to convince
Charles v, who was traveling to his coronation
in Aachen, to continue the pension that Diirer
had been awarded by Maximilian i. Diirer
clearly saw the journey, however, as a chance to
mix business with pleasure, for he took along
his wife and her maid and brought with him a
large supply of works of art to sell and barter.
His personal diary of the trip has come down to
us, yielding a vivid picture of the daily life of
this by-now celebrated artist. What is most
striking from our perspective is Diirer's inexhaustible curiosity for the unfamiliar animals,
plants, peoples, and products that he encountered in the Low Countries. The amazing
variety of exotica he was able to examine
was a direct consequence of the voyages of
exploration.
By 1520-1521, when Diirer visited the Netherlands, Antwerp had become one of the principal centers for the spice trade; the other was
Lisbon, since Portugal now controlled the new
maritime sea routes, especially those to Africa
and Asia.1 For Diirer this development meant
direct contact with all sorts of exotic wares,
including imports from America.2 In Brussels
Diirer admired the Aztec treasures sent by
Cortes to Charles v and subsequently exhibited
in the Coudenberg Palace.3 Diirer also noted in
his diary that "I saw behind the King's house
... the fountains, labyrinths, and animalgarden; anything more beautiful and pleasing
to me and more like a Paradise I have never
seen/'4 He made a sketch of the park, the
famous Warande, which he identified, as he did
so often, with an inscription: "This is the
animal park and the pleasure grounds behind, at
Brussels, seen from the palace/'5 The park was
large, with special areas for wild boar and hares,
shelters for deer, wild goats and ibexes, as well
as various aviaries; in 1517, some 150 deer of all

kinds could be seen there. Exotic animals were

kept in the Nederhof. Lions are first mentioned
in 1446, monkeys in 1462, and in 1507, it
included wild cows, camels, ostriches, and other
exotic animals brought from Spain.6 It was
probably in Brussels, but in the next year
(1521), that Diirer drew on one sheet six animals and two landscape scenes (cat. 205): a Barbary lion, two depictions of a lioness, a lynx
the only native animal a young chamois, as
well as a baboon, the latter heightened with
blue and pink washes. According to an inscription now partly lost through the sheet's subsequent trimming, this was "an extraordinary
animal..., big, one and a half hundredweight."
Diirer does not seem to have seen or in any
case to have sketched real lions before his
travel to the Netherlands.7 For the lion in his
small panel of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness*
painted c. 1497-1498, he used a study in watercolor made during his first trip to Venice.
There, however, the animal was not drawn from
life, but rather based on the lion of Saint Mark
as it appears in the coat-of-arms of Venice.9
From Diirer's diary of his trip to the Netherlands, we also know that on 9 April 1521 he saw
the lions kept in Ghent and drew one of them.
In fact he added the words Zw Gent (at Ghent)
on a silverpoint drawing of a crouching lion.
He studied two further poses of the animal on
another sheet and sketched its head on a third.10
In Diirer's time the Ghent lions were kept at the
Leeuvenhof, descendants of the four animals
recorded a hundred years before as in the charge
of a local butcher, Jacques de Melle. His job was
taken over by Henri van den Vyvere, who
seems to have started the tradition of showing
new-born cubs to the town councillors (echevins) for a small fee. The same was done by his
successors, who also kept bears; in 1497 a fight
was even organized between a bear and bulls, in
the manner of classical Roman spectacles.11 It
may have been in Ghent rather than in Brussels
that Diirer made the two splendid gouache studies on vellum of a lion and a lioness.12
Lions came from Asia and Africa but they
were known in Europe during the Middle Ages
and depicted in religious and even secular art.13
More remarkable was the rhinoceros, which
Diirer had recorded in his famous woodcut of

1515 (cat. 206). The animal that sultan Muzafan

n, ruler of Gujarat, gave to Alfonso de
Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India,
who then sent it to King Manuel i, was the subject of intense interest, no rhinoceros having
been seen in Europe since classical times.14 The
Greek geographer Strabo seems to have been
the first to mention fights staged between rhinoceroses and elephants, a tradition that was
briefly revived less than a month after the rhinoceros' arrival in Lisbon, as we know from
various testimonies: "The native keeper... led
the rhinoceros by its chain to a place behind the
tapestries covering the passageway, where it
remained well hidden. Then the elephant, a
young one with short tusks, was brought into
the arena. When the tapestries were pulled
aside revealing the rhinoceros, the elephant
took flight and sought refuge in the shelter
where it was usually kept."15 The mutual antipathy of the two animals was duly recorded on
Diirer's preparatory drawing:
In the year i5[i]3 [recte 1515] on i May was
brought to our king of Portugal in Lisbon
such a living animal from India called Rhinocerate. Because it is such a marvel I considered that I must send this representation.
It has the color of a tortoise and is covered all
over with thick scales, and in size is as large
as an elephant, but lower, and is the deadly
enemy of the elephant. It has on the front of
the nose a large sharp horn: and when this
animal comes near the elephant to fight it
always first whets its horn on the stones and
runs at the elephant with its head between its
forelegs. Then it rips the elephant where its
skin is thinnest, and then gores it. The elephant is greatly afraid of the Rhinocerate; for
he always gores it whenever he meets an elephant. For he is well armed, very lively and
alert. The animal is called rhinocero in Greek
and Latin but in Indian, Ganda.16
King Manuel i sent the rhinoceros to Pope Leo
x. According to Paulo Giovio,17 it was meant to
repeat the combat with an elephant, in this case
the famous elephant Hanno drawn by Raphael,
which Manuel had sent to the Pope the year
before. The fight never took place, as the rhinoceros drowned in a shipwreck off the Italian

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

115

fig. i. Albrecht Diirer, Lion. 1521, watercolor and body color on vellum. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

coast in February 1516; Hanno, incidentally,

died a few months later.18 Both animals had
caused a sensation whenever they were seen.
The French king Francis i traveled to an island
off Marseilles to view the rhinoceros, while
Hanno was a constant source of delight for the
inhabitants of Rome, so much so that Luther
used that fact to mock the papacy for its frivolity.19 Both rhinoceros and elephant were sent to
Portugal from India; the newly established sea
route allowed, for the first time since antiquity,
direct contacts with the heart of Asia.
Almost as curious as the rhinoceros must
have been the walrus, an animal so strange that
Diirer adapted it for the dragon of Saint Margaret in one of his compositional sketches of
1522 for a Sacra Conversazione.20 On that occasion, Diirer used his drawing of a walrus, a
beautiful study in pen and brown ink with
washes, which he had done the year before,
according to an autograph inscription (cat. 207):
'That stupid animal of which I have portrayed
the head was caught in the Netherlands sea and
was twelve Brabant ells long with four feet/' In
116

CIRCA 1492

Europe walruses are found mainly in the Arctic

sea and on the northern coast of Norway, where
they used to be hunted for their ivory and skins.
Even in Diirer's time they were extremely rare
in Netherlandish waters and completely
unknown in southern Europe. They were so
fabulous that the Norwegian bishop Erik Walkendorf sent the head of a walrus, preserved in
salt, to Pope Leo x in 152O,21 to show him the
animal's physiognomy. That specimen was duly
painted by an anonymous artist on a panel that
used to hang in the Curia Argentinae in Rome.
A German epigram added and later published in
Gesner's Icones animalium aquatilium of 1560
starts with Albertus Magnus' erroneous statement that the walrus is the female of the whale;
we are also told that the animal is found in oriental seas, where it frightened Alexander the
Great and his army. This legendary and, of
course, totally inaccurate information appears
beside precise details about where and when the
particular animal had been killed; we also learn
that the head sent to the pope was exhibited in
Strasbourg on its way to Rome.22

From Antwerp Diirer traveled to Zeeland,

probably in the hope of seeing a stranded whale.
He recorded in his diary that: "At Zierikzee in
Zeeland a whale has been stranded by a high
tide and a gale of wind. It is much more than
100 fathoms long and no man living in Zeeland
has seen one even a third as long as this is. The
fish cannot get off the land; the people would
gladly see it gone, as they fear the great stink,
for it is so large that they say it could not be cut
in pieces and the blubber boiled down in half a
year/' When Diirer arrived at Zierikzee on 10
December 1520 he "tried to get sight of the
great fish, but the tide had carried him off
again."23 From the sixteenth century the dramatic stranding of whales was recorded by many
artists, so much so that it became a familiar subject of Netherlandish and northern German art,
especially in the last quarter of the sixteenth
and in the seventeenth century when it was
often charged with moral or political meaning.24
For Luther, the stranding of a whale near Haarlem in 1522 was a clear sign of God's wrath. 25
In the second half of March 1521, Diirer

bought a little tortoise in Antwerp.26 The painter and his wife had previously been presented
with parrots by Rodrigo Fernandez d'Almada,
the Portuguese factor: "Rodrigo has given my
wife/ wrote Diirer in his diary, "a small green
parrot/' for which she bought a birdcage.
Rodrigo gave them a second parrot a few days
later. In June or July 1521, Diirer recorded
another gift from the Portuguese, a parrot from
Malacca for which Diirer bought a new cage.27
Diirer had sketched a parrot as early as the very
first years of the sixteenth century and used it
for his drawing of the Madonna with a multitude of animals and for the Fall of Man, his
famous engraving of 1504.28 African and Indian
parrots were bought in Antwerp by German
merchants at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. We know from a letter written by the
Nuremberg city council in 1505 to Anton Tetzel
and Diirer's friend, the humanist Willibald
Pirckheimer, that agents of the Nuremberg
merchants had been robbed of a basket load of
parrots.29 Slightly later, in 1511, grey African
parrots were sent by the Fugger of Augsburg to
the Bishop of Breslau, Johann Turzo,30 while
Konrad Peutinger, the famous Augsburg scholar,
had talking parrots from India.31 Feathers of
parrots and macaws were also brought back
from Brazil so many, in fact, that a Venetian
spy reported from Lisbon that Cabral had discovered "a new land they call the land of the
Parrots/'32 Bright red macaws, in fact, symbolize
South America on the Cantino map.33
Like lions, apes were known in Germany
during the Middle Ages. Diirer engraved his
well known Madonna with a Monkey as early
as 1498.34 Long-tailed monkeys, however,
became relatively widely available only with the
maritime discoveries. Lucas Rem, the agent of
the Welser in Lisbon between 1503 and 1508,
acquired "strange, new parrots, long-tailed
monkeys, and other rare and curious things" to
be sent to Augsburg.35 Diirer also bought a little
monkey for four gold florins in Antwerp. The
poor creature probably did not last long. At any
rate, when Diirer sent a drawing of a dance
of monkeys to Felix Frey, of Zurich, in 1523,
he commented "in regard to the dance of the
monkeys that you asked me to draw, I am
sending you an awkward sketch, for I have
not seen monkeys in a long time. Please be
understanding/'36
The Antwerp that Diirer visited was one of
the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe and, as
we have seen, a major center for the spice trade,
especially between Portuguese and German
merchants. Apart from spices, the main imports
were sugar in various forms, most of it to be
resold to Germans. Sugar products came mostly
from the Canaries and other Atlantic islands.

Such delicacies are mentioned throughout

Diirer's diary, as for example when Rodrigo Fernandez d Almada gave him two boxes of quince
electuary and many sweetmeats of all kinds, or
when he received from Joao Brandao two fine
large white sugar-loaves, a dish-full of sweetmeats, and two green pots of preserves.37 In
Antwerp Diirer spent time with the wealthy
Genoese silk merchant Tomaso Bombelli, as
well as with various members of the Portuguese
community, especially the Portuguese factors.
Thome Lopes, Portuguese ambassador and
factor in Antwerp from 1498 to 1505, invited
Diirer "to a great banquet on Shrove-Tuesday
1521 which lasted till 2 o'clock and was very
costly... To the... feast very many came in
costly masks and especially Tomasin and Brandao."38 Diirer in fact saw more of Thome Lopes'
successors, Joao Brandao, factor from 1509 to
1514 and again from 1520 to 1526, and his Secretary Rodrigo Fernandez d'Almada, who later
became factor, who seem to have been his best
friends in Antwerp. In return for their exotic
gifts such as those mentioned above, he gave
them prints and paintings and made their portraits. The famous painting of Saint Jerome
(Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) was a
gift to Rodrigo, who took it with him to Portugal.39 Diirer also portrayed Joao Brandao's black
servant, Katherina (cat. 193): the silverpoint
drawing inscribed Katherina alt 20 Jar can be
related to a passage in Diirer's diary in which he
wrote: "I drew a portrait of this moor with met-

alpoint."40 Diirer had already sketched a black

man (cat. 192) in charcoal, perhaps for use in a
composition of the Adoration of the Magi.
Although the two drawings at any rate that of
the maid do not seem to have been done to be
given to the sitters, they are among the first
portraits of black people made in Renaissance
Europe.
The Portuguese traded with Brazil and also
controlled the sea route to Africa and India
via the Cape of Good Hope; this trade bought
immense wealth and the influx of many new
products to Lisbon and Antwerp. Among the
rarest objects acquired by Diirer in the Netherlands were probably ivories and Chinese porcelains : from his diary, we know that Diirer
received "three pieces of porcelain" from Brandao and "a beautiful piece of porcelain" from
Lorenz Sterck, Treasurer of the Provinces of
Brabant and Antwerp.41 Although Chinese porcelain is occasionally mentioned in fourteenthand fifteenth-century inventories, it was
extremely rare until the opening of the Portuguese sea route to India in 1498, when Vasco da
Gama sailed to Calicut;42 it appeared in large
quantities only at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Diirer also acquired objects in ivory: altogether he bought four combs, a button, a small
ivory skull for a florin, and two saltcellars from
Calicut for three florins.43 The saltcellars may in
fact have been Afro-Portuguese ivories (see
cats. 67-71) which are among the finest African

fig. 2. Albrecht Diirer, Lioness. 1521, watercolor and body color on vellum. Musee du Louvre, Paris, Edmond
de Rothschild Collection. Photo Reunion des musees nationaux
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

117

works of art of the early sixteenth century, as

the term Calicut was used generically for all the
newly discovered countries.44 "Calicut objects"
are mentioned all through Diirer's diary. There
we read that Lorenz Sterck gave Durer a
wooden shield from Calicut and one of light
wood reeds.45 Sterck had probably acquired, or
rather been given these objects by Portuguese
merchants; the same is true for the "ivory whistle and a beautiful piece of porcelain/' which, as
we have seen, he also gave to Dlirer.46 Rodrigo
Fernandez d'Almada presented Diirer with Calicut feathers and six Indian nuts (coconuts).
Later Diirer also received from him "two Calicut cloths, one of them in silk..., an ornamented cap, a green jug with myrobalans, and a
branch of cedar tree, worth ten florins altogether/' On another occasion (16 March 1521)
Rodrigo have him six large Indian coconuts, a
very fine stem of coral, and two large Portuguese florins. 47 Even Diirer's host, Jobst Plankfelt, offered him exotica, an Indian coconut and
an old Turkish whip.48 From the diary we also
learn that a Herr Gilbert, of whom we know
nothing else, gave him "a small Calicut round
shield made of fish-skin, and two gloves with
which the natives there fight/' 49 A plaited hat of
alder bark( ?) may have come from some foreign
land; the Turkish cloth which he received from
Tomaso Bombelli certainly did.50 In Zeeland,
Diirer recorded that Master Hugo, Alexander
Imhof, and Friedrich, the Hirschvogels' servant,
each gave him an Indian coconut that they had
won at play; from his host he received a sprouting bulb. Others, such as the commercial agent
of the Hochstatter in Portugal, provided naturalia: "In return for the three books which I gave
him, Herr Lazarus von Ravensburg has given
me: a great fish-scale, five snail-shells, four
medals of silver, five of copper, two little dried
fishes, a white coral, four cane arrows, and
another white coral."51 Diirer also bought various drugs some of them probably to cure the
illness contracted in the Low Countries dyes
and perfumes. He acquired various textiles,
including calico and silk, furs, even fishskins,
which were used as a high-quality substitute for
leather. As for the shells, dried fishes, squid,
and possibly some of the buffalo horns, these
must have been for his collection of curiosities,
his Wunderkammer; also the more precious
items, the glassware rings, precious stones, and
the sprouting bulb. Diirer may have resold
some of these items; buffalo horns were probably not kept with hunting trophies52 but
mounted as drinking horns (see cat. 8) or even
used as raw materials for items such as the ring
purchased by Diirer in Brussels and the ink
stand he sent to Pirckheimer. Coconuts, which
were imported by the Portuguese, were often
Il8

CIRCA 1492

carved and mounted as cups (see cat. n);53 so

were shells (see cat. 9). Altogether Diirer
gathered a formidable collection of curiosities,
most of them probably from Africa and Asia
so many that he had to ask Wenzeslaus Lind,
Vicar-General of the Saxon congregation of the
Augustines, to help him bring them back to
Nuremberg: "I gave the new Vicarius the great
turtle shell, the fish shield, the long pipe, the
long lance, the fish-fins, and the two little casks
of lemon and capers to take home for me."54
Diirer's activities in the Netherlands, sketching people from foreign countries55 as well as
exotic animals, collecting any testimony he
could find of the newly discovered lands,
reflects an interest quite unique in its intensity
and breadth among artists of his time. It indicates that he was as much a man of his time as
any of the explorers, and it helps to explain why
he is the only artist known to have recorded his
admiration for the Aztec treasures sent by
Cortes from Mexico.56
NOTES
1. For Antwerp and its role in the spice trade, see Jan
Albert Goris, Etude sur les colonies marchandes
meridionales (Portugais, Espagnols, Italiens) a
Anvers de 1488 a 1567 (Louvain, 1925), who discusses the imports and exports, including many
exotic products; for medieval trade with the East,
Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce au MoyenAge (Leipzig, 1885); for exoticism in the arts, Gotz
Pochat, Der Exotismus wahrend des Mittelalters und
der Renaissance (Stockholm, 1970).
2. Jan Veth and Samuel Muller, Albrecht DUrers
Niederlandische Reise, 2 vols. (Berlin and Utrecht,
1918), 182-201, have a very thorough chapter on
Diirer as a collector.
3. Hans Rupprich, Diirers schriftlicher Nachlass, 3
vols. (Berlin, 1956-1969), 1:155; Jan Albert Goris
and Georges Marlier, Albrecht Diirer. Diary of His
Journey to the Netherlands. 1520-1521 (London,
1971), 64; see also my essay "Early European
Images of America/' note i, in this catalogue.
4. Rupprich 1956,1:155; Goris and Marlier 1971, 63.
5. Walter L. Strauss, The Complete Drawings of
Albrecht Diirer, 6 vols. (New York, 1974), 4:19321933, no. 1520/15; Fedja Anzelewsky, "A propos de
la topographic du Pare de Bruxelles et du Quai de
1'Escaut a Anvers de Durer," Musees Royaux des
Beaux-Arts. Bulletin 6 (1957), 87-107.
6. Paul Saintenoy, Les arts et les artistes a la Cour de
Bruxelles. Leur role dans la construction du Chateau
ducal de Brabant sur le Coudenberg de 1120 a 1400
et dans la formation du Pare de Bruxelles (Memoires
publics par la Classe des Beaux-Arts de 1'Academie
royale de Belgique, 2e serie, n) (Brussels, 1932), 72777. Harry David, Die Darstellung des Lowen bei
Albrecht Diirer. Inaugural-Dissertation... HalleWittenberg (Halle, 1909), 79; Fritz Koreny, Albrecht
Diirer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the
Renaissance (Boston, 1988), 160. For lions kept in
Germany in Diirer's time, Gustave Loisel, Histoire
des menageries de I'antiquite a nos jours, 3 vols.
(Paris, 1912), 1:231-236.

8. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum,

Albrecht Diirer. 1471-1971 (Nuremberg, 1971), 304305, no. 569; Jean Michel Massing, "Diirer's
Dreams," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 49 (1986), 242, n. 26.
9. Strauss i974a, 1:232-233, no. 1494/17; also Nuremberg 1971, 302, no. 560.
10. Strauss 19743, 4:2018-2023, nos. 1521/11-1521/13;
Fedja Anzelewsky and Hans Mielke, Staatliche
Museen preussischer Kulturbesitz. Albrecht Diirer.
Kritischer Katalog der Zeichnungen (Berlin, 1984),
101-103.
11. Loisel 1912,1:222-225.
12. Koreny 1988,170-171, nos. 58-583 (see also
160-161).
13. Camels and dromedaries are also commonly found
in scenes of the Adoration of the Magi. Diirer drew
an oriental with a dromedary in the Book of Hours
of Maximilian: Strauss 19743, 3:15381539, no.
1515/32; Walter L. Strauss, The Book of Hours of
the Emperor Maximilian the First (New York,
*974)/ 8414. Abel Fontoura da Costa, Deambulations of the Rhinoceros (Ganda) of Miziifar, King of Cambaia, from
1514 to 1516 (Lisbon, 1937); Donald Frederick Lach,
A Century of Wonder: The Visual Artsf vol. 11.1 of
Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago and London,
1970), 158-172; T. H. Clarke, The Rhinoceros from
Diirer to Stubbs. 1515-1799 (London, 1986), 16-23;
also L. C. Rookmaker, Bibliography of the Rhinoceros (Rotterdam, 1983), 15-17.
15. Angelo de Gubernatis, Storia del viaggiatori italiani
nelle Inde Orientali (Livorno, 1875), 389-392; Lach
1970, 2.1:161-162.
16. Strauss 19743, 3:1584-1585, no. 1515/17; John Rowlands, The Age of Diirer and Holbein: German
Drawings, 1400-1550 (London, 1988), 92-94, no. 65,
ill.; Giinther Pass, "Durer und die wissenschaftliche
Tierdarstellung der Renaisssnce," in Albrecht Diirer
und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance:
Symposium (Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 82/83, 19861987) (1989), 5964.
17. Psolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, veris imaginibus supposita (Florence, 1551),
206.
18. For Hsnno, see Lach 1970, 2.1:136144.
19. Martin Luther, Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Briefwechsel, 18 vols. (Weimar, 1930-1985), 6:289;
G. Scheil, Die Tierwelt in Luthers Bildersprache in
seinen reformatorisch-historischen und polemischen
deutschen Schriften (Bernberg, 1897), 19.
20. Strauss 19743, 4:2180-2181, no. 1522/1.
21. Vslentin Kipsrsky, L'histoire du morse (Annsles
Acsdemise Scienmrum Fennicse, Ser.B.73,3) (Helsinki, 1952), 46-48.
22. Konrad Gesner, Icones animalium acjuatilium
(Zurich, 1560), 178-179; Kiparsky 1952, 46-48. It
cannot be excluded that Bishop Walkendorf sent it
vis Antwerp, where Diirer could hsve sketched it.
Diirer's indicstion that the walrus "was caught in
the Netherlsnds se3," however, seems to imply the
contrary.
23. Rupprich 1956,1:162-163; Goris 3nd Msrlier 1971,
76-77 snd 79.
24. Werner Timm, "Der gestrandete Wai, eine motivkundliche Studie," Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Forschungen und Berichte 3-4 (1962), 76-93; Carus
Sterne, "Walfischstrandungen in ihrem Einfluss auf
Kunst und Poesie," Pan i (1895-1896), 165-171; Van
der Grinten 1962,149-156.
25. Luther 1931, 2:559-560; Timm 1961, 82.

26. Rupprich 1956, 1:166; Goris and Marlier 1971, 84.

He also received a tortoise shell from Bernard
Stecher.
27. Rupprich 1956, 1:154, 156, 157, 175; Goris and Marlier 1971, 63, 65-66, 67, 97-98 (Malaca here refers
to Malacca, not the Spanish Malaga).
28. Strauss 19743, 2:604-605, no. 1502/7; also Koreny
1988, 116, fig. ^.^-Renaissance Drawings from the
Ambrosiana (Notre Dame, 1984-1985), 192-193, no.
84. For the symbolism of parrots, Emil Karel Josef
Reznicek, "De reconstructie van YAltaer van S.
Lucas' van Maerten van Heemskerck," Oud-Holland
70 (1955), 238-241; Lach 1970, 2.1:179-180. On
parrots and exotic birds in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, Adolf Rieth, "Papageiendarstellungen
in der mittelalterliche Kunst Siidwestdeutschlands,"
Nachrichtenblatt der Denkmalpflege in BadenWurttemberg 7 (1964), 53-55; Lach 1970, 2.1:178183.

29. Emil Reicke, Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, 2

vols. (Munich, 1940-1956), 1:257-258; Lach 1970,
2.1:179-180.
30. Goetz, Freiherr von Polnitz, Jakob Fugger... 2 vols.
(Tubingen, 1949-1951), 179; Lach 1970, 2.1:180.
31. Erich Konig, Konrad Peutingers Briefwechsel
(Munich, 1923), 77-78; Lach 1970, 2.1:22.
32. John Hemming, Red Gold. The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (London, 1978), 5.
33. Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land. European
Images of America from the Discoveries to the
Present Time (New York, 1975), 8, pi. i; also Wilma
George, Animals and Maps (London, 1969), 60.
34. Walter L. Strauss, The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Drawings of Albrecht Diirer (New York,
1972), 42-43, no. 21; Walter L. Strauss, The Intaglio
Prints of Albrecht Diirer. Engravings, Etchings and
Drypoints (New York, 1976), 69-70, no. 21.
35. B. Greiff, "Tagebuch des Lucas Rem aus den Jahren
1494-1541," Sechsundzwanzigster Jahres-bericht des
historischen Kreis-vereins... von Schwaben und
Neuburg (Augsburg, 1861), 31; Lach, 1970, 2.1:22.

36. Rupprich 1956, 1:106-108, no. 51; Strauss 19743,

4:2246-2247, no. 1523/11. On monkeys in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Horst W. Janson,
Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance (London, 1952), and Lach 1970,
2.1:175-178.
37. Rupprich 1956, 1:166; Goris and Marlier 1971, 83.
38. Rupprich 1956, 1:165; Goris and Marlier 1971, 82.
For the Portuguese factors, see Veth and Muller
1918, 251-260; Goris 1925, 215-236.
39. Veth and Muller 1918, 254-259; Goris 1925, 231232. For the Saint Jerome, Erwin Panofsky, Albrecht
Durer, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1943), 211-213; Fedja
Anzelewsky, Albrecht Durer. Das malerische Werk
(Berlin, 1971), 122-123, no. 14, figs. 12-13.
40. Strauss 19743, 4:20122013, no. 1521/8; Jean
Devisse and Michel Mollat, Africans in the Christian Ordinance of the World. Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, vol 11.2 of The Image of the Black in
Western Art (Lausanne, 1979), 253, fig. 263. For
blacks in Antwerp, Goris 1925, 3132.
41. Rupprich 1956, 1:156 and 166; Goris and Marlier
1971, 65 and 83.
42. For the import of Chinese porcelain in Europe, see
Lach 1970, 2.1, 104-109; and David Whitehouse,
"Chinese Porcelain in Medieval Europe." Medieval
Archaeology 16 (1973), 63-78. For their representation in Italian paintings of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth century, A. I. Spriggs, "Oriental
Porcelain in Western Painting. 1450-1700," Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 36 (1967), 7374, pis. 57-59: two of the earliest examples are
Francesco Benaglio's Madonna and Child and Feast
of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini and Titian, both in
the National Gallery of Art. For an interesting but
problematic link between a drawing from Diirer's
circle and Chinese porcelain, see Robert Schmidt,
"China bei Diirer," Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins
fur Kunstwissenschaft 6 (1939), 103-108. (For porcelain in Europe in the Middle Ages, see also cats.

15-16).

43- Rupprich 1956, 1:160, 162, 163, 165, and 168; Goris
and Marlier 1971, 72, 77, 79, 83, 86.
44. Ezio Bassani and William B. Fagg, Africa and the
Renaissance: Art in Ivory (New York, 1988), 53; for
the saltcellars, 62-81 and 225-231.
45. Rupprich 1956, 1:152 (also 181, ns. 132-133); Goris
and Marlier 1971, 59.
46. Rupprich 1956, 1:166; Goris and Marlier 1971, 83.
47. Rupprich 1956, 1:156, 162, 165, and 166; Goris and
Marlier 1971, 65, 76, 81, 84.
48. Rupprich 1956, 1:156 (also 185, no. 225); Goris and
Marlier, 1971, 66.
49. Rupprich 1956, 1:166; Goris and Marlier 1971, 84.
50. Respectively Rupprich 1956, 1:152 and 164; Goris
and Marlier 1971, 59 and 80.
51. See respectively Rupprich 1956, 1:163 (191, n. 412)
and 163-164; Goris and Marlier 1971, 79.
52. For a sixteenth-century collection in Nuremberg,
see Detlef Heikamp, "Diirers Entwiirfe fur Geweihleuchter," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 23 (1960),
48-51.
53. Rolf Fritz, Die Gefasse aus Kokosnuss in Mitteleuropa. 15201800 (Mainz, 1983), 13-18.
54. Rupprich 1956, 1:176; Goris and Marlier 1971, 100.
55. I have not discussed the studies of foreign costumes
that Diirer made in the Netherlands. For his study of
Irish warriors and peasants, see cat. 208; also Henry
Foster McClintock, Old Irish and Highland Dress
(Dundalk, 1950), 30-31. For the drawings of Livonian women, Strauss 19743, 4:2066-2071, nos.
1521/371521/39; also Ursula Mende, "Diirers
Zeichnungen livlandischer Frauentrachten und seine
sogenannte Tiirkin," in Kunstgeschichtliche Aufsatze
von seinen Schulern und Freunden des Heinz Ladendorf zum 29. Juni 1969 gewidmet (Cologne, 1969),
24-40. See also Sebastian Killermann, Diirers Werk.
Eine natur- und kulturgeschichtliche Untersuchung
(Regensburg, 1953), 67-69.
56. See my essay "Early European Images of America,"
note i, in this catalogue.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

119

DISTANT WORLDS
Tales of the splendors of Cathay had circulated
in Europe for centuries before Columbus'
voyage. The medieval world had inherited from
antiquity a bewildering variety of fact and fiction concerning the lands of Asia, dating as far
back as the time of Alexander the Great and
preserved in romances and in the Christian
encyclopedias. In the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth century these sources were enriched by
the narratives of actual travelers to China, most
notably Marco Polo. Their journeys were made
possible by the opening up to Europeans of the
overland trade routes during the period of
Mongol rule over China and central Asia.
Late medieval Europe was fascinated by
these accounts of the marvels of the East, which
centered on its storybook riches and on the
strange humans and monstrous creatures that
120

CIRCA 1492

inhabited it. The trickle of exotic goods both

natural objects, like ostrich eggs and coconut
shells, and manmade products, like silks and
porcelains that reached Europe from the faroff lands of Africa and Asia fetched high prices,
as did the spices that were so vital to a society
that lacked effective means of refrigeration to
preserve food.
The few maps that have survived from this
periodmost notably the Catalan Atlas
present a world that looks familiar to us only in
its western reaches, where coastal navigation
had established the basic contours of land and
sea. To the east lay a vast, uncharted territory,
full of riches and wonders, whose luxuries
enticed the merchant and whose largely
heathen populations beckoned to the Christian
rulers of Europe, who also imagined new
opportunities for spreading the Gospel.

Abraham Cresques
Mallorcan, 1325-1387

CATALAN ATLAS
1375
12 vellum sheets, 2 leather bindings, mounted on
7 wooden panels
each panel 65 x 25 (25% x 97/s)
references: El Atlas Catalan 1975; Freisleben 1977;
Grosjean 1977; Campbell 1981, 116; Avril et al
1982, 96-98, no. no
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS espagnol 30
The Catalan Atlas was originally made up of six
large rectangular panels; at the beginning of the
sixteenth century each of these was split lengthwise in two, and the vellum leaves were glued
onto the rectos and versos of seven panels which
were then backed onto one another so that the
map could be read as a book. The binding in

brown leather recalls the style of the so-called

Atelier de Louis xn. Some of the inscriptions and
most of the illustrations found in the northern
half of the map are upside down. This, together
with the fact that some inscriptions on the eastern
edges are written at a ninety-degree angle, suggests that the map was intended to be placed horizontally and read from all sides, as a sort of tabletop object. The Catalan Atlas is implicitly dated
on the first sheet, where the compiler gives the
method of finding the dates of the movable feasts
of the year according to the Golden Number. Here
he twice mentions in the same paragraph that for
the year 1375 the Golden Number is eight, a piece
of information that is repeated on the outer circle
of the diagrammatic wheel of the second sheet.
The atlas was owned by Charles v of France;
it appears as manuscript 201 in Jean Blanchet's
inventory of the Royal Library compiled before 6
November 1380 ("Une carte de mer en tabliaux
faicte par maniere de unes tables, painte et

historiee, figuree et escripte"). It also appears,

described in greater detail, in the inventories of
1411 and 1413. Since it was in the Royal Library
by 1380, the Catalan Atlas cannot have been one
of the world maps the Aragonese infante Don
Juan asked Guillaume de Courcy to take to Charles
vi, who succeeded to the throne of France in 1381.
The two letters about this transaction, both dated
5 November 1381, also mention the author of
the world maps in question the Jew Cresques
("Cresques lo juheu"), who can be identified
with Abraham Cresques (1325-1387), a leading
"master of maps of the world and of compasses"
of his time. He was not so much a cartographer in
the modern sense as a copier of maps who sometimes added new material to them. Abraham
Cresques and his son Jehuda were without doubt
the most famous masters of the Catalan school of
mapmakers, which was rivaled only by the Italian,
and especially the Genoese, practitioners of the
art. Abraham is probably responsible for the

Catalan Atlas (but for doubts about the authorship, see Campbell 1981,116). He is perhaps
also the illuminator of the famous Fahri Bible of
1381 (Letchworth, Sassoon Collection, MS 368), a
Hebrew-Samaritan work by a scribe and illuminator who signed himself Elic.a (Abraham) Cresques.
The basis of the Catalan Atlas is a portolan chart
of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, to which
are added representations of Asia and Africa;
the information provided for the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean is noticeably less precise than that
for Europe. Various traditions supplied the map's
details: the Bible, of course, and also apocalyptic
writings, ancient and medieval literature, and
travelers' tales, especially those of Marco Polo.
The lack of precise information for the eastern
areas is particularly striking on the last sheet,
where the features no longer have any connection
with accurate geographical information and where
place names are given at random, in the order
in which they appear on medieval town lists. J.M.M.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

121

2 <

ALEXANDER OBSERVING
THE ICHTHYOPHAGI
from Jehan Wauquelin,
Histoire du bon roy Alexandre
c. 1448
French
manuscript on parchment, 227/0/5.
43-5 x 30.5 (i?V8Xi2)
references: Omont 1895-1896, 1:383, no. 9342;
Ross 1963, i1/ and 36; Ross 1971, 193; Husband
1980, 53, f i g . 26.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS fr. 9342, fol. 182
This illustration depicts one of the best-known
adventures from the Romance of Alexander,
showing the hero being lowered in a diving bell
below the sea to observe the fish-eating people,
the ichthyophagi, who can be seen on the right,
hunting their prey surrounded by all kinds of
aquatic animals. (For additional information on
Alexander's submarine adventures, see Ross 1971,
193, index.) The Romance of Alexander has some
factual basis in Alexander the Great's travels in
Asia, but Alexander's actual adventures were
eclipsed by legend. The oldest Greek Alexander
legend was probably written by the author known
as the Pseudo-Callisthenes sometime in the
third century A.D. This text is known to us only

122

C I R C A 1492

indirectly, through various recensions that fall

within three main lines of transmission. The
present manuscript belongs to the tradition which
dates back to a Greek version, of which the oldest
surviving manuscript is Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris, MS grec 1711. This text is also known
through various derivatives, such as the Latin
version by Julius Valerius (Res gestae Alexandri
Macedonis] and its epitomes; this was used by
Alberic for his Old French Roman d'Alexandre in
dodecasyllabic verse. Jehan Wauquelin of Mons,
the author of the text in the manuscript exhibited
here, used Alberic's text for his Histoire du bon
roy Alexandre which he wrote, before 1448, for
Jean de Bourgogne, Comte d'Etampes. The first
part of this work is entirely based on the Roman
d'Alexandre while the second is a version, sometimes quite literal, of the Old French Prose Alexander, a derivation of the Historia de preliis.
Wauquelin's Histoire is found in four illustrated
manuscripts, including the one exhibited here, of
great quality, which was made for Philippe le Bon,
Duke of Burgundy. MS fr. 9342 has eighty miniatures on 227 folios showing a great variety of
narrative scenes; on folio 179 is found, for example, the story of Alexander the Great's visit to
the Earthly Paradise, a legend of Jewish origin
which was known in the Middle Ages through
a short Latin text, the Alexandri Magni iter
adParadisum.
J.M.M.

3
Boucicaut Master
THE PEPPER HARVEST IN COILUM
from Livre des merveilles
c. 1410
manuscript on parchment, 297 fols.
42 X 29.8

(l6l/2 X ll3/4)

references: Omont 1907; Bibliotheque Nationale

1955, 82-83, no. 169; Meiss 1968, 116-122,
figs. 81-100; Wittkower 1977^, 76-92
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS fr. 2810,
fol. 8^r
The history of this splendid Livre des merveilles
(Book of Marvels) is well known. From an inscription on a guard folio we know that the manuscript
was presented by John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, whose portrait, coat of arms, and devices
appear on fol. 226, to his uncle Jean, duke of
Berry. An inventory of the duke of Berry's possessions records that he received the gift in January
1413. The manuscript was later owned by Jacques
d'Armagnac, duke of Nemours, and on his death it
passed to the House of Bourbon before entering
the Royal Library. The illustrations for the most
part fall into three distinct stylistic groups. The
first of these consists of works from the workshop
of the so-called Boucicaut Master: The portrait
of John the Fearless was probably painted by the
master himself, while a few pictures are by one
of his followers. The second group can be linked
to the circle of the Bedford Master. The remaining pages are traditionally attributed to minor
illuminators.
The manuscript is a'n important compilation
of French translations of various texts describing
voyages to the east, including Marco Polo's
Description of the World, Odoric of Pordenone's
Itinerarium, and William of Boldensele's Liber de
quibusdam ultramarinis partibus (On Certain
Lands beyond the Sea), an account of his pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt in 1336. The volume
also contains the letter from the great khan to
Benedict xn (1338) and the pope's answer, as well
as a description of the state of the great khan
written by John of Cor, bishop of Sultaniyah.
Finally there are Sir John Mandeville's Travels,
Hayton's Historia orientalis, and Ricoldo di Montecorvo's story of his voyage to the East begun in
1288. Real travel accounts are thus mixed with
spurious and imaginary material.
The inscription on the guard folio written by
the duke of Berry's secretary Flamel indicates
that the book contains 266 hystoires, by which he
means illustrations of narratives. The miniatures
present a visual counterpart, or rather complement, to the marvels described in the text. They
depict, for example, fabulous creatures on the
islands of the Indian Ocean (fol. i94v), or pygmies from the land of Pitan who live on the

smell of fruit (fol. ziyv). The best known pages,

however, are probably those illustrating the
pepper harvest in Coilum (fol. 84r), the dogheaded men of the Adaman Islands (fol. /6v),
and the headless men (fol. i94v).
J.M.M.

4
Strasbourg artist
WILD MEN STORMING A CASTLE
AND OTHER SCENES
c. 1440
tapestry
LOO x 490 (}93/s x 193 j
references: Concilium Basiliense 1904, 5:413;
Cavallo 1967, 47-49, no.i, pis. i-if; Husband 1980,
77-82, no. 14; Vandenbroeck 19^7, 15, fig. 11; Rapp
and Stucky-Schurer 1990, 314-318, no. 96

Museum of fine Arts, Boston

This tapestry shows various characteristic scenes

of wild men mythical figures who were supposed to have a human body covered with hair
except on the face, hands, feet, and sometimes
elbows (for wild women, also breasts). Wild men
were believed to be creatures halfway between
men and beasts, who lived roughly, close to
nature, but often according to familiar social and
familial patterns. On several upper Rhenish tapestries of the fifteenth century, they interact with
fabulous animals as well as perform the everyday tasks of raising their children, working the
land, hunting, and fighting.
The concept of the wild man could be extended
to embrace social outcasts and people living in
exotic or "fabulous" countries. For the famous
Strasbourg preacher Geiler of Kaisersberg, "wild
men" included anchorites, various types of satyrs,
gypsies, pygmies, and devils. The wild men in the
Boston tapestry seem to be inhabitants of faraway

countries and not, as has sometimes been claimed,

embodiments of sexual desire. Andrea Gattaro,
a Venetian envoy to the Council of Basel in 1435,
recorded that he saw there twenty-two dancers
dressed as wild men entertaining the guests of
the council; the fact that the event took place on
Epiphany (6 January, the day commemorating the
coming of the Magi) suggests that they may have
been meant to symbolize the eastern world from
which the Wise Men had come (Concilium Basiliense 1904, 5:413).
The Greek writer Herodotus, in the fifth century B.C., provided the earliest known account of
wild men in his Histories (iv, 191), where he
writes of strange inhabitants of Libya, among
them "dog-headed men and the headless that have
their eyes in their breasts, as the Libyans say, and
the wild men and women, besides many other
creatures not fabulous." The fabulous races were
discussed by many authors in classical antiquity

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

123

and the Middle Ages. Wild men are found, for

example, in the legends that grew up around
Alexander the Great (cat. 2); in these stories they
dwell in the most remote areas of Asia and sometimes even Africa. It seems that the wild men
took on only in the twelfth century the form in
which they became familiarwith a hairy body
as one of their identifying characteristics.
The Boston tapestry shows a succession of
scenes. In the first, seven wild men armed with
tree trunks and various rustic weapons attack a
castle held by black people, an indication that the
scene is set in a country far from Alsace. The fortress is defended by two archers wearing long
tunics and, from the top of the towers and behind
the crenelated walls, by soldiers; at the window
the king and queen can be seen exhorting their
troops. The following scenes show a wild man
fighting a snarling lion; two wild men fighting
a basilisk or a dragon, one of them thrusting
a wooden pole down the animal's throat; then
another who has caught a unicorn, which he holds
by its horn. On the right sits a wild woman nursing two of her children. She is flanked by three
wild men returning from the hunt; one rides a
stag, another carries a dead lion on his back, while
the third presents her with an animal's leg, which
he has just torn from his prey.
The aim and the function of this tapestry are
difficult to determine, but it is possible that by
conjuring up these images of people of exotic
lands, the tapestry may have been intended to
reinforce, by contrast, contemporary Christian
values.
J.M.M.

124

CIRCA 1492

5J
MAP OF THE WORLD AND
PEOPLE FROM FARAWAY LANDS
from Hartmann Schedel,
Liber chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493 (fols.
1493
46.9

i2v-ijr)

X J1.6 (l8V2 X 12l/2)

references: Baltimore 1952, no. 44, pi. XH; Riicker

1973, 77-79, fig. 59; Wilson 1976, 115; Husband
1980, 48-50, no. 4, fig. 22; New York and
Nuremberg 1986, 233-234, no. 87; Campbell 1987,
i52~i53' ^0. 219, fig. 33
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Gift of Paul Mellon in Honor of the 50th
Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art
Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum (Book of
Chronicles) was first published in Latin on 12 July
1493; a German translation appeared the following 23 December. This survey of the history of
the world from the Creation to the year 1493,
with its 1,809 illustrations (actually 1,165 woodcuts, some of which are repeated at different
places, in some cases more than once), was the
most lavishly illustrated printed book of the fifteenth century. It must also have been one of
the most widely diffused, since more than 1,200
copies of the Latin and German versions are still
extant. The work was commissioned from the
humanist Hartmann Schedel by two Nuremberg
patricians, Sebald Schreyer and his brother-in-law
Sebastian Kammermeister. The woodcuts were
designed in the workshop of Michael Wolgemut
and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and the
printer was Anton Koberger.

In the Liber chronicarum, now commonly

known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, the history
of the world is divided into seven ages according
to the scheme laid down by the seventh-century
encyclopedist Isidore of Seville. The second age
begins with Noah's ark and ends with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is in this section,
following a discussion of the Flood and Noah's
drunkenness, that we find an account of the fabulous races of mankind, for which Schedel cites as
his authorities Pliny, Saint Augustine, and Isidore
of Seville. Some examples of those races are illustrated on the recto and verso of fol. 12; on the
latter page are found, from top to bottom, a man
with three pairs of arms, a wild woman, a man
with six fingers on each hand, a centaur, a hermaphrodite, a man with four eyes, and finally a
crane-man. They appear next to a map of the
world that has Noah's sons at three of its corners,
to represent Japhet's inheritance of Europe,
Shem's of Asia, and Ham's of Africa. Schedel used
as a model the mappamundi found in an edition
of the Cosmographia of the Roman geographer
Pomponius Mela published at Venice in 1488. Like
Mela's, Schedel's world map is based on that of
Ptolemy, but simplified and without indications of
longitude and latitude; it is also shown as a segment of a globe in the conical projection, and surrounded by the twelve winds identified by name.
The Indian Ocean is wrongly depicted as an
enclosed sea, with Asia linked to Africa by a strip
of land. Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, is unrecognizably
large, and the shape of India is badly distorted.
One of Schedel's very few improvements on the
map in Mela's Cosmographia involves the definition of the southeastern bend of the coast of west
Africa, as recorded by Portuguese navigators
around 1470. By 1493, however, one would have
expected a better understanding and a more
accurate rendering of the whole west coast of
Africa, since in 1487-1488 Bartolomeu Dias had
circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope, the most
southerly point of the African continent. Even
areas that were well known, such as western
Europe and the Mediterranean, are relatively
poorly rendered: they appear more accurately, for
example, in the world map from the 1482 Ulm
edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, and in nautical
charts of the time.
The Nuremberg Chronicle is best known for its
eighty-nine views of towns and cities; of these,
thirty are more or less recognizable renderings,
while the other fifty-nine are fanciful (and share
only seventeen different woodcuts). The book also
contains a map of central Europe by Hieronymus
Munzer, based on a manuscript map made in 1454
by Nicolas of Cusa, which is probably the first
map of the German Empire to appear in a printed
book. The copy of the Chronicle from the National
Gallery of Art is beautifully hand-colored and
preserved in a fine binding made for Raimund
Fugger (1489-1535) of Augsburg, a member of
the famous banking family.
J.M.M.

6_,
MARVELS OF THE EAST
from Liber de naturis rerum creatarum
1492
flemish
manuscript on vellum, 280 fols.
41 x 29.5 (16 Vs x ii5/sj
references: Thomas Catipratensis 1973, 9#~99;
Wittkower 19770, 57 fa- 8o' Derolez 1979,
168-175, no. 29; Oudenburg 1984, 281-282,
no. 166; Arnould 1991, forthcoming
Library of Sint-Baafskathedral, Ghent, MS. 15, /o/s.
1172 r
Raphael de Mercatellis (1437-1508) is best known
today as a collector of richly illuminated manuscripts. Raphael, a scion of the Venetian family
Mercatelli di Mercatello, was probably born in
Bruges. After joining the Benedictine Abbey of
Saint Peter at Ghent, he studied theology in Paris.
He returned to Flanders to serve as abbot first of
Saint Peter's at Oudenburg, then of Saint Bavo's
in Ghent. While serving as abbot of Saint Bavo's,
Raphael built up a collection of manuscripts,
which were mostly works commissioned by him.
The present manuscript was made for him in
1492, as a Latin inscription records: "Hoc volumen comparavit Raphael de Marcatellis, Dei
gratia episcopus Rosensis, abbas Sancti Bavonis
iuxta Gandavum, anno Domini 1492." It includes
a variety of texts: first a Liber de naturis rerum
creatarum (On the Nature of Created Things),
then a number of works mostly concerned with
the history of eastern Europe. These include Jordanes' De origine actibusque Getarum (On the
Origin and Deeds of the Thracians), Johannes de
Thwrocz' Chronica Hungarorum, and Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini's Historia bohemica.
The Liber de naturis rerum creatarum is
divided into seven books. Essentially it is a bestiary, which discusses among other things the
fabulous races of mankind; it is composed largely
of extracts from Thomas of Cantimpre's De
natura rerum (also called Liber de naturis rerum,
or On the Nature of Things). The verso of fol. i
and the recto of the next leaf illustrate fabulous
inhabitants of faraway countries, including dogheaded people and cannibals (for the text illustrated, see Thomas of Cantimpre, De naturis
rerum, 3.2-3.5, in Thomas Cantipratensis 1973,
98-99). The first column of fol. 2r contains some
of the best known examples: a woman with one
eye in the middle of her forehead, a kind of
Cyclops; a "sciopod" resting on his back to shield
himself from the sun with his large foot (note
that here, as in other cases, "breeches" were
added later to cover the nudity of the figures);
a headless man with his face on his chest; an
apple-smeller who lives on the smell of apples
and would die from the effect of a bad odor;
a man with six arms; and finally various exotic
dangerous women.

The Ghent manuscript can be linked to another,

better known example that illustrates the same
text: Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, MS 411 (see
Oudenburg 1984, 281-282, no. 166; for an illustration, Wittkower i977a, 57, fig. 80). The two

works are not closely related, but they clearly

belong within the same traditionas do some
of the woodcuts that illustrate fabulous people
in Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle
(cat. 5).
J.M.M.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

125

7
CEREMONIAL STAFF
c. 1125-1150
English
narwhal horn
length 117 (^6l/s)
references: Schonberger 1935-1936, 164-247; Saxl
1954, 7371.24, fig. 25; Beckwith 1972, 135, no. 82,
ill. 198; London 1974, 67, no. 43; Einhorn 1976;
Freeman 1976, 29, fig. 9; London 1984, 223, no. 204
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In medieval times, horns of the narwhal (Monodon monoceros I.), a small whale inhabiting the
Arctic seas, were of great rarity and accordingly
commanded high prices, for they were thought to
be from unicorns. The Greek physician Ctesias
was the first to describe this mythical creature;
writing in around 398 B.C. he characterized it as
a wild Indian donkey, larger than a horse, white,
and with a single horn one and a half ells (about
five and a half feet) long. He added that "those
who drink from these horns, made into drinking
vessels, are not subject, they say, either to convulsions or to the falling sickness. Indeed they are
immune even to poisons if, either before or after,
they drink wine, water, or anything else from
these 'beakers'/' Such an idea was widespread in
classical antiquity and throughout the Middle
Ages, when the horns were often seen as symbols
of Christ. Many narwhal horns are found in treasuries, especially, but not exclusively, in those of
churches: A horn in the Musee de Cluny, Paris,
can be traced to the famous abbey church of SaintDenis, while another, with runic inscriptions, is
still in the Marienkirche in Utrecht. Narwhal
horns in medieval mounts are found in the Treasury of San Marco in Venice. One of them has
inscriptions in Arabic, while another must have
come from Constantinople, as its mount carries
the name of a Byzantine emperor, either John v
(1341-1391) or John vi Paleologus (1425-1448).
On the second piece, in addition to biblical
passages and words in praise of Christ and the
Virgin, there is a text in Greek on how the unicorn offers protection against poison (for the cultural history of narwhal horns, see Schonberger
1935-^936, 167-247).
This narwhal horn is splendidly carved into a
ceremonial staff. The lower portion has straight
bands, some of them plain, others with grotesque
animals or naked figures intertwined with scrolls,
while the long, spiraling end alternates straight
plain bands with bands of leaf scrolls and scrolls
with birds and animals. Another, unpublished,
staff, which is said to be "similarly carved" and
"probably from the same workshop and of the
same date," is recorded in a private collection in
England. Fritz Saxl compared the decoration of
the present tusk to that of one of the columns
from the central portal of Lincoln Cathedral, now
126

CIRCA 1492

dated circa 1145. This date must be close to that of

the ivory staff, even though it may have a quite
different provenance. That tusks should be used
as ceremonial staffs seems natural, given that
Christians saw the unicorn as a symbol of Christ.
For the theologian Tertullian, writing in the third
century A.D., "Christ is meant by it and the horn
denotes Christ's cross." This idea was elaborated
by later theologians and mystically expressed in
the image of the unicorn hunt, which ends with
the animal tamed in the lap of a virgin (for the
symbolism of the unicorn, see Einhorn 1976 and
Freeman 1976).
J.M.M.
8 <**,

Salzburg or Nuremberg craftsman

DRINKING HORN (Greifenklaue)
c. 1400
gilt silver, champleve enamel, and horn
28 x 32 (11 x i25/s)
references: Rossacher 1966, 122, no. 18, pi. 8;
Salzburg 1967, 55, no. 23, pi. in; Kohlhaussen 1968,
150, no. 229, fig. 243; Cologne 1978-1980, 3:166;
fritz 1982, 257-258, no. 512, fig. 512; Wagner 1986,
66-67

Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Like the shell cup and the ostrich egg jug in the
Museo degli Argenti (cats. 9, 10), this drinking
horn comes from the silver chamber (Silberkammer] of the prince-archbishops of Salzburg. Both
Salzburg and Nuremberg have been proposed as
its place of manufacture. In Germany, drinking
horns, usually made of the horn of an ox or an
aurochs, were called Greifenklauen, or griffin
claws. Our specimen is mentioned in an inventory
of 1586 as having the coat of arms of Gregor
Schenck von Osterwitz, who was archbishop of
Salzburg from 1396 to 1403 ("Ain Greiffen Claw
innwendig mit Silber ausgefiittert und mit ainem
silbern Vogl und Khlaider eingefasst, mit den
Schenggen von Osterwitz wappen"). In a later
inventory compiled in 1612, it is simply described
as a drinking horn with silver mounts, partly gilt
and with a pelican ("Ain Greiffenklau mit silbern
und verguldten beschlecht, darauf ein Pelican").
In Europe large horns were rare in the Middle
Ages and were often mounted with the most precious materials. Diirer acquired a number of them
while traveling in the Netherlands in 1520-1521.
A medieval legend records how Saint Cornelius
once cured a griffin of epilepsy; in gratitude, the
fabulous animal gave him one of its claws. The
origin of this story is probably related to the fact
that the saint was invoked as protector from epilepsy and was often depicted with a mounted horn
as his attribute. The griffin, a mythical animal
with the body of a lion and the wings and head of
an eagle, was sometimes depicted, appropriately,
as part of the mount of such horns.

turned into a drinking vessel by the addition of a

fluted stem with a hexafoiled embossed foot. The
shell (Dolium galea) has deep whorls giving a rich
surface texture, with clearly defined growth rings
and a large siphon. The species is found in a wide
geographical area, including the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean.
The systematic collection of exotic shells seems
to have begun in the Renaissance. Diirer bought
a number of shells during his trip to the Netherlands in 1520-1521, but it seems to have been
Erasmus who assembled the first real collection,
probably for scholarly reasons; this was certainly
the motivation of their younger contemporary,
the Swiss zoologist Conrad Gesner (for the early
collecting of shells, see Coomans 1985). The shell
cup from Florence, like the drinking horn and
ostrich egg jug also in the Museo degli Argenti
(cats. 8, 10), was originally in the Hochertzstuftliche Silberkammer in the palace of the princearchbishops of Salzburg. This collection of precious objects was dispersed in 1805, two years
after the secularization of religious institutions in
Salzburg. In the 1586 inventory of the treasury,
the shell cup is described as a mounted seashell
("Ain grosser Marschnegg mit ainem silbervergulten Fuess und vergoldter Khlaidung").
J.M.M.

This horn, which appears to be that of a

European bison (Bison bonasus), is beautifully
mounted on a gilt eagle with long, finely incised
wings. The horn is elegantly set with bands; on its
tip is a pelican nourishing its young from its own
breast. This was thought by Pliny and many writers after him to be characteristic behavior of the
animal a misunderstanding of the bird's habit of
regurgitating the fish it had caught to feed its
chicks. In the Middle Ages, the pelican's "self-sacrifice" was taken as an image or type of Christ's
Passion. Yet the presence of the pelican on this
drinking horn does not necessarily suggest a liturgical function for the vessel. Most such horns
were used in a secular context, especially as luxurious drinking vessels at banquets.
j. M. M.

9
Nuremberg craftsman
SHELL CUP
c. 1480
silver, partly gilt, and shell
height 22 (85/8)
references: Rossacher 1966, 11, 130, no. 33, pi. 13;
Kohlhaussen 1968, 155, 159, no. 244; Hernmarck
1977, in, fig. 160; Fritz 1982, 307, no. 870,
fig. 8yo; Loomans 1985

Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Mounted by an anonymous silversmith from
Nuremberg around 1480, this dolium has been
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

127

11

10

Nuremberg craftsman
OSTRICH EGG JUG
c. 1300-1350
ostrich egg and silver gilt
height 33 (13)
references: Rossacher 1962, 6-7, no. 6, fig. 8;
Rossacher 1966,126, no. 26; Kohlhaussen 1968, 154,
no. 234, f i g . 252; Meiss 1976, f i g . 88; Lightbown
1978, 59; Wagner 1985, 36, /ig. 4; Koreny 1988,
38-39, no. 5
Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
This jug comes from the famous Silberkammer,
the treasury of the prince-archbishops of Salzburg; it is recorded in an inventory of 1612 as a
small jug made of an ostrich egg mounted in silver
and gilt ("Ain Kandl von einem Straussenayr mit
Silber und verguldt eingefasst"). Ostrich eggs
were still very rare objects in the fourteenth century. Raoul de Nesle, marshal of France, had one
such egg mounted in gold, as we know from an
inventory compiled after his death in 1302, while
128

CIRCA 1492

Charles v of France had three, although one of

them was broken (Lightbown 1978, 59). Ostriches
from North Africa and the Near East had been
brought to Europe in classical antiquity; Pliny the
Elder knew the animal well and provided a good
description of it. In the Middle Ages, however,
the ostrich was known mainly through literary
sources, such as bestiaries, and most images fail to
capture the characteristics of the animal. It is only
in the drawings of Giovannino de' Grassi (d. 1398)
and his workshop that we find a more accurate
rendering of the ostrich (Struthio camelus L.);
the best known among Renaissance images is perhaps a Franconian drawing made c. 1500 and until
recently attributed to Diirer (Koreny 1988, 38-39,
no. 5). In the Middle Ages and later the ostrich
egg was sometimes seen as a symbol of the
Madonna's perpetual virginity. Such associations
encouraged the mounting of ostrich eggs as religious vessels. Eggs were also hung in churches as
a symbol of the Madonna; this is why Piero della
Francesca painted an ostrich egg hanging over
the Madonna in his celebrated altarpiece, now in
the Brera, Milan (Meiss 1976, fig. 88).
J.M.M.

COCONUT CUP
c

-1475-1500

English
coconut, silver partly gilt
height 20.2 (j7/s)
references: Jackson 1911, 2:649; Wafts 1924, 28-29;
Oman 1979, 296, pi. 71; fritz 1983, 93-94, no. 27,
pi. m
The Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford
Seven coconut cups are mentioned in a 1508
inventory of the plate owned by New College,
Oxford. Two of these are still owned by the college today. The body of this cup, the earlier and
more unusual of the two, is fashioned out of a
coconut mounted in a silver oak tree. The base
represents a patch of ground enclosed by a palisade. From the "ground/' an area of plain white
silver displate, rises the trunk of an oak tree
encircled by a collar of intertwined Ds. From the
trunk, which is also the stem of the cup, spring a
dozen branches, six of which have been pruned
back, while the other six are covered in abundant

foliage; they hold the coconut and join the upper

rim. The band of Lombardic Ds linked back to
back may refer to Robert Dalton, who was admitted to New College in 1472 and left in 1485; if so
he was presumably the donor of the cup.
Coconuts (from the tree cocos nucifera L.) are
found in most tropical areas. During the Middle
Ages, when they were known as Indian nuts (noix
d'Indes), they were imported from Islamic countries, but the opening of the Indian Ocean to Portuguese trade and the discovery of the Americas
gave Europeans direct access to the areas where
they grow. Diirer's diary of his trip to the Netherlands in 1520-1521 attests to the ready availability
of coconuts, which he eagerly purchased. One of
the earliest mounted coconut vessels still extant is
a reliquary made circa 1250, now in the Domkammerin Miinster, which also contains a Fatimid
rock crystal lion on its cover. Others are documented in medieval inventories; for example,
thirty such vessels are recorded between 1295 and
1371 in the papal treasury in Avignon. Coconuts
were praised for their curative values; Marco
Polo mentioned coconut milk as a panacea, while
others, like the Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta,
described the coconut as an aphrodisiac and
as a medicine for various ailments, including
"phlegm" (for the cultural history of the coconut,
see Fritz 1983, 8-28).
J.M.M.

can be removed by lifting the topaz; this allowed

the sharks' teeth to be dipped in wine or food to
test for poison, for according to legend the teeth
would sweat and change color upon contact with
toxins. The piece is first recorded in 1526, among
the possessions of the deceased Emperor Maximilian i, as a gilt table ornament with "serpents'
tongues" mounted as a tree ("ain vergulte
credenz mit viel natterzungen in gestalt wie
ain paumb").
The triangular teeth come from chondrichthyes
(Lamna, Odontaspis, etc.), which are marine fish
with cartilaginous skeletons including sharks,
rays, and skates; they were distinguished from

prehistoric times onwards for their shiny enameled

surfaces, often stained by different minerals,
which gave them a variety of hues: milk white,
yellowish-brown, bluish-gray, and green. In the
Middle Ages they were known as glossopetrae
(tongue-stones) or as serpents' tongues. The
Swiss zoologist Conrad Gesner, in 1558, was the
first to notice their resemblance to sharks' teeth
(Rudwick 1976, 30-31).
The identification with serpents' tongues could
be explained by a simple process of visual association, but there is probably also a basis in biblical
lore. Medieval sharks' teeth came mainly from
Malta, the place where Saint Paul was bitten on

12

Nuremberg craftsman
"SERPENT'S TONGUE"
TABLE ORNAMENT (Natterzungenbaum)
c. 1450

silver gilt, with fossil sharks' teeth and large topaz

height 27 (io5/s)
references: Pogatscher 1898; Kris 1932, 4, no. 7, pi.
6; Vienna 1964, 32, no. 80, pi. 43; Tescione 1965,
224-225; Kohlhaussen 1968,162163, no- 252' /*&
276; Oakley 1975, 15-21; Zammit-Maempel 1975;
Rudwick 1976, 30-31; Hannsmann and KrissRettenbeck 1977, figs. 252-257; Lightbown 1978,
29-30; Oakley 1985, 63-65; Schiedlausky 1989,
2
9-3of fig. 4
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung fur
Plastik und Kunstgewerbe
Natterzungenbaume (in French espreuves or
languiers) still summon up a vivid image of the
luxury of table decorations in the late Middle
Ages. This piece has fossilized sharks' teeth
then called "serpents' tongues" mounted as a
bouquet. The four-lobed foot a type that is also
found on Gothic chalices and monstrances is
surmounted by a knob of foliage from which the
leaves and "flowers'7 spring. Above these a large
topaz is mounted. Part of the crowning bouquet
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

129

the hand without coming to any harm by an adder

which he then threw onto the fire. The Maltese
name for sharks' tongues is indeed Ilsien San Paul
(Saint Paul's tongues), and legend has it that
because of the saint no venomous serpent is now
found on the island. The notion that the teeth
have apotropaic power is rooted in sympathetic
magic, though in the legend the idea has been
given a religious rationale (see Oakley 1975, 1521; Zammit-Maempel 1975; Oakley 1985, 63-65).
In the thirteenth century, Arnald of Villanova
wrote in his Breviarium that "certain nobles and
barons, when they eat, keep on the table the horn
or else the tongue of a serpent in a vessel on a
piece of bread, and it is said that if any poison is
set before it on the table, it at once begins to
sweat" (Lightbown 1978, 29). Chinese porcelain
and narwhal horns served a similar function on
the medieval table (cats. 16, 7).
The oldest reference to languiers is in the
inventory of goods made at the death of Odo,
count of Nevers, in 1266. Under Pope Boniface
vin in 1295 the Holy See had fifteen "branches or
trees with serpents' tongues/' In the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries they appear in many
inventories; for example, in 1318 Pope John xxn
received from Philip the Long one that was
described as "a beautiful languier of gold, covered
with rubies and emeralds and fine pearls, with six
serpents' tongues" (for the history of languiers,
see mainly Pogatscher 1898; Tescione 1965, 224225; Lightbown 1978, 29-30; Schiedlausky 1989).
Natterzungenbaiime are extremely rare today.
Only two other medieval specimens are extant,
one in the Schatzkammer des deutschen Ordens
in Vienna and another in the Griines Gewolbe
in Dresden (Kohlhaussen 1968,163, no. 253,
fig. 277). To these examples, which have been
preserved intact, can be added a few individually
mounted teeth which, if not originally hanging
on a languier, must have been worn as amulets
to protect against poison, plague, and epilepsy
(Hansmann and Kriss-Rettenbeck 1977,
figS. 252-257).

J.M.M.

*3
CRUET MOUNTED AS A EWER
loth century (rock crystal), ijth century (mount)
Fatimid, mount possibly Venetian
rock crystal silver gilt, and niello
height 28 (11)
references: Hahnloser 1971, 113-115 no. 125, pis.
c-ci; New York 1984, 222-227, no. 32; Berlin 1989,
544, no. 4/1, fig. 218
Tesoro di San Marco, Venice
According to the Arab scholar Biruni, who wrote
at the turn of the first millennium, rock crystal
was imported from Kashmir, Madagascar, and the
130

CIRCA 1492

Laccadive and Maldive islands, while other sources

mention North Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen, and
the Red Sea as well. Of the 170 medieval works in
rock crystal from the Islamic world that are still
preserved, by far the largest number come from
Fatimid Egypt. This is the case with the cruet now
in the Treasury of San Marco, which was mounted
as a ewer in the thirteenth century. The rock
crystal receptacle, which has lost its handle, has a
symmetrical decoration of two rams facing each
other and separated by palmettes, which fill most
of the remaining space. The style is close to that
of another crystal vase, also in the Treasury of San
Marco, which bears a Kufic inscription "Blessing
from Allah for the Imam al-Aziz billah," referring to the Fatimid caliph al-Aziz who ruled from
975 to 996. The Fatimid treasure must have been
of fabulous wealth: Various sources mention
between 18,000 and 36,000 items. It is not known
when this vase reached Venice, but it was probably one of the three pieces mentioned in an
inventory of 1325 ("Ampulletas tres de cristallo,
varnitas argento"). It was probably mounted
as a ewer in the thirteenth century, although for
decorative purposes only, as the silver spout is not
functional. The general effect of the mount has
been described as orientalizing, and it must have

been intended to harmonize stylistically with the

vase. The largest section of the neck is decorated
with foliate scrolls populated by two men fighting
dragons, while the foot of the cruet has scrolls
enriched in two cases with lions and in a third
with a dragon. Most impressive, however, are the
handle, formed of an elegant dragon, and the
spout, which ends in a dragon's head. The closest
parallels to the mount are found in French works
of the late twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries; a Venetian origin, however, is
not impossible.
J.M.M.

*4
ROCK-CRYSTAL ELEPHANT
late 15th century
Indian, Deccan Sultanate
rock crystal, with 16th-century European mounts in
gold and enamel
height 7.3 (27/s); length 9.4 (33/4J
references: Born 1936, 275, pi. IID; Lack 1970, 27,
pi. 9; Welch 1985, 132-133; Jordan 1991
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung fur
Plastik und Kunstgewerbe
This recumbent rock-crystal elephant is difficult
to date, because of its uniqueness and the fact that
rock crystal takes on no signs of age. It is clearly
Indian in style and workmanship. The carving
could only have been done by a lapidary aware of
the way Indian elephants look and move. After
studying the animal's exceptional and very
obliging pose, he abstracted it, echoing the
pleasing roundness of head and trunk in the
almost circular space between trunk and chest.
As there are no signs of the naturalism that is
characteristic of Mughal Indian style, which would
have lent the piece more individuality, suggestions
of texture, and greater accuracy of proportion, it
is almost certainly of Sultanate manufacture. The
gold and enamel mounts were added in Europe
during the sixteenth century, when the elephant
was fashioned into a saltcellar.
Although the literature on this piece suggests
that it once formed part of the famous Kunstkammer of Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol (15201595), in fact it belonged to Catherine of Austria
(1507-1578), the younger sister of Charles v, who
was queen of Portugal. Her collection of oriental
and other exotic objects was one of the largest of
the sixteenth century, next to that of Philip n of
Spain. The mount for the Elephant was commissioned in 1552 (Jordon 1991 and forthcoming
article). A splendid example of European enthusiasm for Asia during this period, the piece may
have come through Goa, which enjoyed close relations with the Deccani sultans. This plump, benevolent pachyderm bears stylistic affinities to

must have been exceedingly rare, acquired in

diplomatic gifts from oriental rulers or, in a few
instances, brought back from the East by travelers
(Whitehouse 1973, 63-78).
The Gaignieres-Fonthill vase had certainly
reached Europe by 1381, when it was set in a now
lost silver gilt and enameled mount. From various
inscriptions, from heraldic evidence, and from the
style of the mount, the ewer can be dated 1381,
the year when it was given by the Hungarian
king, Louis the Great to Charles in of AnjouSicily to celebrate the latter's accession to the
kingdom of Naples (1381). The bottle itself is
made of a hard, white qingbai (blue white, formerly known as yingqing) porcelain with a pale
bluish-green glaze and can be dated c. 1320-1340.
A drawing made for Roger de Gaignieres in 1713
represents the bottle when it was still mounted as
a ewer (Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 20070, fol.
8). Four manuscript pages bound with the drawing describe its mounting at the time, when it was
in the collection of M. de Caumartin. It had previously belonged to the dauphin and was recorded
in a royal inventory of 1689. The ewer, which
later came into the possession of William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, was sold in 1822 to John
Farquhar and resold by him a year later. When
it reappeared in the Hamilton Palace sale in 1882,
it had been stripped of its fourteenth-century
mount to become again a simple "pear-shaped
bottle"; today only the hole pierced for the spout
testifies to the European additions.
J.M.M.
later Deccani depictions of elephants, suggesting
strongly that it should be assigned to one of the
sultanates of the Deccan, perhaps to the Bahmanid
dynasty that ruled from 1345 until the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
s.c.w.
(Adapted with permission from India: Art and Culture,
published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, 1985.)

15

GAIGNIERES-FONTHILL VASE
c. 1320-1340
bluish-white glazed Yuan-dynasty porcelain
height 28.3 (nVs)
references: Mazerolle 1897; Moule and Pelliot 1938,
1:352; Pelliot 1959-1973, 2:805-812; Lane 1961;
Whitehouse 1973, 63-78; Spallanzani 1978, 83;
Lunsingh Scheurleer 1980, 4-5, figs, la, ib; Ayers
1985, 260-261
National Museum of Ireland, Dublin
In his Description of the World written in 12981299, Marco Polo provided the first substantial
account of Chinese porcelain to reach the European educated public: "And... I tell you that the

most beautiful vessels and plates of porcelain,

large and small, that one could describe are made
in great quantity... in a city which is called
Tingiu [Tongan near Quanzhou], more beautiful
than can be found in any other city. And... from
there they are carried to many places throughout
the world. And there is plenty there and a great
sale, so great that for one Venetian groat you
would actually have three bowls so beautiful that
none would know how to devise them better
(Moule and Pelliot 1938 1:352 [chap. 157]; Pelliot
1959-1973,2:805-812).
In the Islamic world, porcelain was first described
by Sulayman, an Arabian traveler of the ninth
century, and recent excavations in Siraf have
revealed that large quantities of porcelain were
reaching the Persian Gulf before 820. Rulers like
Harun al-Rashid (786-806) in Baghdad and the
Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir (1036-1094) had large
collections of Chinese porcelains. Chinese silks, as
well as other Chinese objects, had already found
their way to Europe as early as the Roman period.
The oldest reference to actual examples of porcelain in a European collection seems to occur in
1323 in the will of Queen Maria of Naples and
Sicily, but material from an archaeological excavation of the royal residence in Lucera in Puglie
provides an indication that Chinese porcelain
reached Europe before the fourteenth century.
The evidence suggests, however, that porcelain
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

1^1

6
KATZENELNBOGEN BOWL
c. 1434-1453
bowl, late iqth/early i$th century celadon ware,
probably from Longquan
mount silver gilt, partly enameled
height (with cover) 20.6 (SVs)
references: Pelliot 1959-1973, 808-809; Whitehouse
1973, 71; Spallanzani 1978, 83-84; Lunsingh
Scheurleer 1980, 9-10, f i g . 4; Ayers 1985, 262;
Carswell 1985; Kassel 1990,10-13, 215-218, no. i
Hessisches Landesmuseum, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen, Kassel

The Katzenelnbogen bowl is first mentioned in

an inventory, compiled in 1483, of the possessions
of Landgrave Heinrich m, where it is described
as a gilt cup with cover and identified as an Asian
ceramic ("Ein vergoldeter Pokal mit Deckel,
genannt die Erde von Indien"; Indian in this case
simply means Asian). In an inventory of 1594
we are told that the cup was brought back from
the orient by one of the Katzenelnbogen counts
("ein Graff von Catzenelnbogen auss Orient
Mitt sich in diese Landte brachtt").
The bowl is a typical example of Chinese
celadon ware, probably from Longquan, of the
late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. It was
probably purchased by Philipp the Elder, count
of Katzenelnbogen, during his pilgrimage to the
Holy Land from 14 July 1433 to 3 May 1434; this
would accord with the information given in the
1594 inventory. He may have bought it in Acre;
an account of his life written by an anonymous
author and later versified tells that merchants
from all over the world could be found there.
Chinese wares were relatively easy to obtain in
the Near East, for they had been exported there
for centuries (for the export of Chinese blue-andwhite porcelain to the Islamic world, see Carswell
1985). In western Europe they were still of the
utmost rarity. To set off his "Indian" treasure,
Count Philipp had it mounted by a silversmith in
a Rhenish workshop as a cup with a broad stem
and a six-lobed foot; the cover was decorated with
an enameled acorn, held by foliage, which originally (as we know from descriptions of the piece in
two inventories of 1500 and 1502) was completely
blue and surmounted by a pearl. The pearl has
now disappeared. The enameled coats of arms
have been identified as those of Philipp von
Katzenelnbogen before he became count of Dietz
in 1453.
The Gaignieres-Fonthill vase (cat. 15), the
Katzenelnbogen bowl, and another dish in Longquan celadon ware that was given by the sultan of
Egypt Qa'it Bay to Lorenzo de' Medici in 1487
(Spallanzani 1978, 85-86, pis. 21-22) are the only
Chinese ceramics known today that can be shown
132

CIRCA 1492

to have been brought to Europe before 1500. The

so-called Marco Polo Jar in the Treasury of San
Marco in Venice may well have come to Europe at
a later date (Whitehouse 1973, 71-72).
In medieval times, Chinese porcelains were
believed to offer protection from poison. This
belief is reflected, for example, in the Libellus de
notitia orbis (On Knowledge of the World) of
1402: "Noblemen eat and drink from these vessels. Porcelain is said to be efficacious against

poison, and whatever there may be inside, poison

or anything drinkable, it absorbs all the impurities, etc. of the poison and purifies it entirely"
(Pelliot 1959-1973, 808-809). Chinese ware, as
we have seen (cat. 15), was still rare in Europe
at the end of the fifteenth century. Only after
Vasco da Gama opened the new maritime route
to the Middle and the Far East in 1498 did porcelain become more common in European
countries.
J.M.M.

*7 '
DALMATIC
c. 1350-1400
probably Gdansk
five silk textiles, three with gilt yarns;
blue linen lining
height 124 (487/s); width with outstretched sleeves
133 ($23/8); width at hem 132 (52]
inscribed: (in rounded naskhi script) as-sultan
al- calim and as-sultan
references: Falke 1913, 2:62-63; Kendrick 1924, 67;

Mannowsky [lyjij-iyjS, 1:6, 3:15-16, no. 111, p/s.

122, 123; Nuremberg 1958, 11-12, cover

illustration; Atil 1981, 223, 228, n. 5; Wardwell
1988-1989, 100, 106-108, 127, n. 106, figs. 41-41 A;
Berlin 1989, 172-173, figs. 186-187, 569-570,
no. 4/43
EKU, Berlin; Museum fur Kunst und
Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt Lubeck

outlined with tiny crescents, rosettes, and flowers,

which frames ornate medallions inscribed "the
sultan/' It is thought to be Mamluk Egyptian or
Syrian, from around 1300-1350. Around the
neckline is an inset of red and green silk lampas,
with a white and blue pattern of paired facing
birds and palmettes, attributed to the Italian
center of Lucca in the mid-fourteenth century.
The left sleeve has a patch of Lucchese goldbrocaded red silk lampas of around 1350-1400.
The visible part of the design is a leaping leopard
in a large letter S. The blue linen of the lining
may come from near Gdansk, where the dalmatic
was presumably assembled.
Liturgical vestments were usually made in
matching sets, to be used together. At least eight
other vestments from the Marienkirche were primarily of similar striped lampasses: a cope, four
chasubles, and three other dalmatics; along with

two stoles and a maniple (Mannowsky [1931]1938, nos. 3, 30-33,112-114,132, i3za, 133, pis.
5-6, 46-49,122-125,132). The cope, two chasubles, and one other dalmatic are also now in
Lubeck (Nuremberg 1958, nos. 3,18,19, 52). The
eastern silks of this unusually large set were considered so precious that every small bit was used;
the gaps were filled with only slightly less precious Lucchese silks. Such a costly set was probably for only the most solemn occasions the
missa solemnis at consecrations, for instance
when there might be more celebrants than for
usual masses. The textiles indicate that the dalmatic was made around 1350-1400. Gdansk was
then ruled by the Teutonic Knights, who had
close ties with the court of Emperor Charles iv
in Prague (r. 1346-1378), and hence to Venice,
a major center for trade with the Mamluks
(Mannowsky [i93i]-i938,1:6).
C.A.

The dalmatic is one of the three main outer garments used for Roman Catholic rites since the
Middle Ages, along with the chasuble, which
shrank over the years from a bell shape to a
double-shield shape, and the large, half-circle
cope. The dalmatic, which has sleeves but is open
down the sides, derives in shape and name from
an ancient garment of Dalmatia, now northwest
Yugoslavia, which became a mark of important
personages during the late Roman Empire.
This dalmatic is one of the hundreds of rich
vestments originally used in the Marienkirche
(Church of Mary) in Gdansk. The front and back
are of a magnificent silk and gold lampas, in which
dark blue, salmon, and light green stripes are separated by narrower white ones with salmon and
beige outlines. On alternate wide stripes are
palmettes, or the inscription "the sultan, the
wise/' The narrow stripes show crescents with a
dot at the center, separating dotted florettes. The
sleeves are of a slightly different lampas, with
wide stripes of the same colors, but outlined in
salmon and dark blue, and white and light blue
narrow stripes. The wide stripes show alternately
the same inscription, or palmettes and ovals of
leaves, with parrots and birds in between. In the
narrow stripes, the crescents with the dot separate
running dogs, deer, and lions. The type of these
two textiles, dated around 1270-1350, has sometimes been identified as Chinese, for the Mamluk
market (Kendrick 1924, 67), but more often either
Syrian or Egyptian or specifically Syrian. Most
recently it has also been assigned on technical
grounds to Khorasan, then a part of the vast
Mongol Empire, and now northeast Iran. Various
regions of the Mongol Empire are believed to have
created such striped, inscribed silks for sale to
Mamluk Egypt and Mesopotamia. The triangular
insets down the sides of the dalmatic are of a red
and green silk lampas showing an ogival trellis
EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

133

THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT

It is easy to overstate the extent to which the
Renaissance in Europe brought about a revolution in man's outlook on the world. In numerous ways medieval concepts continued to
influence many of the principal figures of our
period, Columbus among them. Their view of
history was not the secularized one that prevails today. They believed fervently in the
coming end of historical time as foretold in the
Book of Revelation, in a bitter struggle with the
forces of evil and the establishment of God's
kingdom on earth. They keenly felt the call of
the Biblical injunction to effect the final conversion of all the world's races to Christianity.

Nowhere are these apocalyptic sentiments

better reflected than in the art of northern
Europe. There the circumstances that were to
climax in the Reformation led to a heightened
sense of religious anxiety. Thus Albrecht Durer,
though one of the major humanistic artists of
the age, also published a famous series of
woodcuts of the Apocalypse and, in a highly
personal drawing, recorded his fearful dream of
the destruction of the world. Perhaps the most
gripping of all renderings of the struggle
between the forces of good and evil occurs in
Hieronymus Bosch's depictions of the Temptation of Saint Anthony.

l8

Hieronymus Bosch
c. 1450?-1516

TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY

c. 1500-1505
oil on wood
center panel 131.5 x 119 (5^/4 x 462/2), each wing
131.5 x 53 (5i2/4 x 2o5/s)
references: Cuttler 2957, 109-124; Baldass 1959,
240-241, figs. 86-98, 123-126; Cinotti 1966, no. 43,
pis. XLII-XLVII; Gibson 1973, 138-152; Snyder 1973,
28-41; Bax 1979, 1-178; Unverfehrt 1980, 309 (for
index); Gibson 1983, 105-109; Massing 1984;
Vandenbroek 1987
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon
In the twentieth century, Hieronymus Bosch is
perhaps as famous as he is misunderstood. He was
born and spent his life in 's-Hertogenbosch, the
town in Brabant from which he took his name. He
was baptized Jeroen van Aken and was both the
son and the grandson of painters. Not much is
known about his life, but there are a few references to him in archival documents, especially
those relating to the Brotherhood of Our Lady
(Li eve Vrouwe Breeders chap). It was in the chapel
of Our Lady the chapel of the brotherhood
that Hieronymous Bosch was buried, on 9
August 1516.
Many attempts have been made to unravel the
"mystery" of Bosch's art. Some interpretations
emphasize the influence of writings of the Dutch
mystics, while others turn to astrology or alchemy
to explain the artist's symbolism. A more productive approach, however, is to examine Bosch's
painting in relation to iconographic traditions of
the time and to consider the influence it had on
his immediate sixteenth-century successors.
Bosch's art becomes less perplexing when seen in
the context of contemporary religious and sociocultural conventions, especially those of popular
134

CIRCA

1492

culture (see Bax 1979 and Vandenbroek 1987).

In the case of Bosch's imagery of the temptations of Saint Anthony, the meaning was clear to
at least one sixteenth-century viewer, the critic
Felipe de Guevara. In his Commentaries on Painting (Commentarios de la pintura) of around 1560,
Guevara considered Bosch's interest in depicting
devilish creatures, noting that the artist "painted
strange figures, but he did so only because he
wanted to portray scenes of Hell, and for that subject matter it was necessary to depict devils and
imagine them in unusual compositions." A Spanish cleric, the learned Fray Jose de Sigiienza, gave
a more extensive account of the nature of Bosch's
art in his History of the Order of Saint Jerome
(Historia de la Orden de San Jeronimo), published
in 1605. Sigiienza found Bosch worthy of comment for various reasons: "first, because his great
inventiveness merits it; second, because [his
works] are commonly called... absurdities... by
people who observe little in what they look at;
and third, because... people consider them without reason as having been tainted by heresy."
Sigiienza divided Bosch's works into three groups,
which he characterized respectively as devotional
subjects, various versions of the Temptations of
Saint Anthony, and paintings of more complex
iconography, such as The Haywain or The Garden
of Earthly Delights (both Prado, Madrid).
Of all Bosch's versions of the temptations of
Saint Anthony, the Lisbon triptych is the most
extraordinary, testifying not only to the formal
and iconographic inventiveness of Hieronymus
Bosch, but also to his outstanding skill as a
painter, for the triptych has come down to us in
pristine condition. It is traditionally placed in the
first decade of the sixteenth century, probably
between 1500 and 1505 or slightly later. When the
triptych came to Portugal is unknown; it is first
recorded in the nineteenth century in the Palacio da
Ajuda (Real Palacio das Necessidades) in Lisbon.

When closed, the triptych displays on its wings

two scenes of the Passion of Christ, which are
painted in monochrome except for some brown
and bluish tones. On the left is the Capture of
Christ in Gethsemane, including in the foreground the episodes of Judas fleeing with his
money and Saint Peter cutting off the ear of Malchus. On the right-hand panel is Christ falling
under his cross, with Veronica kneeling before
him; in the foreground, amid the desolation
of Golgotha, are the two thieves confessing
their sins.
When opened, the triptych shows Saint
Anthony subjected to a wide range of devilish
delusions. On the left wing are scenes from the
saint's life described by the early Christian writer
Athanasius and found in abbreviated form in later
works, such as Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum
historiale (Mirror of History) and Jacopo da Vora-

gine's Legenda aurea (Golden Legend}. After

having been attacked by devils and left half dead
in the desert, Anthony was rescued by a friend
who took him home. When he recovered consciousness, the saint asked to be brought back to
the desert to fight the devil on his own ground. In
the painting the saint is being carried by three
companions back to his tomblike "cave," which has
been taken over by the devil; a woman, clearly a
prostitute, can be seen at the window. Up in the
air, the saint is seen enduring another tribulation,
usually described as the devil's second assault on
the hermit. The Dutch translation of the Legenda
aurea describes how "the fiends came again and
tore him with their teeth and stabbed him with
their horns and struck him with their claws. They
cast him up into the air, then they hurled him
down again, in such manner that they had almost
brought him to death/' It is more likely that Bosch

meant the aerial attack to represent a different

scene in the life of the saint, namely his moment
of ecstasy, when he saw himself struggling in the
air with his enemies. Bosch was probably familiar
with Martin Schongauer's engraving representing
this scene (see Massing 1984, 220-236), and he
must have known the text in which Anthony "felt
himself carried off in spirit... Then he also saw
loathsome and terrible beings... preventing him
from passing through," thus trying to thwart his
mystical experience. In the end, the devils had to
set the saint free. In the painting the devils lurking under the bridge are probably compiling a list
of sins supposedly committed by Anthony their
faked evidence for the accusations they make in
the aerial scene.
On the right wing of the triptych is shown
another episode of temptation, when Saint
Anthony came upon a beautiful woman bathing

naked in a stream the Devil, again, in this case

disguised as a queen. As in the left-hand panel,
the whole composition swarms with a crew of
monsters and demons who take on the most
extraordinary forms to bring the saint and the
world to damnation.
The devilish temptations become almost overwhelming in the central panel, in which the
oppressed saint kneels in front of an altar, set up
inside a broken-down structure a haven from
the torments of sin, with Christ pointing to a crucifix. All around Satan triumphs, with devils
enacting parodies of Christian practices and
beliefs. These are the fantasies inspired by the
devil in the saint's fevered mind. They are distinctly medieval fantasies, for in the psychological
theory of the period, dreams suppress the rational
powers that control both the virtus imaginativa
(the power of imagination) and the images stored

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

135

in the imaginatio (imagination). These images

then take rational forms and are submitted to the
sensus communis (common sense), which accepts
them as real. Fray Jose de Sigiienza was clearly
thinking of some such process when he discussed
the function of the temptations of Saint Anthony
as painted by Bosch: "In one place one observes
this Saint, the prince of hermits, with his serene,
devout, contemplative face, his soul calm and full
of peace; elsewhere he is surrounded by the endless fantasies and monsters that the archfiend
creates in order to confuse, worry and disturb that
pious soul and his steadfast love. For this purpose
Bosch conjures up animals, wild chimeras, monsters, conflagrations, images of death, screams,
threats, vipers, lions, dragons, and horrible birds
of so many kinds that one must admire him for
his ability to give shape to so many ideas. And all
this he did in order to prove that a soul that is
supported by the grace of God and elevated by His
hand to a like way of life cannot at all be dislodged
or diverted from its goal even though, in the
imagination and to the outer and inner eye, the
devil depicts that which cannot excite laughter or
vain delight or anger or other inordinate passions." Moreover, Sigiienza appears to have considered Bosch's message especially relevant to
him: "He made variations on this theme so many
times and with such invention that it arouses
admiration in me that he could find so much to
deal with, and it makes me stop to consider my
own misery and weakness and how far I am from
that perfection when I become upset and lose my
composure because of unimportant trifles, as
when I lose my solitude, my silence, my shelter,
and even my patience. And all the ingenuity of
the devil and hell could accomplish so little in
deceiving this saint that I feel the Lord is just as
ready to help me as him, if I would only have the
courage to go out and do battle/' (For the various
translations from Spanish, see Snyder 1973, especially pages 28-29 and 34~37-) Viewers such as
Felipe de Guevara, Ambrosio de Morales, and
Sigiienza would certainly have understood many
of the details that Bosch included for example,
the burning houses in the background that refer
to the ignis sacer or Saint Anthony's fire, an illness (ergotism) thought to be propagated by the
devil and cured by the saint; both the desiccated
foot and the cup of wine held by the woman next
to the saint allude to this disease. They would also
have recognized that the artist's general intention
was moral, since Bosch illustrated in his work the
devil's role in disseminating various vices and
especially the Deadly Sins.
J.M.M.

136

CIRCA 1492

PORTUGAL AND THE SEA ROUTE SOUTH

The Age of Exploration began in Europe with
Portugal's voyages down the African coast in
the 14305. In the century that followed, the
Portuguese revolutionized navigation. They
sailed as far west as Brazil and as far east as
the Indian Ocean, which Vasco da Gama
opened to European commerce in 1498. The
small kingdom quickly developed into a major
world power; in 1494 Portugal presumed to

19

Nuno Gon^alves

Portuguese, active c. 1450-1491

PANEL OF THE INFANTE (FROM THE

ALTARPIECE OF THE VENERATION OF
SAINT VINCENT)
1471-1481

oil on oak panel

220 X 124 (86 5/8 X 4#3/4J

references: Vasconcelos 1895; Figueiredo 1910;

Saraiva 1925; Cortesdo 1925; Motta Alves 1936;
Jirmounsky 1940; Huyghe 1949; Lambert 1951;
Santos 1955; Gusmdo 1956; Belard da Fonseca
1957-1967; Gusmdo 1957; Botelho 1957; Vieira
Santos 1959; Franga 1960; Sterling 1968; Cortesdo
1971; Markl and Pereira 1986; Freitas and
Gongalves 1987; Osorio de Castro 1988; Markl 1988
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon
The polemic that has surrounded the celebrated
altarpiece to which this panel belongs could be
said to approach, in its intensity, the controversies
that have long enveloped Leonardo's Mona Lisa. It
has led to the publication of literally hundreds of
books and articles, to violent fights, and even to
one suicide. When the panels were discovered in
1882, at the monastery of S. Vicente de Fora in
Lisbon, they were being used as scaffolding by
workmen. Their recovery brought about one of
the most complex debates in all of Portuguese art.
Sixty portraits confront us in the altarpiece,
masks of the dramatis personae in a spectacle,
calling upon us to interpret the action. The closed
composition recalls Italian narrative frescoes of
the Quattrocento. In the background are a series
of faces, like the chorus in a tragedy. In the foreground the principal figures are singled out, in an
exaggerated way, to emphasize their importance
as protagonists. The strength of the composition
stems from its unique combination of the religious and the worldly. It attests to a pivotal
moment in the transition between sacred and
secular, a time of great uncertainty. It represents
the final moments of a world order defined by
theology, which governs the iconic and architectonic structure of the work, but it also affirms secular references and a structure that is devoid of

divide up the entire non-Christian world with

Spain.
Portuguese artistic monuments of this
periodwhether produced in Portugal or commissioned abroad, in the Low Countries or
Italy reveal the deep religious faith that lay
behind its expansionist foreign policy, as well as
pride in the country's remarkable political and
economic success.

sacred character. In fact, following the Council of

Trent, the paintings were taken out of use because
of what was judged to be the excessive number of
laymen represented (Markl 1988).
In the panel displayed here, facing the figure of
Saint Vincent, at the observer's right, is the benefactor Dom Afonso v, shown on his knees.
While the painting is influenced by religious
themes, the presence of the court and lay figures
shows the intention of communicating on a historical level, as well as of creating a true collective
portrait of the age. While the votive intent of the
composition is clear, there is also a secondary
meaning, the king's loving dedication to his first
wife. Though she had died in 1455, he had her
represented in the panel (Dom Afonso v's
mottoJAMAYS [never] inscribed in the Pastrana
tapestries [see cat. 20], stresses his intention
never to forget her). This emphasis on family
harmony is directed to the young Prince Dom
Joao (later King Dom Joao n) seen at the right as
a delicate adolescent, his restrained seriousness
characteristic of images of that period
a message made all the more important by the
tragic struggles that had taken place during the
regency, while Dom Afonso was a minor, which in
1446 cost the life of his uncle and father-in-law,
the Infante Dom Pedro.
The altarpiece also celebrates the Discoveries,
the project which galvanized the efforts of the
entire nation, symbolized by the figure of the
Infante Dom Henrique (Prince Henry the Navigator), seen in sober garb behind the prince at the
right. Dona Isabel, the daughter of Dom Joao i,
appears at the left in her widow's garb as a Franciscan nun or as a member of the order of Santa
Clara. She focuses attention on the historic role
of the House of Avis in the pursuit of navigation
and conquest and on its international policies,
which led to her marriage to Philip the Good of
Burgundy.
The altarpiece consists of five other panels in
addition to the Panel of the Infante: the Panel of
the Friars, the Panel of the Relic, the Panel of the
Archbishop, the Panel of Sailors and Fisherman,
and the Panel of the Noblemen. The first two,
though each half the width (61 cm.) of the Panel
of the Infante, are related to it. The friars, in

white robes, are from the monastery of San

Vicente da Fora (or, according to some scholars, of
Alcobac.a), which was closely associated with the
campaigns in Arzila. The kneeling figure is Nuno
Alvares de Aguiar, the prior from 1464 to 1490,
who accompanied Dom Afonso v's army during
the occupation of Tangiers. There, on 20 August
1471, he celebrated a thanksgiving mass in a large
mosque that had been transformed into a Christian chapel and was designated bishop of Tangiers.
The Panel of the Relic shows the fragment of a
skull, part of the remains of Saint Vincent,
preserved in the Cathedral of Lisbon. The coffin
shown in the upper part of the panel is thought to
be a reference to a knight, Dom Henry, a crusader
against the Moors who perished in the siege of
Lisbon in 1147. He miraculously appeared and
healed two of his friends, and his relics were venerated by a growing number of pilgrims. Others
believe that the casket represents the one in which
the relics of Saint Vincent were transported, while
others think that it is meant to be the casket in
which the remains of Dom Fernando were found.
The figure holding the Hebrew Bible is Isaac
Abrabanel, whose significance is discussed below.
The Panel of the Archbishop (called by some
scholars the Panel of the Condestdveis to indicate
its relationship to the Panel of the Infante [also
known as the Panel of the King]), shows Saint
Vincent holding a staff, the symbol of military
action, flanked on the left by the kneeling figure
of Dom Fernando, brother of Dom Afonso v and
strategist of the expedition to Arzila, who died
days before the battle. On the right is the kneeling figure of Dom Henrique de Menezes, first
count of Valency and the official bearer of the
royal flag, who took Dom Fernando's place. To the
rear is Dom Fernando de Menezes, who was
appointed governor of the conquered city of
Arzila because of his bravery. Dom Joao, the
twenty-three-year-old son of Dom Fernando, is
shown next to his father, in a visual parallel to the
representation of Dom Afonso v and his son Dom
Joao on the Panel of the Infante. The imposing
ecclesiastical figure who appears at the upper left
of this panel is Dom Jorge da Costa, archbishop of
Lisbon from 1464 to 1500. He is flanked by
canons of the cathedral and by the archdeacon,
who holds the bishop's crozier. It is Dom Jorge da
Costa, later to become Cardinal Alpedrinha, who
is generally credited with the program for the
polyptych (R. da Cunha 1642). At the upper right,
the figure with a book may be the chronicler
Gomes Eanes de Azurara.
The sailors and fishermen who appear in the
fifth panel are ordinary people who have become
actors in this drama. Their significance is historical as well as religious; their brotherhood was
under the protection of the Holy Spirit, and they
played a key role in furnishing the transportation
that was essential to the Portuguese success at
Arzila. The Panel of the Noblemen is usually
thought of as homage to the noble house of BraE U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

137

ganga. The first duke, Dom Afonso (1385-1461),

illegitimate brother of the Infante Dom Henrique,
is the figure in the foreground, singled out for his
role in defending the king's party in the crisis that
led to the Battle of Alfarrobeira and for the part he
played in the North African campaigns. In the
background, to the right, is the second duke, Dom
Fernando (1403-1483), who served as regent
during the absence of Dom Afonso v in the African campaign. To the left is the third duke of Braganc,a, Dom Fernando (1430-1483), who served in
the assault on Arzila, together with Dom Joao, his
brother, the marquis of Montemor. The bearded,
hirsute young man may be meant to represent
Mohammed, son of the Sheikh of Arzila, who was
kept in the custody of the court in Lisbon for two
years following the battle.
The Portuguese cult of the martyr Saint Vincent is closely related to the drive for national
independence and the Reconquest of Portugal
from the Moors, symbolized by the victory of
Dom Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal,
in Lisbon in 1147. Above the grave of those who
perished in that bloody battle, the King erected a
Romanesque temple, dedicated to the Virgin as
well as to Saint Vincent. Shortly before his death
Dom Joao i arranged for the construction of the
presbytery and the altar of Saint Vincent (1433).
We know that in 1434 Dom Duarte donated six
urns of oil for the lamps of the altar of Saint Vincent at the Cathedral of Lisbon, where the saint's
remains were deposited soon after their arrival in
the city in 1173. The Infante Dom Fernando, held
prisoner in Fez, in 1437, left valuable religious
works to the memory and honor of Saint Vincent,
who became the patron of the royal house, of the
city of Lisbon, and of the navigators.
Documents dating from 1451 (ANTT, Chancelaria do Rei D. Afonso v, Book 11, fl. 139, cited in
Sousa Viterbo, 1899) describe the campaign to
construct a chapel dedicated to Saint Vincent,
under the direction of the master-architect Joao
Afonso, who is described as "master of works of
that chapel of the blessed/' In the slightly earlier
Niccolini Chapel in the Vatican Pope Eugenius iv
commissioned an ensemble of frescoes in honor of
the martyrs saints Lawrence and Stephen, the
only deacons other than Vincent to be canonized,
may have encouraged Dom Afonso's project. A
document of 1469 indicates that Dom Afonso v
offered "5650 reals to the cathedral chapter as
alms for the altarpiece of the martyr Saint Vincent
being made there/'
The Retrato dos Reis q Estaem Lisboa, a codex
of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century
in the Biblioteca Nacional of Rio de Janeiro, states
that the figure of Saint Vincent has the features of
the son of Dom Joao n, Prince Dom Afonso, who
died tragically in 1491, suggesting that the face of
the saint was repainted to commemorate the loss
of the heir to the throne. This change further
complicates the issues of dating and attributing
the altarpiece. These historical sources were the
138

CIRCA 1492

basis for assuming that Dom Afonso v commissioned the altarpiece for the chapel of Saint Vincent. It is thought that its execution took some
time and that the historical events of the conquest
of Arzila and Tangiers in 1471 determined its conceptual and symbolic framework.
We know that on 12 April 1471 Nuno Gongalves, to whom the altarpiece is attributed, was
appointed official painter of the city, replacing
Joao Eanes. One of the most important references
to him, and a basis for the attribution, is a quotation from Francisco de Hollanda's Da Pintura
Antiga of 1548: 'And this was Nuno Conceives,
the painter of King Dom Afonso, who painted the
altar of Saint Vincent in the Cathedral of Lisbon"
(Book i, ch. xi).
We know little about Nuno Conceives. There is
no stylistic tradition to support the attribution of
the panels to him, nor do we know of any followers. We know nothing of his training. The
influence of Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) is often
proposed. While it is thought certain that van
Eyck visited Lisbon in 1428-1429 to paint a portrait of the future wife of Philip the Good, this
date is too early for him to have exerted any direct
influence on Gongalves, who may not even have
been born yet. The other Early Netherlandish
master who is often mentioned is Rogier van der
Weyden (c. 1400-1464). Conceives must have
known of van der Weyden, as he was painter to
the court of Burgundy, the home of Dona Isabel,
who is represented in the Saint Vincent altarpiece.
Her portrait appeared in a triptych which until the
early nineteenth century was preserved in the
monastery at Batalha.
Ultimately, one can speak only of the general
inspiration of Flemish art, which was of broad
influence in Portugal at this time. The same can
be said about the influence of Catalan painting,
whose principal exponent, Bartolome Bermejo
(1430-1498), shares stylistic features with Flemish art. Francisco de Hollanda also spoke of Gongalves' innovative technique "for in a very
primitive time he wanted in some way to imitate
the care and description of the ancient and Italian
painters" a statement which has caused scholars
to look to the paintings of Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio,
and Luca Signorelli (the latter above all in his anatomical modeling of figures see, for example, his
Christ at the Column [Museu Nacional de Arte
Antiga, Lisbon]).
There is an especially fascinating correlation
between the text of the book that Saint Vincent
holds open to the observer in the Panel of the
Infante and the Hebrew Bible which Isaac Abrabanel holds in the Panel of the Relic. The intention is evidently to convey a message through
both the New and Old Testaments. The passage in
Saint Vincent's Bible is chapter xiv, verses 30 and
31, of the Gospel according to Saint John: "Hereafter I will not talk much with you; for the prince
of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.
But that the world may know that I love the

Father; and as the Father gave me commandment,

even so I do/' In the context of the New Testament, Christ, anticipating his Ascension, is
encouraging the apostles in their coming struggle
with the devil. The text is read in the mass for
Pentecost, where it refers to the propagation of
the faith by the apostles after the Holy Spirit has
descended upon them. In the symbolic context of
the altarpiece this Biblical quotation must refer to
the Portuguese struggle with the Infidel, the
forces arrayed against Christianity (Cortesao
1978).
Isaac Abrabanel (1436-1508), a powerful Jewish
banker and the administrator of Dom Fernando's
household, became the financial adviser to Dom
Afonso v in 1472. In later years he helped finance
the campaigns in Castile. He was also an important Biblical scholar. He holds his Hebrew Bible
open to a passage from Isaiah 66:18-19, a text
which medieval theologians had compared to passages in St. John's Gospel, seeing in it a prefiguration of the evangelical mission of the Apostles.
Abrabanel thus appears as the bearer of Isaiah's
prophecy, attesting to the mission of the Apostles
and, by extension, to the crusade of Portugal and
its soldiers, the new apostles, who have taken on
the mission of combating the Infidel (Sterling
1971)J.T.
2O

Attributed to the workshop of

Pasquier Grenier
Tournai, active until 1493

TAKING OF TANGIERS
c. 1471-1475

365 x 1050 (i4}5/8 x 4i}3/s)

tapestry: wool and silk
references: Faria Y Sousa 1680; Raczynski 1846;
Guiffray 1886; Viterbo 1920; Merchante 1923;
Lopes 1925; Santos 1925; Figueiredo 1926; Dornelas
1926; Santos 1927; Mendonga 2949; Thompson
1980
Museo Parroquial de Pastrana
The splendid set of four Tournai tapestries of
which this forms a part, preserved today in the
Collegiate Church of Pastrana in Spain, celebrates
an important military triumph in the Portuguese
conquest of Morocco.
In 1471 Dom Afonso v (1432-1481) added a
new epithet to the title he had inherited, one that
was intended to glorify his expansionist foreign
policy: Rei de Portugal e dos Algarves daquem e
dalem mar em Africa ("King of Portugal and of
the Algarves and on this side of, and beyond the
seas in, Africa"). To underscore the ten years he
spent in conquering Morocco, the Portuguese
later dubbed him o Africano ("the African"),
clearly indicating their approval of his own
characterization.
The historical context of the Moroccan campaign was the conflict between Christianity and
Detail, cat. 20

Islam in the Mediterranean world at mid-century.

In 1457 Pope Calixtus n appealed to the princes of
Christianity to unite in a crusade against the Infidel, a call that was in reaction to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, regarded by
the Catholic world as a catastrophe. In 1456, Dom
Afonso v had ordered that the income of the
Church in Portugal be used for the crusade
"which we now undertake to serve God and
defend the Holy Church against the renegade
Turks" (Monumenta Henricina, vol. xm). In
1457, in the midst of preparations for the Pope's
crusade, the first gold cruzados emerged from the
Casa da Moeda (Mint). Their production reflected
the considerable quantities of gold that the Portuguese obtained from south of the Sahara through
Ceuta and especially via their trading post at
Arguim.
Portuguese support for this crusade did not go
unrewarded. The Papal Bull promulgated by
Nicholas v on 8 January 1455 legitimized the
occupation of lands and the struggle against enemies of the faith, an undertaking regarded as
serving the interests of God and of the Christian
religion. A Bull of Pope Calixtus in of 13 March
1456 reiterated this pronouncement and granted
to the Order of Christ, the special Portuguese
order that had been founded in 1319 to fight the
Muslims, spiritual jurisdiction over all territories
discovered at present and in the future, "from
Cape Bojador and Cape Nao, along the coast of
Guinea and beyond to the Indies."
After the Portuguese victory in 1458, which led
to the annexion of the Moroccan town of AlcacerCeguer, the failure of the expedition to Tangier in
1463 persuaded Dom Afonso v to undertake a
new Moroccan campaign. His military advisers
140

CIRCA 1492

determined that for strategic and commercial reasons, the most important objective on the Atlantic
coast was the city of Arzila. It ultimately fell to
Dom Afonso's troops in 1471.
The so-called Taking of Arzila tapestries depict
the fierce battle in a format that reflects the great
mythological narratives of classical antiquity. The
intent was to glorify Portugal's ambitions in
northern Africa and to celebrate its national
achievements. The tapestries are thought to have
been commissioned from the workshop of Pasquier Grenier in Tournai soon after the battle and
to have been based on drawings made on the
scene, as the accuracy of detail in the costumes
and armor would suggest. This lifelikeness
extends to the extraordinary gallery of portraits
presented in the compositions. The drawings have
been attributed to Nuno Gongalves on the basis of
similarities between the figures of Dom Afonso v
and Prince Dom Joao in the tapestries with the
corresponding figures in the Panel of the Infante
from the Saint Vincent altarpiece (cat. 19).
The Taking of Arzila is recounted in three tapestries narrating the Disembarkation, the Siege,
and the Taking of Arzila. The tapestry exhibited
here celebrates the Taking of Tangiers immediately following the fall of Arzila. The king himself decided to attack this Moroccan town after
learning that the inhabitants had been frightened
by the fate of Arzila. A small expedition led by
Dom Joao, son of the second duke of Braganga and
later marquis of Montemor, took the city without
encountering any resistance.
The tapestry reads like a triptych, from right to
left: the flight of the Moors; the vacant city; and
the arrival of the Portuguese. At the right the
population of the city, in a compact group, is

shown fleeing the arrival of the Portuguese

troops. A woman in the foreground leads one
child by the hand, holding a second on her back
and a third on her arm. The tapestry captures the
exotic style of the Moorish garments and their
colors.
At the center of the composition Tangiers is
depicted with such accuracy that it can easily be
compared to the rendition in the engraved view of
the city in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg
Braun (1541-1622). Despite the schematization
the essential features of the Muslim town emerge
clearly, including the monumental mosque with
its various towers and minarets.
To the left the Portuguese army approaches the
town's main gate, led by a standard-bearer dressed
in a magnificent blue doublet, carrying a leather
shield on his back and holding a red and yellow
standard. Dom Joao, Constable of Portugal since
1463, stands out in his splendid garments, with
plumed helmet, damascened steel armor and
pointed boots a la poulaine, riding a richly harnessed white horse with a red and gold brocade
saddlecloth.
It is not known for certain how the tapestries
made their way to Pastrana. A variety of theories
have been proposed. One suggestion is that they
were offered by Philip n to Rui Gomes da Silva
(1517-1573) at the time of the union of the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. Because of his influence on Philip n, Gomes da Silva was known
popularly as Rei (King) Gomes; he was later
Prince of Eboli and first duke of Pastrana. (He was
descended from Dom Joao da Silva, Prince Dom
Joao's camareiro-mor (steward), a circumstance
that could account for the gift of the tapestries;
moreover, he is portrayed with the coat-of-arms

of the Silva family (a lion rampant) on one of the

tapestries of the Arzila series. Another suggestion
is that the tapestries were presented to the second
marquis of Santillana, later first duke of the
Infantado, by Dom Afonso v himself, at the time
he claimed the throne of Castile (1474-1479).
According to this explanation, the tapestries later
passed by inheritance, to Dona Catarina de Mendonga e Sandoval who gave them to her husband,
the fourth duke of Pastrana, at the time of their
marriage in 1630. It is also sometimes thought
that the Mendoza family, who supported the
troops of Ferdinand and Isabella during this struggle over the Spanish succession, acquired the tapestries as a result of the victory over Dom Afonso
at Toro in 1476. Yet another proposal is that Dom
Joao ii gave the tapestries, as a reward for important services rendered to the Portuguese crown, to
Cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendonga, brother of
the second marquis of Santillana, who accompanied the Infanta Dona Isabel to Portugal for her
betrothal to Prince Dom Afonso in 1490.
Faria Y Sousa unmistakably described the tapestries in his Epitome de la Historias Portuguesas
(1628) after seeing them in the palace of the dukes
of the Infantado in Guadalajara. Indeed, we know
that in 1664 they were donated to the Colegiata at
Pastrana by a nephew of Don Frei Pedro Gonzalez
do Mendoza, archbishop of Granada, Zaragoza and
Sigiienza (1564-1639) and son of Don Diego da
Silva y Mendoza (d. 1630).
J.T.

21

SALVER DEPICTING A BATTLE

FROM THE TROJAN WAR
end of i$th century
Portuguese
silver-gilt, engraved and repousse
diameter 30 fn3/4J
references: Sousa 1739, 2:448; Braga 1870;
Vasconcelos 1951; Couto and Gongalves 1960; Oman
1968; Smith 1968; Santos and Quilho 1974
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The scene in deep repousse work on this salver
depicts a battle from the Trojan war, set at the
entrance to the city of Troy. The two knights in
combat above the upper part of the coat-of-arms
are identified in engraved inscriptions as the
Trojan commander Hector on the left and the legendary Greek hero Achilles on the right. The
story of the siege and attack of Troy, as narrated
by Homer and Virgil, was a popular theme in
classical antiquity as well as in medieval novels
and Renaissance and Baroque decorative art. It
was a popular subject for tapestries, as well. The
city and fortifications ^depicted on the salver
resemble those of Arzila, as depicted in the series
of tapestries in Pastrana (see cat. 20). Other similarities to scenes on tapestries are the ships' riggingnote the ornament of the sails and the

crows' nests. The salver also recalls the great

silver-gilt pieces of the Manueline period in the
Palacio Nacional de Ajuda, both in the mythological narrative and in the style of the figural
scenes.
The dowry that the Infanta Dona Beatriz of
Portugal (1504-1538) took to Nice in 1521 at the
time of her wedding to Charles in of Savoy (the
Good) included many pieces of jewelry and gold
work, including "four large silver cups gilded
inside and outside and with relief work on the
base and edges, that is, one of the Story of Troy,
which has a city, a horseman and a tent" (A. Caetano de Sousa, Provas, 2:448). This description
corresponds to various depictions of the Trojan
War from this period and to the scene on the
salver, though the work's provenance cannot be
traced that far back. The central medallion on the
salver was engraved in the seventeenth century
with the coat of arms of the Pintos da Cunha family. In 1871, it was sold by Dr. Henrique Nunes
Teixeira of Porto, to Francis Cook, a London
businessman and investor with Portuguese con nections. In 1863-1865, Cook had commissioned
the architect James Knowles, Jr. to design a neoarabic revival palace in Sintra. The salver was
subsequently acquired in 1955 by W. L. Hildburgh,
an American resident of London, who left it to the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
J.T.

22

Attributed to Joao Afonso

Portuguese, active 1402-1443

SAINT MICHAEL
limestone, with polychromy
79 til1/*)
references: Humbert 1913; Santos 1948; Muller
1966; Bazin 1968; Quarre 1978; Almeida 1983;
Andrade 1983
private collection
If we follow the suggestions of Reinaldo dos
Santos, this sculpture of Saint Michael should be
attributed to the master Joao Afonso. Other works
related to this piece are the sculpture from the
collection of Ernesto Vilhena, now in the Museu
Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon; a very similar
statue in the church of Golega; and the sculptures
that make up the altarpiece of the Corpo de Deus
of 1443, now in the Museu Machado de Castro at
Coimbra. All of these works have features in
common, such as the stylized hairdos, encircled
by an interwoven wreath ornamented with
rosettes, and the garments with angular patterns
of folds, decorated with geometrically shaped
brooches (another recurrent element).
The ultimate iconographic prototype of this
image is the famous Ange au Sourire of the west
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

141

portal of Reims Cathedral, the high point of the

attempt in Gothic sculpture to capture human
expression in the representation of the divine.
This led to the creation of hybrid sacred and profane examples, whose elegance appeals to an
earthly taste, without emphasizing the religious
dimension. In the case of Saint Michael, the
sacred element is conveyed by the figure's spiritual restraint and by the very size of the wings,
which are appropriate for this Biblical being.
Another source of inspiration was small-scale
French Gothic sculpture, works in ivory which
were produced mostly for private devotion and
which often depicted the Virgin and Child. They
contributed their best-known characteristic, an
effect of elegance. The third influence on this
work came from Burgundian art. Burgundy had
emerged in the fifteenth century as one of the
most important commercial and cultural centers
of Europe. It was there that the "International
Style'' gained momentum, with nuances that were
different from the style prevailing in France. The
marriage of the Infanta Dona Isabel, daughter of
Dom Joao i, to Philip the Good of Burgundy in
1428 strengthened the ties between Portugal and
Burgundy, leading to increased artistic influence.
142

CIRCA 1492

Sculpture produced under Burgundian inspiration

is distinguished by a certain archaic aspect, with
features such as accentuated drapery folds, delicate mouths, and melancholy expressions. In
Saint Michael, the schematic anatomical rendering of the figure's hands creates an incongruous
effect, almost of coarseness, which is accentuated
by the marked rigidity of the shield with its
heraldic cross.
The devotion to the archangel Saint Michael
(described in the Apocalypse of Saint John xn,
7-10 as the chief of the celestial militia arrayed
against satan) has always been great in Portugal.
According to tradition, Dom Afonso Henriques,
the first king of Portugal, was baptized in the
chapel of Saint Michael in the castle of Guimaraes.
He later dedicated to Saint Michael the private
chapel of the royal palace in Coimbra, as well as
other chapels, such as those in the monastery of
Santa Cruz de Coimbra, in the fortress at Santarem, and in the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria
de Alcoba^a. When Dom Dinis began to spend
more time in Lisbon and built his residence in the
castle, he, too, erected a chapel (1299) dedicated
to Saint Michael, like the one in the palace of
Coimbra.
Dom Pedro's father, the infante Dom Pedro
known as das Sete Partides because of his cosmopolitan manner and extensive knowledge, adopted
as his emblem a pair of scales to which he added
the motto DESIR (desire). One can discern a duality of purpose in this selection, on the one hand
associated with ethical and proper conduct, and on
the other with the scale, the symbol of justice,
which is also the symbol of Saint Michael. The
Infante Dom Pedro dedicated his altar in the
Chapel of the Founder at the monastery of Batalha
to Saint Michael. Dom Manuel i was also thinking
of the archangel's patronage when he asked Pope
Leo x to authenticate the feast of the Guardian
Angel of the Kingdom, celebrated on the third
Sunday of July.
J.T.

23

RELIQUARY CHEST
Portuguese
c. 1460
silver-gilt, engraved and repousse
38 x 15 x 29 (14 7/s x 5 7/s x n3/s)
inscribed on the ledges of the cover: HESTA ARCA
MANDOV FAZER HO CLARO E MVI NOBRE DOM PEDRO
REGEDOR DO MESTRADO D. AVIS FILHO P'.MOGENITO DO
IF ANTE DON P. DE CLARA MEMORIA REJENTE QVE FOI
NOVE ANOS DESTE REINO E FOI FEITA PERA OS OSSOS
DOS BENAVENTURADOS PEDRO E PAVLO APLLOS E PERA
OUTRAS RELIQAS PRECIOSAS E PERA HO LENHO DO
SENHOR (THIS CHEST WAS MADE AT THE BEHEST OF THE
ENLIGHTENED AND VERY NOBLE MAN DOM PEDRO

ADMINISTRATOR

OF THE MASTER MILITARY ORDER OF

AVIS FIRST-BORN SON OF THE INFANTE DOM PEDRO OF

BRILLIANT MEMORY WHO WAS FOR NINE YEARS REGENT
OF THIS REIGN AND WAS MADE FOR THE BONES OF THE
BLESSED PETER AND PAUL APOSTLES AND FOR OTHER
PRECIOUS RELICS AND FOR THE RELIC OF THE LORD'S
CROSS)

marks: caravel (assayer's mark of the city of Lisbon,

Victoria and Albert no. 2535): "IM" (unidentified,
goldsmith, Victoria and Albert no. 2/33AJ; "i"
(unidentified, appraiser, Victoria and Albert no.
27063)
references: Estago 1625; Roiz 1631; Keil 1938; Rego
1730; Martinez 1940, 1942; Chico 1948; Santos and
Quilho 1953; Couto and Gongahes 1960; Ferro and
Avelar 1983; Marques 1987
Church of Nossa Senhora da Ouradaf Aviz
While the shape of this object, as well as its lock,
which is made up of two latches, indicate that it is
a reliquary, its models are those cases that are
miniature versions of gothic cathedrals. It resembles those architectonic reliquaries, a vestige of
which remains in the border of battlements surrounding the top part of the cover. A crucifix
originally was at the center of the cover, but it was
removed in the seventeenth century and replaced
by the rocky coping from which a skull emerges.
The need to explain the contents of the reliquary
and the teratological obsession of baroque culture
led to the replacement of the crucifix. Crucifixes
often appear atop thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury enameled reliquaries from Limoges,
which were very popular in Portugal. It is likely
that they served as a source of inspiration for
Portuguese artists.
This piece is described succinctly by Jorge Roiz
in his Regra da Cavalaria e Ordem Militar de S.
Bento de Avis (Rules of the Knighthood and Military Order of Saint Benedict of Avis, printed in
Lisbon in 1631) as "a box of gilt silver" for keeping "the most Sacred Relic, which is in the convent of the Holy Rood of Christ, and the bones of
Saints Peter and Paul." The inscription on the
ledges of the cover confirms this function. The
sides of the coffer are decorated elaborately with
small rosettes, reminiscent of the ornamentation
of the Limoges reliquaries. On the front of the
reliquary, in relief, are the figures of Saint
Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Benedict. Saint
Catherine is depicted with her most common
attributes: the wheel of knives, the instrument of
her torture as ordered by the Emperor Maxentius
in the early fourth century A.D., and the executioner's sword; the demon's head crushed under
her feet seems instead to recall the attributes of
quite a different saint, Catherine of Siena (c.
1347-1380). Saint Benedict (c. 480-547), the
founder of the Benedictines, the oldest of the religious orders, appears as a bishop of the church
wearing a dalmatic, decorated with a cross of Avis,
and a mitre; in his right hand he holds the book
and in his left the crozier. At the center is the

coat-of-arms of the kingdom of Portugal with a

battering ram, an attribute of the infantes, above
which appears the Biblical burning bush, on which
are depicted the Virgin and Child on the crescent.
This reliquary was offered to the church of the
Convent of Avis by Dom Pedro (1429-1466),
generally called o Condestdvel ("Supreme Commander of the Army") to distinguish him from
his father, the Infante Dom Pedro, son of Dom
Joao i, the founder of the house of Avis. The
Infante Dom Pedro is known as o Regente, o das
Sete Partidas or o de Alfarrobeira. It was Dom
Pedro o Condestdvel who at the age of fifteen,
according to his contemporary, the historian Rui
de Pina, when he was the handsomest youth of
the day, was knighted in Coimbra by his uncle
Prince Henry the Navigator. In his youth Dom
Pedro served as a soldier, principally in Castile,

but he was also able to pursue his studies of the

humanities, continuing the tradition of culture
pursued by his father and uncles.
After the battle of Alfarrobeira (1449), in which
Dom Pedro's father lost his life, the victors pressured Dom Afonso v, Dom Pedro's cousin and
brother-in-law, to strip Dom Pedro of his title of
Condestdvel and of his status as Master of the
Order of Avis, of which he was the second titleholder. All his possessions were confiscated, and
he was forced into exile. Until 1457 he lived as an
unhappy wanderer in Castile and Aragon. His
fatalistic motto PAINE POUR JOIE (sorrow for
joy) appears in the ornamental border around
the coat-of-arms on the front of the reliquary. It
faithfully expresses his existence prodigal in
sorrows and sparing in joys. The title of one of his
books, Coplas do menosprego do Mundo (Stanzas

of contempt for the World), underscores the misfortune that followed him. He was eventually
reinstated in the military Order of Avis and
served in the campaigns in Africa under Dom
Afonso v, even though he pronounced himself
opposed to the undertakings in Morocco (1460).
Three years later, in Ceuta, in view of his great
prestige as a knight and a man of culture, and the
fact that through his mother he was a grandson of
Don Jaime, the last count of Urgel, he was offered
the crown of Catalonia, which had been vacant
since 1462. Dom Pedro was made King of Aragon
and Sicily, Valencia, the Mallorcas, Sardinia, and
Corsica, and Count of Barcelona. His reign lasted
only two years, but his interest in intellectual and
artistic matters is reflected in his accomplishments : he extensively remodeled the royal palace
of Barcelona, as well as the church of Giranolers.
He also instituted the Archive of Catalonia and
donated to its chapel of Santa Agueda the magnificent altarpiece by Jaime Huguet (today in the
Museo de Historia de la Ciudad) and endowed the
Cathedral of Huesca with a set of Flemish tapestries, on which his motto is inscribed.
This reliquary is one of the oldest works of Portuguese goldsmiths, if not the oldest, to be
stamped with the mark of an appraiser of the
goldsmiths' guild, the Brotherhood of Saint Eligius. This privilege was granted by the royal
patents of Dom Afonso v of 1457 and 1460, the
latter confirming the guild's obligation to mark
the works produced in the Lisbon workshops. The
reliquary should be compared with that belonging
to the Museu Alberto Sampaio Guimaraes, which
came from the old collegiate church of Our Lady
of Oliveira of Guimaraes and is dated 1467. The
two works have a similar shape, though the
ornamentation of the Avis reliquary is more in the
vernacular.
J.T.

DALMATIC
first quarter of the i6th century
Italian (?)
silver and gold brocaded beige silk embroidered in
silk, silver, and gold
133 x 117 (52% x 46)
references: Gois 1566; Belem 1750-1755; Correia
1953; Mayer-Thurman 1975; Gombrich 1984;
Wieck and Zafran 1989
Se Patriarchal de Lisboa
This dalmatic is complete and is part of a set of
vestments which, according to tradition, were
presented by Dom Manuel i to the Se (Cathedral)
of Lisbon immediately after he acquired them in
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

143

ter of Dom Duarte of Portugal), offered her, from

his father's treasury, the relic of the body of Saint
Auta, one of the 11,000 virgins martyred in Cologne. The naval cortege bearing the relic entered
the Tagus estuary on 4 September 1517, and the
body of Saint Auta was brought in pomp to Madre
de Deus. A triptych depicting the Arrival of the
Relics of Saint Auta at Madre de Deus Convent
(Museu Nacional de Arte Amiga, Lisbon) records
the appearance of the church at that time and
shows, to the right of the helicoid counterfoils
that frame the portal, the della Robbia medallions.
This altarpiece is thought to have been commissioned at the time of the relics' arrival and completed around 1520. It indicates that work on the
church had progressed relatively swiftly from the
foundation in 1508 and that it was essentially
complete in 1517.
This chronology indicates that the traditional
attribution of the medallion to Luca della Robbia
(1399/1400-1482) is mistaken. It must have been
executed by Andrea, his nephew and successor in
the workshop. The two angels bearing the coat-ofarms are strikingly analogous to those in a della
Robbia roundel of the Madonna and Child in the
Accademia, Florence (Cavalucci and Moliner 1884,
115), while the garland of fruit around the border
recalls Andrea della Robbia's Coronation of the
Virgin in the Church of the Assunta in La Spezia.
A terra-cotta roundel of the Madonna and Child
in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, of great
sculptural quality, appears to be by Luca himself.
This piece was acquired by Dona Leonor's parents,
the Infante Dom Fernando, master of the Order of
Christ, duke of Beja and of Viseu, and Dona Bea-

triz, who offered it to the convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceicjlo de Beja, which they founded in
1456. It is comparable to another medallion of the
Madonna by Luca in which the child is seen with
his arm around his mother's neck (Pope-Hennessy
1980, cat. 27), and to numerous other works by
him, distinguished by the studied folds of the Virgin's cloak and their balanced composition (PopeHennessy 1980, cats. 15, 32, 48, 52). It would
have been well known to Dona Leonor. The popularity of della Robbia terra-cottas in Portugal may
also have been a consequence of the construction
of the funerary chapel of Dom Jaime, Cardinal of
Portugal, in San Miniato al Monte in Florence, by
Antonio Rossellino; its decoration includes medallions by Luca della Robbia executed in 1462-1466.
We know of Dona Leonor's interest in ceramics, as
she had in her service a master tilemaker known
as Alle Azulejo Mouro da Rainha (The Moor
Tilemaker of the Queen). Her last will indicates
that she continued to maintain relations with
Rome, which began during her husband's reign,
and with Florence. It mentions her intention to
bequeath, in addition to the silver ampullas used
in her oratory given to her by the archbishop of
Lisbon and produced in Rome, "all things sent to
me by the Mothers of Florence" (Belem 17501755/4:85).
The medallion shows the royal Portuguese arms
as modified in 1485 by Dom Joao n, who had the
Cross of Aviz removed, the lateral escutcheons
changed on the vertical level, and the number of
castles fixed at seven. The pendant to this piece,
which is also in the Museu Nacional de Arte
Antiga, shows a pelican in his nest opening his

breast to feed his young, an emblem adopted by

Dom Joao n; his motto was pola lei e pola grei (by
the law and by the people). This image, symbolizing good will and brotherly love, corresponds to
the changes Dom Joao n made in the coat-of-arms
and reflects his intention to create a modern,
centralized monarchy, as opposed to the previous
medieval conception of royal power in a framework of feudal sovereignties.
J.T.

26

PORTRAIT OF DOM MANUEL i

from Leitura Nova, district of Alem Douro i
1521
Portuguese
tempera and gilding on parchment
53 x 38 (2o7/s x i43/4J
references: Baido and Azevedo 1905; Dornelas 1931;
Santos 1932; Gusmdo 1951; Campos 1967; Santos
1967; Deswartes 1977; Ahes 1985
Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
The Leitura Nova (New Reading), a corpus of
sixty-three books containing forty-three illustrated frontispieces, reproduces documents from
the royal Portuguese archives. Ordered by Dom
Manuel i in 1504, the series was continued under
his son Dom Joao in until 1552. The project was
described in 1566 by Damiao de Gois, the chief
keeper of the Torre do Tombo archives, in Part iv
of the Cronica do Felicissimo Rei D. Emmanuel
(Chronicle of the Most Fortunate King Emmanuel): "He ordered most of the documents of the
Torre do Tombo to be reproduced in books of
parchment well written and illustrated." The new
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

145

system of organizing the royal archives continued

the initiatives begun by Dom Manuel I's predecessor, Dom Joao n, to centralize and modernize the
archive. It put an end to the existing labyrinth of
documents. The books were grouped in volumes
according to administrative and juridical divisions
(districts), military orders (masterships), miscellaneous (mixed), monarchs (kings), bulls, donations, payments, and others.
The first volume of the series was finished
about six months before the death of Dom Manuel
i and signed by the officials who reproduced the
documents, Franciscus (fols. i2^ov) and Gabriel
Gil (fols. 241-261). The splendid frontispiece to
the volume is a compendium of the iconography
of the Portuguese monarchy. The royal Portuguese shield is held aloft at the top of the page by
four angels, recalling a passage in the Tratado
Geral de Nobreza (General Treatise on Nobility)
by Antonio Rodrigues, one of the three lords-inarms who served Dom Manuel i and Dom Joao in
in the reformation of the court bureaucracy.
Explaining the origin of royal power as it was then
understood, Rodrigues compared the functions of
the angels and archangels of the divine court to
those of the heralds and lords-in-arms who served
the Portuguese king. Above them, the heavens
part to reveal a patch of goldpart of the gold
leaf that lies under the paintingbehind a tiny
figure of God the Father. His image gives visual
expression to the rhetorical flourish with which
the text begins: "Dora Manuel por graga de Deus
Rei de Portugal" (Dom Manuel, King of Portugal,
by the grace of God),
In the tondo on the right, a youth shown in
slightly more than half length appears against a
blue sky with golden stars. He points to the historiated initial of the portrait of Dom Manuel that
begins the text. The sash he holds is inscribed REX
PACIFICUS MAGNIFICATUS EST, part of a biblical proclamation from Isaiah xi, 2,3 ("The kingdom of the
Messiah is peaceful and prosperous and the spirit
of the Lord will repose over him"), another analogy between the greatness and benign nature of
the monarchy and its parallel in the realm of religion. This imagery shows that the sovereign is
indeed worthy of the impressive titles accorded
him in the opening of the text: "Dom Manuel, by
the grace of god King of Portugal and Algarve, on
this side and beyond the seas in Africa, Lord of
Guinea, of the conquest, navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and the Indies."
Although Dom Manuel i usually preferred
sober everyday dress, he was also known to be
fond of pomp and of the ceremonies and feasts
that were part of the ritual of monarchy, a facet of
his character that was also reflected in his artistic
patronage. In his frontispiece portrait worked into
the initial "D," he wears an ermine cloak and a
velvet beret set with a jeweled pin. Brooches of
rubies, diamonds, and pearls appear to adorn the
angels surrounding the initial.

146

CIRCA

1492

The armillary spheres, which Dom Manuel took

as his emblem and which had been offered to him
by his brother-in-law Dom Joao n, both implied
that the planets had smiled on the foundation of
the Portuguese maritime empire and suggested
the important role played by science and astronomy in the Portuguese discoveries. Dom Manuel
i's choice of the armillary sphere indicated his
determination to continue the maritime exploration begun by his predecessors, which brought the
Portuguese to India and to Brazil during his reign.
The establishment of commercial bases in India
was crucial in launching the empire in the East,
and the arrival in Brazil consolidated Portuguese
dominion over the Atlantic. It is small wonder,
then, that historians accorded Dom Manuel i the
soubriquet Afortunado (Fortunate). His motto,
"hope in God and do good," taken from Psalm
cxxxvi, Spera In Deo Et Fac Bonitatem, exploited
the semantic play on the Latin word spera (hope),
which in Portuguese at that time could refer
either to espera (hope) or to esfera (sphere). J.T.

^L

Simon Bening

Bruges, 1483/1484-1561

Antonio de Hollanda

Holland(?), c. i5io-after 1553

Two LEAVES FROM THE

GENEALOGY OF THE INFANTE
DOM FERNANDO OF PORTUGAL
Genealogical tree of the later kings of Portugal
(Antonio de Hollanda, fol. 8)
Genealogical tree of John, Duke of Lancaster (Simon
Bening, fol, 10)
1530-1534
manuscript on vellum
55-9 x 39-4 (22x1^/2)
references: Gois 1619, 65; Kaemmerer-Strohl 1903,
1:9; Thieme'-Becker 1907-1950, 1:595-596; Destree
1923, 24-25, $9; Hollstein 1949-, y.nos. 324-415;
Dos Santos 1950; Aguiar 1962, 7^-79; Seguardo
1970,12, 54, 142, 175-177, 228, 454, 460, 503-505,
5i2
The British Library Board, London, Additional MS
12531
The artistic importance of the unfinished Genealogy of the Portuguese Infante Dom Fernando,
brother of Dom Joao in (r. 1521-1527), rests
mainly on the five magnificent leaves by Simon
Bening, the finest Bruges illuminator of the sixteenth century. Like most Flemish illuminators of
his period, Bening was a specialist in the execu-

tion of small devotional books; but the present

leaves are much larger than a page from a typical
book of hours and they comprise the only illuminated genealogy in the corpus of Flemish
illumination.
The Genealogy of Dom Fernando contains a
total of thirteen leaves, seven of which were illuminated by Antonio de Hollanda, an artist active
in Lisbon, who designed all thirteen. Damiao de
Gois (1503-1573), a Portuguese humanist, historian, and diplomat who lived in Antwerp, records
in his chronicle of Dom Manuel i the circumstances behind the creation of the Genealogy, He
tells that while he was in Flanders in the service
of Dom Joao in, Dom Fernando
ordered me to find whatever chronicles I could,
either manuscript or printed, in whatever language, so I ordered them all. And to compose a
Chronicle of the Kings of Hispanha since the
time of Noah and thereafter, I paid a great deal
to learned men: salaries, pensions, and other
favors. I ordered a drawing of the tree and
trunk of this line since the time of Noah to
Dom Manuel i, his father. [Dom Fernando
ordered it illuminated] for him by the principal
master in this art in all of Europe, by name of
Simon of Bruges in Flanders. For this tree and
other things I spent a great deal of money
(Gois 1619, 65 [trans, by Barbara Anderson])
G6is/ Simon of Bruges is certainly Simon Bening,
an identification supported not merely by the
wide evidence of Bening's own fame but also by
the style of some of the illuminations. Another
contemporaneous source, the Portuguese artist
Francisco de Hollanda's notation in his copy of
Vasari, confirms that his father, Antonio de Hollanda, designed the Genealogy (Dos Santos 1950).
Hollanda executed the drawings, which Dom Fernando sent to Bening one at a time. Gois wrote to
Dom Fernando on 15 August 1530, describing the
progress on the illumination and telling him that
Bening was disappointed because only a single
drawing had arrived (Destree 1923, 24-25, 89). In
1539, five years after the death of Dom Fernando,
Antonio still had not been paid for his work on
the Genealogy and the project was never completed. In the end, Bening illuminated only five
leaves, and Hollanda attempted to complete the
remainder himself. In addition to the seven he
illuminated, he drew another that was never
completed.
The Genealogy begins with the Old Testament
ancestors of the family, then jumps ahead to
Favila, Duke of Cantabria (d. 700), and his
descendants, described as the "Trunk of the Kings
of Leon and Castile/' That is followed by the lineage of the Kings of Aragon and by that of the
ruling house of Portugal, beginning with Henry
of Burgundy, first Count of Portugal (d. 1112), to
which sequence folio 8 belongs. It was conceived
as a pair of facing leaves with folio 7, as the head-

ing reads across the top of the two pages: "First

Table: The Kings'' on folio 7, and "of Portugal"
on folio 8. The representation at the bottom of
the page of sixteenth-century Lisbon, shown
under siege, is one of the earliest known panoramic views of the city (Aguiar 1962,104). The
last two tables, on folios 9 and 10, represent the
complex array of descendants of John of Gaunt,
duke of Lancaster and Aquitaine (d. 1399), whose
progeny included fifteenth-century kings and
queens of the houses of Lancaster, Burgundy,
Hapsburg, Portugal, and Castile (KaemmererStrohl 1903, 1:9). Visual and genealogical lacunae
among various folios strongly suggest that the
Genealogy was intended to be considerably more
extensive than the existing thirteen leaves, and
over thirty may have been planned. It has been
argued persuasively that the genealogy, long considered that of the royal house of Portugal, is
rather a genealogy of Dom Fernando himself
(Aguiar 1962, 78-79).
The designs and illuminations for the Genealogy are Hollanda's most famous work. Probably

born about 1480, possibly in Holland, he was

named by Dom Manuel i to the post of heraldic
officer in 1518, a position he continued to occupy
into the reign of Dom Joao in (Haupt in ThiemeBecker 1907-1950,1:595-596; Seguardo 1970,
12,142,175-177, 228, 454, 460, 503-505, 512). He
was alive in 1553, when his son Francisco wrote
about him to Michelangelo, but he probably died a
few years later (Segurado 1970, 142, 505, 54).
Hollanda's primary prototype for the genealogical tree was Hans Burgkmair's woodcut series of
1509-1512, The Genealogy of the Emperor Maximilian i (Hollstein 1949-, 5:nos. 324-415). However, Burgkmair's woodcuts depict only rows of
single figures unrelated by arboreal motifs. The
composition of the Hollanda design recalls Tree of
Jesse imagery. Hollanda's draftsmanship was probably inspired by the technique of German artists,
especially Albrecht Diirer. He modeled his figures
in fine, closely placed parallel hatchings and crosshatchings. The hatchings are short and their
arrangement gives the materials a velvety quality.
His designs suggest that he followed the artistic

mainstream in Lisbon, which had absorbed recent

developments in other European art. The quality
of Hollanda's painting on pages which he illuminated lacks the refinement of his drawing. It
appears competent but flat and dull his characters lack expressionwhen compared to Bening's
work.
The leaves by Simon Bening tell quite a different story. He has breathed life into the Portuguese artist's refined drawings. A range of lively
personalities is apparent in the Genealogical Tree
of John, Duke of Lancaster, one of the illuminator's most unusual and beautiful miniatures.
Bening gives his illuminations a sculptural quality
and places them in a deeper, more tangible space.
The colors, blues and reds in particular, are richer
and the textures of a leaf, a brocade, velvet, or
armor are differentiated in an even light. He had
beautiful drawings to work with here but his skill
as an illuminator surpasses the draftsman's
achievement. His leaves compare favorably with
the work of the best painters of his day, including
Bernaert van Orley and Joos van Cleve.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

147

28

The fact that this Manueline hourglass seems

so similar to the instrument depicted in Albrecht
Diirer's Melencolia i (cat. 199) may not be coincidental. Diirer's engravings influenced Portuguese painting of the period, particularly the
works of Vasco Fernandes (see cat. 32), in whose
painting of Jesus at the House of Mary and
Martha the figure of Mary reflects the figure in
Melencolia i. It may be that this hourglass also
reflects Diirer's model.
J.T.

HOURGLASS
c. 2517

Portuguese
silver-gilt and glass
height 18.5 (j 2/4J; diameter 10.7 (^Vs)
references: A. Caetanos de Sousa 1752; Raczynski
1846; Vasconcelos 1904; 1929; Wollf 1962; Panofsky
2967; Guye 1970; Couto and Gonqalves 1970; Attali
1982; Matoso 198}; Le Go//19^4; Markl and
Pereira 1986
Museu National de Arte Antigaf Lisbon
Like the solar quadrant and the clepsydra, or
water clock, the hourglass is among the oldest
non-mechanical instruments for measuring time.
It consists of two conical glass bulbs, one of
which is filled with sand, connected by a small
channel, which in this example is adorned with a
filigree knot.
The gilt silver framework architecturally resembles a circular miniature temple. Eight small columns are sectioned half-way up the shaft, and
repeat the pseudo-capitals in the shape of a
cupping-glass. In the extremities of the frieze the
rims are adorned by a wreath accompanied by a
threadlike molding, which is followed by a hollow
panel of fleurs-de-lis. Also in the friezes, blending
with the concave frame, small double-S shaped
lizards rest upon the end of each small column.
At either end of the drum of the hourglass, the
royal Portuguese coat-of-arms and the armillary
sphere are engraved. The armillary sphere was
the emblem of Dom Manuel i, "because mathematicians portray the shape of mechanism of
heaven and earth, with all the other elements,
which is astonishing" (Gois 1566, ch. v).
Used by sailors to measure the speed of their
ships and to mark the shifts of the watch, the
hourglass appears on the frontispiece of Lucas
Janzoon's Spieghel der Zeevaerdt..., published in
Leyden in 1584, together with the astrolabe, the
quadrant, the terrestrial and celestial globe, the
magnetic compass, and other instruments of navigation. Given Dom Manuel's own association
with the maritime world, it is clear why the hourglass was chosen as an object to be presented to
him. It was during his reign that the most important events occurred in the history of Portuguese
navigation and exploration.
During that period rare and precious objects of
this type formed part of the royal collection. A
similar instrument was part of the trousseau of
the Infanta Dona Beatriz (1504-1538) when she
married Charles in of Savoy in 1521. The list
given to her treasurer describes a number of goldsmith's works, including "a white silver clock with
six staffs, and it has above and below it the
emblem of daisies in low relief with a knot in the
middle, also of silver" (A. Caetano de Sousa,
Provas, vol. n). The description suggests that this
148

CIRCA 1492

^9
LISBON BIBLE
14^2

Sephardi
illuminated manuscript on vellum, 184-1-11 folios
30.5x24.4

(l2X95/8)

references: Narkiss 1969, So; Sed-Rajna 1970, 2429, no. 2; Narkiss 1982,141-144, no. 42; Sed-Rajna
1988; Cohen 1988

The British Library Board, London, MS Or. 2626,

fols. yb-8a

hourglass is similar to that example. The presence

of the emblem of the "marvel-of-Peru" (Mirabilis
Jalapa) in low relief indicates that it belonged to
the second wife of Dom Manuel i, Queen Maria
(1482-1517). Her emblem, the bough of "marvelof-Peru," appears in several sculpted medallions in
the monastery of the Jeronimos in Lisbon. It is
therefore thought that the two hourglasses were
made for Dom Manuel and Dona Maria prior to
1517, the date of Dona Maria's death. The hourglass described as being in the trousseau of the
Infanta Dona Beatriz in 1521 was presumably the
one that had belonged to her mother, Dona Maria.
Just as cartography in the Renaissance changed
from rendering the symbolic and sacred space of
the Christian religion to the representation in the
portolan charts of the direct observation of the
world, so did the concept of time change from a
hierarchy of events related to divine history. The
new Portuguese chronicles reflected the actual
historical events of the monarchy and of the
nation, seen from a humanistic perspective.
Mechanical clocks came to replace the church bells
as regulators of social life. The hourglass itself
came to be associated with the philosophical concept of Time, which was revived by Petrarch,
whose Triumphs were a popular theme in humanistic illustration.

This illuminated Bible is one of the masterpieces

of a Hebrew manuscript workshop active in
Lisbon from no later than 1469, the year of its
earliest preserved dated work, until 1496. It was
presumably disbanded at the time of the enforced
collective conversion of the Portuguese Jews; the
official Edict of Expulsion was promulgated on 5
December 1496.
The volume displayed here is the first of a set of
three (MS Or. 2626-2628) containing all twentyfour books of the Bible, as well as certain addenda.
According to the colophon at the end of the manuscript, the text, which is written in light brown
ink in square Sephardi script, was executed by
Samuel the scribe, son of Samuel Ibn Musa, and
completed in Lisbon between 12 November and 10
December 1482. The patron was Joseph, son of
Yehuda al-Hakim.
The manuscript is illuminated throughout with
a luxurious system of decoration that emphasizes
the major divisions in the text. The opening illustrated here is from an introductory section,
preceding the Biblical text, which lists the 613
precepts contained in the Bible in the order in
which they are mentioned in the Old Testament.
The decoration on these pages consists of fullpage frames filled with floral motifs, which can be
related to contemporary styles of Portuguese illumination, panels of filigree penwork surrounding
the text, and burnished gold ornamental script.
Unlike scribes, the artists and craftsmen in charge
of the decoration rarely signed their work, and the
decoration in the Lisbon Bible in fact appears to be
the work of a team of artists, among whom several
different hands can be distinguished. The Lisbon
workshop's productions are characterized by the

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

149

technical refinement of the decoration, especially

the burnished lettering of the decorative script,
and the very limited vocabulary of decorative elements employed (Sed-Rajna 1988).
Illuminated Hebrew manuscripts do not appear
to have been common in Europe until the thirteenth century. Jewish manuscript illumination
reached its peak in the following century, and
while the tradition continued through the fifteenth century, the later manuscripts are known
more for their highly refined technique than for
any compositional innovations. By the latter part
of the century, the manuscript tradition began to
be displaced by the introduction of Hebrew printing. In fact, the first Hebrew book printed in Portugal is dated 1487, only five years later than the
Lisbon Bible.
J.A.L.

30

SALVER WITH AFRICAN MOTIFS

late i$th century-early i6th century
Portuguese or Afro-Portuguese
silver-gilt, engraved and repousse
diameter: 32 (i25/s)
references: Resende 1596; Pina 1792; Simoes 1882;
Viterbo 1882; Vasconcelos 1882; Mota 1975; Bassani
and Fagg 1988
Paldcio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon
In the last century this salver was thought to be
an Indo-Portuguese work. In 1882 Sousa Viterbo,
describing the Exhibition of Portuguese and
Spanish Art at the Palace of Janelas Verdes, which
was to become the Museu Nacional de Arte
Antiga, questioned the Indo-Portuguese classification of this salver, which at the time was in the
collection of Dom Luis i, asking whether "these
are scenes of Africa, or scenes of Asia?" A. Filipe
Simoes, who wrote a series of articles on the
exhibition, unaware of Sousa Viterbo's reservations, described the salver as depicting "Indians
armed with crossbows, elephant hunts, and palm
trees; in the central medallion the royal Portuguese arms are engraved."
At that time the Indo-Portuguese works of
art furniture, ivory, bedspreads, and goldsmiths'
works were the subject of nostalgia for the maritime and mercantile grandeur of the Age of Discoveries. Charles Yriarte lamented that a special
section had not been devoted to them in the
exhibition. In 1882, the historian Joaquim de Vasconcelos, who had studied the goldsmiths' works
of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in depth,
considered this salver a work done in "Indian,
semi-barbarian style, the work of some artist from
the Portuguese colony of Goa." His attribution
reveals the influence of the many sixteenth150

CIRCA 1492

century works created as a result of the contacts

with the orient. Vasconcelos noted, however, that
the salver reflected a European decorative model:
two concentric bands, the outer one divided into
eight segments separated by palm trees rather
than the traditional pilasters. He also suggested
that the coat-of-arms of the central medallion was
that of the Casa de Braganga (he assumed that the
crown in the upper register belonged to a duke
and that it was not the heraldic device at the top of
an escutcheon indicating royalty). This coat-ofarms was frequently reproduced during the reign
of Dom Manuel i, in the Cartas de foraisf the
volumes of the Leitura Nova (see cat. 26) and in
the coinage of the "Perfect Prince." Dom Joao n
changed the coat-of-arms of the Portuguese
crown. He eliminated the cross of Avis and corrected the lateral escutcheons, placing them as
pendants (they had previously been placed horizontally). In 1485 Dom Joao n was first called
"the Lord of Guinea" (G. de Resende, 1596, ch.
LVII). While still a prince he received from his
father, Dom Alfonso v, the concession of the
Guinea trade, and the rights to fish in its rivers
and seas; it was prohibited for anyone to go there
or send anyone there without the prince's authorization. On being elevated to the throne he knew
from his own experience just how profitable was
the African trade in gold, ivory, and slaves, which
was the crown's recognized source of wealth.
Dom Joao's rights in Guinea were the basis for
the claim he made in 1493, upon learning from
Columbus of the newly discovered lands to the

west, that America belonged to the Portuguese

crown by virtue of "believing that said discovery
was made within the seas and terms of his lordship of Guinea" (Rui de Pina 1792). His controversy with the Catholic Monarchs led to the
intervention of Pope Alexander vi and the Papal
Bull of 4 May 1493, by which the Spanish were
given the right to all lands found or to be found to
the west of the meridian that ran 100 leagues west
of the Cape Verde islands. The dispute persisted,
however, and the Treaty of Tordesillas signed by
Portugal and Spain on 7 June of the following year
changed that distance to 370 leagues, at the suggestion of Duarte Pacheco Pereira. The objective
was to specify an area that would include the coast
of Brazil (reached just six years later).
The construction of the fort of Mina in Africa,
which was essential for maintaining the monopoly
on gold, led to the naval policy which, with the
objective of reaching the orient, encouraged continued exploration along the African coast. In
1486 John Afonso of Aveiro reached the kingdom
of Benin, opening the door to cultural contacts.
This salver may have been created during
the early phase of contact with Africa, to convey
images of a world that was just beginning
to be known in Portugal, a world in which the
indigenous artists were creating, in response to
Portuguese commissions, the fascinating AfroPortuguese ivories (see the essay by Ezio Bassani
in this catalogue and cats. 67-78). The unusual
aesthetic of these ivories also seems to be present
in this salver.
J.T.

3OB

SALVER WITH AFRICAN MOTIFS

late i$th-early i6th century
Lisbon
diameter 25.8
copper-gilt and enamel, engraved and repousse
references: Marques 1940; Blake 1940; Vasconcelos
1882; Campbell 1983; Godinho 1984; Bassani and
Fagg 1988; Peres 1988
private collection

The program for the tapestries commissioned in

Flanders by Dom Manuel i to celebrate the key
events in the opening of the sea route to India
includes a view of the Cape of Good Hope, which
Vasco da Gama's fleet rounded on 22 November
1497. It called for an African scene with natives
and local flora and fauna, including elephants and
shepherds with their cattle emerging from their
huts "in the style of that place" (Barreto 1880).
This description is close to that of the African
scenes reproduced on this salver, which reflects an
effort to set a standard in this form of expression.
The first Portuguese accounts of Guinea and
Sierra Leone indicate that most of the natives in
fact went about without clothing; only a few wore
cotton garments, which are portrayed on this
salver, perhaps out of modesty or because the
piece was likely to be presented to the king or to a
member of his court. There was a great interest in
fifteenth-century Portugal for genuine objects
from the newly found lands. We know that Prince

Henry the Navigator himself "much desired to

have these strange things that came to him from
different parts and countries discovered through
his diligence" (Cadamosto e Sintra 1988, 168)
In Hans Burgkmair's woodcut The Kings of
Cochin, published in Augsburg in 1509, the figures said to be from Guinea resemble those on the
salver; one man holds a lance similar to those
depicted in the salver. The famous engraving of
the city of Benin included in Olfert Dapper's
Description de I'Afrique (1687) shows the cortege
of the oba or king, which includes leopardtrainers, recalling the leopard portrayed on the
salver. The motifs on the salver also recall those
depicted in the Miller Atlas of 1519 by Lopo
Homem-Reineis (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris),
especially the palm trees, elephants, huts, and figures of natives (although there they are meant to
represent India). Similar palm trees and elephants
appear in the scene of the Flight to Egypt in the
Book of Hours of Dom Manuel i of 1517-1538
(Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon). Despite
the thematic similarities, however, the scheme of
representation used in the salver is fundamentally
different from that employed in these works; it
shows affinities with the Afro-Portuguese ivories.
The materials used in the salver remind us of
Portugal's foreign trade during this period. From
the reign of Dom Joao i until the mid-sixteenth
century, Portugal controlled several cities in
Morocco, from which it obtained gold, copper, and
cotton cloth (V. M. Godinho). The entrepot at
Arguim served as an advance post for obtaining

gold from the Sudan. Copper from the Maghreb

brought high prices in Lisbon (in 1436 one hundred kilograms sold for 1,410 reals, and in 1506, in
the reign of Dom Manuel i, for 6,240 reals). African copper arrived in Lisbon from northern
Europe through Flanders. Copper also was
exported through Cairo to India, where it was
highly sought after, especially by the Casa da
Moeda, or mint, at Goa. Copper was also used for
liturgical ornaments, jewelry, and arms and armor,
as well as for a great many works of religious art.
The gilt and enamel decoration is typical of this
period. Objects in copper, enamel, and gold figure
prominently in an inventory of armor and tapestries in the royal collections, dated 1505. The
entries include "a sword one-third gold-plated,
the handle and mace of gold-plated copper; two
swords one-third gold-plated with the edges and
sphere all gold-plated... and on the mace the
edges and sphere are enameled; there is one goldplated and enameled dagger." Prince Henry donated "two silver ampullas with enamels in his
colors, that is, blue, white, and black" to the
church of the Convent of the Order of Christ in
Tomar. Salvers said to be Manueline often have
enameled medallions, and such royal works as the
Belem Monstrance and the Reliquary of Dom
Leonor (both Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga,
Lisbon) attest to the importance of enamels in
Portuguese goldsmiths' work.
J.T.

31

FESTIVE PROCESSION WITH GIRAFFES

early i6th century
Flemish, probably Tournai
tapestry, warp: wool; weft: wool and silk
references: Barreto 1800; Vasconcelos 1896; Keil
1919; Viterbo 1920; Castanheda 1924; Bottiger
1947; Chumovsky 1960; Asselberghs 1968, 13, 15;
Digby 1980, 31; Aguas 1987
Mr. Roger Brunei

This tapestry is part of a cycle of works commissioned to commemorate the establishment of the
Portuguese presence in India, the crowning
achievement of Portugal's Age of Discoveries. The
momentousness of the event was recognized even
at the time. When on 20 May 1498 Vasco da
Gama arrived at the port of Calicut in India, he
had learned through the contacts he had made
during his voyage that he would have to respect
cultural differences in India and give a clear explanation of the reason for his voyage so as to facilitate the exchange of goods. It was important to
reinforce the image of the power of the Portuguese kingdom and yet also to indicate that the
goals of his voyage were not pillage, looting, and
oppression. According to the narrative of the

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

151

voyage, the Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco

da Gama (Route of the First Voyage of Vasco da
Gama), he declared to the king of Calicut that "he
was ambassador of the King of Portugal, who was
Lord of a vast territory, rich in all things, more
than any other king of those parts'7 (although one
of the sailors confessed plainly to two Muslims:
"We came to look for Christians and spices").
According to this account the experienced Arab
pilot who had guided da Gama's fleet on the
voyage from Melinde to Calicut compared Portugal to the former Roman Empire and stressed
the fierceness of the Portuguese. Da Gama himself, despite the dangers and the reservations of
his crew, boldly decided to lead the party to meet
the King of Melinde who resided five leagues
inland. "Even though I may know how to die," he
said, "I still wish to meet the King of Calicut to
see if I can establish friendship and dealings with
him, and to have spices and other things from his
city, that they may serve as testimonies in Portugal to verify that the discovery of Calicut is
true" (Castanheda, i, ch. 16).
It is in this context of authentication that the
commissioning of the tapestries "in the style of
Portugal and India" should be understood. The
Portuguese wanted to make known to all the
exotic nature of the world they had encountered
in order to draw attention to the leading role they
had played. Da Gama's voyage and its aftermath
had yielded a wealth of information about new
peoples and lands, furnishing eloquent testimony
of a larger world. Detailed maps of the routes
were made, showing the location of coasts and
ports, and inaccuracies in old maps were corrected. The cartographers who executed the new
portolan charts attempted to systematize and
update this knowledge and incorporate elements of
local flora, fauna, and anthropological data.
There is no documentary evidence for dating
the tapestry exhibited here. However, we do know
that in 1516 Dom Manuel i (r. 1495-1521), an
important patron of the arts, had his royal secretary Antonio Carneiro send to craftsmen in Antwerp details of da Gama's voyage and other events
related to the Portuguese in India. The document
that was sent to Antwerp was called Pera os
pannos que El Rey nosso senhor quer hordenar
(For the tapestries the King our lord wishes to
commission). This "order book" specified that the
tapestries should faithfully portray images and
events taken from nature (Graqa Barreto 1880)
and summarize twenty-five principal themes.
Emphasis was placed on da Gama's leavetaking,
with his audience before the king and the delivery
of the regiment for Vasco da Gama's voyage, and
the procession, including the monks of the convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar, who
departed from the chapel of Our Lady of Belem to
go to the Praia do Restelo that Joao de Barros
called "shore of tears for those who depart, land of
pleasure for those who arrive." The arrival of da
152

CIRCA 1492

Gama in Calicut and the return of the armada to

the port of Lisbon completed the cycle of the
voyage. The Conquest portion of the cycle was to
include the foundation of fortresses at Mozambique in 1507, at Cochin, erected by Francisco de
Albuquerque on 27 September 1503 (this series of
tapestries also depicted a baptism of native Indians
in a Christian church), and at Cananor, constructed in the time of Dom Francisco de Almeida
(1505). The cycle of Contacts and Diplomacy
included the capture of Quiloa, showing the city
with Portuguese flags flying on the walls, the
ships in the foreground, and Dom Francisco de
Almeida crowning the new king who accepts the
swearing-in and the homage. The same ritual is
portrayed in the "Act of Homage Rendered by the
King of Cochin," in which a gold cup, a present
from Dom Manuel i, is being handed over.
The "order book" emphasizes details when new
territories, their peoples, and customs were to be
represented. It pays specific attention to the
adornments of indigenous women: "how they
wear jewels on their toes and the way they wear
them," which coincides with the text of the
Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama.
Another passage specifies the representation of
the crafts and trades, depicting merchants selling
jewels and spices. The third tapestry of the Cochin
series is to portray the local prince, "the make-up
of the people, color and dress and arms, true to
nature with their litters, elephants, and hats
(parasols)."
We also know that even earlier, in 1504, Philip
the Handsome, who was married to Princess
Isabel of Portugal, the sister of Dom Duarte, had
acquired a tapestry "a la maniere de Portugal et de
Inde" from the Tournai tapestry maker Jean Grenier. Emperor Maximillian i (1493-1515), the son
of the Infanta Leonor of Portugal (daughter of
Dom Duarte), had in 1510 bought a tapestry for
his residence described as une Histoire de gens et
bestes sauvages a la maniere de Calicut (a story of
wild people and beasts in the manner of Calicut).
Documents record numerous payments to Tournai
craftsmen for tapestries on this theme, as well. A
great range of scenes appears to have been available. The tapestry exhibited here comes from the
Dreux-Breze collection, which had the most
extensive set of Calicut tapestries to survive into
modern times. This particular piece, which originally was almost twice as wide as it is now, is one
of three that constitute the Cortejo Festivo (Festive Procession). It depicts the exotic fauna of the
Indies, as well as giraffes, which had been transported by the Portuguese from Africa to India.
J.T.

Not illustrated.

32

Attributed to Vasco Fernandas

Portuguese, c. 1475-1541/1542

ADORATION OF THE MAGI

c. 15011502
oil on oak panel
131 x 81 (5i2/2 x }i7/s)
references: Moreira 1921; Cortesao 1944; Santos
1946, 1962; Cortez 1968; Foutora da Costa 1968;
Santos 1970; Sampaio 1971; Honour 1976;
Hemming 1978; Markl and Pereira 1986; New York
Public Library 1990
Museu de Grdo Vasco, Viseu
This Adoration of the Magi is unique in European
painting for its depiction of a native American, a
. Tupinamba from Brazil, as one of the Three Kings
paying homage to the Virgin and Child. There
was an older tradition for portraying one of the
Magi, Melchior, as an African, but no other picture is known that introduces an American figure
into such an image. The artist apparently sought
to suggest the growing knowledge of new worlds
and new peoples brought about by the Portuguese
voyages. Another contemporary element is the
gold coin, brought by the Magi, which the Child
Jesus holds, presumably a Portuguese coin from
the reign of Dom Manuel i (1456-1521). This is
evidently an allusion to the fact that the desire to
spread the gospel had been a driving force behind
the discoveries since the time of Henry the Navigator, as had the search for secular ricfies Em
nome de Deus e do lucro (In the name of God and
gold), as it was sometimes put.
The Tupinamba Indian is placed at the center of
the composition, dressed in a costume that is a
composite of Brazilian elements the feathers and
the accurately depicted arrow and European
shirt and breeches (see essay by Jean Michel
Massing, "Early European Images of America,"
in this catalogue). As his offering he holds a
cup of coconut shell, mounted in silver, a detail
that reinforces the exotic character of the
representation.
This picture forms part of a polyptych painted
for the high altar of Viseu cathedral, of which
sixteen panels remain of an original eighteen. The
Adoration is attributed to Vasco Fernandes (c.
1475-1541/1542), who probably also painted the
panel of The Agony in the Garden from the same
series. The altarpiece is the work of a group of
painters who worked in the Flemish style, which
also included Francisco Henriques, who painted
the high altar of Evora cathedral (now in the
Museum of Evora). The collaboration explains the
uneven artistic quality of the polyptych.
Whoever commissioned this image must have
had some special connection with Brazil and it is
in fact believed that the kneeling Magus in the
foreground is a portrait from life of Pedro Alvares

Cabral (1468-1519), who in 1500 commanded the

first Portuguese fleet to reach Brazil. Cabral's
portrait is known from a limestone medallion,
surrounded with a garland of fruit in the style of
della Robbia, that decorates the walls of the south
wing of the cloister of the Jeronimos in Belem,
where he is shown with a Renaissance helmet in
the Florentine style (similar to those depicted in
many frontispieces of the Leitura Nova [cat. 26])
and a Roman-style tunic fastened at the shoulder.
The protruding jaw, accentuated by the long
beard, in the image on the medallion is close to
the facial structure of the figure in the painting.
At the time the Adoration was painted, Alvares
Cabral would have been about 35 years old. His
personal history may explain his much older

appearance. He had spent his life in constant

travel, participating in an expedition to Morocco
when he was only eighteen years old, and soon
thereafter in an expedition to Graciosa in the
Azores, which resulted in his being knighted by
Dom Joao n and receiving a handsome pension.
The artist may also have made Alvares Cabral look
older to emphasize his experience as a navigator.
Although there are no historical records of
Alvares Cabral's participation in the commissioning of the altarpiece, we know from a document
dated 22 September 1500 that Dom Fernando
Gongalves de Miranda, Bishop of Viseu from 1487
to 1491, was concerned that the costs of the painting had not been covered and was seeking to
enlist the support of patrons of the arts. At that

time, soon after his return from the voyage to

Brazil, it is said that Alvares Cabral spent some
time in the city of Viseu or in the neighboring
village of Azurara da Beira (today known as Mangualde), where his relatives owned property. His
ancestors were buried in Viseu cathedral, and his
grandfather had been a respected property owner
in the city.
There are no references to any Tupinamba
having been brought back to Portugal on Alvares
Cabral's return trip, though it is known that Columbus had brought West Indian natives to Seville
years earlier. The Portuguese first came ashore in
Brazil at Porto Seguro on 21 April 1500. There
they encountered members of the Tupinamba
ethnic group, a nomadic culture characterized by
its high degree of adaptation to the tropical forest.
The natives spoke the Tupi language, which was in
use all along the coast of Brazil in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, after which it was
replaced by Portuguese as the area's lingua franca.
The specifics of this first encounter are preserved in a letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha
(i45O?-i5Oo) to be sent to Dom Manuel i (Foutora
da Costa 1968). It emphasized the distinct characteristics and skin color of the native peoples:
When the Portuguese boat arrived at the mouth
of the river, there were nearly twenty "brown
men all nude with nothing to cover their shameful parts. They had bows in their hands and their
arrows
And one of them gave him a hat of
long birds' feathers with a small crown of red and
brown feathers such as those of the parrot/' Later
the author adds: "their features are reddish brown
with good faces and good well-formed noses."
Short and robust (from 15.8 cm to 16.2 cm), the
Indians had horizontal eyes and aquiline noses,
straight, black, and short hair ("cut even above the
ears"); they removed their facial hair, as well as
body hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows.
The Portuguese observed the natives before
proceeding to disembark. They had not appreciated the food the Portuguese offered them (bread,
cooked fish, honey, and overripe figs). In the
course of the letter Vaz de Caminha moves from
emphasizing the Indians' humanity to describing
them as "bestial people, with little knowledge
. . . they are like birds or mountain animals," in a
statement affirming the Europeans' ethnic superiority. The author does, however, repeatedly
emphasize the Indians' innocence, "such that
Adam's could be no greater," a statement that contributed a good deal to the developing myth of the
noble savage.
J.T.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

153

SPAIN: THE FOUNDATIONS OF EMPIRE

Two key events in the later fifteenth century
consolidated Spain's position as an emerging
world power: the union of the crowns of
Aragon and Castile through the marriage of
Ferdinand and Isabella and the victory of these
"Christian Monarchsff in 1492 over the kingdom of Granada, the last stronghold of Islam,
which had ruled large areas of Spain in the
Middle Ages. It was no accident that Christo-

154

CIRCA 1492

pher Columbus, the Genoese captain who had

been peddling his vision of a sea route to the
Indies throughout the courts of Europe, found
his first sympathetic audience in the person of
the Queen of Spain. Columbus' "Enterprise of
the Indies" offered his patrons the prospect of a
new route to the East, enabling Spanish merchants to compete with their Portuguese rivals
and the established maritime trading cities of

Italy. It also was to provide direct access to the

courts of Asia, allowing the Gospel to be
preached to the ends of the earth.
Spain's geographical position had long made
it the crossroads of Europe. In Columbus' day
its culture was an amalgam of indigenous traditions, including important contributions from
its long-established Islamic and Jewish communities, and more recent influences from the Low

Countries and Italy. As the monarch]/ of Ferdinand and Isabella developed into the Empire of
Charles v, the Italian Renaissance emerged as
the dominant influence in Spanish art.
Columbus' unexpected landing in the Americas gave Spain the opportunity to develop the
greatest empire of early modern times, eclipsing the wealth of the Far Eastern powers, word
of which had inspired his journey.

33
Workshop of Pieter van Aelst
Brussels

CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN

Tapestry from the series called Triumph of the
Mother of God or Panos de Oro
c. 1500-1502
warp: wool; weft: wool, silk, silver and go
332 x 375 (ijo7/s x i475/sj
reference: Madrid 1986

34

Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real de Madrid

The series of four tapestries of the Triumph of the
Mother of God, also known as the Panos de Oro
because of the vast quantity of gold thread used in
their manufacture, is the earliest set of its kind
still in the Spanish royal collection.
The author of the designs for the Panos de Oro
is unknown, but the sale of the tapestries from the
shop of Pieter van Aelst in Brussels on 10 August
1502 is documented. They were bought by Juana
la loca (Joanna the Mad), second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and wife of Philip the Handsome. Juana gave the set, along with another,
similarly rich tapestry, The Mass of Saint Gregory
(also preserved in the Spanish royal collection), to
Isabella, who on her death in 1504 bequeathed
them back to Juana.
Juana's life was tragically marred by the death
of her young husband in 1506 and by a severe
mental illness that led to her gradual deterioration. After Philip's death Juana took the tapestries
with her to Tordesillas, where she lived in isolation and died in 1555 at the age of 75.
The Panos de Oro represent four key events in
the life of the Virgin: God Sending the Angel
Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, the Annunciation,
the Nativity and the Coronation of the Virgin
exhibited here. In the center of the Coronation,
the Virgin Mary is crowned by the Trinity (in
which the Holy Spirit is, unusually, pictured as an
angel). They are surrounded by a choir of musical
angels, saints, and representations of the Virtues
with their attributes. In the four corners of the
tapestry are scenes that represent subjects not

usually associated with the Coronation of the

Virgin but all apparently related to royal or
courtly marriages. In the upper left, the betrothal
of David and Abigail, as told in Samuel 25:40-42,
is pictured. The marriage of Solomon is in the
upper right. The scenes in the lower corners
show the coronation of a young woman and a
young woman presented with the portrait of a
young man.
The biblical stories and the image of the woman
presented with the portrait may refer to Juana's
own marriage in 1496 to Philip, son of Maximilian i and Mary of Burgundy. The coronation scene
at the lower left, which reflects the subject of the
Coronation of the Virgin, may refer to the historical event that took place in 1501, when Juana
and Philip journeyed from Flanders to Spain to be
recognized officially by the Cortes of Castile and
Aragon as inheritors of the Spanish crown
(Madrid 1986, 5). Ferdinand and Isabella's older
children, Juan and Isabel, had already died, in
1497 and 1498 respectively. If this interpretation
is correct, it would strongly suggest that Juana not
only purchased the Panos de Oro but specifically
commissioned them to celebrate her own marriage and coronation.
Pieter van Aelst, from whom the tapestries
were bought, held the title of tapestry master to
Emperor Maximilian i. These tapestries are
typical of the finest Brussels weaving of the
14905, the period in which, under the aegis of
Maximilian, painters and weavers in Brussels collaborated to create this new style of luxury
tapestries.
s.s.

Master of the Older Prayerbook of

Maximilian i (Alexander Bening)
CRUCIFIXION and DEPOSITION
from the Book of Hours of
Queen Isabella of Castile
c. 1496-1504
manuscript, tempera and gold on vellum, 279 fols.
22.6x15.2 (87/sx6)
references: de Winter 1981
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase, Leonard
C. Hanna Jr. Fund, fols. 7217-73r
Isabella inherited from her father a substantial,
for her time, library to which she added books and
illuminated manuscripts throughout her lifetime.
The monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo
was to include a library that would be the repository of Isabella's and Ferdinand's collection, though
that plan was never implemented. This Book of
Hours is a particularly fine example of the illuminated prayerbooks in the Ghent-Bruges style
favored by Isabella; others that once belonged to
her may be found in the Spanish national collections and elsewhere, including a breviary in the
British Library, London (Add. MS 18851).
The shield on the armorial page of the Cleveland Book of Hours includes the pomegranate
(granada), a symbol that Isabella and Ferdinand
added to their heraldry after they expelled the
Moors from Granada in 1492. The book therefore
must have been commissioned afterward. Other
inclusions indicate that the book was intended

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

155

for the queen herself; as she died in 1504, it was

probably completed by that date (de Winter
1981, 343).
Isabella's taste for Netherlandish art was agreeably facilitated by her family connections in the
region. Two of her children married into the
House of Burgundy in 496 (cat. 33). Those weddings occasioned the commissioning of the breviary now in the British Library by Fernando de
Rojas, Ferdinand's and Isabella's ambassador to
Flanders. The Cleveland Book of Hours was also
probably commissioned as a gift for the Spanish
queen, perhaps by Rojas as well (de Winter 1981,
347), though indications in that volume suggest it
might have been begun for someone else.
A book of hours is exactly that: a selection of
prayers to be read at the eight canonical hours of
the day, along with other prayers to mark special
feast days. The Cleveland Hours comprises 279
folios, which include ten three-quarter page miniatures and forty full-page miniature paintings.
The text is written in black with red rubrics by a
single hand throughout the volume and is illuminated with elegant initial letters in gray, blue, and
white with gold on a brown ground. The framing
elements surrounding the Crucifixion and the
Deposition are representative of the brilliantly
decorated borders painted throughout the manuscript. Irises and butterflies, strawberries and
lilies are laid out as though in a shadow box:
"Appealing and yet disquieting is the unruffled
seclusion of this arrested microcosm observed
as if through the magic of prismatic crystal"
(de Winter 1981, 351).
The illumination of the Crucifixion and the
smaller Deposition on the facing page have been
convincingly attributed to the Master of the Older
Prayerbook of Maximilian i (Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin); the master is now identified as Alexander
Bening, father of the prolific sixteenth-century
illuminator Simon Bening (de Winter 1981, 355).
Alexander Bening evidently designed the layout
of the manuscript and provided the majority of
the illuminations.
The compositions of both the Crucifixion and
the Deposition can be found in earlier manuscripts
and both are, as is usual in manuscript illumination, ultimately dependent on large-scale compositions by early Netherlandish masters. In this
instance, two paintings by Rogier van der Weyden
were Bening's main sources of inspiration: a Crucifixion in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna, and the Deposition in the Museo del
Prado, Madrid. The scenes are not mere copies,
however; they are varied by elements that may be
traced to paintings by Hugo van der Goes and to
Dieric Bouts' Deposition.
Interestingly, both van der Weyden's and
Bouts' paintings referred to here were later transferred from Flanders to Granada by Isabella's
grandson Charles v. There they served as part of
the decoration of the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel)
156

CIRCA

1492

of the cathedral where Isabella and Ferdinand

were interred. The remains of the Reyes Catolicos
lie in the city that their crusade liberated from
the Moors.
s.s.

35
THE RICH MISSAL (Misal Rico)
OF CARDINAL CISNEROS
1503-1519

Spanish
manuscript on vellum
45.5 x 33 (18 x 13)
references: de Winter 1981; New York 1985, 71-72
Biblioteca National, Madrid, MS 1546
This seven-volume missal al uso de Toledo is
important not only because of the richness of its
thousands of illuminated pages but also because it
was made for one of the outstanding figures of the
age, Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros. Cisneros rose from a humble Franciscan friar to his
appointment as Confessor to Queen Isabella in
1492. He succeeded Cardinal Mendoza as Archbishop of Toledo in 1495. In 1504, when Isabella
died while Ferdinand was in Italy, Cisneros served
as Regent of the Realm. He served in this capacity
again on Ferdinand's death in 1516, while Spain
awaited the arrival of its new ruler, the Emperor
Charles v, from Flanders. Cisneros was a prodigious patron of artists and architects; his generous

"support of the arts is particularly visible today in

the Cathedral of Toledo (see the essay by Jonathan
Brown in this catalogue).
Although the Misal Rico was finished during
Cisneros' lifetime, it also bears the coat of arms of
his successor as Archbishop of Toledo, Alonso de
Fonseca. These precious volumes, which took fifteen years to complete, continued in use in the
Cathedral of Toledo until the nineteenth century;
here and there on its vellum pages are stains left
by candles and oil lamps, attesting to its active
role in the rites of the faith.
Records in the cathedral chapter show that Cisneros spared no expense in the production of the
manuscript called the "rich missal." The lettering
and illumination of the volumes were executed by
Gonzalo de Cordoba, "Master of the Books of the
Cathedral," between 1504 and 1510. The miniatures were painted by Bernardino de Canderroa,
Alonso Jimenez, Fray Felipe, and Alonso Vazquez.
Their styles represent the uniquely Spanish blend
of Flemish and Italian Renaissance styles prevalent
at this transitional moment.
The volumes contain 2,794 decorated bands in
the side margins, 1,866 historiated initials, 1,316
miniature paintings, and 2,688 even smaller ones.
Full-page borders illuminate the pages dedicated
to the main feast days of the church; each page is
decorated with a historiated initial related to that
feast. In the ornamental borders, flowers, fruits,
and insects glow against a golden field. In the first
and second volumes there are also 322 miniatures
with "banners," initials decorated with bands of
flowers on a blue or gold background (New York
1985,71-72).
s.s.

36
Konrad Seusenhofer
Innsbruck, active 1500-1517

BOY'S DRESS ARMOR OF ARCHDUKE

CHARLES, SUBSEQUENTLY CHARLES v
1512-1514

steel, silver gilt; velvet, leather

height 150 (59]; width 70 (2^/2)
references: Primisser 1819, 52-53, no. 6; Sacken
1855, II5//-/' Sacken I#59/ 16, pi. 8; Boeheim 1894,
2-3; Boeheim iSyya, 25; Boeheim iSyyb, 2$6ff.;
Vienna 1936, 42; Thomas 1949, 37//-; Innsbruck
1954, 68-69, no - 62; Vienna 1958, no. 87; Vienna
1959, no. 622; Thomas-Gamber-Schedelmann 1963,
p/. i6a; Thomas-Camber 1976, 118-119; Vienna
1988, 395; Vienna 1990, 12#//.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Hofjagd-und
Rustkammer
This armor, which does not appear in the old
inventories, was catalogued in the Ambras collection in 1819 and attributed to Philip i. The validity of this traditional attribution was questioned
(Sacken 1855) and it was later definitively proved
that only the young Charles v (1478-1506) could
have worn this dress armor (Boeheim 1899^.
Maximilian i (1459-1519) ordered this magnificent armor for his twelve-year-old grandson in
1512 from his court armorer, Konrad Seusenhofer,
who had run the court armory since its creation in
1504. He had an unusually gifted, versatile, and
imaginative artistic personality, and this type of

armor could only be his creation. He undoubtedly

enjoyed imitating such a work of fashion in steel,
but it required unusual skill to do so. The armor is
patterned after the pleated skirt of the Dutch
man's costume, the so-called "long-cloak," which
has appliqued borders. To imitate this, recessed
bands were affixed on the front and back, on the
pleated skirt, the shoulders and the knees of the
armor. Originally, black velvet was the background for these gilded interlaced bands. The
emblems of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the
cross of Saint Andrew, and the flint and sparks of
Burgundy are constantly repeated. The cut-out

arched sections were necessary for riding and

could be closed with inserts, now unfortunately
missing, for foot combat.
The closely fitted vest, incised with half moons
and with etched slits, emerges from under the
wide cone-shaped shoulders. This motif resembles
the then fashionable Landsknecht costumes,
which reveal the slitted puff sleeves of the colored
lining underneath. Partially gilded, partially
blackened etching in the style of the Augsburg
master Daniel Hopfer the Elder decorates the
other pieces; foliage, star flowers, creatures of
fable, and putti on a punched ground accompany

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

157

37
CABASSET OF FERDINAND OF ARAGON
late i$th-early i6th century, Aragonese (?)
steel, gilded copper
height 29 (n3/s); width 24.5 (95/s); depth 32.5 (i23/4J
references: Marchesi 1849, 2-3; Valencia de Don
Juan 1898, 127; Mann 1932, 296-297, 304; Vienna
1936, 22; Vienna 1976, 118-119
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Hofjagd-und
Rustkammer
Three half-sun marks are engraved on the side of
this bell-shaped helmet. Since the beginning of
the nineteenth century these markings have been
attributed to the previously unstudied armory in
Calatayud near Saragossa. The smooth helmet
inclines slightly toward a point at the back. This
incline ends in a small cross. The helmet is
encircled by a ribbonlike headband of gilt copper
with the engraved inscription in hoc signo vincit
(in this sign you shall conquer), on a punched
ground. The letters are separated by two lobed
leaves and a similar decorative band, covered with
vegetal climbers, adorns the brim. Crowned cartouches with the emblem of Granada are affixed
to the middle of the forehead and on the nape. In
the front another cartouche with what is now only
a partial cross is affixed above the one with the
emblem. The cartouche in back was topped at
some later point with a plume holder. The decorative inscription, undoubtedly based on Moorish
design, alludes to the conquest of Granada by Ferdinand, as do the emblems. The word cabasset
comes from the Spanish cabeza (head) and represents a local variation of the helmet. The receding
brim and the sharp ridge from front to back are
typical for the cabasset.
C.B.-S.

edges of "sewn designs" and free-formed branches

of pomegranates. For etching and silver decoration
the armor was sent to Augsburg, where the best
artists for this work were to be found. The visor
displayed here is a contemporary piece thought to
be by Seusenhofer, but it did not originally belong
to the armor.
Maximilian i had many presentation armors
fashioned in his Innsbruck armory. In 1511 he
commissioned the armorer Hans Rabeiler (active
1501-1519) to make a body armor for his grandson
Charles, which was never completed. It was evidently learned that the armor then in progress

158

C I R C A 1492

would no longer have fit the growing Charles and

the project_was abandoned. On 12 March 1512 the
chamberlain at Innsbruck informed the emperor
that a vest and pants of the young Charles had
been sent to the master armorer Konrad Seusenhofer as a basis of measure for the new armor. At
the same time Maximilian i ordered two additional parade armors in this style for his English
relation Henry vm. At least a helmet, now in the
Tower of London (inv. no. iv 22), remains of this
gift, which the brother of Konrad Seusenhofer,
Hans, delivered to Antwerp in April 1514 for its
journey to England.
C.B.-S.

coat-of-arms on the chapel's screen (Burgos 1496).

Judging from the 1487 inventory, the reliquaries were not part of a series of apostles (apostolado)f as has been suggested (Rico Santamaria
1985, 445), but were simply meant to house the
relics of three saints especially venerated in
Burgos. Santiago, patron of Castile, was particularly important. Burgos was not only at the time
the unofficial capital of the kingdom, la cabeza de
Castilla, it was one of the major cities on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.
Luis de Acuna, the prelate who commissioned
the reliquaries, was an important political figure
during the years immediately preceding the reign

38
Master IF (possibly Juan Gonzalez Frias)
RELIQUARY OF SAINT JAMES
THE GREATER
1456-1457
Castilian
gilt silver, painted, with precious stones
height 67 (265/s)
references: Burgos 1496; Martinez Sanz 1866, 270272; Lopez Mata 1950, 96, 98; Lopez Martinez 1961,
309; Estepa Diez 1984, 287-288; Rico Santamana
1985, 445
Excmo. Cabildo CatedralBurgos
This silver gilt figure of Santiago, Saint James
the Greater, is one of a set of three reliquaries in
Burgos Cathedral in the form of standing figures
of apostles, the others depicting Saints Peter and
Paul. They date from the tenure of Luis de Acuna
as bishop of Burgos (1456-1495); his coat-of-arms
appears on the Santiago reliquary. The reliquary
also displays the Caput Castellae, the crowned
head of a king atop a castle, the mark of the
Burgos silversmith's guild. The mark of the silversmith himself consists of two letters: IF.
Burgos was one of the principal centers of silversmith's production in Castile in the fifteenth century, and its guild was one of the most prestigious

and among the first to be established (Estepa Diez

1984, 287-288).
Burgos Cathedral once possessed a large
number of relics, which were kept in the sacristy
until 1765 (Martinez Sanz 1866, 270-272). The
reliquaries of Saint James, Saint Peter, and Saint
Paul are almost certainly identical with the ones
listed in a 1487 inventory of the sacristy:
b.i El pulgar de senor Sant Pedro apostol esta
en el apostol
b.n De los huesos de senor Sant Pablo apostol
esta en el apostol
b.m De los huesos de senor Santiago apostol
esta en el apostol
(Lopez Martinez 1961)
The Roman numeral in is inscribed on the base
of the Santiago reliquary, corresponding to the
inventory number. The listing of these relics
under the alphabetical headings ag can probably
be understood as a reference to the compartments
within the reliquary cabinet in the sacristy in
which the relics were stored. This arrangement
may have been altered in 1495 upon the completion of Alonso de Sedano's "altar of the relics"
(retablo de las reliquias). Significantly, it must
have been Luis de Acuna who initiated this project, as the artisan responsible for the ironwork,
the rejero, was later required to place the bishop's
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

159

of the Catholic Monarchs. Like several other

members of his prominent family, he had opposed
a matrimonial alliance between Castile and
Aragon and, subsequently, Isabella's claim to the
throne. As a result, Acuna spent the years 14761481 in exile from Burgos. Nonetheless, during
his lengthy term as bishop, he intervened in favor
of several major building projects in Burgos
Cathedral. Successive masters (maestros de la
obra) Juan and Simon de Colonia completed the
north tower, the Gothic cimborium (which collapsed in 1539), and Acufia's own funerary chapel.
Gil de Siloe and Diego de la Cruz executed the
main altarpiece of Acuna's chapel. In addition,
Acuna caused the silver image of Santa Maria la
Mayor, patroness of the cathedral, to be remade
on a larger scale between 1460 and 1464, providing the silver necessary for the undertaking. That
anonymous work can be usefully compared with
the Santiago reliquary (Lopez Mata 1950, 96, 98).
R.K.

worked with embossed and engraved foliate decoration, with the enameled coats of arms of the
Catholic Monarchs and the Dominican order
applied. The cup is likewise sustained by large,
embossed, leafy forms. The hexagonal stem is
decorated with Gothic fenestration, while the sixpaneled central nodule is articulated with a like
number of tiny figures of standing saints. The
maker of the chalice is unknown, as is its place
of origin. The goldsmith's marks are not clearly
visible, though one of them appears to be that
of the city of Avila (Arnaez 1983,1:75).
C.P.I, and R.K.

40

CHALICE
c. 1500
Castilian
gilt silver, filigree, pearls, enamel
height 23 (92/sj
inscribed: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS TECUM
references: Madrid 1893,no- 44 '> Villa-Amil y
Castro i#93, 13; Chicote 1903-1904, 1:140-141;
Martin Gonzalez 1971, 322; Brasas Egido 1980, 117,
fig- 67

39
CHALICE OF THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS
late i$th century
Castilian
gilt silver, enamel

25 x 19 (93/4 x 73/sj

references: Llorente 1961, 39; Palomo Iglesias 1970,

89; Arndez 1983, 1:74-75, fig. 24
Convento de Santo Domingo el Real, Segovia

This chalice, bearing the coats of arms of Spain

and of the Dominican order, attests to the special
devotion of Isabella the Catholic for the order
founded by Saint Dominic of Guzman. The queen
called upon a Dominican, Tomas de Torquemada,
to undertake the reorganization of the Tribunal of
the Holy Office (the Inquisition) and appointed
him inquisitor general. Torquemada was the prior
of the convent of Santa Cruz at Segovia, an institution of great tradition and importance. It was
the first Dominican convent in Spain, founded by
Saint Dominic himself in 1218 (Jordan of Saxony,
Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum, n.
59). For this and other reasons Isabella took the
convent of Santa Cruz under her royal patronage.
She had it completely rebuilt, sparing only the
cave to which Saint Dominic had withdrawn at
night for prayer and penitence. The queen
entrusted this work to the royal architect Juan
Guas.
Columbus' "Enterprise of the Indies" is itself
connected with a prominent Dominican of the
time. Before the queen agreed to finance Colum160

CIRCA 1492

bus' undertaking, she sent him to Salamanca to

discuss the feasibility of the voyage with the
Dominican Diego de Deza, a learned cleric about
whom Columbus wrote: "Ever since I came to
Castile he has held me in favor and desired my
honor" and if it were not for him "Their Highnesses would not possess the Indies and I would
not have remained in Castile, since I was about to
leave." In memory of this event, one of the cloisters in the Dominican convent of San Esteban of
Salamanca is named after Columbus, and the
stone lintel above the window of Deza's room is
inscribed, "Diego de Deza and Columbus spoke
together here."
Among the donations Isabella made to the convent of Santa Cruz was this chalice. It was kept
with the most valued objects until the disentailment of 1834, when the clerics were forced to
abandon their convent. At that time Prior Claudio
Sancho Contreras took the chalice and kept it in
his possession until his death in 1886. It then
passed to the convent of Dominican nuns in Segovia, where it is still kept and used on the most
solemn occasions. This chalice was one of the
objects exhibited at the History of the Americas
Exhibition on the occasion of the fourth Columbus Centenary.
Though the intervention of the queen's architect at Santa Cruz dates from at least as early as
1478, the chalice must have been commissioned
slightly later, as the royal coat of arms includes
the pomegranate of the kingdom of Granada,
added in 1492. The base of the chalice is richly

Museo Diocesano y Catedralicio, Valladolid

Given that no goldsmith's marks can be distinguished on the chalice, it is impossible to identify
its maker or to be certain of its place of origin. It

has been attributed to a Valladolid craftsman and

dated to around 1500.
The base of the chalice is divided into five lobes
and is decorated with an unusual floral pattern
executed in filigree and enamel, repeated at the
base of the bowl and enriched with tiny pearls.
The broad uppermost part of the stem, just below
the bowl, is articulated with gothic fenestration.
The bowl itself is inscribed with the words of the
angelic salutation from the Annunciation.
The chalice originally comes from the Valladolid church of La Magdalena, a parish that prospered under the patronage of the La Gasca family.
It is traditionally said to have been a gift of the
prelate and statesman Pedro de la Gasca (14851567), who was named President of the Audiencia
of Peru by Charles v. La Gasca is known as "el
Padre restuarador y pacificador" for his role in
subduing the rebellion against the crown led by
Gonzalo de Pizarro. Upon his return to Spain,
he served as Bishop of Sigiienza and later, of
Palencia.
R.K.

4*

PANELS FROM A DOOR

last quarter i$th century
Castilian
walnut
each upper panel 145.5 x 5-$ (571/4 x 2O)
each lower panel 50 x 50.8 (i$5/8 x 20)
inscribed: AVE GRACIA p and SALVE REGINA MA
references: Ara Gil 1977, 371-372; Mateo Gomez,
1979, 219; Martin Gonzalez 1985, 15
Museo Diocesano y Catedralicio, Valladolid
This door, now placed at the entrance to the chapel
of San Llorente in Valladolid Cathedral, is one of
six late fifteenth century doors to survive from
the no longer extant Collegiate church of Santa
Maria la Mayor. The Colegiata was founded in
1095 by the Conde Ansurez and was later elevated
to the status of Cathedral in 1595 by Clement vm
at the request of Philip n.
The door is divided into four panels: the two
lower ones are decorated with tracery while the
two upper ones are decorated with a foliate pattern populated with birds. A jar of lilies, associated with the Virgin (to whom the colegiata was
dedicated), is found in each of these two panels,
accompanied by inscriptions which likewise refer
to Mary: in the left hand panel, "AVE GRACIA p"
and in the right hand panel, "SALVE REGINA MA/' In
the latter panel, the lilies are supported by a wild
man and woman (see cat. 4), a rather common
motif in Castilian art of the late fifteenth century,
above all in heraldic contexts in architecture and
the decorative arts, where such creatures often

serve as guardians of portals or of a particular coat

of arms. Two of the most prominent examples
occur in the decoration of the fagade of the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid and the Capilla
de los Condestables in Burgos Cathedral. The wild
man and woman represented in the Valladolid
door function similarly as the "heraldic" guardians of an emblem of the Virgin.
The author of the portal is unknown, though it
is likely that all six doors were commissioned at
the same time as a set of choir stalls, also from the
Collegiate church, now found in the Cathedral.
Although there appear to have been a certain
number of entalladores (woodcarvers) active in

Valladolid towards the end of the fifteenth century, only a few names are known: Fray Pedro de
Lorena, Fray Pedro de Valladolid, Martin Sanchez,
Pedro de Guadalupe. Among these craftsmen, few
names can be connected with surviving works.
Martin Sanchez, who is referred to as a resident of
Valladolid, was active between 1486 and 1489 in
the construction of the stalls for the monk's choir
at the Cartuja de Miraflores near Burgos. Unfortunately, the Miraflores stalls have no figural
decoration and it is not possible to draw any conclusions regarding the authorship of the Valladolid
doors by analyzing similarities between the
two works.
R.K.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

l6l

42-45
FOUR PANELS FROM THE
POLYPTYCH ALTARPIECE
OF QUEEN ISABELLA

Juan de Flandes
Hispano-Flemish, active 1496-1519

c. 1496-1504

TEMPTATION OF CHRIST
IN THE DESERT

Michel Sittow

oil on panel
21 x 15.5 (8V4 x 6V4)

Hispano-Flemish c. 1469-1525 or 1526

ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN

oil on panel
2i.3xi6.7(83/8x65/8)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon
Bruce Fund
162

CIRCA 1492

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon

Bruce Fund

Juan de Flandes
MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES
AND FISHES

oil on panel
21 x 15 (8V4 x 6)
Patrimonio National Palacio Real de Madrid

Juan de Flandes
SUPPER AT EMMAUS
oil on panel

2i.2xi5.7(8y4x6y4)
Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real de Madrid
references: Sanchez Canton 1930, 99, 115; National
Gallery of Art 1941; Vandevivere 1967, 35; Trizna
1976, 19, 39

Juan de Flandes and Michel Sittow began working

on a miniature altarpiece for Queen Isabella in
1496. Listed in a 1505 inventory of Isabella's possessions in the castle at Toro are forty-seven small
panels (tablicas), which were stored in a cabinet
(Sanchez Canton 1930, 99). These (and probably
others planned but not executed) were intended to
be framed as aretablo, with a format like that of
the enormous retablos in Spanish cathedrals, but
greatly scaled down to serve for Isabella's personal
devotions. Twenty-eight of the panels are extant
today, fifteen of them in the Palacio Real, Madrid.
Juan de Flandes painted the majority of the panels
and probably served as supervisor of the project.

This miniature retablo, with its many individual scenes from the life of Christ, was privately
commissioned by Queen Isabella. It thus reflects
both her personal piety and, as was recently suggested by Chiyo Ishikawa, underlines the character of the religious reform undertaken during the
reign of the Catholic Monarchs. The compositions
are spare and simple, the stories told with impressive sobriety, the facial expressions showing the
utmost seriousness. One of the panels even
includes portraits of the king and queen; in the
Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes they are
seen on the left, Isabella kneeling and Ferdinand
standing behind her.

Michel Sittow was born in Reval, a Hanseatic

port on the Baltic (now Tallinn, Estonia). His
apprenticeship and early career as a painter were
served in Bruges, from about 1484 to 1491, when
Hans Memling was the most influential painter
there. From 1492 to 1504 Sittow was in the service of Queen Isabella. Not yet twenty-five
years old, he received an annual salary of 50,000
maravedis, more than twice as much as Juan de
Flandes would receive four years later (Trizna
1976,19). Although Sittow worked on the polyptych altarpiece of Isabella with Juan de Flandes,
he was probably retained primarily as a portrait
painter.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

163

After Isabella's death in 1504, Sittow evidently

returned to his native Reval to straighten out a
matter of his inheritance (Trizna 1976, 39). In
1514 he traveled to Denmark, where he painted a
portrait of King Christian n (Statens Museum for
Kunst, Copenhagen). In 1516 he was in Marines,
painting for Margaret of Austria and the future
Charles v. His last years were spent in Reval,
where he died in 1525 or 1526.
Sittow's work on Isabella's altarpiece is documented in a 1516 inventory of the panels made
when they were in the collection of Margaret of
Austria. The Ascension of Christ (Earl of Yarborough, Brocklesby Park, Habrough) and the
Assumption of the Virgin are there attributed to
"la main de Michel" (the hand of Michel). Sittow
painted for Margaret and may well have been at
her court in Malines to help with the inventory
and thus identify panels that he himself had executed (Sanchez Canton 1930,115).
Juan de Flandes may have been trained as a
miniaturist in his native Flanders; however, when
Isabella died in 1504 and his tenure as court artist
ended, he never again worked on such a small
scale. In 1505 he was painting the main altarpiece
164

CIRCA 1492

for the chapel of the University of Salamanca. He

established residence in Palencia in 1508 and
began work on the main altarpiece of the church
of San Lazaro in that city (four panels of which are
now in the National Gallery of Art). In 1509 Juan
de Flandes contracted to paint the immense altarpiece of the Cathedral of Palencia; he was still
working on that project when he died in 1518
(Vandevivere 1967, 35).
Juan de Flandes also painted three of the panels
exhibited here. Albrecht Diirer, who saw the
panels in Margaret's collection on his trip to the
Netherlands in 1520-1521, admired the small
paintings for their "purity and excellence," qualities still prized today. Scene after scene quietly
unfolds before us, picked out with the meticulous
brushstrokes of a painter completely at ease
with the miniature format. The figures move with
studied serenity through simple architectural
settings (Supper at Emmaus) or against atmospheric landscapes (Assumption of the Virgin) that
sometimes reflect the rugged austere landscape
of Isabella's Castile (Temptation of Christ in the
Desert).
s.s.

46

Pedro Berruguete

Spanish, c. 1450-0. 1504

THE PROPHET DAVID

c. 1480-1490
oil on panel
98.4 x 59.1 (j83/4 x 2^/4)
references: Lainez 1943, 46; Post 1947, 85, 86;
Angulo Iniguez 1954, 12:89-90
Church of Santa Eulalia, Paredes de Nava
Pedro Berruguete was born in Paredes de Nava,
a town northeast of Palencia, around 1450. We
know nothing definite about his early life and
training, but his style indicates that he may have
served an apprenticeship in the Low Countries
around 1470. He may have traveled from there
directly to Urbino in the company of Joos van
Gent, who worked between 1473 and 1475 for
Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. For the
studiolo of the ducal palace in Urbino, Berruguete
painted allegories of the Liberal Arts, and completed with Joos van Gent a series of twenty-eight

portraits of famous men (Angulo Iniguez 1954,

89-90).
In 1483, the year after Federigo da Montefeltro's death, Berruguete was back in Spain, at the
Cathedral of Toledo, where he is recorded
throughout the following decade, though little of
his work there remains. After his patron, Archbishop Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, died in 1495,
Berruguete painted several important works for
Cardinal Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor
during the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand, including the main retablo of the monastery of Santo
Tomas in Avila and that of the Cathedral of Avila.
Besides these important commissions, which are
his masterpieces, Berruguete created altarpieces
for a number of churches in the areas around
Palencia, Burgos, and Segovia. Following Berruguete's death some time before 6 January 1504
(Lainez 1943, 46), his altarpiece for the Cathedral
of Avila was completed by Juan de Borgona.
The set of paintings in the church of Santa
Eulalia in Berruguete's home town of Paredes de
Nava, to which this panel belongs, must have been
one of the earliest commissions he undertook
upon his return to Spain from Italy. Those paintings are now ensconced in an altarpiece painted by
Pedro's grandson Inocencio Berruguete, in collaboration with another artist, in the mid-sixteenth
century (Post 1947, 85). Despite the considerable
stylistic changes in Spanish art that had occurred
between the 14805 and the 15505, the contract for
the new altarpiece explicitly required the inclusion of Pedro Berruguete's existing paintings.

The predella of the Santa Eulalia altarpiece

includes six half-length Old Testament worthies
by Pedro Berruguete Jehoshaphat, Solomon,
Uzziah, Ezra, and Hezekiah, in addition to David.
All but Ezra are mentioned in the book of Matthew as ancestors of Saint Joseph and so are iconographically appropriate for the altarpiece, which is
dedicated to the life of the Virgin (Post 1947, 86).
The degree of idealization in these imaginary portraits reflects Berruguete's Italian experience and
somewhat recalls the series of portraits that he
painted in Urbino. However, it is clear that his
experience in Italy did not turn Pedro Berruguete
into an Italian Renaissance painter. He simply
infused into his native Hispano-Flemish style a
greater sense of monumentality and an interest in
space and perspective. Much more striking in The
Prophet David is Berruguete's masterful handling
of those elements most characteristic of the Hispano-Flemish style: the dazzling gold brocade, the
brilliant palette, and the precise rendering of
details. King David is not overwhelmed by his rich
trappings, however; his steady outward gaze conveys both a sense of his magisterial wisdom and a
profound humanity.
s.s.

47
Michel Sittow

Hispano-Flemish, c. 1469-1525 or 1526

PORTRAIT OF A MAN
(DIEGO DE GUEVARA?)
c. 1515-1518
oil on panel
^.6x2^.y(i^/4X93/8)
reference: National Gallery 1941, 185
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W.
Mellon Collection
Sittow, who worked on the Polyptych Altarpiece
of Queen Isabella (see cat. 45) with Juan de
Flandes, was primarily a portrait painter. This
modest portrait of a middle-aged man wearing a
fur collar, seen in three-quarter view facing to
the left, his left hand on the parapet and his right
on his breast, indicates clearly the qualities that
earned Sittow his importance in Isabella's
entourage.
The painting has been tentatively identified as
the portrait of Diego de Guevara, who worked for
the court of Isabella's daughter, Juana "la Loca,"
and her husband Philip the Handsome. An
inventory of 1548 of the estate of the Marquis of
Zenete includes a reference to a diptych with one
panel representing the Virgin and Child and the
other "Don Diego de Guevara with a furred gar-

ment." About 1560, Diego de Guevara's son Felipe

mentions a portrait of his father by "Michel." It is
certain that this portrait has a pendant, the Virgin
and Child with a Bird (Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin, no. 1722), because the pattern of the oriental carpet on the parapet on which the Christ
Child rests exactly matches its continuation in the
foreground of the portrait.
These references are tantalizing, but ultimately
inconclusive. The portrait could also be of a
member of the entourage of Catherine of Aragon,
painted when Sittow was in England (National
Gallery 1941,185). The brocaded pattern of the
sitter's doublet could allude to the emblem of the
Order of Calatrava the cross and fleur-de-lis
which would suggest that the sitter was a knight
of that military and religious order, established in
the twelfth century. (Ferdinand and Isabella, to
avoid the possible use of the order's resources
against their monarchy, in 1489, with the approval
of the papacy, took over the administration of the
Order of Calatrava.)
Whoever the subject may have been, Sittow's
own accomplishment in this portrait is clear. With
precision and unflinching honesty played off
against the values of light, shadow and volume, he
has created a likeness that is small in scale but
monumental in its sobriety and dignity.
s.s.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

165

48
Gil de Siloe
Netherlands or Lower Rhine (?), active 1486-1500

SAINT JAMES THE GREATER

1459-1493

alabaster with traces of polychrome and gilding

45.9 x 17.8 x 14.6 (iSVs x 7 x 53/4J
references: Burgos 1500; Burgos 1501; Laurent C.
1577; Iglesia 1659, 3; Rada y Delgado 1874, 3:322;
Turin y Juaneda 1896; Lopez Mata 1946, 103;
Wethey 1936, 31, 130, nn. 116-118
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The
Cloisters Collection, 1969

Like numerous other sculptors active in Castile

during the second half of the fifteenth century,
Gil de Siloe was from northern Europe, though
his precise origin remains uncertain. A document
describing him as a native of "urliones" (Orleans?), and another, recently discovered, in which

166

CIRCA 1492

he is called "francos," cannot be easily reconciled

with stylistic evidence that points to his origin in
the Netherlands or the Lower Rhine region
(Lopez Mata 1946,103; Burgos 1501). Nothing
certain is known of Gil's activities prior to 1486,
when he provided the designs for the tombs at the
Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, near Burgos.
These tombs were not begun, however, until
1489, and in the interim Siloe must have completed the retablo for the funerary chapel of Luis
de Acuna in Burgos Cathedral, and another altarpiece, now lost, for the chapel of Alonso de Burgos
at the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid.
Upon completion of the royal tombs in 1493, Siloe
was commissioned to execute the main altarpiece
for the church of San Esteban in Burgos (now
destroyed). Between 1496 and 1499 he was once
again at Miraflores, at work on the monumental
main altarpiece. With the Miraflores altarpiece,
the documented activity of Gil de Siloe comes to
an end, though other works attributed to him
such as the Saint Anne altarpiece in Burgos
Cathedral and the tomb of Juan de Padilla (from

Fresdelval), are presumed to postdate it. He died

in 1500 (Wethey 1936; Burgos 1500).
The alabaster tomb of Juan n of Castile and
Isabel of Portugal, for which this figure of Santiago was sculpted, is one of the most unusual and
extravagant funerary monuments of the fifteenth
century. The Carthusian monastery in which it is
situated was founded in 1442 by Juan n, who
ceded the former palace of Miraflores for the purpose. However, the monastery was almost
entirely destroyed by fire in 1452, less than two
years before the death of its founder. It remained
for Isabel la Catolica to pursue the construction
and decoration of her father's foundation. Work at
the monastery came to a complete standstill
during the troubled reign of Enrique iv and did
not resume until 1477, shortly after Isabel
secured the throne. Construction of the monastic
church was directed by Simon de Colonia, who
completed it in 1488. During the course of the
next decade, Gil de Siloe and his shop executed
the tomb of Juan n and Isabel of Portugal, that of
Isabel's brother, the Infante Alfonso, and the
polychromed wood retablo mayor (Tarin y
Juaneda 1896). Significantly, the royal tombs at
Miraflores distinguish and exalt the particular line
of succession through which Isabel la Catolica
asserted her disputed claim to the throne of Castile. As a dynastic monument, Miraflores functions to affirm the legitimacy of Isabel's claims.
The alabaster figure of Saint James the Greater,
the patron of Castile, is one of sixteen that once
adorned the top of the star-shaped tomb of Juan u
and Isabel of Portugal. The largest of these figures, the four Evangelists, remain in situ at the
cardinal points of the eight-pointed star. The
remaining points and interior angles were originally adorned with twelve standing figures of
saints, including the Santiago and the eight statuettes still at Miraflores. It is possible that two of
the latter originally belonged to the adjacent tomb
of the Infante Alfonso. Although written descriptions of the monument have listed varying numbers of figures (Wethey 1936, 31,130, nn. 116118), there is no reason to doubt that there were
originally twelve standing figures situated in the
twelve available points and angles of the tomb.
Moreover, the earliest description of the tomb
specifically cites twelve figures: "en las quatro
principales esquinas los quatro Evangelistas, y en
los demas angulos, ay doze estatuas menores..."
(Iglesia 1659, 3).
A lithograph and two early photographs show
that this figure was formerly situated to the left
of the figure of Saint Luke, near the head of the
effigy of Isabel of Portugal (Rada y Delgado 1874,
3:322; Laurent C. 1577. It cannot be assumed,
however, that this was its original location. Physical evidence suggests that the Saint James was
singled out for special devotion and was at some
point removed from the tomb for a period of time.
The figure's gilding and polychromy cannot be
considered original as formerly maintained

(Wethey 1936, 32). Early photographs show that

it was the only figure on the tomb to be so embellished, and physical examination of the work
reveals that the paint and gilding is in some instances applied over restorations. Parts of the
back of the figure have been roughly cut away,
apparently in an effort to accommodate its placement in a more restricted site, most likely an altar
dedicated to Santiago.
R.K.

49
San Pablo de la Moraleja Master

Netherlandish or German

LAMENTATION
c. 1500
polychromed wood
159 x 187 (625/s x 735/sj
references: Buser 1974, i; Valladolid 1988,
162-163

Museo Diocesano y Catedralicio, Valladolid

The anonymous author of this sculpture, who
probably came to Spain from Flanders or Germany, has been called the "San Pablo de la
Moraleja Master" after the parish church in the
province of Valladolid from which the group came
(Valladolid 1988,162-163). The work is characteristic of the late gothic in Castile; in fact, it has
much in common with polychromed sculptural
groups throughout Europe at this time. Sculpture
in marble and bronze was largely the specialty of
the artists of central Italy, where classical examples were most reverentially recalled. Elsewhere
in Europe the power of these narrative groups,
composed of unidealized figures painted and
gilded to emphasize their corporeality, reflected
the immediacy of the medieval Passion play. This
sculptural group in fact suggests a scene from a
play of the Passion of Christ, performed by actors
representing Joseph of Arimathia, Nicodemus,
Saint John, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, and
the "other Marys/' As in the play, the actors are
distinguished individually by their makeup and
costumes, but they respond to the death of Christ
almost in unison, as a tragic chorus.
The subject of the Lamentation is an extraordinarily apt one for an altarpiece, where the body of
Christ is the all-important focus. The emphasis of
the more contemplative image of the Virgin and
her dead son, or Pieta, is on the compassion of the
Virgin, and thus that image is more suitable for
private devotion. In Spain it is often adapted for
use in tomb sculpture (Buser 1974, i). The Lamentation, on the other hand, is based on the narrative of the Passion of Christ, which is a public

scene with many figures, including by implication

the viewer himself.
A comparison of the Lamentation with Alonso
Berruguete's Sacrifice of Isaac (cat. 51) is extraordinarily instructive. Although created less than
thirty years apart, the two Spanish polychromed
sculptural groups represent entirely different stylistic worlds. In the Lamentation, the drama of
the scene is brought to stylized life. The San
Pablo de la Moraleja Master's awkward figures,
wearing concave masks of tragedy, swoon melodramatically over the greenish flesh of Christ's
scarred and bloodied body. Alonso Berruguete's
finely wrought figures, on the other hand, reflect
the idealization of the Italian Renaissance style in
which the younger sculptor was trained. The two
artists, however, are heirs to the same spiritual
tradition. Both knowingly use tortured faces and
compressed space to express the religious fervor
of their respective subject in beautifully painted
and gilded wood.
s.s.

50

Diego de Siloe

Spanish, active 1517-1563

MAN OF SORROWS
c. 1522
polychromed and gilt wood
height 54 (21 vy
references: Villacampa 1928, 25-44; GomezMoreno 1941, 17, 3#-39

Excmo. Cabildo CatedralBurgos

Diego de Siloe's Man of Sorrows forms part of
the altarpiece of Saint Anne in the funerary
chapel of the Constables of Castile in Burgos
Cathedral. The dead Christ, supported on the
edge of his tomb by a pair of lamenting angels, is
an explicitly eucharistic subject. The figure is the
central image of the banco of the altarpiece, a
position that recalls, and refers to, the tabernacle
in which the consecrated host was stored.
The altarpiece was left unfinished by Gil de
Siloe around 1500 and was completed more than
twenty years later by his son, Diego, who added
four figures: the Man of Sorrows and three standing female saints. The polychromy of these figures can be attributed to Leon Picardo, the painter
responsible for the polychromy of the main altar-

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

167

cipally active in southern Spain. In Granada, he

was active as architect, designer, and sculptor at
the Cathedral, and at the churches of San Jeronimo, San Gabriel, and San Gil. Likewise, he
intervened in the construction of the Cathedrals
of Sevilla, Malaga, Guadix, and Plascencia.
R.K.

5*

Alonso Berruguete

Spanish, c. 1490/1492-1561

THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

from the altarpiece of the church of the monastery
of San Benito, Valladolid
begun 1526
polychromed wood
36.5 x 18 x i} (i43/s x /Vs x 53/sj
references: Camon Aznar 1980, 20
Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid

piece for the same chapel executed by Diego de

Siloe and Felipe Bigamy.
The chapel within which the Saint Anne altarpiece is located, dedicated to the Purification of
the Virgin, was founded by Pedro Fernandez de
Velasco and Mencia de Mendoza, Condes de Haro
and Constables of Castile. Documents of the
period, however, consistently refer to the "chapel
of the Condesa," attesting to the primary role
played by Mencia de Mendoza in the foundation
of the chapel and her direct involvement in its
construction. A member of one of the most
powerful and influential families of Spain, Mencia
was the daughter of Inigo Lopez de Mendoza,
Marques de Santillana, and the sister of Pedro
Gonzalez de Mendoza. The construction and
decoration of the chapel, begun in 1482, seems to
have stalled upon the death of the founder in
1500. It was only in 1522 that Inigo Fernandez de
Velasco, Third Constable of Castile, secured the
financial means and assumed the legal responsibility to finish the chapel in accordance with the
testament of his mother, Mencia de Mendoza. The
Saint Anne altarpiece, referred to in a document
of 1522, must have been one of the first works in
the chapel to be completed (Villacampa 1928).
As the son of Gil de Siloe, Diego would have
customarily received his training as a sculptor
in the shop of his father. Yet from the start
of Diego's career, his Italian-influenced style
diverges sharply from his father's manner. While
there are certain stylistic anomalies in the later
168

CIRCA 1492

works of Gil, such as the Lamentation relief from

the tomb of Juan de Padilla, that are sometimes
regarded as "Italianizing," these works cannot be
convincingly attributed to the young Diego. Nor
can the influence of the father's late Gothic
manner be discerned in the earliest works of the
son. The contrast between the two generations
is nowhere more evident than in the Constable's
chapel and, in particular, in the placement of
Diego's Man of Sorrows within the flattened trefoil niche of Gil's canopied tabernacle-like altarpiece. The date of Diego's birth is unknown, but
given that Gil died in 1500, it is entirely possible
that Diego received, or at least completed, his
training elsewhere.
Whatever the nature of Diego's training, his
earliest works manifest a style that is thoroughly
Italianate, and this was precisely what was
required by his patrons. The contract for the tomb
of Luis de Acuna is explicit: it should be executed
in the "Roman" manner. Diego is first documented in 1517, in Naples, working alongside Bartolome Ordonez (who was from Burgos), in the
chapel of the Caracciolo family in San Giovanni a
Carbonara (Gomez-Moreno 1941). By 1519 he
had returned to his native Burgos, where he was
engaged in a series of important projects in the
Cathedral: the tomb of Luis de Acuna (1519), the
Escalera Dorada (1519), and the altarpieces of
Saint Anne, Saint Paul, and the Purification for
the Constable's chapel (1522-1526). In 1528 Diego
left Burgos for Granada and thereafter was prin-

Alonso Berruguete, the son of the painter Pedro

Berruguete (cat. 46), was born in Paredes de Nava,
probably about 14901492 (Camon Aznar 1980,
20). Alonso Berruguete's early training took place
in Italy, which he reached at a very auspicious
moment. Michelangelo mentions him in a letter
of 1508, and Vasari speaks of "Alfonso Berruguete
espagnuolo" in his biographies of Michelangelo
and Baccio Bandinelli. Berruguete is recorded as
working in Florence and Rome. He probably
returned to Spain before 1516.
Berruguete's first important commission in
Spain was the tomb of Grand Chancellor Juan Selvaggio, a member of the court of Charles v, which
was entrusted to him together with the French
sculptor Felipe Bigamy. This opportunity gave
Berruguete an early entry into high circles; in
1518 he was referred to as "pintor del rey" (painter to the king). In 1521 both Berruguete and
Bigamy were commissioned to work at the Royal
Chapel in Granada, which Charles v ordered decorated in a manner befitting the burial place of his
grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella. Berruguete's
contract for the work in Granada specified fifteen
historias pintadas, and between 1520 and 1523 he
was busy painting banners and standards for the
Armada. Not until 1523 did he turn to the design
of altarpieces and the combined arts of architecture-sculpture-painting.
Between 1523 and 1526 Berruguete created the
main altarpiece of the Hieronymite monastery of
La Mejorada (Olmedo). From then on Berruguete,
who is now called a sculptor, both designed the
architectural framework for the great altarpieces
and carved and painted the sculpture. In 1526 he
was commissioned to create the altarpiece for the
church of the monastery of San Benito in Valladolid for which The Sacrifice of Isaac was created.

Alonso Berruguete was hardly alone among

Spanish sculptors of his generation in adopting
the aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance, but he
was the only Spanish sculptor able to imbue those
classical, idealized forms with a spiritual passion
as intense as that of his Gothic forebears. The Sacrifice of Isaac shows Berruguete's sources, his
inspiration from Donatello's late works, Michelangelo, and the sculpture of the Laocoon, which
was discovered in Rome during his Italian sojourn. In terms of sheer emotional impact, Alonso
Berruguete's sculpture recalls the late work created by Michelangelo after Berruguete left Italy
for Spain.
The sculpture represents the moment when
Abraham is about to slay his own son as an offering to his God, just before the angel stays his hand
(Genesis 22). Berruguete has combined with great
sensitivity the physical beauty of Isaac and his
palpable fear with his father's ambivalent stance
and yearning. These elements, bound within a
highly compressed composition, express the passion and agony of Abraham's faith.
Berruguete remained active throughout the
remainder of his career. In 1529 he provided
sculpture and paintings for the altarpiece of the
Colegio de Fonseca in Salamanca. Major works of
the 15305 include altarpieces for the churches of
Santiago in Valladolid, and Santa Ursula in Toledo,
as well as some of the choirstalls in the Cathedral
of Toledo. When Bigamy died in 1543, the commissions for the throne of the Archbishop of
Toledo and for the huge alabaster Transfiguration
in the choir went to Alonso Berruguete. In 1554
he began the sepulcher of Cardinal Tavera, modeled after that of Cardinal Cisneros in Alcala de
Henares by Bartolome Ordonez. Berruguete died
in 1561.
s.s.

52

"ADMIRAL" HERALDIC CARPET

c. 1429-1473
Hispano-Moresque
wool, Spanish knotting
581 X 267 (2284/5 X 10^/8)

references: Faraday 1929, 23; Ellis 1988, 247

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Joseph Lees

Williams Memorial Collection

The disassembled altarpiece is now exhibited in

the Museo Nacional de Escultura. The contract
for the altarpiece specified a mixture of paintings
and sculpture, with the latter gilded, then painted

(estofada sobre oro). The Sacrifice of Isaac was

placed in a niche at the lower left of the altarpiece,
where its considerable energy must have seemed
only barely contained.

Rug weaving, a craft brought to Spain by the

Moors, became an important industry there in
the twelfth century. Some of the oldest carpets
in existence today were manufactured in Spain.
When Queen Eleanor of Castile traveled to England in the late thirteenth century, she brought
back carpets from Cordoba and Granada that provoked much interest, because rugs were hardly
known in England at that time (Faraday 1929, 23).

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

169

Spanish carpets, like all European hand-knotted

carpets, are based on Persian techniques. However, Spanish designs reflect the unique contribution of the Moors, who absorbed design
elements Persian, Roman, Copticalong every
step of their nomadic journey to northern Africa
and then to Spain, where Moorish elements often
intermingled with Christian ones.
One of the most distinctive types of early Spanish rugs is the heraldic carpet, a long, narrow rug
with coats of arms woven into the design. This
example, which bears the arms of Don Fadrique
Enriquez de Mendoza (c. 1390-1473), Lord of
Medina de Rioseco and twenty-sixth Admiral of
Castile, is one of half a dozen that were donated
by the Enriquez family to the Convent of Santa
Clara in Palencia. They are all called "admiral"
carpets because they bear the coat of arms of
Fadrique Enriquez, the second member of the
Enriquez family to bear the hereditary title of
Admiral of Castile. The device includes a lion
rampant, two triple towered castles, and anchors.
Fadrique Enriquez de Mendoza and his first
wife, Marina de Ayala, were the parents of Juana
Enriquez, queen of Aragon and mother of King
Ferdinand. The convent of Santa Clara was begun
by Don Fadrique's father, Alfonso Enriquez, and
continued by the son. It was to be the burial place
of the Admirals of Castile. In 1910 the carpets
donated to the convent were sold and dispersed.
Besides this example in the Philadelphia Museum,
one is in the Villa Vizcaya Museum (Miami), two
in The Art Institute of Chicago, one in the Textile
Museum (Washington), and one in the Institute
de Valencia de Don Juan (Madrid).
The carpet appears to have been woven by
Muslim craftsmen, as is evidenced by the upper
and lower borders of illegible Kufesque script
(Ellis 1988, 247). Rugs belonging to another set of
admiral carpets, donated to the Convent of Santa
Isabel de los Reyes in Toledo, bear the legible
Kufic inscription, "There is no God but Allah"
an inclusion that, if they understood it, evidently
did not offend the Christian patrons.
Of all the surviving admiral carpets, this is perhaps the finest. An elaborate design in tones of
ivory to brown is laid upon a dark blue background. The diapering surrounding the coats of
arms contains, within myriad octagons, a lively
array of peacocks, ducks, hawks, tiny heraldic
lions, and stylized human figures with upraised
arms. The borders along the length of the carpet
frame a rich variety of scenes that have a narrative
elementrampant bears under a tree wait for
fruit to fall, a hound torments a stag, and bears
are attacked by armed wild men, while ladies in
impossible farthingales await the outcome.
s.s.

170

CIRCA 1492

53

nizable to the Christian patrons. This seems

particularly remarkable in the cases in which such
designs surround specifically Christian themes,
such as the sacred monogram of pieces commissioned for use in a church or convent. Other patterns derive from plants and leaves and flowers;
ivy, acacia, trumpet flowers, and bryony are often
worked in gold and blue lusters over the primary
glaze of creamy white.
s. s.

LUSTERWARE VASE WITH

COAT OF ARMS OF THE MEDICI
c. 1465-1475
Hispano-Moresque
earthenware
height 57 (222/s)
references: Frothingham 1951, 2, 3; Caiger-Smith
*973' 7'' Caiger-Smith 1985, 101,107-108
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
This wing-handled vase (in the shape called a
terras), which bears the arms of the Medici family, was meant to hold a bouquet of flowers. Such
vases were often used on altars and in shrines.
This splendid example must have been commissioned by Piero "The Gouty" or his son and successor Lorenzo il Magnifico, because the shield
bears seven balls (palle), one decorated with the
French fleur-de-lis, an addition granted to Piero
by Louis xi of France in 1465. The rest of the vase
is covered in a delicate ivy pattern in lustered
gold and cobalt blue.
Lusterware, along with other luxury items such
as silk worked with gold, was brought to Spain
from the Middle East as early as the late tenth
century, as is evidenced by fragments of goldlustered pottery found at sites around Cordoba
where the Islamic Caliph himself once lived
(Frothingham 1951, 2). When the difficult process
of luster-glazing was employed by Muslim artisans in Spain, it was used as painted decoration on
vessels that were first glazed in opaque white:
Either metallic copper and silver mixed with
sulphur or the bisulphides of these metals
. . . were calcined to form copper and silver
oxides. The compound was ground and mixed
with red ochre, which contained ferric oxide,
and then fluxed with vinegar and painted on
the white-glazed earthenware. The vessels were
given another firing to reduce the oxides to the
metallic state, this time at a low temperature
and in a reduction kiln. When they emerged,
they were blackened, but with rubbing, the
coating was removed, and the decorated parts
appeared as metallic silver, copper, or gold
(Frothingham 1951, 3).
The earliest production of lusterware in Spain
was in Andalusia, and it was long referred to as
"Malaga-ware" in contracts and inventories.
However, Moorish craftsmen also migrated north
to practice their craft in the Christian kingdoms,
and the fame of their skill soon spread; as early as
1362 a Moorish ceramist in Manises, near Valencia, was contracted to produce floor tiles for the
papal palace at Avignon (Caiger-Smith 1985, 101).
The number of ceramists in Spain, who were
largely Moorish, multiplied during the fifteenth
century, and their product was sought not only by

54
LUSTERWARE PASSOVER PLATE
c. 1480
Hispano-Moresque
earthenware
diameter 57 (223/s)
references: Roth 1964, no; Katz 1968,160;
Davidovitch 1975, 51-54; Avrin 1979, -27-46
Spaniards, but by important persons in Italy,
France, and the Low Countries. Entire sets of dinnerware were ordered for royal palaces, and Hispano-Moresque lusterware was also bought by
merchants, apothecaries, religious communities,
and churches. Lustered tiles decorated floors,
walls, and ceilings. According to one fifteenthcentury observer, Hispano-Moresque lusterware
was so highly prized that "the Pope himself and
the Cardinals and Princes of the world all covet it,
and are amazed that anything so excellent and
noble could be made from common clay" (CaigerSmith 1973, 7). The Medici, arguably the most
discerning artistic patrons of the era, evidently
concurred.
Lusterware was originally developed in
response to the Islamic hadith, which condemned
the use of gold and silver vessels. Although it
mimicked such sumptuous items in a more
humble material, lusterware itself was certainly a
luxury. It was never, however, merely decorative;
each of the various shapes reflects a practical use.
Goblets were drunk from, and even the most
magnificent plates were designed to hold food.
During a feast, the grand pieces bearing heraldic
emblems, which ordinarily graced walls and sideboards, were pressed into action for service at
table (Caiger-Smith 1985, 107-108).
Malaga, Manises, Paterna, and Valencia were
the centers of lusterware during the fifteenth century, and the finest work was produced between
1440 to 1480. Not a single piece of lusterware
from that golden age is known to have been
signed by the artist who made it, but many pieces
bear the heraldry of the high ranking individuals
who commissioned them. These heraldic devices
form the centerpiece of an overall design that
often incorporates signs and symbols from Moorish tradition, which would have been unrecog-

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

This Passover plate is one of very few preserved
Jewish artifacts that originated in Spain prior to
the expulsion in 1492. Shaped and decorated in a
way typical of contemporary Spanish lusterware
plates, it has a wide rim, flat bottom, and an elevated umbo in the center. It is decorated with
repeated motifs of gadroons and various floral and
geometric designs in brownish-gold and cobalt
blue. There is a hole in the brim, in which a clay
peg was probably inserted to keep the large dish in
an upright position during one of the firings, as
was customary in the process of producing large
Valencian plates.
Dr. Leila Avrin, who has published an extensive
study on this plate, has hypothesized that it was
commissioned by a Jewish lead merchant from the
town of Murviedro, near Manises, in exchange for
the merchant's ware, one of the ingredients of the
glaze. This suggestion could explain the naive
spelling mistakes that appear in the Hebrew
inscription. According to Avrin "the client, who
was not expert in spelling and who could not
afford the quality of the plates made for royalty or
nobility, provided the potter, possibly Jaime
Murci, with the inscription, and the decorator did
his best to write and space the unfamiliar letters
aesthetically." (Avrin 1979, 45-56) The inscription refers to the three main elements of the Passover Feast, following Rabban Gamliel: Pesah
(paschal lamb); mazzah (unleavened bread); and
maror (bitter herb). The word seder (order) refers
to the special home ceremony on the first night of
Passover. In Hebrew the inscription reads:
-rra yxQ 109 -no
with mistakes both in spelling and vocalization. It
was obviously intended to read:
THO nso nos no

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

1/1

Although a special seder plate (Ke'arah) is mentioned as early as mishnaic times (around A.D.
200), no early examples have survived. Most seder
plates known to us date from the eighteenth century onwards and are made of every conceivable
material: pewter, brass, silver, faience, porcelain,
and even wood. In medieval Ashkenazi illuminated Passover prayer books (Haggadot), there is
often a large round plate shown on the table,
probably for ceremonial use during the seder, but
in medieval Sephardi Haggadot, we usually see a
special wicker basket for the pieces of unleavened
bread (mazzot). Avrin has assumed that the Israel
Museum's plate was used in a pre-Passover ritual
of the distribution of the mazzot, a popular
custom at the time. In fact in most depictions of
the distribution of mazzot and harosset (a paste
made from almonds, apples, and wine) to the children, the round mazzot are kept in a wicker basket
(see, for example, the Golden Haggadah [British
Library, Add. MS 27210, fol. 15] and the HispanoMoresque Haggadah [British Library, MS Or.
2737, fol. 89v]), making it questionable that this
was actually the function of our plate. Yet there is
at least one example, the Sister to the Golden
Haggadah (British Library, MS Or. 2884, fol. 17),
in which it is not clear whether the mazzot are
kept in a basket or perhaps on a dish. Moreover, one must bear in mind that all the abovementioned Haggadot are from the fourteenth
century and the use of a special seder dish in
Spain might have been introduced later.
I.F.
172

CIRCA 1492

55
HEADSTALL
late i$th-early i6th century
Granada
copper-gilt, ornamented with copper granulation
and cloisonne enamel
width and height (largest assembled piece) 38.6 x
2i.4(i<;V4x83/8)
references: Fernandez y Gonzales 1872, 1875,
1:573-590, 5:389-400; Leguina 1898, 7-46; Dalton
1907, 376-378; Rosenberg 1918, 152-153; Laking
1920-1921, 2:15-18, 21-23, 261-267; Mann 1933,
301-302; Fernandez Vega 1934-1935, 360, 364-367;
Hildburgh 1941, 211-231; Forrandis Torres 1943,
142-166; Rodriguez Lorente 1964, 6870; Seitz
1965, 180-181; Py/irr and Alexander 1984, 21-22
T/ze Trustees of the British Museum, London
This headstall (the part of the bridle or halter that
encompasses the horse's head) is made up of
twenty-five flat sections of copper gilt through
which the leather straps passed; the two medallions forming the junction for the bands pass
behind the ears. The upper surface of each section
of the headstall is divided into two compartments.
One section is ornamented with a section of cloisonne enamel, in which translucent green and
blue form the ground for arabesque patterns in
opaque red and white. The other section is decorated with an arabesque set out in strips of wire
on a gilded ground decorated with copper granulation. In each section, the relative position of the

enameled and gilded compartments is reversed,

creating a rich decorative effect.
The headstall closely resembles an example
depicted on an early sixteenth-century Venetian
School painting, A Warrior Adoring the Infant
Christ and the Virgin (National Gallery, London),
attributed to Vincenzo Catena (d. 1531), and so
was long regarded as Venetian-Saracenic in
origin. W. L. Hildburgh pointed out, however,
that it is clearly from the same source as a group
of objects, principally sword-hilts and scabbardmounts, that are decorated with similar enamels
and, in some cases, similar granulated work.
These are associated with the Nasrid Kingdom of
Granada and apparently date from the second half
of the fifteenth century. Outstanding among
these objects are the hilt and scabbard-mounts of a
sword and the scabbard-mounts of a dagger now
respectively in the Museo del Ejercito and the
Real Armeria, Madrid. They are traditionally said
to have been taken from the last Nasrid king of
Granada, Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad (Boabdil),
after the Battle of Lucena in 1483, by an ancestor
of the de Vieana family, Marqueses de Villasca, in
whose possession they remained until recently.
Enamels of the same type are also found on a late
fifteenth-century helmet in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, which has also been
ascribed to Boabdil, though nothing certain is
known of its history before the nineteenth
century.
The style and decorative techniques represented
on these objects belong to a tradition in Muslim
Spain that goes back to a period long before the
time of Boabdil, but, as Hildburgh pointed out
(1941, 212), the actual designs on them are "a
pure translation into metal-work of typical Granadan ornamentation... we may, indeed, see still in
the stucco wall-coatings of the Alhambra just such
designs, differing... only in their minor details/'
There can be no serious doubt that all of them
were actually produced in Granada, though not
necessarily exclusively for Moorish patrons, since
several fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
Christian Spanish inventories include descriptions
of what must have been similar espadas moriscas
(or ginetas) and daggers mounted in enameled
precious metals (Leguina 1898,15-18; Fernandez
Vega 1934-1935, 365). The headstall and the
Boabdil sword and dagger have every appearance
of being the products of the same presumably
royalworkshop, to which the following pieces
can also be attributed: three swords in, respectively, the Landesmuseum, Kassel, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles, Paris
(cat. 56), and the store of the Topkapi Palace,
Istanbul (unpublished); a sword-scabbard mount,
Victoria and Albert Museum (no. M5 8-1975,
unpublished); harness (?) ornament, Musee
Dobree, Nantes; dagger-pommel (?) and a Jewish
torah shield, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (nos.
44.248 and 44.151, unpublished); a necklace, a set
of belt-mounts, and a pair of stirrups, Metropoli-

chasing, surface granulation, and filigree,

enhanced with enamel and applied cloisonne
enameled plaques. The pommel bears circular
enameled plaques with the same inscription on
the obverse (wa Id ghd) and reverse; one, however, is inverted. On the sides there were originally two longitudinal pointed plaques, one now
missing, with the continuation lib illd'lldh. The
script of all is a modified Maghrib! naskhi. The
inscriptions are in opaque white enamel on a
ground of silver scrolling arabesques with traces
of gilding that form the cloisons of a translucent
green enamel ground. The grip has granulation
forming an all-over star-polygon design.
Above and below are two naskhi inscription
bands in opaque white, both between thin bands
of opaque turquoise enamel: the inscriptions are
in opaque white and are similarly on a scrolling
ground of arabesques in silver, but the ground
enamel appears to have decayed to black. The
inscriptions above and below both read wa Id

tan Museum of Art, New York (nos. 17.190.161,

17.190.962,17.190.641, 642, the second unpublished); a pair of stirrups, formerly in the collection of Lady Ludlow; a mount and tassel from a
dagger-belt (?), Museo Arqueologico Nacional,
Madrid (unpublished). Also, according to Mann
(1933, 301), there are two "fragments of a bridle"
similar to the headstall in the Museo Nazionale
del Bargello, Florence.
The only information available about the actual
maker of these pieces is the Arabic inscription
"The work of Ridwan" damascened in gold on the
blade of the Boabdil dagger. Unfortunately, nothing is known about Ridwan, though the name is
one found in Granada at the period (Leguina 1898,
27), and it is even uncertain whether he was
responsible for the whole dagger or merely for its
blade. There appears to be no evidence to support
the suggestion (Seitz 1965,180-181) that he was
the same person as Julian del Rey, King Ferdinand's swordsmith, a Moor who is said to have
worked for Boabdil before converting to Christianity after the conquest of Granada in 1492.
C.B./D.T.

56

SWORD OF BOABDIL
late i$th or early i6th century
Granada
steel; mount: gold or gilt silver and enamel;
scabbard: wood, leather, gold or silver-gilt and
enamel mounts
blade length 95 (373/sj
references: Babelon 1924, 261-262; Paris 1971,
no. 179; Paris 1977, no. 388
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Cabinet des Medailles
Like other related swords, including examples in
the Museo del Ejercito in Madrid and the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, this weapon is
traditionally associated with Boabdil, the last
Nasrid ruler of Granada, who was defeated and
expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 (see
cat. 55). The sword and its hilt are inscribed with
numerous variants of the royal Schriftwappen of
Granada, wa Id ghdlib illd'lldh BM (And There
is no Conqueror but God [the sense of "BM" is
obscure]). The blade, which may have been
pattern-welded, has on each side a stylized fourlegged animal, somewhat like a bird-headed
dachshund with open beak, inlaid in copper. The
hiltwith pommel surmounted by a stemmed
finial, grip, and down-turned quillons is somewhat flattened in profile. It is of silver-gilt or gold
worked in three dimensions with considerable
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

173

ghalib ila'lldh. The lower one is broken at the

sides in the usual way, ghd:lib, by medallions
filled with a palmette or fleur-de-lis in opaque
turquoise and black enamel on a translucent green
enamel ground. The down-turned quillons are
spewed from the mouths of dragons or felines,
worked in relief and with chasing. Below their
jaws on each side are small tonguelike panels, now
rather damaged, of opaque white and translucent
red enamel, possibly suggesting a forked tongue.
The flattened obverse and reverse bear enameled
medallions: on the obverse is a shield of European
type with a diagonal bar from left to right bearing wa Id ghd in naskhi; on the reverse is a transverse bar with the usual continuation ild'lldh BM
in Kufic. The inscriptions are in opaque white
enamel on a decayed black enamel ground; the
ground of the bar is of scrolling arabesque in silver, with traces of gilding filled with translucent
green enamel. The rest of the surface bears fine
filigree and granulated ornament.
The sheath of the scabbard is of wood covered
with dark brown leather heavily sewn with metal
thread; the obverse has longitudinal naskhi
inscription cartouches with variants of the
inscriptions on the hilt, and three transverse bars.
The cartouches are separated by knotted, winglike
split palmettes enclosing a quatrefoil, with confronted palmettes on a plain ground. The reverse
of the sheath is stitched down the center with
rather more elaborate palmettes and small knots
at each end.
The mounts are gold and silver-gilt, solid or
cast. Worked in champleve relief, they carry
rather perfunctory chasing with considerable surface ornamentation in granulation and filigree,
the latter mostly fine spiral scrolls. The granulation on the central, upper, and hilt mounts forms
stylized Kufic Idm-alifs. The enameled plaques, in
the form of European shield blazons or transverse
bars, are cloisonne with cloisons of fine foliate
scrollwork showing traces of gilding. On the
obverse mount at the tip, which ends in a small
flattened knob, are three plaques and a transverse
bar between two shields, the latter with a diagonal
bar sloping from left to right bearing naskhi
inscriptions. The reverse bears similar inscription
plaques.
The Schriftwappen of the Nasrid rulers of Granada was well known to the Spanish rulers of the
Reconquest, and its appearance on the sheath and
the enamel plaques is not therefore a guarantee of
Nasrid workmanship or even of a Nasrid date.
However, the break at ghd'.lib seems to have been
standard Nasrid practice, so that it does not count
against the sword's alleged provenance. Although
the confused stitched inscription cartouche on the
sheath certainly testifies to inept copying of an
original, it could also have been the work of a
well-meaning but not particularly literate Granadan craftsman. On internal grounds the sword
appears to be late fifteenth- or early sixteenthcentury. The absence of an owner's inscription,
174

CIRCA

1 492

moreover, may suggest that the sword was

designed not for a ruler but possibly for presentation to an emir, or even a neighboring Christian
prince. However, if it was indeed made for
Boabdil, the style, in accordance with such ceremonial weapons, would have been becomingly
conservative.
J.M.R.

57'
NASRID SHIELD (ADARGA)
before 1492
Granada
hide, silk embroidery
9 x 75 (353/s x 292/2]
references: Boeheim 1888, 279; Boeheim 1890, 18};
Madrid 1898,161; Nickel 1958, 98; Buttin 1960,
407, 447; Bruhn de Hoffmeyer 1982, 279;
Encyclopedia of Islam 1986, "Lamt," 651-652; Feest
1990, 7
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Hofjagd-und
Riistkammer

The shield consists of two ovals of thick hide

stitched together, its middle axis strengthened by
an attached bar. The light, originally white outerside is almost free from decoration and the eight
embedded lines along the edge serve more as
reinforcements than as decoration. Interwoven
tasseled strap ends for the handle bindings are
missing. The entire inner surface was originally
dyed red but is now bleached brown and decorated
with finely worked silk embroidery in red, blue,
yellow, green, black, and white. The design
divides the surface into four concentric bands
which follow the shape of the shield. The remaining fields are determined by the trapezoidal
slightly off centered cushioned handles which
are also richly embellished. The densely worked
design contains arabesques, stars, and flowers.
Abstract trilobate lilies and plaited lines on the
outer border are juxtaposed against an Arabic
inscription in a stylized Kufic script. Inscribed on
the second concentric band is ''Allah" in stylized
Kufic script, while the cartouche at the top of the
handle repeats 'Allah the Living One" three
times.
Only one other adarga of this quality nd from
this period has been preserved (Real Armeria,
Madrid. The Vienna adarga is recorded in the
1596 inventory of Ferdinand n of Tyrol (15291595) at Schloss Ambras (RK Ambras, Reg 5556
fol. 346v) which reads "Ain Tiirggische tartsche,
auswendig von weiszen, innwendig von rottem
leder, darauf von allerlei gefarbten seiden Tiirggische buechstaben gestuckht, samt seinem
fuetral" (Boeheim 1888, 279). Exactly how it

passed into the Archduke's collection at Ambras

requires further research. It is generally presumed that it entered the armory of the Austrian
Hapsburgs through the son-in-law of the Reyes
Catolicos, Philip i of Austria, King of Castile and
Granada (14781506). However, it is equally possible that it was included in a gift of ten objects
from "New Spain" presented in 1524 by the
Emperor Charles v (1500-1558) to his brother
Archduke Ferdinand i (1503-1564)^66811990, 7).
As early as the tenth century there is mention of
a sahib adarca (inspector of adarga) in Cordoba
(Madrid 1898,161) but the earliest pictoral representations of such shields are to be found among
the magnificent miniatures of the "Cantigas de
Santa Maria" made for King Alfonso x of Castile
(1221-1284) m which Muslim warriors are
depicted protecting themselves with heart shaped
adargas. During the fourteenth century, the form
of the adarga changed from a simple heart shape
to two ellipses with the longer sides overlapping.
Such shields were introduced into Spain by the
Muslims. The word adarga comes from the Arabic
al-daraq which is also the origin of the English
word targe and the French adargne. Islamic
accounts of the Middle Ages mention that North
Africa was famous for shields made from the skin
of the Lamt (the orynx of the Sahara) and that
these were made by a Berber tribe, also called
Lamt, whose menfolk like the Toureg wore the
veil. The ninth century geographer Ya'qiibi notes
that these shields which were exported to Spain
were white in colorjust as the Vienna shield
originally was. They were said to be cured in milk

and so effective that a saber would rebound or

stick so hard that it could not be freed. They were
light yet solid and if hit, the arrow holes tended to
close up by themselves (Encyclopedia of Islam
1986, "Lamt," 651-652).
The Muslim nobility used adarga such as
this richly embroidered example for parade and
combat games on horseback (furusiyyah). In
the late fifteenth century the adarga and richly
decorated swords of the Boabdil type (cat. 56)
(Bruhn de Hoffmeyer 1982, 279) were favored by
the Christian nobility, and the fashion spread
from Spain to France, Italy, and even to England.
Several artists, including Hans Memling and
Martin Schongauer, depicted individuals carrying
adarga to lend an exotic flair to religious depictions (Nickel 1958, 98, n. 182; Buttin 1960, 407).
The use of such a shield by Hernan Cortes (15191523) and his conquistadors to conquer the Aztecs
has also been documented (Nickel 1958). According to the comments "x de iste fassesson" in the
pictoral inventory of Charles v (Inventario Illuminado), the Emperor owned ten adarga (Buttin
1960, 447) and until the devastating fire of 1884
there were 40 in the Real Armeria in Madrid.
Most, including those remaining (087-095, 0970106), are late Spanish works sometimes decorated on the inside with feathers, such as one
made for Philip n (088). Indeed, the adarga continued to be used by the nobility in Spain for
combat gamesthe "juejos de caras" and "alancias"until the i8th century (Boeheim 1890,
183; Madrid 1898,161).
C.B-S.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

175

AFRICAN KINGDOMS
The works of figural sculpture cast in brass in
Benin are the most famous west African objects
to have survived from the Age of Exploration, a
time of significant artistic production in a
number of different centers. Other notable
works of art include the terra-cotta figures
unearthed in Mali and the exquisite terra-cotta
heads from Owo, first excavated slightly more
than thirty years ago.
Sub-Saharan Africa had long-standing links
to the Islamic world across overland trade

routes, and the ruling elite in the great empires

of Mali and Songhay were Muslims. Contact
with Europe, however, began only in the second
half of the fifteenth century, as Portuguese
ships progressed down the African coast. The
burgeoning trade that developed as a consequence led to the creation of the so-called
"Afro-Portuguese" ivories. These spoons and
forks, saltcellars and horns, crafted in what is
today Sierra Leone, in Benin, and in the kingdom of Kongo, are an extraordinary amalgam
of European shapes and African decorative
vocabularies.

58
EQUESTRIAN FIGURE
ijthijth century
Jenne style, Mali
terra-cotta
3

height 70.5 (2/ /4J

references: de Grunne 1980; Vogel 1985; Ezra 1988;

Kerchache, Paudrat, and Stephan 1988; Mclntosh
1988; Cole 1989, 120-121; Robbins and Nooter
1989; Bernard! and de Grunne 1990
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Museum Purchase
This superb horseman is one of a handful of relatively complete equestrian figures that are outstanding objects in the corpus of ancient Malian
terra-cottas because of their highly formal quality
and imposing size. The average height of ninety
intact statues examined by Bernard de Grunne
(1980) is 27.8 cm. (11 in.) while that of the equestrian figures is close to 70 cm. (27Vi in.).
The figures were modeled in clay, to which
materials were added to decrease its plasticity and
render it less delicate to firing. They were then
smoothed and often covered with a fine reddish
slip that gives them a finished appearance
(de Grunne 1980, 46-47).
More or less identical in a number of these
works are the horseman's features and his pose, as
well as his clothing. With back held straight and
arms outstretched, holding the reins, he wears
short embroidered pants slit at the thigh to form a
triangle, a rectangular cloth in back held by a decorated belt, a caplike helmet and ringed greaves,
a heavy necklace, a dagger fastened to the arm,
and a large closed quiver over the shoulder. Two
other figures, in a private collection, also wear a
heavy cloak (or armor) decorated in a geometric
pattern. The other figures ride bareback, and the
horses have only reins and a collar ringed with
large crotals.
The monumental, hieratic figures are marked
by a rigorous architectonic structure, accentuated
by simplified volumes and a relief type of decoration that is as subtle as it is functional and
refined. Seen in profile the various parts of the
man and his mount, formed of cylinders of almost
equal diameter, seem to come together at a right
angle and define two sections of space. Herbert
Cole (1989,120-121) suggests that "this straightlegged, formal stance is preferred in equestrian
icons, which serve to support and project the
image of heroic leadership/' The horseman's head
is proudly erect, as is that of his mount, in a posture of archaic nobility well suited to the presumed member of a bygone warrior aristocracy.
No archaeological data is available for the figure
exhibited here, as is the case with most of the
terra-cottas from the region watered by the upper
course of the Niger and Bani rivers. Even the precise location of its discovery remains unknown;

176

CIRCA 1492

thus the subdivision into stylistic areas normally

indicated for ancient Malian terra-cottas is for
now limited to the two large regions of the inland
delta of the Niger and Bamako.
For the above reasons, the date is also difficult
to establish. Nonetheless, measuring the thermoluminescence has permitted us to place the group
of horsemen between 1240 and 1460 A.D. Bernard
de Grunne (Bernardi and de Grunne 1990) has
suggested that they were made before the spread
of Islam in the region. The presence of horses in
the Sudanese savannah, which was not infested by
the tsetse fly, is widely documented beginning in
the eleventh century A.D.
De Grunne suggests that "the equestrian figures probably represent some of the Kamara
Kagoro sacred ancestors, who were founders of
clans, powerful sovereigns, great hunters, and
important religious figures/' He prudently
reminds us, however, that "the debate on both
the Soninke and Malinke origins of the Kagoro
is still wide open/'
One clue, even if only circumstantial, is present
in the horseman's weaponry, the quiver and arm
dagger, seen also in a standing figure attired similarly, possibly a product of the same workshop (de
Grunne 1980, no. 1.14). A dagger is also attached
to the arm of a reclining figure, characterized
by a soft, vaguely androgynous body, excavated at
Jenne-Jeno in 1981 by Mclntosh (1988, ill. 6-8).
The arm dagger appears, sometimes together
with the quiver, in certain sculptures of the
Dogon, people who inhabit the cliff of Bandiagara
and the underlying plain (Vogel 1985, no. 7; Ezra
1988, no. 6; Kerchache 1988, nos. 22, 23; Robbins
and Nooter 1989, nos. 32, 34, 36). These horsemen also wear short pants open at the thigh. These
similarities seem to suggest the existence of a
relationship between the ancient inhabitants of
the region of the inland Niger delta and those of
the Bandiagara region, possibly confirming the
Dogon oral tradition of a migration of peoples
from the Jenne area after the Songhay conquest.
Given the few elements at our disposal, the
function and meaning of the equestrian figures,
as well as of the other terra-cottas, remain a mystery. However, the creative ability and technical
skill of their makers are beyond doubt.
E. B.

59
FEMALE HEAD
i$th century
Yoruba people, Igbo'Laja site, Owo, Nigeria
terra-cotta
17.4 (6%)
references: Eyo and Willett 1980, 30, 55; Willett
1986; Abiodun 1989, 99-103, 240, n. 23
Nigerian National Museum, Lagos

In the glorious panorama of Nigerian art, Owo,

the Yoruba city-state halfway between Ife and
Benin City, was known until a few decades ago
only for its works in ivory and bronze.
Excavations conducted by Ekpo Eyo between
1969 and 1971 at Igbo'Laja, a location about
five hundred meters from the current center of
the city, near the palace of the Olowo (king),
uncovered two deposits of interesting archaeological material. In the main deposit were the ruins
of what is thought to have been a thatched-roof
hut, some heads and incomplete small human
figures, as well as important fragments of larger
figures and groups.
Among the finds, all dated to the fifteenth century, were numerous terra-cottas relating to the
theme of the sacrificial offering of small animals,
and even the theme of human sacrifice, rare in
African art, which was represented by a basket of
severed heads (Eyo and Willett 1980, nos. 66-69
and 57).
Iconographically the Owo works have elements
in common with the art of Ife and Benin and seem
almost to be the connecting link between the two
artistic traditions in the region before the arrival
of the Europeans.
Analogies with Ife works are visible mainly in
the heads: the upper eyelids marked by a sharp
incision, the dimples at the sides of the mouth,
the relief surrounding the lips, and the vertical
striations lining the face. So evident are these
similarities that scholars who have dealt with the
question (Eyo and Willett 1980, 30, 55, and nos.
60-61, 64; Abiodun 1989,101) have considered

the possibility that the terra-cottas were brought

to Owo from Ife. Stylistic considerations and the
type of clay used (Willett 1986), however, have led
them to conclude that the works were created
in Owo.
Analogies with Benin sculptures are fewer but
no less significant. One may note, for example,
the vertical keloids, or scars, on the forehead,
typical of Benin heads of the early period, and
those on a small fragment of a human head excavated at Owo (Eyo and Willett 1980, no. 75),
which present the same motif.
Rowland Abiodun (1989, 99-103) believes that
the head exhibited here, because of its royal attitude, could represent the legendary Oronsen,
beautiful wife of the Olowo Renrengeyen.
According to Owo tradition, she disappeared into
the earth forever after a violent argument with
her co-wives, leaving her head-wrapping in the
hands of those who ran after her to detain her.
The head certainly shows extraordinary nobility, and beyond the indisputable iconographic
analogies, it is conceived with a spirit that seems
very different from that of the sublime, idealized
portraits from Ife.
The oval face under the compact hairstyle,
defined by a harmonious outline, has a strong
but very gentle structure. The fluid modeling is
ennobled by the light diffused by the carefully
placed scarifications. The small wide-set eyes,
without a pupil but with a profound, disturbing
expression, the delicate nose, the very beautiful
lips hinting at a smile, the dimples at the sides of
the mouth and in the chin constitute an image full
of sensitivity, a living figure with an intensely
moving message, composed of a system of perfect
curves and volumes.
Abiodun (1989, 240, note 23) has pointed out
that "as pottery is traditionally a female occupation, there is a reason to believe that Owo terracotta sculptures were made by women." Perhaps
this is the context for the human tenderness of
this portrait.
E.B.

60

MALE HEAD
i$th-early i6th century?
Edo peoples, Benin kindgom, Nigeria
cast copper alloy and iron
22.2 (83/4)
references: Elisofon and Fagg 1958, 62-65; Forman
and Dark 1960, 21; Fagg 1963, 32; Dark 1973, 9,18,
39; Ben Amos 1980, 18; Nevadomsky 1986; Freyer
1987, i
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian
Institution Collection Acquisition Program, 1982
Ancient Benin art is almost synonymous with
sculpture that is often generically called bronze.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

177

Of the approximately two thousand artworks

taken from Benin after the British punitive expedition in 1897, the vast majority of works were
metal objects made by the "lost wax" casting process. However, the word bronze, frequently used
to describe ancient Nigerian sculptures, whether
from Ife or Benin, is often incorrect, as most of
these works were actually cast in an alloy of
copper and zinc rather than copper and tin. Thus
brass is really the more appropriate word, except
in the case of the male heads of the "early period"
(like the one exhibited), for which the designation
low tin bronze is the most suitable.
The earliest efforts to cast cupreous alloys
in Benin are enshrouded in myth (see Ben-Amos
1980,15-18 for a discussion). According to one
oral tradition, at the death of the Oba (king) the
head of the dead sovereign was sent to Ife, where
a commemorative image in bronze was made
and then taken to Benin. This practice continued
until Oguola, the sixth Oba (who reigned around
1400), sent for a master founder named Ighueghae, who came from Ife to teach Benin artists the
casting technique. Thereafter the presumed commemorative heads were made in Benin by Ighueghae's followers, who belonged to a guild, the
Iguneromwon, exclusively in the service of the
Oba. Among the body of works found in Benin,
no head can be attributed with reasonable certainty to Ife artists, so there is no material proof
to confirm that oral tradition. However, Philip C.
Dark (1973, 9) advances the hypothesis that
because of the scarcity of metal before the Portuguese arrived in Benin, the heads brought from
Ife could have been melted down to provide material for new works.
178

CIRCA 1492

A number of heads slightly smaller than life

and showing similar characteristics have been
grouped together, including the head shown here
(Freyer 1987, i), which William Fagg has assigned
to the early period of Benin art, from the early
fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century (Elisofon
and Fagg 1958, 62-65; Fagg 1963, 32).
These heads are products of a refined, mature
technology, differing from later works in several
respects: the thinness of the metal (no more
than a millimeter at certain points), the sober
representation, and the superbly refined modeling. The nose and mouth are regular; the pupils
of the open eyes are of iron inlay, as are the ethnic
markings on the forehead flanked by four keloids
above each eye (see Nevadomsky 1986, 42 for a
discussion of these markings). The flattened ears
are the most stylized feature of the heads. The
only decorative elements are the hairstyle in the
form of a cap of overlapping bands of tight parallel
curls and the coral bead collar around the neck,
with its insistent horizontality in harmonious
contrast to the strong vertically of the hairstyle,
all executed with great subtlety.
The heads from subsequent periods are more
massive and imposing, and the collar becomes so
important as to cover altogether the bottom part
of the face; the hairstyle is covered by a cap of
coral beads, and several decades before the arrival
of the English this cap was enriched by two wings
at the sides of the forehead. A large round opening at the top of the head, which cannot be
explained on technical grounds (Dark 1973, 39),
recalls a similar characteristic of Ife heads. In
Benin heads from Fagg's "later" group, the
openings allowed the heads to support carved
ivory tusks.
Commentators have often remarked on the
stylization of the Benin heads, as compared to the
earlier Ife examples. According to Fagg (1963, 32),
the heads of the early period show the Benin
artists' attempt to adopt the spirit as well as the
letter of the "sensitive naturalism" of Ife heads,
even though in comparison the Benin heads "are
in detail considerably more stylized and also
rather less individualized. Those which appear to
be by a single hand are very clearly similar to each
other in expression and features, and may therefore represent the artist's 'ideal portrait' rather
than an attempt to represent individuals."
Philip C. Dark (Forman and Dark 1960, 21),
referring to a Benin head similar to this one,
notes that it is not "close stylistically to the
known examples of bronze heads discovered at
Ife," since it is "stylized and generalized, showing
no real evidence of an attempt at meeting the
requirements of naturalistic portraiture." For
example, the slight asymmetry that renders the
Ife heads so expressive is missing completely in
the Benin pieces, characterized instead by strongly
symmetrical features.
R. E. Bradbury, in a personal communication
reported by Dark (1973,18), observes that the

male heads "are impersonal in character because

they represent not the late king as an individual,
but the authority which he transmits to his successors/' This thesis presupposes, however, the
use of the heads in succession rituals, but we have
no conclusive proof of this, only conjectures that
do not always agree.
Paula Ben-Amos (1980,18) advances the fascinating theory that these are trophy heads, citing
as support a tradition reported by a member of
the caster's guild, Chief Ihama, according to
which "in the old days they used to cut off the
head of (conquered) kings and bring it to the Oba
who would send it to our guild for casting. They
did not necessarily cast heads of all the captured
rulers, but just the most stubborn among them. If
it happened that the senior son of a rebel king was
put on the throne, the Oba would send him the
cast head of his father to warn him how his father
was dealt with." The close similarity between the
hairstyle of the Benin heads of the early period
and that of an Igbo man (photographed at the
beginning of this century and published by Paula
Ben-Amos) supports the hypothesis that the
ancient male heads represent a foreigner and not
the dead Oba. However, this explanation does not
seem to account for the stylization and resulting
impersonal nature of the heads.
Despite the mystery surrounding their origin
and function, the early Benin heads are a valuable
testimony to the skill of the Benin sculptors and
to their ability to work creatively within the context of an authoritarian and highly formal court
culture.
E.B.

6l

QUEEN MOTHER HEAD

i6th century
Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria
cast copper alloy and iron
51 (20)
references: Dapper 1686, 311; Luschan 1919;
Underwood 1949, 20; Eghareva 1953; Elisofon and
Fagg 1958, 64; Forman and Dark 1960; Fagg 1963;
Blackmun 1991, 5960
Nigerian National Museum, Lagos
In the first half of the sixteenth century the Oba
Esigye conferred the title of "Queen Mother" on
his mother, Idia, who had helped him in his struggle for power. In giving her this title, he institutionalized the role of the king's mother and
defined its position in the kingdom's complex
hierarchy (Eghareva 1953; Blackmun 1991,
59-60).
About a century later, in the monumental work
on Africa by the Dutch scholar Olfert Dapper, a
chapter on Benin, based on the report of an
unknown author, confirmed the high status of the
Queen Mother, her participation in affairs of state

sculptor Leon Underwood notes (1949, 20), "is

more that of a general concept of beauty than that
of the individual/' William Fagg has commented
that these heads "have a remarkable formal
abstract quality, as a drop of liquid, almost as if
they had been influenced by Brancusi" (Elisofon
and Fagg 1958, 64).
A limpid rhythm defines the synthetic structure of the work, which is articulated in two complementary blocks : the base in the form of a
truncated pyramid and the egg-shaped volume of
the head, joined together by the perfect cylinder
of the neck enclosed in the regal collar of coral
beads. The tall netted headdress, also made of
coral and edged with stiff vertical hanging strands
of beads that cover both sides of the face and neck,
seems molded onto the head.
The face has a rounded, inert surface, large eyes
close to the plane of the head (the pupils are of
iron inlay, as are the scarifications across the forehead); nostrils and mouth are vigorously modeled
to yield a remote, evocative mask.
This head is indeed distinguished by a "remarkable formal quality," without any uncertainty, to
whose perfection any indication of humanity has
yielded. These elements were the deliberate
choice of the artist, who refused any attempt at
specific characterization, as can be seen by comparing this work with similar heads a fitting
choice for a work whose purpose was to give shape
to an abstract notion of royalty, to a "general
concept of beauty," and to cast it in metal for eternity.
E.B.
and her relationship to the Oba. "This prince
greatly honors his mother, and does nothing
important without first asking her advice. Nonetheless, according to I don't know what law, it is
not permitted that they see each other; for this
reason the Queen Mother lives in a beautiful
house outside the city, where she is served by
a large number of women and young girls"
(Dapper 1686, 311).
The first commemorative heads of queen mothers, recognizable by the tall pointed headdress
which coincidentally recalls the "ducal horn/' the
insignia of office of the Doges of Venice, can thus
be dated about the middle of the sixteenth century. They belong, both by chronology and style,
to the early period of Benin art, according to the
subdivisions proposed by William Fagg. The
heads of queen mothers are fewer in number than
the male heads. The group includes, along with
this piece from the Lagos museum, two others in
the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin (Luschan
1919, pis. 51 and 52 b,c), one in the Museum of
Mankind in London (Forman and Dark 1960, nos.
65-67), and one in the museum in Liverpool
(Fagg 1963, no. 13). The last two lack the base.
Compared to the male heads (cat. 60), those of
the queen mother are more stylized and impersonal, as though isolated in their mysterious and
haughty perfection. Their "physical beauty/' the

scholar, even if at present there is no strong basis

for concluding that this work actually originated
in Ife. It is clear that in style the Dwarf is far from
a typical Benin work. Its deformed head, like a
similar but fragmentary head preserved in the
Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin (Dark 1973,
pis. 37, 38), shows a degree of expressiveness
which, though very unusual in the stylized plasticism of Benin art, at the same time does not correspond to the balanced, Apollonian canons of Ife
sculpture which exhibits a sublime fusion of realism and idealization. The details of the Vienna
Dwarf, moreover, differ from those of classic
Benin figures. Philip Dark (1973, 23) has noted
that the facial features of the Dwarfthe deep-set
eyes, flattened nose and mouth "do not bear the
stamp of Benin conventionalization," just as the
necklaces and wide bracelets worn by the figure
are not typical of Benin.
There are, moreover, interesting connections
between this work and Ife art. Frank Willett
(1986, 95, ill. 45, 47, 48) has drawn attention to

62

DWARF
iqth-ijth century
Edo peoples, Benin kindgom, Nigeria
cast copper alloy
59.5 (233/sj
references: Fagg 1963; Dark 1973, 23; Eyo and
Willett 1980; Willett 1986, 95; Duchateau 1990,

13-17

Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna

This and a second sculpture of a dwarf from the
museum in Vienna (Duchateau 1990, 13-17) are
considered by scholars of Benin art to be among
the most extraordinary works created in the
Nigerian city. William Fagg (1963, pi. 25) goes so
far as to declare that "without doubt they are the
finest of all Benin bronze figures, but they are so
naturalistic that it is difficult to find points of
style by which to date them, though the early date
seems most likely
It is even conceivable that
they are Ife works/'
The date of I4th-i5th century, recently established by measuring the thermoluminescence of
some traces of clay found in the cavity of the
dwarf from Vienna not exhibited here (Duchateau
1990), confirms the keen intuition of the English
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

179

the accentuated deformity of the head in a series

of terra-cotta sculptures excavated at Obalara's
Land, Ife. In fact, a comparison of our piece with
the full sensual volumes of the wonderful seated
figure formerly in Tada (Eyo and Willett 1980, no.
92), recently restored conjecturally to Ife art, suggests the most convincing explanation: the
Vienna Dwarf should be included among the
works executed in Benin when Ife influence was
significant and supports the hypothesis that there
were indeed important relationships between
these two art traditions, at least in the early period
of Benin history. These relationships, which
according to some oral traditions were very close,
must now be substantiated by thorough formal
investigations.
The features of the second Vienna dwarf (Duchateau 1990,16-17) are stylized and substantially more impersonal, more in accord with the
Benin figure canons epitomized in the Queen
Mother Head (cat. 61). Dark nonetheless agrees
with Fagg that, on the whole, both the Vienna
figures and the related Berlin head can be considered works of Edo artists, albeit different sculptors, perhaps working in different periods.
Disagreeing with Fagg, he suggests, however, that
the figure represented here is a woman; while his
arguments are ingenious, they do not seem conclusive for determining the figure's sex, especially
if we accept that the two figures are not contemporary and did not originally form a pair.
The sculpture exhibited here, with its large
body and admirably shortened limbs, has a compact structure, rounded, strongly sensual volumes,
and smooth, gentle surfaces. The head, marked by
sharp relief and deep furrows, conveys an extraordinary, moving humanity. The apparent contrast
between the sluggish heaviness of the torso and
the dramatic deformity of the head is reconciled
by means of the sensitive modeling and fluid
handling, resulting in a work of incomparable
formal unity.
E.B.

63
HORNBLOWER
i6th century
Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria
cast copper alloy
height 62 f242/2J
references: Dapper 1686, 311; Luschan 1919, pi. 72;
Forman and Dark 1960, 23-25; Fagg 1963, 36, 540;
Dark 1973, 44; London 1974
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
Hornblowers served an important function in the
complex ceremonials of Benin society. Along with
180

CIRCA 1492

a few examples of sculpture in the round, including the one shown here, hornblowers appear fairly
frequently on plaques next to the Oba, chiefs, or
warriors. In court ritual a hornblower always
accompanied the king and announced his
presence.
The seventeenth-century Dutch scholar Olfert
Dapper writes that the king of Benin "appears in
public once a year, covered with his royal ornaments, accompanied by an entourage of three or
four hundred gentlemen as infantry or cavalry
and by a group of players of (musical) instruments, some preceding and others following the
sovereign" (Dapper 1686, 311). In the very
famous engraving appearing as a plate in that volume and illustrating the royal cavalry riding
against a background of the royal palace and city
of Benin, two hornblowers are clearly visible,
along with men playing drums, tambourines, and
triangles. The illustration is misleading, however,
as the artist had as inspiration only Dapper's brief
description and did not know that African horns,
usually made of ivory, do not have the mouthpiece
at one end like European instruments, but are
played through a side mouthpiece like flutes.
Instruments from Benin and Yoruba are further
distinguished by the fact that the mouthpiece

opens onto the convex side of the tusk rather than

the concave side as is the case with all other African horns. This characteristic is readily evident in
sculpture of hornblowers and is confirmed by the
ivory horns that have come down to us, for example the magnificent example in the Museum fur
Volkerkunde in Vienna (Fagg 1963, 54a).
Besides the hornblower exhibited here, at least
five other examples can be dated around the
second half of the sixteenth century and thus
assigned to the early period of Benin art: another
in the Museum of Mankind (Dark 1973, 44), one
in the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin (Luschan
1919, pi. 72), one in the National Museum of
Scotland (inv. no. 1985.631), one in the Brooklyn
Museum, and one in an unidentified collection
(Sotheby's London, sale July 1974, lot 58, formerly S. R. Ingersoll Collection). The similarities
among these six works are so strong as to suggest
not only that they were executed at the same time
but also that they were products of the same
workshop; the piece shown here, the one in
Berlin, and the one formerly in the Ingersoll Collection were probably even by the same sculptor.
The massive figure, set in a rigidly frontal pose,
stands heavily on the ground with his huge feet,
rendered with surprising realism, which, like his
massive legs, are disproportionate to the height of
the figure but functional to the solid balance of
the piece. In contrast, the arms are thin and, like
the torso, show no sign of muscles. The delicate
gesture of the left hand holding the musical
instrument and following its movement provides
a contrast to the figure's overall severity. The
large head is made even more imposing and compact by the cap pulled down to the eyes, over an
impersonal face with stylized, stiff features.
The artist's attention is concentrated on the
sumptuous costume: the fiber helmet (Forman
and Dark 1960, 23-25), decorated with parallel
bands of chevrons running in opposite directions;
the thin, tight-fitting, finely chiseled armor,
which contrasts with the rigid collar set with
leopard's teeth; and the skirt of heavy precious
cloth held by a belt decorated with the mask of a
leopard.
The studied opposition between the very beautiful series of parallel horizontal bands and tapering oblique bands gathered together by the
crescent-shaped, upward-pointing piece, typical of
the costume of high Benin officials, introduces the
only hint of movement into the otherwise rigid
figure. The intricate ornamentation, with its
subtle, virtuoso rendering of the dress that
encloses the body of the musician like a precious
wrapping and exalts its impersonal quality, is in
perfect accord with the expressive canons of a
court art whose purpose was the glorification of
the sovereign.
Sculptures like this were placed on the altars to
ancestors and were associated with the royal
ancestor cult (Fagg 1963, 36).
E.B

64-65
PAIR OF LEOPARDS
i6th century (?)
Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria
copper alloy
length 69 (2jVs)
references: Dapper 1686; Elisofon and Pagg 1958,
171,172; Ben-Amos 1976, 246-247; Ben-Amos
1980, 20, 64; Eyo and Willett 1980, 81-82;
Quarcoopone 1983, 95
Nigerian National Museum, Lagos
The seventeenth-century Dutch author Olfert
Dapper notes in his description of the ride of the
Oba of Benin around the royal palace that the

entourage included "some tame leopards and

a goodly number of dwarfs and deaf people
whose function was to entertain the king/' The
cats and dwarfs are also illustrated in the plate
accompanying the text.
In Benin culture the leopard was the symbol of
the Oba, a metaphor for royal power because of its
combination of threatening force and prudent
reserve (Quarcoopone 1983, 95; see also BenAmos 1976, 246-247). In the*cosmology of the
ancient African kingdom, the leopard was celebrated as "king of the bush/' and only specialized
hunters in the exclusive service of the king were
allowed to hunt it. Leopards were sacrificed at the
coronation of the Oba and on the occasion of the
Iguae, the annual ceremony dedicated to the rein-

forcement of the king's mystical powers. A pair of

leopards in brass or ivory were usually placed on
either side of the king when he sat in state (BenAmos 1980, 20, 64).
In Benin art the leopard is the most frequently
represented animal, depicted in different contexts
but always in some way connected with the Oba.
Besides statues of this type, leopards appeared as
ewers in imitation of European models, on basrelief plaques, and on hip pendants. Often the
head stands for the whole animal; in other cases
the leopard's skin is worn by the warriors also
shown on the plaques.
Brass was most often the medium, although we
do know of leopard images done in ivory, notably
an imposing pair (each animal is 83 cm. long) now

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

l8l

in the British Museum, on loan from Her Majesty

Queen Elizabeth n. These are probably works
from the nineteenth century, but they may have
been carved as substitutes for two older pieces
that were damaged and subsequently destroyed;
the superb head in the Museum fur Volkerkunde
in Vienna could be the only fragment remaining
of these earlier pieces.
The two leopards in the Lagos museum, which
Eyo and Willett (1980, 81-82) have assigned to
the middle of the sixteenth century, are considered by William Fagg to be among the most
technically perfect works of Benin metalcraft
(Elisofon and Fagg 1958, 171-172).
The imposing bodies in a watchful, proud pose,
summarized with extraordinary success, are made
up of muscular masses that vibrate and ripple
under the smooth skin, evoking the beasts' capacity for sudden leaps. The rendering of the spotted
pelt with concentric circles on a finely stippled
ground does not interfere with the steady, precise
modeling of the curves; on the contrary, the
refined surface decoration seems to complement
the superb structural balance.
The sculptures' plastic animation is concentrated in their proudly lifted heads. The strong
canine teeth convey aggression. Their volumes
are harmoniously integrated with the expressive
head despite the fact that the different elements of
the work are faithful to the canons of Benin sculpture. Note also the humanlike eyes with incised
pupils, the beautifully molded ears decorated like
precious leaves, the stiff whiskers in relief, similar
in shape to the half-open mouth but pointing in
the opposite direction: these are all signs of a
deliberate search for a compositional balance that
seems to have been the aim of the maker of these
superb monumental representations of the power
oftheOba. of the Oba
E.B.

66
MASK
i6th century
ivory, copper, and iron

24 (9y2)

references: Fagg 1957; Forman and Dark 1960, 25;

Fagg 1963; Fagg 1968; Willett 1971, 108, 109; Dark
1973, 97; McLeod 1980, 133; Koloss 1982; Blackmun
1991, 59-60
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of
Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1972
Among the spoils of the conquered city of Benin
in 1897, the members of the British punitive
expedition found in the Oba's bedchamber a
group of ivory masks that are iconographically
similar to one another and represent a human
182

CIRCA 1492

face. The two finest masks were taken by Sir

Ralph Moor, civil head of the expedition, and subsequently entered the Seligman Collection: one is
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exhibited here), the other in the Museum of Mankind
in London (McLeod 1980,133). Two others were
taken by other officers and are now in the Seattle
Museum of Art (Fagg 1968, no. 141) and the

Linden Museum in Stuttgart (Koloss 1982, A8).

The four masks, according to Fagg, "should be
regarded as contemporary and of the first half of
the sixteenth century"; thus they belong to the
early period of Benin art. Philip Dark (1973, 97)
also believes that the four ivories are "relatively
contemporary"; he suggests that it is reasonable
to assign the London and New York pieces to the

Esigie epoch on the basis of the Portuguese heads

forming a band above the forehead on both masks
and the rich decoration below the chin on the
mask in the Metropolitan Museum. The reign of
the Oba Esigie (c. 1517-1550) witnessed numerous contacts with the Portuguese. Oba Akenzua n
has in this century identified the masks as representations of Idia, the powerful mother of King
Esigie, because of the presence of the Portuguese
heads (see Blackmun 1991, 59-60 and note 7).
In the mask shown here the stylized Portuguese
heads (a motif that recurs almost unchanged on
Benin ivories and brass sculptures in later periods)
alternate with mudfish, a symbol of the Oba,
another recurrent motif in Benin art. Mudfish
also form a band above the forehead on the Stuttgart mask; the decoration below the chin, as in
the London and Seattle pieces, is an elaborate
guilloche design. The ornament on the forehead
of the Seattle ivory is composed of birds, which
have largely been lost. These similarities, along
with the almost identical treatment of facial features, indicate that the works were almost certainly executed at the same time.
The presence of lugs above the ears suggests
that the masks were hung from a cord. Fagg
(1957) therefore concludes that the masks were
worn around the Oba's neck and not hung from a
belt like the smaller brass masks that decorated
the king's costumes in more recent times. A brass
mask similar to these ivory examples and of the
same size, assigned to the early period of Benin
art (Willett 1971, 108-109), belongs today to the
Atah of Idah, sovereign of the Igala (a people who
had contact, including warfare, with the Benin in
the past); he wears it during official ceremonies.
In support of Fagg's conjecture is a drawing dating
from 1832-1833 depicting an ancestor of the Atah
wearing this mask on his breast.
The facial features of the Metropolitan
Museum's mask are rendered with the usual
mixture of naturalism and stylization that characterizes Benin works of the early period, harmoniously placed to form a design that is rigorous
and strictly symmetrical; the profile, at once delicate and strong, has a musical rhythm. The details
are executed with great skill; the use of different
materials, such as copper for the outline of the
eyelids and iron for the pupils and the markings
on the forehead, is discreet and functional,
although, as Dark observes (Forman and Dark
1960, 25), quite different from the European
treatment of ivory.
The mask shown here and the example in
London, probably by the same hand, are among
the most beautiful ivories carved in Benin; their
maker, a master of his craft, was also an artist
of great refinement and sensitivity. The slightly
disquieting sense of impersonal coolness that
pervades these pieces reminds us of the expressive
conventions binding the Igbesanmwan, the
powerful guild of carvers of ivory in the service
of the Oba.
E.B.

67

SALTCELLAR
late i5th early i6th century
Sapi-Portuguese style, Sierra Leone
ivory
height 43 (i67/s)
references: Ryder 1964, 363-365; Dittmer 1967,
183-238; Teixeira da Mota 1975, 384, 580-589;
Grottanelli 1975, 14-23; Grottanelli 1976, 23-58;
Bassani and Fagg 1988, fig. 135, and 75, 78
Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi
Pigorini, Rome

Of the more than fifty ivory cups or fragments

of cups usually referred to as saltcellars that are
known to date, made by artists in Sierra Leone in
the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, this
example is among the most impressive, not only
for its extraordinary size but also its refined execution and sophisticated conception of volumes.
The decorative motifs and the iconography of the
characters portrayed, which show unquestionable
affinities of style with the production of stone
nomoli figures from Sierra Leone and, above all,
its formal syntax, with elements carved in the
round alternating with surfaces left undecorated
allow us to assign this work to the Bulom

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

183

sculptural tradition in Sierra Leone, or, as was

recently proposed by Ezio Bassani and William
Fagg, to the Sapi (Crapes, Sapes). This collective
term was adopted by the Portuguese during the
Renaissance to indicate a group of populations
including the Bulom, the Temne, and other
bordering nations.
The cup illustrated here has a hollowed-out
cylindrical base with figurative elements carved in
the round inserted into an architectonic structure.
Four human figures, male alternating with female,
seated on the rim of the base, are separated by
vertical elements, some decorated with crocodiles

in bas-relief, which modulate the rhythm of the

carving on the basis of rectangular registers. The
architectural structure is thus lightened by the
skillful alternation of filled and empty spaces,
which produces an openwork effect. The base supports a hemispherical cup whose lid is decorated
with an execution scene carved in the round. The
complex formal structure and the originality of
the iconography combine to make this cup unique
among works of its type.
The imperfect attempts at restoration the
head of the victim about to be sacrificed, the hand
and ax of the executioner, the latter completed

according to the restorer's imagination do not

detract from the exceptional aesthetic quality of
the object. The sophisticated structure and the
clever formal devices note the elegant alternation between carved masses with smooth surfaces,
and areas decorated with simple incised geometric
designs show this to be the work of a great
master. With the rhythmical modulation of volumes, the tension of line, and the sculptural
precision of the surprising effects of balance, he
shows that he is able to combine dynamism and a
feeling for the essential with the most significant
morphological elements of the great African
sculptural tradition.
E.G.
The Sapi saltcellars are mentioned in some
of the earliest Portuguese accounts of ivories
imported from Africa. The 1504-1505 account
book of the Casa de Guine refers to saleyros (saltcellars). Valentim Fernandes, in his report of
1506-1510, describes the Sapi as "very skillful in
manual arts, that is [they create] ivory saltcellars
and spoons and thus whatever work you draw for
them they carve out in ivory/'
E.B.

68-69

SPOON AND FORK

late i$th- early i6th century
Sapi-Portuguese style, Sierra Leone
ivory
spoon length 24 (92/2J; fork length 24.5 (95/s)
references: Pacheco Pereira 1905, 134; Fernandes
1951; Ryder 1964; Teixeira da Mota 1975;
Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47, 48;
Bassani and Fagg 1988
The Trustees of the British Museum
The virtuosity and exquisite taste of the carvers of
ivory in what is today Sierra Leone attain their
finest expression in these small masterpieces, the
Sapi-Portuguese spoons and forks. Although the
models are European as is easily confirmed by a
quick comparison with Portuguese examples in
metal from the end of the fifteenth century the
choice of decorative motifs and their perfect integration into the finished works must be attributed
entirely to the inventiveness and skill of the African artists.
Open and closed spaces are skillfully articulated
throughout. Snakes and crocodiles, whose scales
are rendered by means of cross-hatched incisions,
slither along the slender handles, forming elegant
loops, or confront small four-legged animals.
Typical motifs of Portuguese Manueline decoration (rows of beads and zigzag transverse bands,
which also appear on saltcellars and oliphants) are
harmoniously integrated with the images of ani184

CIRCA 1492

A spoon now in Copenhagen and another piece

from Benin (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 61,161)
were registered in a Danish manuscript inventory
of 1689 as "two East Indian carved spoons with
lizards and snakes on the handles" (Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47, 48). It is beyond
doubt, however, that the spoons are African, as
analogies with other works from Sierra Leone and
Benin have established.
From the very valuable account book of the
Casa de Guine, we note the importation into early
sixteenth-century Europe of 114 spoons in ivory
(colhares de marfy) and 22 in wood (colhares de
pao). F. C. Ryder (1964) and Avelino Teixeira
da Mota (1975) have analyzed the merchandise
subject to tax besides spoons and saltcellars (in
particular, rice and woven straw mats) and have
concluded that the ships touched shore in Sierra
Leone, where rice was abundant, indicating that
the spoons also came from that part of Africa.
This conclusion is confirmed by the early
report of Valentim Fernandes. His contemporary,
Duarte Pacheco Pereira, is even more explicit in
Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, written between 1505
and 1508, where he affirms that in Sierra Leone
"the finest ivory spoons are made, worked better
than anywhere else and also they make palm mats
that they call bicas, very harmonious and beautiful" (Pacheco Pereira 1905,134). At the same time
he lists ivory spoons and woven mats like those
registered by the Casa de Guine.
Not all of the 114 colhares de marfy on which
a tax was levied in the year 1504-1505 correspond
with the decorated examples ordered by the Europeans. If we take this number as a yearly figure,
then their total would have reached several thousand. Yet only eight Sapi-Portuguese spoons
and three forks have to date been identified.
It is probable that for the most part the spoons
recorded in the account book were simple and
without decoration, valued for the material used
to make them and, like the wooden spoons, their
significance as souvenirs. Most of them have
presumably been lost or confused with other
objects imported in more recent times.
E.B.

/O

mals in lively and highly refined combinations.

The unequivocal manner of representing the
crocodiles with blunt tails and transverse reliefs
marking the juncture of the necks to the rest of
the bodies leads us to attribute the London fork
and spoon to the very talented author of four
saltcellars (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 27-30),
which present an original solution. The container
proper is attached to the conical base by a series of
slender semicircular elements along which slide
serpents and crocodiles, forming a spherical openwork cage.

The spoons and forks almost certainly served an

ornamental rather than practical purpose, as was
true also of the saltcellars. However, a practical
use is suggested by the inclusion of what appears
to be a Sapi-Portuguese spoon in the painting
The Death of the Virgin by the Mestre do Paraiso
of 1520-1530 (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga,
Lisbon), where it is shown immersed in a container of food. It is nevertheless possible that the
object is actually a Portuguese metal spoon that
by chance resembles a model used by an African
carver.

OLIPHANT
late 15thearly i6th century
Sapi-Portuguese style, Sierra Leone
ivory
length 63 (2/f/s)
references: Pigouchet 1497; Bonanni 1709; Fagg
1981; Bassani and Fagg 1988
Armeria Reale, Turin
Oliphants do not appear in the lists of objects in
the account book of 1504-1505 in the Casa de

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

185

Guine, nor are they mentioned among the creations of Sierra Leone artists in the early sixteenthcentury reports of Duarte Pacheco Pereira and
Valentim Fernandes, who describe "spoons, saltcellars, and handles for daggers/' Nonetheless,
thirty-six ivory horns of quite large size (between
26 and 68 cm.) have come down to us (Bassani and
Fagg 1988, nos. 75-110). The absence of any
record in the Casa de Guine could be explained by
the assumption that the horns were destined for
the royal palace, which would be supported by the
presence of the royal coat of arms carved on the
sides of many of the horns. This would account
for the horns7 exemption from tax.
An oliphant that was in the Collegio Romano,
the museum of the Jesuits in Rome, and is now in
the Museo Luigi Pigorini, is the only ivory identifiable as Afro-Portuguese whose African origin
was recognized as early as the eighteenth century.
Father Filippo Bonanni, director of the museum
and editor of its catalogue in 1709, described the
horn, probably on the basis of documents no
longer in existence, as "Cornu eburneum ex
Africa alatum cum figuris variis elegantissime
sculptis" ("Winged ivory horn from Africa with
186

C I R C A 1492

various figures very elegantly carved"), thus eliminating any doubt as to the object's origin.
Horns made from an elephant's tusk (and thus
called "oliphants"), usually carved by Arabian
artists, were common in Europe during the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They must
have been even more widespread in Africa, where
ivory was abundant before the arrival of the Europeans. The horns used in Africa differ from those
made for export, both in terms of shape and in the
way they are played; the mouthpiece is on the
side (on the inside of the curve of the tusk in
instruments from Sierra Leone) instead of at one
end. They also lack the rings for attaching a cord,
which are always found on European horns.
The mouthpiece of the Sapi-Portuguese oliphants mimic the teeth and jaws of animals of
prey. On some examples a winged dragon is
sculpted in the round; both elements also can be
seen in European objects, especially guns, dating
from the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The bas-relief decorations on the sides of the
horns are usually deer-hunting scenes, carved
freely over the surface. The theme is common in
many Franco-Flemish tapestries of the late fif-

teenth and first half of the sixteenth century, as

well as in drawings, miniatures, and prints of the
same period. Analogies with small images printed
along the borders of some prayer books, particularly the small incunabulum Home Beatae Mariae
Virginis, printed in Paris in 1498 by Philippe
Pigouchet for Simon Vostre and widely distributed, are so close as to suggest that the devotional
books served as models for some of the ivories.
Some horns have carvings in high relief of
hunters holding dogs on leashes or carrying their
prey over their shoulders; the latter strongly
recall images of the Good Shepherd in Christian
iconography. Heraldic motifs such as the crowned
lion, fantastic creatures such as unicorns, centaurs, and harpies, the sun and moon all make up
part of the decoration. Oriental motifs also
appear: the two birds with entwined necks on the
Turin oliphant and on a few others, for example.
This theme can be found in printed books from
the same epoch, but it ultimately derives from
Indian and, even more, from Islamic decorative
traditions.
Elements common in Portuguese Manueline
architecture are found on the oliphants as well as

the saltcellars; the transverse reliefs dividing the

surface of the oliphants into registers are particularly analogous to the horizontal bands carved into
the pilasters and capitals of many early sixteenthcentury Portuguese monumental buildings, such
as the monastery of Los Jeronimos in Lisbon.
The coats of arms of the House of Aviz, the
armillary sphere, and the cross, symbol of the
Order of Christ, all attributes of King Manuel i of
Portugal, are carved, sometimes by themselves
but more often together, on almost all of the
oliphants and on two saltcellars.
Three oliphants and a powder flask made from a
fragment of a fourth horn (Bassani and Fagg 1988,
nos. 75-77, 79) have carving showing the coat of
arms of Portugal, as well as those of Ferdinand v
of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and the motto of
the Spanish king "Tanto Monta" ("it amounts to
the same thing/' thought to refer to a remark
made by Alexander the Great in cutting the Gordian knot). It is likely that Manuel i of Portugal,
who had married in succession two daughters of
the Catholic monarchs (in 1497 Isabella and in
1500, after her death, Maria), presented his
father-in-law with these hunting horns created by
an artist from Sierra Leone. The inscription Ave
Maria carved on a transverse band of the oliphants could refer to the name of Manuel's second
wife. The coat of arms of Ferdinand and Isabella
also contains a pomegranate, the emblem of Granada, the kingdom in southern Spain that was
liberated from the Moors in 1492; thus these
works can be dated between 1492 and 1516, the
year of King Ferdinand's death.
On the oliphant exhibited, the coat of arms of
the reigning house of Portugal is shown hanging
from the limbs of a leafy tree, flanked by two unicorns, a motif identical to that appearing in the
device of the French printer Thielman Kerver,
active in the last decade of the fifteenth century,
whose shop was styled "at the sign of the unicorn/'
All the European iconographical elements that
we have identified in the Sapi-Portuguese ivories
can be dated more or less between the last quarter
of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of
the sixteenth, allowing us to conclude that these
works were carved in a relatively brief period by
a small group of artists who worked for the export
market as well as for African purchasers. This
is confirmed by the oliphant in the Musee de
l'Homme in Paris (Bassani and Fagg 1988, no.
201), which has a side mouthpiece and no rings
for attaching a supporting cord a typically African instrument. Careful comparison shows that it
was carved by the same artist who executed the
saltcellars now in the Museum fur Volkerkunde
in Vienna and the Bowes Museum in Barnard
Castle (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 16-17). E - B -

7^_
SALTCELLAR
i6th century
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria
ivory
2C).2

(llV2)

references: Dark 1973; London 1980; Mendes Pinto

1983; Voge.11985; Bassani and Fagg 1988
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
This saltcellar from the Museum of Mankind
in London belongs to a group of fifteen BiniPortuguese examples, most of which are incomplete (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 114-128).
Unlike the Sapi-Portuguese saltcellars, those from

Benin have two spherical containers, one atop the

other, divided exactly in half, so that the complete
saltcellar is composed of three parts: a base with
the lower half of the first container, a middle section comprising the upper half of the first container and the lower half of the second, and, in the
few surviving complete pieces, a third part, which
serves as the lid of the second container, usually
topped by a group sculpted in the round. In each
case a frieze of figures in European clothes
standing in five of the saltcellars and mounted on
horseback in the other ten encircles the base.
The saltcellar exhibited here belongs to the type
with standing figures and is the work of an artist
who, on the basis of this work, may be called
the "Master of the Heraldic Ship." He also carved

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

187

two incomplete examples, of which only the

central sections survive (Bassani and Fagg 1988,
nos. 114-116).
On this saltcellar the four human figures are
skillfully alternated in frontal and three-quarter
poses to emphasize movement. This is the most
intriguing stylistic trait of the fifteen Bini saltcellars; most of the figures are represented in
movement, unlike the figures on Sapi-Portuguese
saltcellars as well as those in classic Benin art and
in African art in general. This unusual manner
of rendering the human figure, common only to
the saltcellars and to a few Bini figures of crossbowmen and harquebusiers cast in brass, has
suggested the possibility that a Portuguese
"commissioner/teacher" could have introduced
this convention to Bini figurative art. After his
departure or death, this foreign motif would have
been abandoned.
The double-chambered form of the saltcellars
bears no resemblance to traditional works from
Benin; The standing figures carved on them also
have no precise iconographical equivalent in traditiorial sculpture from the ancient Nigerian kingdom, with the exception of some facial details (the
eyes and mouth, for example) and some decorative
motifs, such as the basket weave and lozenge patterns that were part of the artistic vocabulary of
the Igbesanmwan. See, for example, the Portuguese figures carved on the ivory bracelets in the
Museum of Mankind and the Monzino Collection
188

CIRCA 1492

(Dark 1973, pi. 8 left, and Vogel 1985, no. 80).

Attribution to Benin artists is possible not only
because these stylistic detailsparticularly the
similarities between the horsemen on some saltcellars of the second type and the figure of a
Portuguese horseman on the surface of a tusk
destined for the altar of the Oba's ancestors, even
though this piece is of later date (London 1980, lot
24) but also because of the close correspondence
of details of the saltcellars to traditional Benin
works in ivory and brass, in particular the ears in
the shape of leaves and the tack of the horses.
The frontal figures on the saltcellar shown here
wear sumptuous costumes, and in their monumentality evince a close relationship to contemporary images of important figures in Portuguese
society. See, for example, the portrait of Afonso
de Albuquerque, viceroy of the Indies, painted
in Goa in the sixteenth century and now in the
Museu Nacional de Arte Amiga in Lisbon.
The three-quarter figures wear a kind of light
armor with metal plates fastened by rivets, which
was common in Europe beginning in the second
half of the fifteenth century. The four figures
hold swords with handles decorated with a large
pommel, a type widely used in Europe between
the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the
sixteenth centuries. The lances, according to
Claude Blair, could be an Indian style because of
the way the blade is fixed to the shaft; also possibly of Indian origin are the daggers worn at the

belt by several horsemen carved on the saltcellars

of the second type. Oriental weaponry was certainly common among the Portuguese, as Vasco
da Gama had reached India in 1498.
The Bini-Portuguese saltcellars also show elements typical of Manueline decoration, for example, the rows of beads used to render the rivets
of the armor and other details of costume and the
lotus flowers carved on the stockings of the figures seen frontally. This is a typical Indian motif
going back to Vedic tradition, adopted in IndoPortuguese architecture to decorate teak beams
(Mendes Pinto 1983, nos. 156,157) as well as in
Manueline decoration, as can be seen in the rich
portal of the church of Viana in the Alentejo.
These elements suggest the first half of the
sixteenth century as the period when these saltcellars were created.
The ship carved on the lid is not a caravel,
the ship used by the Portuguese in the sixteenth
century for ocean voyages, but an urea, a type
of freighter common in Portugal and northern
Europe until the middle of the preceding century an identification that we owe to Admiral
Vasco Viegas of the Marine Museum in Lisbon.
The image must therefore have been copied from
a drawing or print, but the detail of the sailor in
the crow's nest, rendered in a narrative manner
unlike the imposing figures of the lower register,
has the character of an observed detail and could
have been added by the carver.
E.B.

7^-74
THREE SPOONS
i6th century
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria
ivory
72: length 25 (97/sj
73: length 24.8 (93/4J
74: length 25.7 (loVs)
Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence
75-76

Two SPOONS
i6th century
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria
ivory
75: length 24.8 (93/4J
76: length 26 (iol/4)
Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi
Pigorini, Rome
references: Zeiler 1659, 53; Dapper 1668; Heger
i#99, 109; Welsh 1904, 452; Wolf 1960; Bassani
1975; Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47;
Eyo ant/ Willett 1980; Bassani and Fagg 1988

antelopes carved on the spoons are always shown

devouring leaves. This motif is common in the art
of Owo, a Yoruba city about 100 kilometers from
Benin (see, for example, the covered ivory cup in
the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lille).
The concave bowl of the spoons, so thin as to
appear translucent, is the most refined element.
This may have led to the erroneous description of
the pieces in Florence as "spoons of mother of
pearl/' The elongated shape, tapered toward the
rib along the back, and toward the point at which
it meets the handle, where it curves forward to
form a three-sectioned hook, seem inspired by
the form of a leaf. These motifs are rare in Benin
art, whereas they appear frequently in the Owo
figurative tradition. Some fifteenth-century
terra-cottas excavated at Owo show leaves of the
sacred akoko tree (Eyo and Willett 1980, nos. 7071). Reference to the leaf shape and the marked
absence of the horror vacui that characterizes
Benin art suggest that the makers of the spoons
may have been Owo artists working for the Oba
alongside other Bini members of the Igbesanmwan, according to a tradition reported by R. A.
Bradbury in his posthumously published notes.
This workshop could have been located outside
the city of Benin, not far from the Portuguese

port of entry. Possibly it was not far from, or even

the same as, the shop that produced the Bini saltcellars, considering the similarity between the
only human figure carved on a spoon, perhaps a
Portuguese apprentice sailor (now in the British
Museum, London; Bassani and Fagg 1988, no.
171), and the figure represented in profile on a
saltcellar now in Berlin (Bassani and Fagg 1988,
no. 126).
The numerous examples that have come down
to us and the relatively late (1588) but precise
description by James Welsh, "In Benin they make
spoons of Elephant teeth very curiously wrought
with diverse proportion of fowls and beasts made
upon them" (1904, 452), suggest that the creation
of Bini-Portuguese spoons (and perhaps the horns
and saltcellars) began later than that of SapiPortuguese spoons and lasted longer, until about
the end of the sixteenth century, when Prince
Christian of Saxony is recorded to have purchased
a dozen of these objects (Wolf 1960).
The diminishing numbers of elephants that
resulted from over-hunting due to the European
demand for ivory may have ended the carving
of larger works for export, such as saltcellars
and oliphants, but small spoons continued to
be produced.
E.B.

Spoons are the most numerous category (fortyeight examples have been identified to date) of
Bini-Portuguese ivories. A very large number of
them must have been made since so many have
survived despite their fragility. The three spoons
in Florence and the two in Rome were listed
among the possessions of Eleonora of Toledo, wife
of the Grand Duke Cosimo i de'Medici in 1560
(Bassani 1975). Other groups of these valuable
objects were part of the celebrated "cabinets of
curiosities" amassed by various sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century European collectors (Bassani
and Fagg 1988, nos. 134-169).
Documents in Dresden and Ambras describe
the spoons in those collections as "Turkish" (Wolf
1960) or of "Turkish shape" (Heger 1899, 1O9)> an
attribution curiously repeated in the Florentine
inventories beginning in 1793; one of the spoons
in the collection of the merchant Christof Weickmann of Ulm is described as "Indian" (Zeiler
1659, 53), while one from the Danish royal collection, now in Copenhagen, is called "Japanese"
(Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47). Such
mistaken oriental attributions are typical of the
early inventories. Iconographical and stylistic considerations prove beyond a doubt the Nigerian
origin of the spoons. Carved in the round on the
handles in various combinations are leopards and
antelopes, birds, snakes, and crocodiles eating
smaller animals, all belonging to traditional Bini
iconography, as can be seen in the innumerable
works in brass and ivory found in Benin. The
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

189

77

OLIPHANT
i6th century
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria
ivory
length 57 (22l/i)
reference: Bassani and Fagg 1988
Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum fur Volkerkunde
der Stadt Koln
This instrument belongs to a group of three
extant Bini-Portuguese oliphants (Bassani and
Fagg 1988, nos. 111-113). Their close similarity
indicates that they were almost certainly carved
by the same artist within a relatively brief period.
Thus they represent a circumscribed episode
in the cultural exchange between Benin and
Portugal.
The oliphants differ substantially from the
Sapi-Portuguese examples (cat. 70) in both form
and decoration. They are more like native African
instruments than those designed for export to
Europe. The three Bini horns have no rings for
attaching cords, and in each case the rectangular
mouthpiece is placed on the outside curve of
the tusk, a position that is documented only in
indigenous Bini and Yoruba instruments. The
oliphant exhibited here could be compared to a
typical Bini horn like the one in Vienna, decorated
with the figure of an Ob a riding an elephant,
a metaphor for power.
The head of an animal at the narrow end of
the oliphant, from whose teeth the mouthpiece
appears in Sapi-Portuguese instruments, serves
here as a purely decorative element.
The bas-relief decorations that cover the entire
surface of the oliphant are a skillful combination
of geometric elements typical of the Bini figurative traditionbasket weave, lozenge, and guilloche patterns and European motifs. The latter
include the coat of arms of the House of Aviz, the
ruling family of Portugal, surmounted by a rich
crown, an armillary sphere, and small stiff figures
of hunters with lance, sword, and dogs, confined
to a narrow transverse band. In terms of both iconography and placement, the coats of arms of the
reigning house of Portugal strongly recall those
appearing in miniature in a manuscript volume,
the Livro Carmesin, containing documents of the
Lisbon administration from 1502 to 1796 (Arquivo
Historico da Camara Municipal, Lisbon).
The evident horror vacui that characterizes this
artist's work and the presence in two of the horns,
among other traditional motifs, of a border design
consisting of a single line of steps framing the
armillary sphere (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos.
111-112; on no. 113 the coat of arms does not
appear) a motif used only by carvers in Benin
enabled William Fagg to establish the Bini origin
of the three horns.
190

C I R C A 1492

Despite the presence of the Portuguese coats

of arms and the figures of hunters, the typically
African structure of the three oliphants makes one
wonder whether they were carved for export or
rather for the use of the sovereign of Benin himself, who might have requested the European
motifs for their prestige and exotic nature. It is
also possible and perhaps more probable that the
oliphants were indeed commissioned in Benin by
a European, but that the rigid academic training
given to artists belonging to the Igbesanmwan
(the guild of carvers of ivory who worked for the
Oba) led them to conform to indigenous canons
even when they were working for a foreign client.
E.B.

78

OLIPHANT
i6th century
Kongo-Portuguese style (?), Zaire or Angola
ivory
length 83 (i25/8)
references: Brasio 1952, 113, vol. r, Bassani 1975,
143; Bassani 1981; Bassani and Fagg 1988
Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pittif Florence
The two splendid horns in the Museo degli
Argenti in Florence, one of which is exhibited
here, are the very earliest identifiable sculptures
from Africa to have been registered in a European
inventory. Other works mentioned in even earlier
documents have either been lost or confused with
objects found in more recent times. These two
oliphants appear to correspond to the "2 ivory
horns worked in intaglio" described in both the
General Inventory and the Wardrobe Inventory
of the possessions of Cosimo I de'Medici in 1553
(Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaroba Medicea, vol. 30, c. i34r and vol. 36, c. i34v). This
brief description fits the two instruments perfectly, although it does not completely guarantee
their identity. Combined with my analysis of
a series of archival elements, however (Bassani
1975,143), the connection is highly probable.
The two ivories in the Museo degli Argenti are
part of a group of seven known instruments, all
having a very elegant line and a surface entirely
covered with bas-relief decorations in a refined
interwoven design based on Greek frets and
lozenges. Analogies of shape and decoration are
strong enough to attribute the seven oliphants to
the same artist, a highly talented master from the
Kongo, the great kingdom reached in 1482 by
Diogo Cao.

In these seven examples the mouthpiece is

pierced into the concave side of the tusk following
African usage, but, at the same time, one or two
rings for attaching a cord have been carved (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 181-187). As noted earlier, typical African horns have no rings, and the
cord, when it exists, is wound around the instrument. We must therefore conclude that the artist
who created these oliphants had seen a European
horn. In that case they must have been carved
between 1482, the year that Diogo Cao's ships
entered the mouth of the Kongo River, and 1553,
when they were registered in the inventories of
the grand duke in Florence. The tradition that one
of the seven oliphants belonged to the collection
of the famous Spanish writer of Peruvian origins,
Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), is consistent
with this hypothesis.

The rings could have been added by the maker

in anticipation of the instruments' eventual ownership by some European prince or the pope. It is
possible that the two Florentine ivories were sent
by the king of the Kongo to one of the two Medici
pontiffs (Leo x, who was pope from 1515 to 1521
or Clement vn from 1523 to 1534). Henrique, son
of King Afonso i of the Kongo, a convert to Christianity, was appointed bishop by Leo x.
It is equally possible that all seven oliphants
were carved for the king or another important
leader of the Kongo people and that the rings were
incorporated simply to imitate European models.
Ivory horns, called mpungi in the Kikongo language, were part of the hereditary regalia of the
appointed leaders, beginning with the king, and
played an important role in court ceremonies. The
earliest reports describing the arrival in April

1491 of the Portuguese delegation, led by Ruy de

Sousa, in the capital of the Kongo notes that the
king sent to meet them a group of nobles "with
many ivory horns and drums, and many other
instruments" (Brasio 1952, i, 113).
The decorative motifs on the horns belong to
the traditional figurative vocabulary of the Kongo,
elaborated before the arrival of the Europeans, and
are seen not only in ivories but also in cloth made
of palm fiber, headdresses, and woven baskets.
They reveal a highly cultivated taste, a sense of
rhythm and composition, and also a complete
mastery of geometry. The design on the Kongo
ivories is consistently regular and controlled.
Note, for instance, the carver's skill in adapting
the Greek fret motif to the narrowing spiral bands
as the conical tusk becomes smaller.
E.B.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

191

ISLAMIC EMPIRES
The conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed n
in 1453 sealed the Ottomans' rise to power.
Mehmed's successors were ultimately to extend
Ottoman hegemony over most of the Near
East, but in the closing decades of the fifteenth
century rival Islamic empires continued to
flourish. The Mamluks under Qd'it Bay controlled Egypt, Syria, and southeastern Turkey;
the Aqqoyunlu (White Sheep) Turcomans ruled

from Baghdad to Tabriz; while in the East the

Timurid court at Herat set the model for
princely patronage.
The taste and extraordinary skill of the court
artists and craftsmen are evident in all that
they producedreligious manuscripts and paraphernalia, arms and armor, costumes, and
precious objects designed for personal use.
Contacts with China and Europe also had

79

Since, however, hostilities between the Aqqoyunlu and the Ottomans culminated in the defeat
of Uzun Hasan at Bakent in eastern Turkey in
1473, Uzun Hasan may seem an unlikely donor to
a Sufi shrine in the heart of Ottoman territory.
Melikian-Chirvani has, therefore, suggested that
the lamp, probably one of a pair, was dedicated to
a presumed mausoleum of Hajji Bayram Veil,
somewhere closer to Aqqoyunlu territory, popularly revered as such or deliberately encouraged
for propaganda purposes by Uzun Hasan himself.
J.M.R.

COMPOSITE STANDARD LAMP

c. 14701478
Aqqoyunlu Turcoman
cast or beaten brass, engraved and inlaid with silver
(the drip-tray, of a different alloy, may be
subsequent, though possibly contemporary addition)
height 121 (475/s)
references: Encyclopedia of Islam 1960- , "Hddjdji
Bay ram Wall"; Bayramoglu 1983; MelikianChirvani 1987; Grube 19^9
The Rabenou Charitable Settlement Number One

This composite standard lamp (chiraghdan] has

a bowl-shaped reservoir and a tall knopped shaft.
Its candlestick-shaped base is in the form of a
truncated cone. Such lamps, despite their improbable shape, are illustrated in a Kalila wa Dimna
manuscript (Topkapi Sarayi Library H. 362, folios
36b and 95a) made in 1431 for Baysunqur Mirza
at Herat that includes miniatures of earlier date
which have been pasted in.
The lamp bears a series of inscriptions in Arabic
and Persian dedicating it as waqf to the shrinemausoleum of an eminent Sufi Shaykh, Bayram
Baba Vali, stipulating that it shall not be removed
from the shrine and invoking God's curses upon
anyone who replaces it or disposes of it by
istibdalthe buying out of the assets of an older
waqf in favor of a new endowment, a practice forbidden by many Muslim lawyers. There follow
praises of the twelve Shici Imams and, on the
candlestick-shaped base, brief prayers for the
Sultan Abu'1-Nasr Hasan Bahadur Khan, that is,
the Aqqoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan (d. 1478). The
earliest known coin of Uzun Hasan's to bear these
titles is dated 1470-1471, and this lamp evidently
dates from between 1470 and 1478.
The exact extent of Uzun Hasan's allegiance to
Sufism is still under discussion; however, at least
up to the extreme polarization of Shicism and
Sunnism under the early Safavids in Iran, praises
of the twelve Imams would not invariably have
been regarded as incompatible with Sunnism.
192

CIRCA 1492

consequences for the arts during this period.

Enthusiasm for Chinese porcelains led to the
development of Iznik blue-and-white ware,
while Ottoman and Mamluk diplomacy occasioned visits to the Near East by prominent
Italian artists, who on their return redefined
the European image of the Islamic world.

80

LANTERN
c. 1470

Turkish, Ottoman
beaten silver
height 6j (263/s); base diameter 40 (i53/4J
inscribed: Koran xxiv, the Surat al-Nur
references: Washington 1966, no. 254;
London 1982, fig. 6; Istanbul 1983, no. E2i
Turk ve Islam Eserleri Muzesi, Istanbul

Melikian-Chirvani has argued that the Sufi

shaykh to whom the lamp is dedicated must be
Hajji Bayram Veil, the founder of the Bayramiyya
order whose mausoleum-shrine is at Ankara.

This hexagonal lantern, decorated with openwork

and repousse with chased detailing, was probably
made for Mehmed n's mosque, Fatih in Istanbul.
Each facet of the lamp is decorated by lobed
medallionswith split-palmette arabesque traceryon a ground of dense chinoiserie foliate
trails. On a scrolling ground above and below are
fine, rounded inscriptions of Koran xxiv, the
Chapter of Light, verse 35.
A tray or polycandelon, inserted into the base,
is designed to hold seven oil lamps. In one of the
sides, a door opens and provides access to the
lamps from above.
J.M.R.

82

KORAN FRAGMENT
(Sura xviu, 107, to Sura xx, 12)
late i$th century
Turkish, Ottoman
written in fine muhaqqaq or rayhan script, seven
lines to the page, with elaborate cloud contours
(abrij and interlinear Persian translation in
small naskhi
height 36.3 (i42/4); width 27.5 (io7/s)
references: Martin 1912, 102; Lisbon 1963, no. 115;
Arberry 1967, 57, no. 185; London 1976, no. 578
a-b; James 1980, no. 71; James 1981, no. 32
The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,
MS 14.92, fols. ib-2a
The first opening, folios ib-2a, has fine panels of
illumination above and below the text with marginal hasps. The verse counts and Sura-headings,
which also include appropriate verses from other
Suras, are in spidery white, heavily stylized
Kufic on a dense scroll of split palmettes. These
palmettes are rendered in vividly contrasting
colors with finely serrated fronds. The layout,
owing much to Timurid prototypes, is somewhat
atypical of late fifteenth-century Ottoman illumination; but the motifs and their treatment are
from the period of Bayazid n (r. 1481-1512). The
binding is modern.
Another fragment from the same Koran is in
Lisbon in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
According to Frederic Martin, the Koran was originally in the library of the mosque of Ayasofya
194

C I R C A 1492

in Istanbul. Since his evidence for this assertion

is not known, the Koran may have left the foundation to which it was originally endowed some
time before the mid-eighteenth century, when
Mahmud i founded the library at Ayasofya.
J.M.R.

83

KORAN CHEST OF BAYAZID n

1505-1506

Turkish, Ottoman
walnut veneered with ebony, inlaid with ivory
height 82 (322/4J; diameter 56 (22)
inscribed: (on body) Koran n, 255, the Ayat al-Kursi
or Verse of the Throne; LIX, 22-24; (on kd) Koran
XLVIII, 28-29; in, 18-19; and xxvn, 30
references: Migeon 1903; Merit; 1957, 7-76; Merig
1963, 764-786; Istanbul 1983, no. 19; Frankfurtam-Main 1985, no. 8/2
Turk ve Islam Eserleri Muzesi, Istanbul
It was doubtless in connection with the inauguration in 1505 of the mosque of Bayazid n
(r. 1481-1512) that this superb chest was created.
It is one of the finest extant examples of Ottoman
woodwork. The hexagonal body is decorated
with oblong panels of ivory carved with Koranic
inscriptions in fine thuluth on a deep blue
ground. The triangular ivory corner pieces are
embellished with carved arabesques and include
verses in Ottoman Turkish in praise of Bayazid n,

as well as the date 911 (1505-1506). The chest is

signed by Ahmad b. Hasan al-Kdlibi ("the inlayer
of firearm stocks"). The hinged lid, which is surmounted by a twelve-sided pyramid and a carved
and turned ebony and ivory finial, is adorned
with ivory panels carved with Koranic inscriptions
and arabesques.
The interior is more sparely decorated with
small panels of minute inlay in fine woods, greenstained ivory, and gilt brass. The three interior
compartments were to hold the parts of a thirtypart Koran, a common format for mausolea, where
endowment deeds frequently stipulate that one
part of the Koran should be read each day in
memory of the founder. Although the Koran that
the box once contained has not been identified,
the dimensions are oblong, indicating that it
must date from the early centuries of Islam, when
such formats were standard. Such Korans, often
believed to be written by the early Caliphs, were
much treasured by the Ottoman Sultans. In fact,
the registers of palace expenses and disbursements
for the reign of Bayazid n contain numerous
entries of rewards to those who had given early
Korans for the inauguration of his mosque
(Meric, 1957).
As the inscription indicates, the craftsman's
specialty was the inlaying of firearm stocks (compare Merig 1963), an interesting indication of
craft specialization during the reign of Bayazid n.
This type of fine Ottoman woodwork has many
features in common with the products of the contemporary Embriachi workshops in Northern Italy
(compare Migeon 1903, pi. 8).
J.M.R.

sorts of metalwork. The lower inscription includes

the name of the Shirvanshah Farrukhyasar (14641501) best known for his victory over the Safavid
leader Shaykh Haydar in 1492-1493. Farrukhyasar was a refined patron of the arts of the book, as
is shown by a splendid anthology in the Herati
style (British Library Add. 16561), copied at Shamakha in Shirvan by Sharaf al-DIn Husayn alSultani in 1468-1469. This inscription, which is
surmounted by a lobed, scribbled border, is less
carefully dotted than the former; and its arrangement and ungrammatical construction make it
difficult to suggest the order and parts of words.
Only a highly tentative reading can be proposed.
Turban helmets of this type, which seem to
have been made in Dagestan and sold in Derbend,
are associated particularly with the Aqqoyunlu
Turcomans. (Another helmet also bears a rare
legible dedication to the Aqqoyunlu ruler Yacqub
Beg.) Shirvan, now modern Soviet Azerbaydzhan,
was important both as a producer of raw silk and
as a winter military bivouac, but though nominally independent by the later fifteenth century,
the Shirvanshahs were little more than tributaries
of the Aqqoyunlu.
Helmets and armor found today in Turkish
collections must mostly have entered Turkey as
booty. David Alexander has observed in conversation that the substantial number of such pieces
in the Leningrad armories were almost certainly
seized by Russian forces from the Ottoman
arsenal at Erzurum, which they occupied
in 1827-1828.
J.M.R.

84
TURBAN HELMET
late i$th century
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman
iron, heavily overlaid with silver
height 34 (ij3/s); base diameter 23.4 (y1/^
inscribed: (upper) al-dawla wa'1-iqbal al-nusra
wa'1-ifdal li-sahibihi; (lower) Sultan ibn Bsa
QTAFS wa al wa ibn taj ijlal wa cizz BR TIR AHSU
Farrukhyasar manbac Bohl majmac [?] abyar [?anbar]
al-muzaffar al-mansur al-mu'ayyad.
Askeri Miize, Istanbul

This helmet, originally decorated at its apex with

a plume, recalls early fourteenth-century stucco
work in Il-Khanid in Iran, rather than the International Timurid foliate or floral style fashionable
in the late fifteenth century. The nose-piece
is missing.
The helmet bears two inscriptions in handsome,
rounded script. The upper one, placed between
thin, lobed bands filled with traces of scribbled
Arabic, reads, 'Tower and good fortune, victory
and favors to its owner/' These are a form of the
standard prayers on arms and armor and other
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

195

85
BATTLE STANDARD OF QA'IT BAY
late i$th century
Egyptian, Mamluk
iron, with traces of gilding
length 225 (885/s)
inscribed: clzz li-mawlana al-Sultan al-Malik
al-Ashraf, Qa'it Bay
Askeri Miize, Istanbul
The forged, tonguelike blade, with cast gaping
dragons' mouths below, has a spine or midrib with
fretwork panels on either side, decorated variously
with half-lozenges, half-circles, and curved
leaves. Below is a lobed cartouche, across which is
engraved the royal dedication: "Glory to His Majesty, al-Malik al-Ashraf, Qa'it Bay." Both sides are
inscribed in the name of the Mamluk Sultan of
Egypt and Syria, Qa'it Bay (r. 1472-1496).
These standards (ca/ara) were evidently given
out to the commanders of units on Mamluk military campaigns. A standard and a drum were also
ceremonially presented to a Mamluk at manumission on the completion of his training, a ceremony comparable to the commissioning of an
officer. The original appearance of these standards
is difficult to reconstruct but, assuming they
resembled Ottoman battle standards (tug), they
would have been decorated with pennons, textile
streamers, or animal hair.
J.M.R.

86
BATTLE-STANDARD OF QA'IT BAY
late i$th century
Egyptian, Mamluk
gilt steel with openwork
length
inscribed: (on one side) clzz li-mawlana al-Sultan
al-Malik; (on the other side) al-Ashraf, Abu'1-Nasr
Qa'it Bay cazza nasruh
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul
Like cat. 85, this standard is inscribed with the
device of Qa'it Bay, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and
Syria (r. 1472-1496): "Glory to His Majesty, alMalik al-Ashraf, Qa'it Bay, may his victory be
glorious." The cast base is faceted, with a broad
band of gilding, a pierced knop, and flattened
dragons' necks, the heads of which appear to be
biting the blade. The blade is flat with a recessed
spine, semi-circular in profile. At the top are leaflike panels first pierced and then with gilt decoration. Below are two swordlike leaves, filled with
tight scroll work, probably stencilled, of chinoiserie lotuses with a triangular indentation at
mid-height and with two pierced pointed heptagons. Below is an eight-lobed rosette with a bar
that contains the inscriptions held as though in a
stand.
J.M.R.
196

CIRCA 1492

88
CEREMONIAL SCIMITAR OF
MEHMED n THE CONQUEROR
blade possibly late i^th century, hilt and quillons
possibly i6th century
Turkish, Ottoman
steel gold, walrus ivory, with damascening
length 126 (495/sj; blade 106 (4i3/4J
inscribed: Sultan al-ghuzah wa'1-mujahidin and sayf
Allah al-maslul li'1-jihad
references: Yucel 1988, 106, no. 87
Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi, Istanbul
The exceptionally long blade of this ceremonial
scimitar (yatagan) is grooved and encrusted
on the obverse in gold. A fine thuluth two-line
inscription offers prayers for the victory of
Mehmed the Conqueror, describing him as
"Sultan of warriors for the faith" and his weapon
as "the Sword of God unsheathed in the Jihad/'
His genealogy, going back to Sultan cOsman, the
legendary founder of the Ottoman dynasty, is
also inscribed. The sword bears neither date nor
craftsman's signature. The hilt and quillons could
well be sixteenth-century replacements, as it
was standard practice for later sultans to refurbish
the swords of their famous ancestors.
j. M. R.

87

BATTLE AXE
late i5th century
Egyptian, Mamluk
iron damascened with gold
length 98.6 (}87/s); axe head 30.5 x 20.5 (12 x 8l/s)
inscribed: (on socket) in square Kufic formulae,
inter alia, Muhammad (four times), al-hamdu
li'llah (twice)
references: Munich 1910, no. 530, pi. 244
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Hofjagd und
Riistkammer
The axe bears the name and titles of the Mamluk
Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Abu'l-Sacada Muhammad (r. 1495-1498), son of Qa'it Bay, and prayers
for his victory in the usual late Mamluk heraldic
form (Schriftwappen). It must have been Ottoman booty from the arsenal at Alexandria, sacked
by Selim i (r. 1512-1520) on his conquest of Egypt
in 1516. The square Kufic inscriptions read "Muhammad, Praise be to God/' It evidently fell into
Hapsburg hands after one of the defeats of the
Ottoman armies by central European powers in
the late seventeenth century. The shaft and the
surface of the blade are richly ornamented with
arabesques in gold. The shaft is partly faceted and
partly fluted to give a better grip; however, the
weapon may well have had a ceremonial rather
than a practical purpose.
j. M. R.

89

CEREMONIAL SCIMITAR OF
HERSEKZADE AHMED
court workshops of Bayazid n or Selim i,
c. 1500-1517
Turkish, Ottoman
inlaid with gold, silver, and rubies
length 81.2 (32); blade 67.8 (265/s)
inscribed: (on spine) Rustam-i casr, yare-i caskar,
Iskandar-i began... Ahmed b. Hersek yan
references: Encyclopedia of Islam, 1960-,
"Hersekzade Ahmed"; Ettinghausen 1983, 208-222;
Uzungarih 1986, 23-76; London 1988, no. 83;
Rogers 1988, 12-17; Melbourne 1990, no. 50;
Alexander and Kalus, forthcoming
Collection Rifaat Sheik El-Ard
The long, inward-curving blade of this ceremonial
scimitar (yatagan) is inlaid in gold on either side
below the hilt, with a scaly dragon and phoenix
locked in combat amid chinoiserie flowers. The
monsters, forged separately and secured by pins to
the blade, are depicted differently on each side.
The teeth of the dragon are silver and the eyes of
the animals are set with tiny rubies. The monsters
and the foliage are gilded. The scimitar embodies
a variety of virtuoso techniques, possibly requiring the separate skills of a swordsmith (kihgci),
EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

197

a damascener (zerneanci), an inlayer in metal

(kuftekdr), an inlayer in ivory or other precious
materials (hakkak), a jeweler (kuyumcu), and a
goldsmith (zerger).
Along the spine of the blade are four inscriptions, each separated by a floret. These consist of
a distych in Persian praising the quality of the
sword and a series of titles, including the name of
the weapon's owner, 'The Rustam of the age, the
aid of the armies, the Alexander of generals
"
This was Hersekzade Ahmed (1456-1517) (Encyclopedia of Islam, 1960), who distinguished himself under Mehmed n, then served under Bayazid
ii and Selim i as commander-in-chief of Anatolia
(Anadolu Beglerbegi), admiral of the fleet (Kapudan-i Derya), and grand vizier.
The eulogistic inscriptions are appropriate for
a great general (which would not exclude a grand
vizier) but not for a naval commander. Although
Ahmed was evidently a great administrator and
politician, his success as a general was rather
indifferent. A younger son of the Grand Duke of
Herzegovina, he arrived in Istanbul in 1472. He
was standard bearer (mir-i calarri) on Mehmed n's
Albanian campaign of 1478. In 1481 he married
a daughter of Bayazid n, Hundi Hatun, and was
appointed provincial governor (sancakbeg
subai in the sources, however) of Bursa and then
beglerbeg or commander-in-chief of Anatolia, in
which capacity he led Bayazid's army in July 1483
against Bayazid's brother Cem Sultan (see cat.
91). In the spring of 1486 he commanded an expedition toward Karaman and Syria, but was captured and imprisoned in Cairo. On his release and
return to Turkey he was made a vizier and
Admiral of the Fleet (Kapudan Paa/Kapudan-i
Derya). In August 1488 the fleet was almost
entirely destroyed at Aga (^ayiri, but he was reappointed beglerbeg of Anatolia in the autumn of
1489 and commanded an expedition to Kayseri.
It was not a great victory but at least he was not
defeated. In 1497-1498 he was grand vizier, but
was dismissed and reappointed admiral, capturing
Lepanto in 1499. He was grand vizier from late in
1502 to 1506, and from 1512 to October 1514,
taking part in Selim I's (^aldiran campaign. His
dismissal so soon after the battle suggests that his
performance cannot entirely have satisfied the
sultan. However, in 1515-1516 he was again, briefly, grand vizier. At the time of Selim's Egyptian
campaign he was governor (muhafiz) of Bursa.
He traveled to Egypt to congratulate Selim and
died on the way back, old and with many honors,
in July 1517.
This somewhat checkered career suggests
therefore, that certainly up to 1500, a splendid
presentation sword with such grand titulature
would have been wholly inappropriate for Hersekzade Ahmed. It would most appropriately have
been awarded in 1517 on his congratulatory visit
to Selim, who at the height of his glory could have
recognized Hersekzade Ahmed as the architect of
his Egyptian triumph. Such presentation swords
198

CIRCA

1492

may have been customary; the close parallels to

the sword made by Ahmed Tekelii in 1526-1527
for Siileyman the Magnificent suggest a workshop in continuous production over the course
of several decades, and even the participation of
Ahmed Tekelii himself, although Hersekzade
Ahmed's sword is not signed. Ahmed Tekelii,
however, may well have been an outsider. He is
listed in the palace registers only once (Topkapi
Saray Archives D. 9605; Uzunc.ars.ih 1986), yet
his reward, 3000 akge and a medallion brocade
robe of honor, far outweighs any given to other
specialist craftsmen.
Although the yatagan was not a Turkish invention it was adopted by the Turks at an early date:
A Tang painting, probably ninth century (National Palace Museum, Taibei; Ettinghausen 1963,
208-222), depicts a Turkish chieftain girt with
a long yatagan-\ike knife. This yatagan and
one other (private collection), inscribed with the
name and titles of the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid n
(r. 1481-1512), are the earliest surviving Islamic
examples of this type of weapon. Ahmed's sword
can be dated by its hilt, which is of the style commonly found on Ottoman swords and sabers of
the fifteenth century (see Alexander and Kalus
and especially Alexander in Melbourne 1990).
J.M.R.

90

CALLIGRAPHIC SCROLL
c. 1457-1458, or later
Turkish, Ottoman
ink and color on paper
page 41 x 25 (i6l/s x 97/sj; total length 1,640 (645 5/s)
references: Istanbul 198}, J:EIO; Richard 1989,
8
9~93
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul
Calligraphed partly length-wise and partly across
the width, this scroll appears to contain a random
collection of text fragments, all dedicated to
Mehmed n (r. 1451-1481). The texts are virtually
all Arabic Koranic ay as, prayers (duca)f or
hadith. The illuminated heading, in blue with
gold chinoiserie lotus-scrolls, is characteristic
of work from contemporary Shiraz. It originally
had a crescent finial. The dedication follows in a
pointed oval with grand thuluth in gold on blue.
At the end of the scroll are panels of assorted
scripts (thuluth, tacliq, and nastacliq) in white on
a black ground with eulogies in Persian of Mehmed's saintliness (clsa dust), wise judgment (Asaf
rayy), and Salomonic justice.
A long Koranic inscription written lengthwise,
which ends abruptly, must be the pattern for an
inscription on a building. In later Islamic cultures
architectural inscriptions were almost always
written out by a calligrapher to scale, and often
though not in the case of the present scroll in
full size, before being executed in stucco, paint,

stone or tilework, as the case may be. This was

to establish how the lines of text would break and
to ensure accuracy; the texts were generally quotations from the Koran and would have been
rendered invalid by errors in transcription. The
calligraphic bird and lion in this scroll are the earliest known datable examples of this type. The
square Kufic panel has below it a rather curiously
composed craftsman's signature in nastacliq, of
c
Ata Allah b. Muhammad al-TabrizT, one of the
Persian scribes in Mehmed n's chancery, and the
date 4 Rabic i 862 (19 February 1458). While this
is no indication that all the contents of the scroll
are the work of this scribe, he very probably
composed and wrote the final panels praising
Mehmed's statesmanship. The bars of thuluth
inscription strongly suggest that the scribe was
trained in one of the Timurid chanceries of Iran.
J.M.R.

91

TALISMANIC SHIRT
late i$th century
Turkish, Ottoman
white glazed cotton
length: 120 (472/4J; width 133 (523/sj
inscribed: in black, blue, red, carmine, and gold
with panels containing Koranic verses, magic
figures, and magic squares filled with numbers;
(in the four corners of the square on right shoulder)
Inna fatahna laka: fathan mubaynan: wa nasara
Allah laka: nasran cazizan; (below left shoulder, in
nastacliqj Cem Sultan: Khallada Allah dawlatuh;
wa ayyada mamlakatuh
references: Herklots 1921, 247-263; Gokyay 1976,
93-112; Istanbul 1983, 3:25; London 1988, 175-177
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

199

The talismanic shirt (cam'e-yi f e t h ) , designed to

protect the wearer in battle, appears to have been
in use in the sultanates of northern India in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Such shirts may
have been in widespread use in later Muslim cultures, but the best known examples are Ottoman
Turkish, from the later fifteenth century and
onward. Many talismanic shirts are preserved in
the Topkapi Saray, some of them, like this one,
with the hole for the neck uncut. This shows that
the shirts must have been presents that were
never used.
This shirt is almost sleeveless, without an opening at the neck. It is dedicated in two places to
ehzade Cem (1459-1495), brother of Bayazid n.
At the bottom right of the shirt is a short Persian
horoscope in two columns stating that this victory
garment (came-yi feth} was begun on 14 Dhu'lHijja 881 (30 March 1476), in the fifty-seventh
minute of the fourth hour when the sun was in
the nineteenth degree, and that it was completed
on 16 Muharram 885 (29 March 1480), on the
thirty-sixth minute of the twelfth hour when the
sun was also in the nineteenth degree. This is a
valuable indication of the time it took to make the
shirt, but the name of the craftsman-astrologer
is not given.
On the chest is a large panel of sixteen magic
squares framed by the Surat al-Fath (Koran
XLVIII), the so-called Victory chapter of the Koran.
Other Koranic verses used on the shirt are from
Suras ni-v, vn, ix, xiv, XLVIII, LIV, LXI, ex, and
cxn, as well as various of the "Ninety-nine"
names of God. On the right shoulder is a large
blue circle with silver at the center surrounded by
eight asymmetrical gold hexagons with their
points inward, each forming a compartment containing numbers. The upper inscription from
Koran XLVIII, i, reads, "Verily, we have granted
thee a manifest victory" in fine gold thuluth. The
lower inscription reads, "Prince Cem, may God
prolong his good fortune and support his territory." A similar inscription appears on the square
panel immediately to the right of the neck, with
an asymmetrical six-pointed star. The back is a
single, enormous magic square composed of 100 x
100 boxes with thin borders of columns of figures.
Numerous digits have been erased and rewritten
in gold, suggesting that the squares were checked
and in some cases the numbers were found to be
erroneous.
Though this talismanic shirt, like many others,
was intended to bring victory to the wearer, a
protective effect must also have been attributed to
it. Thus Hurrem Sultan, the wife of Siileyman the
Magnificent, in a letter to him accompanying the
gift of a talismanic shirt, asks him to wear it for
her sake, stating that it is inscribed with figures
and will keep away bullets.
j. M . R .

200

CIRCA 1492

92
CEREMONIAL KAFTAN
c. 1500
Turkish, Ottoman
velvet with gold brocading and boucle, with satin
and twill lining
length 142 (56); width across shoulders 86 (34);
sleeves 106 (4i3/4J
references: Barista 1981, no.3; Istanbul 1983, 3:E26

Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi, Istanbul

This kaftan belonged to ehzade Korkud (14731513), son of Bayazid n (r. 1481-1512). In its combination of magnificence and sobriety, it is an
outstanding example of Ottoman tailoring. The
Venetian velvet has a ferronnerie-type pattern of
pointed oval medallions with tendrils and small,
stylized thistles. The wide, flaring collar is characteristic of Ottoman fashion of the period. The
arms are, as is usual, ornamental: the slits for the
arms at the shoulders show no signs of wear, as
the garment was very probably worn over the
shoulders with the arms falling to the sides.
Although the loops for fastening the pockets still
remain, the corresponding buttons have been lost.
Inside, down the back are three applique panels:
two of palmettes in bold filigree, showing the blue
satin lining beneath and hemmed in yellow silk;
and a circle with an arabesque and split-palmette
interlacing of deep pink on a yellow ground.
J.M.R.

93

not in exhibition

94
SOLOMON AND THE
QUEEN OF SHEBA
from Sharaf al-Din Musa, known as Firdevsi
Burusevi, Siileymanname (The Solomon Romance)
before 1512
Turkish, Ottoman
332 folios, mottled cream polished paper, naskhi,
autograph, mostly 39 lines sometimes in 5 columns,
some pages blank, preface (zbja) with decorated
borders bears Bayazid ifs name in gold naskhi above
and below
44.3 X Jl (l73/8 X 122/4)

references: Hammer-Purgstall 1836-1838, 1:276;

McCown 1922; Goldschmidt 1923-1924, 217;
Macler 1928; Neuss 1931; Deissmann 1933, no. 17;
Wittkower 1942, 159-197; Minorsky 1958, 9-10;
Kraus 1967; Miner 1967; Flemming 1968, 36-40,
no. 52; Narkiss 1971; James 1981, no. 31; Bologna

1988

The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

The Siileymanname of Firdevsi Burusevi (Uzun

Firdevsi, b. 1453), dedicated to Bayazid n (r.
1481-1512), hence datable before 1512, even
though it is incomplete, is a masterpiece of early
Ottoman painting. It is executed in naskhi on 332
folios of mottled cream polished paper. Bayazid's
name appears in gold, above and below, on the
folios with decorated borders containing the
preface (fols. 2b~3a). Firdevsi Burusevi himself
alleges that he drew upon Suleymannames written in Syriac by Lukman al-Hakim and translated
into Persian by Aflatun (both either apocryphal or
pseudographic), as well as upon a certain unnamed
work that had come his way at Niksar, to which
his attention was drawn by the shaykh of the
tekke of Melik Gazi Danimend there. The text of
his Siileymanname is in twenty books, divided
into a hundred scenes or fits (majlis). The author
states that it was originally to consist of 366 books
and 1,830 fits no such complete version is
known, perhaps fortunately. The text shows, not
surprisingly, considerable eclecticism Koranic
kisas material; hadith and sayings of the Imams;
Biblical material from Genesis, Kings, and possibly the Apocrypha, drawn directly or via the
Midrash scholia; the Alexander Romance; and
Persian epic, that is, the heroes of Firdawsi's
Shdhndme from Gayumarth to Rustam. The narrative begins with the Old Testament, with the
Creation sequence and daimonomachy, but with
Gayumarth introduced as a son of Adam. There
follows, as though anticipating Wagner's operatic
epic, a series of wars between prophets or
patriarchs and demons for possession of Solomon's ring, which allegedly preceded him by
several generations. Solomon himself appears on
the scene relatively late (his birth is recounted on
fols. I58b-i59a): thereafter his exploits are difficult to connect with the Old Testament narrative.
The splendid double frontispiece, the two sheets
of which have been unbound from the manuscript
and mounted separately, contains the only illustrations actually executed. On folio ib Siileyman
(Solomon) is shown as an elderly man, seated
cross-legged in a domed pavilion with cylindrical
side-towers and pointed turrets. To either side
is a gathering of fowls, while behind the throne is
a crowd of angels or peris, crowned, with wings
springing from their shoulders. The moulding
between the two tiers of the throne is irregularly
decorated with repeating letter-forms possibly
derived from Hebrew characters. Below Siileyman
are six registers, the first three of which contain
human figures. The turbaned figures in the first
of these evidently represent Solomon's viziers.
The next two registers contain supernatural figures, including animal-headed spirits (jinns),
demons, and angels, while the last register contains what appear to be planetary figures, as well'
as exotic animals and other details.
Folio 2a shows the court of the Queen of Sheba
(known as Bilqis) flanked by angels holding the
attributes of emirs (including cup, axe, sword,

mace, bottle, and napkin) and female attendants.

The most striking figures in this scene are the
demons, thirty-six in all, many of them part
animal, which stand on the next three registers,
evidently the decan demons of the Egyptian
Zodiac, which made their way into medieval
Western astrology.
The total absence of other illustrations in the
manuscript makes it difficult to interpret the
double frontispiece. So crammed with detail is it
that it may have been intended as a precis of the
illustrations that were planned for the remainder
of the manuscript. The identifiable elements,
however, can be traced only to the Solomon romance ("Sulayman b. Da'ud," Encyclopaedia of
Islam), not to the Shdhndme or the other works
from which Firdevsi Burusevi's poem draws.
Moreover, it is difficult to explain why certain
figures appear on one page rather than the other.
For example, why should it be Bilqis rather than
Solomon who has the thirty-six decan-demons
parading for her in their three rows ? And if the
three tiers of seated turbaned figures and crowned
figures below Solomon are a sign of Solomon as
King of Kings, the lowest registers on this page
suggest no precise interpretation at all. It may be
that the painter's principal aim was simply to fill
the facing pages in a roughly symmetrical way.
The most intriguing figures in the frontispiece
are, of course, the jinns and demons. The principal
Muslim source for the natural history of jinns is
the cAja'ib al-Makhluqdt of Zakariyya Qazvmi,
the earliest known copy of which, dated 12791280 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Cod.
ar. 464), depicts the various sorts oljinn. Some of
the fourteenth-century manuscripts contain jinn
features that are western European in origin (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, supp. pers. 332, 1388),
though the demon pictures in general differ markedly from those in the small number of illustrated
magical manuscripts recorded, notably the Seljuk
Turkish Kitdb Daqd'iq al-Haqd'iq of Nasir al-Din
Siwasi (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, pers. 174,
dated 1271). The demons of Firdevsi Burusevi's
Siileymanname are, however, not in the cAjd'ib
al-Makhluqdt tradition at all. The demon with its
head beneath its shoulders, for example, is the
akephalos daimon of the Testamentum Salomonis
(though going back, of course, as far as Herodotus; compare Pauly-Wissowa xxn c. 2346); while
the enormous ears of other demons depend ultimately on Indian demonology, where the Karnapravarana (literally, "people who cover themselves
with their ears") of the Mahabharata, who were
taken to typify the barbarian tribes of the epic
period in India, are widely represented in medieval
manuscripts of such texts as the Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais or the Alexander
Romance. The musculature of the demons'
stomachs, moreover, recalls the concentric ovals
of Byzantine or Romanesque drapery and limbs.
Dog-headed demons, cynocephaloi, are also
conspicuous: these spread from a Greek tradition

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

2O1

via Roman maps and possibly through Byzantine

painting to the East. In the West, curiously
enough, they were identified as giants, hence the
common representation of Saint Christopher as a
dog-head. As Wittkower has shown, the popularity of these monstrous races in Western art arose
from their use as types of the pagan nations to
whom the Church must preach the Gospel and,
via the universally popular bestiaries, as types of
virtues or vices. There is not the slightest evidence in the Suleymanname frontispieces of
any indebtedness to Armenian demonology or
magical texts.
Compositions showing figures arranged in successive tiers are practically unknown in Islam and
many of the figures certainly presuppose Western
sources; nevertheless, the tiered composition
is also uncommon in medieval European manuscripts. The known examples fall into three
groups. Two of these are too early on to have figured as direct sources for our Suleymanname:
the early encyclopaedia of Hrabanus Maurus (for
202

CIRCA 1492

example, MS Monte Cassino cod. 132, f. i6b, Italian, c. 1063) and Catalan manuscripts of the commentary of Beatus of Liebana on the Apocalypse
(for example, that executed for Ferdinand i of Castile and Leon in 1047, Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid, MS Vit. 14-2, with a double page showing the Adoration of the Lamb) (Bologna 1988,
27); and still earlier medieval English or French
manuscripts (for example, a copy of Saint Augustine's De civitate Dei, probably Canterbury and c.
1120, where the City of God is shown as an edifice
with Christ in a mandorla and rows of angelmusicians, saints, and martyrs below, Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MS Plut. 12.17, f.
2b) (Bologna 1988, 94), and a drawing by Ingelard,
c. 1030-1060, showing the celestial hierarchies
(Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS Lat. 11751, f.
59b) (Miner 1967, 87-108).
The third group of Western manuscripts is,
however, much more promising as a source; most
of the works in this group are Southern Spanish
and mostly with strong Sephardic Jewish connec-

tions. The "Golden Haggadah" (British Library,

MS Add. 27210, compare Narkiss 1971) made,
probably, in Barcelona c. 1320-1325, is not particularly similar in detail to our composition, but
both it and a "Hispano-Moresque" Haggadah of
c. 1310-1320 (British Library, MS Or. 27-37) are
remarkably archaizing in style and hark back to
Catalan manuscript painting of the tenth-eleventh
centuries and the style of the Beatus Apocalypses.
Directly comparable, however, are a historical
manuscript of the fourteenth century from Castile, Cronica de los reyes de Judea e de los gentiles
(Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, MS. 7415) (Bologna
1988, 27), with kings shown enthroned in Gothic
aedicules; and the Bible of the House of Alba (Palacio de Liria, Madrid, vit. i), a translation from
Hebrew into Spanish by Rabbi Moses de Arragel
of Guadalajara, made for Luis de Guzman, 25th
Master of the Order of Calatrava, Toledo, 14221430 (Bologna 1988,140). This manuscript shows
a knightly figure enthroned in an elaborate Gothic
aedicule with a hemispherical ribbed dome, and

below, in rows, the works of corporeal mercy

alternating with figures of Dominicans, Franciscans, and members of the Order of Calatrava.
These Spanish manuscripts with their Sephardic connections harmonize strikingly with the
elements from the Testamentum Salomonis and
from the Jewish Midrash incorporated into the
Suleymanname frontispieces; and the transmission could well be the result of the diaspora of
manuscripts brought by Jewish scholars to Salonike and Istanbul from Granada after its fall to
Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.
j. M. R.

95
BASIN
late i$th century
Egyptian, Mamluk
brass, inlaid with gold, silver, and black composition
rim diameter 36.2 fi42/4J; height 16 (63/s)
inscribed: clzz li-mawlana al-Sultan: al-Malik
al-Ashraf Abu'1-Nasr Qa'it Bay cazza nasruh
references: Munich 1910, no. 3554 andpl 158;
Kuhnel 1950; Ettinghausen 1967; MelikianChirvani 1969
Turk ve Islam Eserleri Muzesi, Istanbul
The outer sides of this celebrated basin are decorated with four bold, repeated, and blazoned
tumar inscriptions "Glory to His Majesty, alMalik al-Ashraf the victorious Qa'it Bay, may his
victory be glorious" on a spiral scroll ground
broken into two and repeated, broken by circular
three-field inscription blazons with the same
inscription. Between the inscriptions are complex
knots on a dense arabesque ground with elongated
split palmettes. At the rim is a band of chinoiserie
lotus scroll typical of manuscript illumination
during the reign of Qa'it Bay, Mamluk Sultan of
Egypt (r. 1472-1496). Above the base are beaten
arcs, filled with minute meanders and y-shaped
motifs and broken by small circles. The base is
shaped as a roundel with a design of star-polygons, and other star patterns. It is one of the
finest known examples of the so-called Mamluk
Kassettenstil (angular interlacing ornament),
which is otherwise more typical of stone and
paneled woodwork of the period. The polygons
are filled with arabesques, stylized chinoiserie
lotus blossoms, and knot patterns. The basin's
interior has the remains of lavish arabesques in
silver.
Certain features of the decoration point to a
deliberate revival of the fine inlaid Mosuli and
Mamluk metalwork of the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries, particularly the chasing of the silver inlay, which stands proud of the
surface, and the use of two highly unusual motifs
for later fifteenth-century Egypt: pairs of backEUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

203

to-back ducks and a minute, undulating design.

These features distinguish the piece, in both style
and quality, from other Mamluk works in metal
with star-polygon strapwork on their bases. It is
also difficult to find parallels for the basin's other
decoration in brasswork made for Qa'it Bay or in
wares made for the Italian market.
j. M. R.

96
COLLECTED POEMS OF AMIR

HlDAYATALLAH (HlDAYAT)

1478
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman
73 folios, in Azeri Turkish, nastacliq on cream,
semi-polished, gold-sprinkled paper, 2 columns of
ii lines; with a binding of contemporary brown
stamped leather with filigree doublures over gold
and blue
folio 17.5 x 12.7 (67/s x 5J; written surface 11 x 6.8
(43/8X25/8)

The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,

MS 401, fol. yob
The Aqqoyunlu ruler Khahl Sultan, son of Uzun
Hasan, to whom this volume is dedicated on the
frontispiece (folios ib-aa), was killed in a battle
with his brother Yacqub Beg after a reign of
only seven months. The manuscript has no colophon and was evidently left unfinished on the
sultan's death.
The manuscript has a fine illuminated doublepage frontispiece (folios ib-zb) and opening text
page (folio zb). The four miniatures, in the finest

Turcoman Court style, are only vaguely related to

the text of the poems and show a princely figure
in a variety of pursuits: drinking by a stream
(folio 3b); mounted with a falconer and shieldbearer (folio 9b); seated on a balcony (folio 38b);
and drinking in an arbor (folio 7ob). One or more
of the images may be intended as portraits of
Khalil Sultan.
j. M . R .

97
PEN CASE WITH INKWELL
c. 1500
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman or Ottoman Turkey
gold, silver, mother-of-pearl, turquoise, rubies, and
amethysts
length 25 (94/5)
references: Menavino 1551, 121, 132-133; London
1982,17-33; Uzun$arih 1986, 23-76; Koseoglu
1987, no. no

Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul

The minuteness, variety, and complexity of its
workmanship make this pen case a masterpiece of
the goldsmith's art. The two barrels, body, and cap
of the inkwell are silver openwork with finely
chased and nielloed split palmettes; the openwork
supports a mosaic of mother-of-pearl, sliced turquoise (firuzekari), rubies, and amethysts.
The gold stoppers of the pen case and the cover
of the inkwell are attached by golden chains. This
flat gold cover has a circular hole in the center
with a lid attached to two small hinged bars of
reddish gold with champleve floral ornament. To
judge from the bottom of the inkwell, the underlay of both it and the cover is silver with minute
floret-scrolls strongly reminiscent of early
sixteenth-century Ottoman illumination. The lid
is decorated similarly on both sides with minute
chinoiserie florets, each embossed with a tiny
turquoise at the center. The cover has densely
scrolling, heavily chased gold arabesques on a
nielloed ground. The caps closing the barrels are
204

C I R C A 1492

of gold with minutely chased arabesques on a

nielloed ground, both originally embossed with a
turquoise nipple. Along the bar that joins the two
barrels at the base and on the body of the inkwell
are inscribed verses in a fine rounded script.
The case bears no craftsman's name. The extensive use of nielloed gold suggests comparison with
the zinc flask from Topkapi (cat. 98), which may
confidently be assigned to Tabriz, around 1500,
but certain features, like the finely worked silver
cloisons of the openwork, recall traditions from
farther East, for example the court of Husayn
Bayqara (r. 1470-1506) at Herat, even though the
details of the floral ornament make it most probable that the place of manufacture was Istanbul. If
crafted in Istanbul, the pen case must certainly
have been the work of one of Bayazid n's so-called
"Persian" (cAcem) goldsmiths, whose work is
described by Menavino, a slave in the Topkapi
Saray for some years. In some later lists of palace
craftsmen, these goldsmiths are stated to have
been recruited in Tabriz in the 14805. The verse
cartouches by an unidentified author, in Persian
but not easily legible, may well be the work of the
patron who commissioned this pen case or perhaps the patron of a prototype from which this
one was copied. This leaves the attribution wide
open, however, for Husayn Bayqara, the Safavid
Shah Ismacil i, and Bayazid n's brother, Cem
Sultan, were all noted poets, and their collected
works survive in several versions. Identification of
the patron must, therefore, await the decipherment of the verses.
j. M. R.

rated with seated drinkers or winged peris, the

latter with pairs of animals, in silhouette but
worked in relief, with heavy chasing emphasized
by niello or black paste. At the rim and base are
half-cartouches filled with peris and chinoiserie
phoenixes.
The ground is of flowering Prunus branches
inlaid in gold with flying birds, the blossoms
inlaid with tiny emeralds and turquoises in now
mostly missing claw mounts. The minuteness of
the work and the extraordinary contrast between
interior and exterior show the piece to be of the
highest quality. Such vessels are represented in
faithful detail in Aqqoyunlu and early Safavid
paintings from Tabriz.
The convex cover and stopper of the drinking
flask are both gold and finely engraved with
arabesques on a nielloed ground. The neck is
plated with beaten gold, with relief decoration
enhanced with niello on a ring-punched ground
and encrusted with turquoise and rubies in claw

settings. Below, the zinc shoulders are worked in

relief, with panels filled with phoenixes and other
animals, alone or in combat on ring-punched
grounds, and encrusted with turquoise and
emeralds, though many of the latter are missing.
The shoulders on the narrow sides of the flask
are covered with openwork gold panels encrusted
with turquoise and rubies with dragons, over a
matt ground. On the broader sides the gold overlay is of oblong panels of finely chased arabesque
on a nielloed ground. Similar plaques, also
encrusted with turquoise and rubies, fill the narrower sides at mid-height. Below these are openwork gold panels with dragons and phoenixes, on
a bluish ground and encrusted with turquoise and
rubies. On the flattened sides are large pointed
oval gold medallions with finely chased arabesque
on a nielloed ground, similarly encrusted. At the
foot are half-cartouches in gold.
The use of zinc for drinking vessels is at first
surprising. There is little evidence for its use in

98-99

FLASK AND CUP

c. 1500
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman
cast zinc, gold, turquoise, rubies, and (cup only)
emeralds
cup height 4.3 fi3/4J; rim diameter 14.6 ($3/4)
flask height 52 (2ol/2); diameter 21 (82/4)
references: Koseoglu 1987, no. 74 (cup), and
no. 75 (flask)

Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul

The cup and the accompanying flask were very
probably booty from Selim I's sack of Tabriz following his victory over the Safavid ruler, Ismacil i,
at (^aldiran in 1514. The polished interior of the
cup, with thin openwork gold plaques laid over a
matt ground and encrusted with precious stones,
is spectacular enough, but the workmanship of the
exterior is even more virtuoso. The inlay consists
of openwork gold panels, six lobed pointed ovals,
and six oblong cartouches. The former are decoEUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

205

other Islamic cultures, nor can any particular

astrological or medical value be attributed to the
metal. A possible explanation is that since vessels
of gold and silver were as forbidden in Islam as
wine, pietistic concern to avoid sin on too many
fronts favored crafting such luxurious specimens
from a base metal, so that it could at least be
argued that the vessels were "not really" gold.
J.M.R.
100

PROCESSION SHOWING
THE TRANSPORT OF CHINESE
BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN
c. 1470-1480
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman
scroll fragment, gouache on silk
25 x 48 (97/sx 18%)
references: Yorukan 1965, 188-199;
Medley 1985, 157-159
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul

206

CIRCA 1492

The fragment is one of a group of images from

album H.2153, all of different formats, representing a wedding procession. The porcelains are
evidently part of the bride's dowry and probably
meant to represent heirlooms rather than pieces
of contemporary manufacture.
The taste of the Middle East had long remained
fixated on blue and white Chinese porcelains of
the Yuan and early Ming periods, to the extent
that by the late fifteenth century the Jindezhen
kilns found it profitable to manufacture copies of
these for export to the Islamic world. The most
striking feature of the porcelains shown here is
not their quantity but the predominance of large
covered jars, of a size and type that are difficult to
parallel among extant pieces. These scroll fragments appear to illustrate a narrative recording
the marriage procession of a Chinese princess sent
off to marry a barbarian ruler on the north-western frontiers of China, an occurrence frequent
enough in Chinese history to make it pointless to
try to identify the present scene specifically. The
miniatures were probably executed for the Aqqoyunlu court at Tabriz, and the artist would have

been far less familiar with the narrative than with

the gifts of porcelains brought back overland from
China by Muslim embassies to the Ming
emperors on their return journey from Beijing.
The exaggerated contrapposto stances of some
of the figures, though paralleled in popular
Chinese woodcuts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are also highly characteristic of
figure-painting at the Aqqoyunlu court at Tabriz
under Uzun Hasan (d. 1478) and Ya'qub Beg (d.
1490), particularly in the style of the painter
Shaykhi al-Ya-qubi. The present scroll fragment
bears no attribution, but a reversed repeat of a
servant holding a bowl in another album in the
Topkapi Saray Library (H.2i6o, fol. 89%) bears an
attribution to Mehmed Siyah Qalem.
J.M.R.

1O1 (

DISH WITH BRACKETED RIM

mid-iqth century
Chinese, Yuan period
porcelain
diameter 46 (iSVs)
references: Washington 1966, no. 277; Krahl and
Erbahar 1986, 490, no. 553
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul
White on blue designs decorate this dish, which is
part of the celebrated collection of Chinese porcelains begun by the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. Its base marked by a firing crack is
designed in concentric circles. The outermost
circle consists of eighteen petal panels filled alternately with flaming pearls and a variety of auspicious objects lingzhi mushrooms, conch shells,
lozenges, bell, rhinoceros horn cups, and cash.
Inside these panels are four ruyi panels on a wave
ground enclosing chrysanthemum sprays. At the
center is a single chrysanthemum blossom
enclosed by six petal panels with flaming pearls.
The cavetto is filled with a peony scroll and the
flat rim bears crested waves. On the reverse of
the cavetto is a lotus scroll. The petal-panel motif
may be an adaptation of the Arabic latters lam and
alif with serifs joined above, which could indicate
a Chinese response to demand from Middle Eastern markets. It is more likely derived from the
lobed panels of fine Chinese metalwork of earlier
periods, though, since the indiscriminate mixture
of Buddhist and Daoist motifs enclosed by the
petal panels scarcely points to a clearly focused
Muslim market.
J.M.R.

1O2

DISH
c. 1480
Turkish, Iznik, Ottoman
underglaze-painted fritware
diameter 44.5 (i/Vzj
references: Unver 1958; Raby and Atasoy 1989,
76-81, figs. 57 and 279

Gemeentesmuseum, The Hague

By 1400, Chinese blue and white porcelains were
being widely imitated in the lands of Islam, and
Yuan and early Ming prototypes remained in
fashion for many decades thereafter. Apart from
mass-produced imitations many of which were
crafted in named workshops in Mamluk Egypt
that were active over several generations little
is known of where these early works were made.
Tabriz may well have been an important market
or kiln site in the fifteenth century.
Although evidence now suggests that much
finer, almost convincing copies of early Ming blue
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

207

and white vessels were manufactured in late fifteenth-century Egypt, in general these craftsmen
could not duplicate the Chinese process. They
had no access to the porcelain-stone that produced
the characteristic, much admired body of Chinese
porcelains, and their kilns fired at far too low a
temperature. The bodies are all silicon-enriched,
making early blue and white wares from Muslim
potteries rather breakable and generally small in
size. The characteristic glaze was alkaline, a mixture of soda and lime.
In the Ottoman town of Iznik, however, revolutionary technologies made it possible to fire kilns
at higher temperatures. Iznik ware was produced
in an unparalleled range of shapes and in larger
sizes than earlier Islamic ceramics.
This impressive dish, which compares in size
with Chinese Yuan blue and white porcelain
dishes (cat. 101), may owe its decoration in
reserve to such a source, but is not markedly
Chinese in shape. The arabesque interlace at the
center is, moreover, adapted from the prints of

small silver-gilt Ottoman drinking bowls of the

late fifteenth century.
The most important innovation, however, is the
use of the chinoiserie lotus-scrolls on the flat rim
as well as on the cavetto and on the ground of the
center. Julian Raby (Raby and Atasoy 1989, 7681) has traced this motif to drawings in an album,
F1423, in the Istanbul University Library. This
material is mostly datable to the reign of Mehmed
ii and has been tenuously associated with Baba
Nakkas,, a high Janissary officer whose career continued under Bayazid n.
Baba Nakkas. served as one of the inspectors of
the accounts (muctemeds) for the building of Bayazid's mosque in Istanbul. He founded mosques of
his own as well, the Dizdariye Camii in Istanbul
and one at atalca in Thrace. Since Imperial
decrees issued for him use the sobriquet nakka,
meaning painter or decorator, it is possible that he
could have also been a court painter who adapted
the album drawings to this blue and white vessel.
J.M.R.

103

MOSQUE LAMP
c. 1505
Turkish, Iznik, Ottoman
under glaze-painted fritware
height 28.5 (ny4)
inscribed: (on the rim) Koran LXI, 13; ya
Muhammad; Allah, Muhammad, cAli
references: Merig 1957, 7-76; Unal 1969, 74-111;
London 1976, no. 409; Frankfurt-am-Main 1985,
no. 7, 2; London 1988, no. 130; Raby and Atasoy

19^9, no. 89

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

At the rim of this mosque lamp are three oblong
panels separated by a knotted pseudo-Kufic motif
with stenciled inscriptions in naive naskhr. part
208

C I R C A 1492

of Koran LXI, 13; ya Muhammad; and Allah,

Muhammad, cAli.
This lamp and another from the mausoleum of
Bayazid n (^inili K6k, Istanbul, 41/1) with similar inscriptions and some similar motifs have been
dated to the reign of Selim i, 1512-1520 (Raby
and Atasoy 1989, 94). An earlier date is however
likely; in fact the lamps were most probably made
for Bayazid's mosque, which was inaugurated in
1506. An entry dated 10 acban 910 (17 January
1505) in the palace registers of miscellaneous disbursements (Meric. 1957, no. 30) records a reward
of 2000 akge to a certain Mehmed Izniki, ki kandil
averd "who brought lamps/' Izniki must refer not
merely to Mehmed's place of origin but to his
trade, a maker of Iznik blue and white pottery
(gini-i Iznik).
The extraordinarily varied profiles of the fourteen or so lamps associated with Bayazid n and
the rich, somewhat incongruous use of decorative
motifs shows that they must have been a trial
order. The subsequent lack of Iznik mosque lamps
until the mid-sixteenth century may indicate
that the experiment was not judged particularly
successful.
J.M.R.

1O4

This lamp from the mosque of Bayazid n in

Istanbul, which was inaugurated in 1505 has a
stiff profile. Like earlier Mamluk glass mosque
lamps, it is designed as a standing vessel, though
with three loops at the shoulders for suspension.
The flaring neck bears a repeating pseudo-Kufic
inscription between cable bands. The ground is
sprinkled with florets, and the ascenders and some
of the other letters terminate in split palmettes.
Above these letter forms are traces of a second
Kufic inscription, reduced to a horizontal line
broken at intervals by pairs of ascenders. The
shoulders have painted flutes, and below these
is a broad band of feathery lotus scroll, perhaps
derived from a Chinese blue and white porcelain
of the Yuan Dynasty (1260-1368), with fat tadpolelike buds. The foot, which allows no light
through, is painted with an eleven-petaled
star-rosette.
Two other lamps from a group associated with
the mausoleum of Bayazid n ((^inili K6k, Istanbul, 41/4 and 41/3), with different profiles but
identical inscriptions and other motifs, must be by
the same hand (compare Raby and Atasoy 1989,
nos. 105/107).
J.M.R.

105

FOOTED BASIN
c. 1510-1520
Turkish, Iznik, Ottoman
underglaze-painted fritware
height 23.5 f92/4J; rim diameter 42.3 (i65/s)
references: London 1983, no. 106; Raby and Atasoy
1989, no. 299
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
The exterior of this basin, painted in tones of
cobalt, has a band of rounded script at its rim. The
inscription, though carefully executed, appears to
be wholly decorative. Foliate motifs of exquisite
detail embellish the interior. Their composition is
crowded into too small a space, however, for an
obtrusive hexagon surrounding the center which
suggests that stencils used to reproduce the panels
fell short, so that the inner space had to be finished by hand. At the center are half-palmettes,
very possibly derived from contemporary silverwork. In addition, they are distinctly, probably
deliberately, reminiscent of swimming fish on
fourteenth and fifteenth-century Mamluk inlaid
metalwork.
J.M.R.

MOSQUE LAMP
c. 1505
Turkish, Iznik, Ottoman
underglaze-painted fritware
height 21.8 (8l/2)-, rim diameter 16.7 (65/s)
references: Unal 1969, 74-111; London 1976, no.
4.08; London 1983, no. 108; Yuksel 1983; Raby and
Atasoy 1989, 98-100

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

209

106

Circle of Gentile Bellini

Venetian

THE RECEPTION OF THE

AMBASSADORS IN DAMASCUS
c. 1488-1499
oil on canvas
175 x 201 (687/s x yyVs)
references: Sauvaget 19451946; Pallucchini 1966,
4951; Raby 1982, 55-60, n. 51, 63, n. 86
Musee du Louvre, Paris, Departement des Peintures
This painting is a landmark in Europe's visual
record of the East, the earliest known attempt to
represent a realistic panorama of an exotic location. The remarkable accuracy of its details makes
it a valuable source for the architecture and costumes of late fifteenth-century Damascus.
The painting is divided into two registers: the
upper shows the skyline of Damascus, dominated
by the minarets, gable, and dome of the eighthcentury Great Mosque. The lower register is a
somewhat contrived juxtaposition of three scenes:
on the right is a historical incident that depicts a
Venetian deputation, perhaps the bailo, the Vene210

CIRCA 1492

tian official resident in Damascus, being received

by a senior Mamluk official, probably the na'ib or
governor of Damascus. The na'ib is seated on a
dais (mastaba), and his rank is confirmed by his
curious "horned" turban, a type used only by the
Mamluk Sultan and his top officials. The figure is
flanked by members of the Mamluk military elite.
The topicality of this tableau contrasts with that
on the left of the picture, which is a generalized
rendering of a street scene with a mounted
Mamluk, armed attendant and two camel drivers
with their beasts. The compositional link between
the two scenes is provided by a third group which
occupies the immediate central foreground. This
depicts three figures in conversation, while a
young boy nearby holds a monkey on a leash. A
sequence of animals camels on the left, a monkey in the center, and deer on the rightprovides
not only incidental interest, but also additional
coherence by linking the parts of the immediate
foreground.
The contrived composition of the lower register
does little, however, to diminish the immediacy
and realism of the painting as a whole. The city is
minutely observed, even down to minor details
such as the body-harness of the monkey and the
Mamluk blazons on the walls. The architecture is

accurately rendered, from the wooden armatures

of the brick housing of Damascus to the minarets
of the Great Mosque, which are shown complete
with their struts for hanging lamps; in fact, the
painting provides the only extant visual record of
the double tambour of the dome of the Great
Mosque. The angle and distance from which the
Great Mosque is depicted suggest that the painter
had a view from the Venetian fondaco, or commercial center, which was situated to the south of
the mosque (Sauvaget 1945-1946).
The identification of the setting as Damascus
puts to rest a long-held belief that the painting
was by Gentile Bellini and depicted the Court of
Mehmed the Conqueror in Istanbul. This attribution can be traced back at least to the seventeenth
century, when it was recorded by Boschini. There
is no evidence that Gentile Bellini ever visited the
Mamluk domains of Syria and Egypt, and the
attribution is a clear example of how the legends
that grew up around Gentile Bellini's visit to
Istanbul influenced the understanding of almost
all early European depictions of the East. It was
effectively abandoned when in 1895 Charles
Schefer correctly identified the setting as Mamluk
rather than Ottoman.
Schefer, however, mistakenly identified the

scene as the Reception of the Venetian Ambassador Domenico Trevisano in Cairo in 1512. The
choice of city was wrong, but Schefer's dating
encouraged a spate of alternative attributions, as
Gentile Bellini was known to have died in 1507.
These have ranged from "School of Gentile Bellini " to Carpaccio, Vincenzo Catena, Antonio
Badile, Vittore Belliniano, and most recently Benedetto Diana (Raby 1982, 63, n.86). None of these
attributions is supported by stylistic, thematic, or
circumstantial arguments that are convincing,
however, and for the time being the painter must
remain anonymous.
The date of the painting can no longer be fixed
by reference to Gentile Bellini's visit to Istanbul
in 1479-1481 nor by Trevisano's reception in
Cairo in 1512. The work must, however, have
been painted between 1488 and 1499. In 1488 the
Mamluk Sultan Qa'it Bay had the western
minaret of the Great Mosque erected in the form
in which it appears on the left of the painting,
while Giovanni Mansueti's Arrest of St. Mark of
1499 contains numerous borrowings from the
Louvre painting.
The Louvre Reception had a considerable
impact when it arrived in Venice. For a decade or
so it inspired an oriental mode in Venetian painting with specific reference to the Mamluks. It
provided many of the details for the cycle of the
life of Saint Mark that Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Mansueti painted for the Scuola di San
Marco. Its influence can be felt even in the work
of Albrecht Diirer, who visited Venice in 14947
1495 and again in 1505 (Raby 1982).
The painting's influence stems from the fact
that it combined exotic picturesqueness with the
meticulous attention to detail that characterized
the late fifteenth-century "inventory school" of
Venetian historical painting, which relied on the
accumulation of gem-like detail. It was the first
European picture to provide such a tangible record
of the East, and no painter attempted a comparable
scene until the mid-sixteenth century. The painting's charm was summarized by Boschini in the
seventeenth century:

10/ <

Costanzo da Ferrara

Venetian

PORTRAIT MEDAL OF MEHMED n

c. 1460-147^

bronze
diameter 12.3 (47/s)
inscribed, first state (on the obverse): SVITANVS
MOHAMETH OTHOMANVS TVRCORVM IMPERATOR/ (on

the reverse) HIC BELLI FVLMEN POPVLOS PROSTRAVIT ET

VRBES (and signed in a tabula ansataj CONSTANTIUS F
references: Karabacek 1918; Hill 1926, 287-298;
Hill 1930, 80, no. 321-322; von Pastor 1959, 3:259;
Dizionario biografico 1960, 30:394-396; Hill and
Pollard 1967, no. 102; Andaloro 1980; Raby 1987
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection
Costanzo's medal is the most powerful preserved
portrait of Mehmed n, the Ottoman sultan who
seized Constantinople in 1453 and thus ended
the Byzantine Empire. It conveys an impression
of considerable physical presence and awesome
intensity, warranting the claim made in the
inscription on the obverse that Mehmed was the
"Thunderbolt of War/' He not only fills most
of the picture space of the medal, but his broad,
sweeping collar rides up high from the surface,
giving the medal a greater three-dimensionality
than is usual for the period. On the reverse the
sultan is shown riding in a rocky landscape with
leafless trees, reminiscent of Pisanello's medallic
compositions (see the essay by Julian Raby in this
catalogue).
The medal serves to remind us of Mehmed's
interests in Western culture in general and in
portrait medals in particular. He was patron to a
great number of medalists. He even attempted
to obtain the services of Pisanello's leading follower, Matteo de'Pasti, but the Venetians arrested

Matteo as he was en route to Istanbul. Before

Matteo's visit was aborted, the sultan and Sigismondo Malatesta, the ruler of Rimini, corresponded on the subject of portraits and their role
in ensuring a person's immortality. The medal by
Costanzo certainly helped disseminate Mehmed's
image; it is probably the medal referred to by the
Mantuan ambassador in 1489 (von Pastor 1959,
31259), and both Paolo Giovio and Vasari owned
examples, though they attributed the authorship
to Pisanello.
As the only surviving signed work by Costanzo,
the medal is central to any attempt to reconstruct
his oeuvre. It suggests a talent that deserves
recognition; like Pisanello, Costanzo combined
glyptic and graphic skills; Summonte, in a letter
of 1524, describes him as "above all else an outstanding draughtsman."
He led a peripatetic existence: he was Venetian
in origin and spent time in Lombardy and Ferrara
before settling in Naples in the 14705. The only
recorded source for his trip to Turkey is a letter by
the Este ambassador Battista Bendidio, dated 1485,
in which he says that Costanzo went to Turkey
gia piu anni (already several years ago), stayed
there for molti anni (many years), and was made
a cavaliere in recompense. Costanzo was sent
to Istanbul by Ferrante of Naples, but political
relations between Naples and Istanbul were so
strained between 1471 and 1475 that the visit
must have taken place either in the 14605 or
between 1475 and 1478. The traditional date for
the medal of 1478 is not, however, based on any
firm evidence.
The medal is known in two versions, of which
the earlier is that in the National Gallery of Art,
a unique specimen. The second, which is signed
Opus Constantii, is dated 1481. As this was the
year Mehmed died, it was probably reissued on
the news of his death and tells us little about the
date of Costanzo's visit to Turkey.
J.R.

Se vede in prospetiva un'armonia

De fabriche diverse, che inamora;
Ghe xe Cameli, Cervi, Simie e tante
Diversita de cose curiose,
D'abiti e de persone capriciose,
Dele piu bele che abita el Levante.
(Pallucchini 1966, 49-51)
In perspective can be seen a harmony
Of diverse buildings that enchants;
There are camels, deer, monkeys and such
A diversity of curious things,
Of costumes and of delightful people,
Among the most beautiful that live in the Levant.
J.R.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

211

io8
After Costanzo da Ferrara
STANDING OTTOMAN
c. 1470-1480
North Italian
brush and brown ink
30.1 x 20.4 (ii7/s x 8)
references: British Museum 1950, 1:5, 6, nos. 7, 8;
Babinger 1951, 349-388
Musee du Louvre, Paris, Departement des Arts
Graphiques
This beturbanned Ottoman figure, wearing a calflength kaftan and the long outer robe known as a
dolaman, stands in a frontal posture, exuding
confidence. Here is a fifteenth-century European
depiction of an oriental that is dispassionately
objective, untramelled by the legacy of classical
scholarship or Christian propaganda. The sheet
belongs to a series of seven such drawings, two of
which are in the British Museum, three in the
Louvre, and two in the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut
in Frankfurt. Three of the seven were used by
Pintoricchio in frescoes he painted in the 14905
and early 15005. Only this standing figure appears
twice, however, once in the Disputation of St.
Catherine in the Borgia Apartments in Rome, and
once in a fresco in the Piccolomini Library in
Siena. He occupies a prominent position in both,
and there have been attempts to identify him as
"Calixtus Ottomanus," the fugitive half-brother
of Sultan Mehmed n (Babinger 1951, 349-388).
There is no basis for this claim, however, and, as

212

CIRCA

1492

Karabacek long ago pointed out, his costume, in

particular his striped kaftan, suggests a character
of more modest origins and means. When A. Venturi first published this series of drawings in 1898,
he attributed them to Pintoricchio. An objection
was soon raised, first by Frizzoni, and then by
Ricci, that the figures had a physicality and presence which distinguished them from Pintoricchio's more winsome types. They were evident
borrowings, and Frizzoni pointed out that whereas
Pintoricchio was of Umbrian origin, the Seated
Lady in the British Museum bears a color notation in Venetian dialect arzento in place of
argento (silver). Only the two drawings in the
British Museum are generally accepted as originals, the others being regarded as later derivatives
(British Museum 1950, 1:5, 6, nos. 7, 8). Nevertheless, as a group, they reflect a common source.
The Ottoman character of the series and the
notation in Venetian on the London sheet seemed
to most scholars to point to Gentile Bellini, who
visited Istanbul between 1479 and 1481, as the
author. This Louvre drawing even bears an
inscription attributing it to Gentile's brother
Giovanni Bellini, but it is in a later, eighteenthcentury hand. Another argument in favor of
Gentile was that in his final will of 1507 he
bequeathed to his apprentices omnia mea designia
retracta de Roma, which was taken to mean "all
my drawings brought back from Rome" a clear
reference, it was thought, to the drawings which
Pintoricchio had used in Rome. The case is not,
however, so clear-cut. The meaning of retracta de
Roma is ambiguous and could refer to views of
the city. More important, the general style of the
drawings bears little relation to Gentile's documented work. They are closely related, on the
other hand, to a gouache drawing of a Seated
Scribe in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
Boston that bears a sixteenth-century Ottoman
inscription in Persian. Attempts have been made
to wrest Bellini's name from this inscription, but
it can be shown that it refers instead to another
European artist who visited Istanbul, Costanzo da
Ferrara, the artist of the splendid portrait medal
of Mehmed the Conqueror (cat. 107). The seven
drawings are more reasonably attributed to Costanzo than to Gentile.
Although, as his name suggests, Costanzo lived
for a time in Ferrara, he was in fact of Venetian
origin, and doubtless would have written color
notations in his native dialect. Costanzo was said
by a contemporary Neapolitan critic, Summonte,
to have been a draughtsman of consummate skill,
and this group of oriental drawings shows that
this was praise well deserved.
J.R.

109

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

AN ORIENTAL RULER SEATED

ON His THRONE
c. 1495-1496
pen and black ink
30.6

X 19.7

(l22/S X 73/4J

references: Romer 1917, 219-224; Dodgson 1922,

17-18; Winkler 1932, 68-89; Tietze and TietzeConrat 1935, 213-223; Winkler, 1936-1939, 1:5758, no. 77; Tietze and Tietze-Conrat 1937-1938,
2:143; no. wya; White 1973, 365-374; Strauss
1974, no. i495/i8-i8a; Strika 1978, fasc. 2; Berlin
1989, 236, pi. 280
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon
Bruce Fund

The identity of this enthroned ruler has occasioned some controversy. In the early nineteenth
century the subject was thought to be Charlemagne, but since the i86os scholarship has
increasingly favored an oriental, and more specifically an Ottoman, ruler. The figure lacks the
Christian symbols one would expect in an image
of a Western ruler; the orb, for example, is not
equipped with a cross. As a "Sultan of Turkey,"
however, the figure belongs firmly in the realm
of fiction. He wears a composite headgear halfturban, half-crownwhile his bejeweled chain
and pendant, two-handed sword, robes, and
footwear, as well as his throne, all derive from
a European rather than an Ottoman context.
The drawing can be dated on stylistic grounds
to Diirer's first trip to Venice in 1494-1495
(White 1973, 365). The figure, together with its
shading, was traced through on the verso of the
sheet, probably by Diirer himself, and served as
the model for an unfinished engraving by Diirer
of the same subject, known from a unique trial
impression (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which
he appears to have begun shortly after his return
from Venice. Despite the Western embroidery,
details of the drawing are reflected in several
Ottoman figures that appear in Diirer's graphic
work shortly after his Venetian trip. The emperor
Domitian, in the Martyrdom of Saint John from
the woodcut Apocalypse of 1496-1498, wears a
comparable chain, and his pendant, like that of the
oriental ruler, has two flanking birds. The standing attendant to the left of Domitian bears a facial
resemblance to the "Sultan of Turkey" and holds
a similar sword. Both Domitian and the standing
attendant, however, wear credible Ottoman turbans. As the drawing of the Three Orientals in the
British Museum (cat. no) proves, Diirer had
access to accurate depictions of Ottomans through
Gentile Bellini, who had been in Istanbul some
fifteen years earlier.
Although the comparison with Diirer's Three
Orientals makes it plain that this is not a realistic

110

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

THREE ORIENTALS
signed with Durer's monogram and dated 1514
by another hand
pen and black and brown ink with watercolor
on paper
30.5 x 19.9 (12 x 74/s)
references: Janitsch 1883, 50-62; Winkler 19361939' i:58~59> no- 78-79'> Tietze and Tietze-Conrat,
1937-1935, 1:87-88, no. wy; Washington 1971, no.
69; Strauss 1974, i: no. 1495/12

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

depiction of an Ottoman ruler, it has been seen

by some as an image of Mehmed the Conqueror.
The suggestion was first made by the orientalist
Friedrich Sarre, who also claimed that the throne
was based on the Near Eastern throne known as
the Catedra di San Pietro, which is preserved in
the Church of San Pietro in Castello in Venice.
Yet the face of the seated ruler is no more related
to known portraits of Mehmed the Conqueror,
such as Costanzo da Ferrara's medal (cat. 107),
than the throne is to the Catedra di San Pietro. A
less literal reading was proposed by the Tietzes:
this was not the Mehmed of the cold light of history, but the conqueror of romantic fantasy. They
linked the seated ruler to a drawing in Basel of
a standing lady who is also heavily draped with
jewelry. The two drawings, they argued, were
companion items depicting Mehmed and his illstarred companion, the Greek beauty Irene.
Mehmed is said to have had her executed in order
to disprove the rumor that she had an unhealthy
hold over him. The story is a topos of despotism,
and was first related of Mehmed by Gian Maria
Angiolello, a Venetian who was a member of
Mehmed's court in the 14705. It passed into
Venetian popular fiction when it was included by
Matteo Bandello (1485-1561) in his Novelle. If
Diirer intended a specific historical allusion in his
drawing, however, he did not include sufficient
detail for us to divine it.
T R

Durer's three orientals are wearing Ottoman

dress, and they have been modeled on a very similar trio that appears in the background of Gentile
Bellini's Procession in Saint Mark's Square (Accademia, Venice), a monumental painting dated
1496. Diirer was in Venice on two occasions, first
in 1494-1495 and later in 1505-January 1507; it
has long been accepted that the style of this drawing is most appropriate to the first of these visits.
He may therefore have seen Gentile's painting as
it was in progress, though it seems more likely
that he had access to Bellini's sketches. The Ottomans are a tiny detail in Bellini's painting, and
their rendering is summary compared to Durer's
drawing. Moreover, in a related watercolor by
Diirer in the Albertina, Vienna, an Ottoman rider
carries a mace; he is not a figure who appears in
Bellini's painting of the Procession, and Diirer
presumably copied him from one of the lost studies from Bellini's trip to Istanbul (Winkler 19361939, i, no. 79, compare to nos. 80-81). Salvini's
thesis which suggested that Diirer drew the
Ottomans while they were posing for Gentile in
Venice has no merit. Diirer made ample use of
these Ottoman types in both his paintings and his
graphic work over the next decade. In the process
he transformed the representation of orientals in
northern European art, from a stereotype that
might have been excerpted from a mystery play
into a more substantial creature, with realistic
details of Ottoman costume.
When Diirer returned to Venice in 1505, Gentile Bellini had almost completed a huge canvas
of Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria (see essay
by Julian Raby in this catalogue), which included
figures of Syrian and Egyptian Mamluks in place
of Ottomans. Diirer responded by introducing
Mamluks into his own work on his return from
Venice. This "Mamluk phase" was relatively
brief, and Diirer soon reverted to his use of
the Ottoman type. Indeed, he continued to rely
on the oriental material from his first trip to
Venice the central Turk in the British Museum
drawing reappears as the lead figure in his etching
of The Cannon, which is dated 1518. The pose and
kaftan are similar, but the head of the Turk has

been replaced with Durer's own features (Washington 1971, no. 69).
In copying from Bellini, Diirer did not feel
constrained to retain every detail of the original.
His drawing differs first in that his central figure
wears only a moustache and not a beard as does
the corresponding figure in Bellini's painting;
second, and more important, the attendant on
the right has been changed considerably He has
been turned into a black servant, and his stance
has been altered so that he no longer walks tentatively forward but stands with his feet firmly
planted on the ground, anchoring the composition
on the right. The pentimento in the servant's left
foot allows one to see how Diirer first copied,
then modified Bellini's model.
J.R.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

213

MEASURING AND MAPPING

In the second half of the fifteenth century, the
works of Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria
(c. A.D. -LOO - c. A.D. i/oj were of central importance to European astronomy and geography.
His principal texts, the Almagest and the Geographia, were preserved in the Islamic world
during the Middle Ages. The former, the
crowning achievement of the Greek tradition of
mathematical astronomy, became known in
Christian Europe when it was translated into
Latin in the later twelfth century. It presented
the complicated formulae that were needed to
describe the geocentric concept of the universe
that prevailed in classical antiquity. Renaissance astronomers corrected the translation,

Ill

THE MOVEMENT OF THE UNIVERSE

c. 1450-1500
Flemish, possibly Tournai
tapestry
415 x 800 (i6}3/8 x 315]
references: Madrid 1892-1893, 79, no. 167; Las
joyas 1893, pis. 179-180; Toledo, Museo de Santa
Cruz 1958, 256, no. 669; Firenze 1980, 327, no.
LI ; Cortes Hernandez 1982, 27-28, 30 and 126127; Revuelta Tubino 1987, i: 55-56, no. 87, ills.
Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo (on loan from
Toledo Cathedral)

At the center of this tapestry, which represents

the movement of the heavens, is the celestial
sphere as an astrolabe activated by an angel
who turns the rete with a crank. The rete
shows a stereographic projection of the celestial
sphere, with the extrazodiacal constellations of
the Northern sky. The polar star is at the
center: the inner and outer concentric circles
represent respectively the polar circle and the
tropic of Capricorn, the path of the sun being
shown on the ecliptic circle. The extrazodiacal
constellations (among them Andromeda, Pegasus, Orion, etc., with Draco round the polar
circle; some are shown on a flowery meadow)
are identified by inscriptions and depicted
according to the tradition transmitted in illustrations to Hyginus' Astronomica (cat. 115).
The image of the heavens is explained in a
Latin text: "Thus adorned with the fixed stars
the sky revolves under the pole both through
the region of the North Wind and the South
Wind; according to their different effects they
are fitted to different figures of people and
other signs and planets and the belt of the
zodiac keeps under itself [that is, controls]
their movement/' (Sub polo volvitur c[o]elum
sic ornatum I stellis fixis tarn per aquilonis
214

CIRCA

1492

revised some computations, made new celestial

observations, and even noted inconsistencies in
Ptolemy's system, but no one emerged to dispute his vision of the universe until Copernicus'
heliocentric theory was published in the sixteenth century.
Ptolemy's Geographia reached Florence in the
early fifteenth century and was avidly studied
as the principal text of classical cartography
and geography. It contained mathematical systems for representing the curved surface of the
earth on maps, as well as tables of the cities of
the classical world plotted by latitude and longitude and maps (probably added in Byzantine
times) that had been based upon the tables. In

this case, however, Ptolemy's authority was

soon challenged by the new knowledge derived
from the voyages of exploration. By the second
half of the century, the Portuguese had traveled
farther south down the African coast than
Ptolemy's maps extended. With the first voyages to the Americas, the classical image of the
world was revealed as incomplete. Early sixteenth-century cartographers had to struggle
to integrate this revolutionary data into
their maps.

locum I quam per austrum. juxta diverses effectus I diversis aptantur figuris hominum I et
alteris signis et planetis motum I circulus conservat sub se zodiacus.)
On the left, God himself is shown, identified as
the power of the prime mover (potentia primi
motoris). The personification holding the mother
of the astrolabe supported by the kneeling Atlas
(Athlas) stands for the agility of the world
(agilitas mobilis). These figures are explained in
another Latin inscription: "The poets say when
the angel acts under the power of the prime
mover the world is made fit for this by its own
agility [and?] the sky revolves controlling its [the
world's] motion/' [An[gelo?] sub potentia primi
motoris agente I mentum /recte mundum] ad hoc
,..aptu[m] sua esse agilitate I dicunt poetae in

c[o]elum re
vat eius rege[n]s motu[m]). On
the right is Philosophy with Geometry and Arithmetic (aritmetica) at her feet. On her left is Abraham (Abram) and above him Virgil (Virgilius),
while Astrology (astrologia), who is next to the
sphere, points with her finger to the heavens.
This scene, too, is explained by a Latin text also
written on a scroll: 'Abraham understood
through Philosophy and through Wisdom these
facts of Astrology of which the poet Virgil speaks.
Many other men now have this knowledge. The
mathematics [of it] is explained through Geometry and Arithmetic/' (Abrachis co[n]gnovit per
philosophiam I h[a]ec astrologie et per scientiam
I under virgilius poeta loquitur I alij quam plures
et hanc notitiam /jam habe[n]t homines per geometria[m] I et aritmeticam numerus panditur).

The tapestry combines various iconographical

traditions. The general formula is that of the
wheel of Fortune turned with a crank, while the
heavenly spheres are shown as an astrolabe, with
the constellations depicted according to their traditional form.
This is probably one of the tapestries mentioned in a Toledo Cathedral document of 1503;
this records three large tapestries with the story
of Saul and David, but also three French astrological tapestries which were bought by Diego Lopez
de Ayala with money from the Marques de Pliego
("Otros quatro panos franceses de la historia del
rey Saul y del rey David y tres panos grandes
franceses de astrologia que mando comprar el
senor Diego Lopez de Ayala de la almoneda que se
hizo en Toledo del marquez de Pliego"). In 1541
they are recorded as "three old astrological tapestries," one of them depicting what was probably
an allegory of death ("Numero tres, tres panos
viejos de astrologia que uno dellos es historia de la
muerte").
J.M.M.

112

ASTROLABE
1235-1236

Egypt or Syria
brass inlaid with copper and silver
height 39.4 (if1/*); diameter 33 (13)
inscribed: (engraved) sanachu cAbd al-Karim
al-Misri al-usturlabi; (underneath in lighter
characters) bi-Misr al-Maliki al-Ashrafi al-MucizzI
al-Shihabi (dated abjad in letters) fi sanat KhLJ
al-hijriyya (that is, 633/1235-1236)
references: Hartner 1939 3:2, 5302, 554 (reprinted
in 1968, 287311; Mayer 1956, 29-30; Barrett 1949
19 ff; van Berchem 1978, 3:18141815; 1941,
no. 4080
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
The astrolabe, the most important astronomical
instrument of the Middle Ages, was designed to
measure the altitude of the stars, moon, or sun
without any mathematical calculation. It was used
in much the same way as the astronomical quadrant or sextant, but in addition it bore various
diagrams or scales which made it possible to
determine immediately the positions of the sun,
moon, and planets most significant, the earth
in relation to the fixed stars (see cat. 121).
The instrument consists of a ring for suspension and a cast body, the umm or mater, into
which fit a series of detachable plates for different
latitudes, each with a stereographic projection of
the heavens. Over the latitude plates rotates the
openwork rete (Arabic cankabut, "spider") with a
stereographic projection of the fixed stars on the
plane of the equator. The revolution of the rete
demonstrates the swing of the courses of the fixed
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

215

stars around the North Pole. On the reverse of the

mater is fixed the alidade, a flat ruler that turns
around the pole and which serves to set the
instrument and read off the altitude of the stars.
The cast suspension plaque (kursi) of this
instrument is lobed, indented, and inlaid on both
sides with silver arabesques, chased and on a
stippled ground. The two rings and the central pin
keeping the instrument together all appear to be
original. The rete is exceptional in showing many
of the star-pointers as figural, including Scorpio,
Taurus, Cygnus, Pisces, and Hercules (en gonasin): they are heavily inlaid in chased silver and
copper. On the inner ring of the rete are abbreviated Latin designations of the Zodiac signs in
Gothic lettering. The three plaques and the inner
face of the mater, which include readings for
Cairo, Kufa, Damascus, and Baghdad, are also
inlaid in silver and copper.
The back is elegantly inlaid with the signs of
the Zodiac. Certain peculiarities of form Capricorn is on its back with a fish tail, Aquarius and
Taurus are both shown sideways, and Virgo is a
bald giant suggest that the figures were drawn
without reference to either a star manual, like the
tenth-century astonomer cAbd al-Rahman alSufi's Kitab Suwar al-Kawdkib al-Thdbita (cat.
114), or of a celestial globe (cat. 113). Engraved
abbreviations of the Latin months were added
later in Gothic letters. The remainder of the back
is engraved with astrological tables, but only as
two half-circles. Consequently, this example lacks
the diversity of information on contemporary
astolabes whose backs are engraved as quadrants.
The alidade, which has an undulating trefoil scroll
inlaid in silver, is a European replacement.
The engraved inscription tells us that this
instrument was made by cAbd al-Kanm al-Misri,
216

C I R C A 1492

the astrolabist, while underneath the remains of a

lighter, probably earlier, inscription date the piece
to 1235-1236 and explain that it was made in
Cairo by the servant or client of al-Malik alAshraf. This lighter inscription may have been
deliberately erased because it was becoming
effaced through wear. The 1235-1236 date is corroborated by the star positions on the rete. In
both inscriptions, the soubriquets al-Misri and biMisr are not otiose as applied to the artisan, for
the technique of Abd al-Kanm, even if he was
born in Egypt as al-Misri implies, shows that he
was trained elsewhere, in an area very much
influenced by the contemporary metalwork of
Mosul in Iraq. He owes his title al-Maliki al-Ashrafito his association with al-Malik al-Ashraf
Musa, a nephew of Saladin who reigned in the
Jazira and parts of Syria (i2io-c. 1237) and for
whom he had made an astrolabe dated 1227-1228
(Museum of the History of Science, Oxford,
ex-Comtesse de 1'Espinasse and Lewis Evans Collections). In 1235-1236, al-Malik al-Ashraf Musa
ruled inter alia, at Damascus. The inscribed soubriquet (nisba) al-Mucizzi may well be associated
with another of that ruler's titles, Mucizz alIslam, "He who brings glory to Islam/' though
Shihdb al-Din was not his honorific title (laqab)
and so the inscribed al-Shihdbi may relate to
someone quite different. Soubriquets [Nisbas]
like al-Mucizzi were not necessarily drawn only
from the Ayyubids' and Mamluks' "throne
names/' which they customarily took on their
accession. Max Van Berchem, who did not realize
this fact, argued that cAbd al-Karim must have
worked for two princes, al-Malik al-Ashraf and alMalik al-Mucizz, and noted that the only occasion
on which two rulers of these titles coincided was
in Egypt 1250-1251, when the Ayyubid al-Malik
al-Ashraf Muzaffar al-Din Musa n was deposed
by the Bahri Mamluk Mucizz al-Din Aybak. Van
Berchem's thesis, though ingenious, still does not
account for al-Shihabi and is also difficult to reconcile with the date given in the inscription,
1235-1236, which is confirmed well enough by
the position of the stars identified on the rete.
J.M.R.

113

CELESTIAL GLOBE
12/5-1276

western Iran
brass, hollow-cast
diameter 24 (92/s)
signed by Muhammad b. Hilal al-munajjim
(astronomer) al-Mawsili
references: Dorn 1830, 2:2-371; Drechsler 1873;
Repertoire chronologique 1941, no. 4708; Mayer
1956, 68; Finder-Wilson 1976, 83-101; SavageSmith 1985
The Trustees of the British Museum, London

This globe may well have been made for the IIKhanid observatory established by the Mongol
ruler Hiilegii (d. 1265) at Maragha in western
Iran under the direction of the astronomer Nasir
al-Din Tusi. The surface is engraved with the
pictures of the circumpolar constellations of the
northern hemisphere, and is inlaid in silver with
approximately 1,025 stars those listed in the
catalogue of the tenth-century astronomer cAbd
al-Rahman al-Sufi. The globe's southern hemisphere is only sparingly engraved, with the oars
of Argo and the hooves of Centaurus as the most
southerly elements. Although the figure of the
constellation Ophioucus has an odd pointed cap
with three concentric rings, most of the constellation figures are very similar in details to the
manuscript of al-Sufi's star catalogue, the Kitab
Suwar al-Kawakib al-Thabita (Bodleian Library,
Oxford), which was illustrated by his son in 1009
(see cat. 114).
The equator and the ecliptic that is, the
apparent path of the sun in the heavens are
graduated in degrees, making longitudes and the
right ascensions of the stars possible to determine.
The great circles of longitude, corresponding to
o, 30, 60, 90, and so on, are engraved perpendicular to the ecliptic. Because the ecliptic is set
at an angle to the equator, the globe appears to
revolve on a slant as it shows the sun's apparent
daily revolution around the earth.

The brass stand, piece-cast and with an applied

copper ring, is also graduated but is a later
replacement. It is held together below the base
by a half-melon shaped screw with a loop below,
probably for a plumb-line.
J.M.R.

114

THE CONSTELLATIONS CENTAUROS

AND THERAN (Lupus)
from Kitab Suwar al-Kawakib al-thabita (Book of the
Fixed Stars) by cAbd al-Rahmdn al-Sufi
i$th century
probably Timurid, Herat
247 folios, 74 illustrations in black line,
colored washes and gold, text in Arabic, written in a
spidery elongated nashkl, 13 lines to a page on
yellowish unwatermarked paper
23.5 x 16.5 (9*74 x 62/2J
references: Ivanov 1977; Paris 1990
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS Arabe 5036, fol.

2386

Al-Sufi composed the Book of the fixed Stars

around 960 for the Buyid sultan of Iran, Azududdawla. The text derives ultimately from Ptolemy's
Almagest of the second century A.D., but in early
versions of al-Sufi, such as the manuscript in the
Bodleian Library of 1009-1010, the Muslim artists
reinterpreted the classical celestial iconography.
The dedication and colophon of this copy state
that it was ordered for the library of Ulugh Beg;
this is generally thought to be the grandson of
Tamerlane who was killed in 1448, although, as is
discussed below, it could also have been a later
Timurid ruler with the same name.
The book is a catalogue of the fixed stars
together with depictions of the circumpolar constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres and the zodiac. Despite its fairly careful
layout, with narrower panels of text at the end of
each section, this volume was very probably not
a fair copy. The text contains numerous passages
crossed out with corrections added in the margins,
as well as omissions made good by the copyist.
There is no illumination: the heading of folio ib
is, for example, blank, and the headings of each
section in bolder script when present vary from
the grand to the banal. At what point the illustrations were added is difficult to say, but space was
clearly left for them, generally on two sides of
the same folio, but the larger on facing pages, and
in exceptional cases a double page was allotted
for them.
The history of the book is unclear. The dedication and colophon state that the book was ordered
for the library of the Timurid ruler of Samarkand,
Ulugh Beg, who was killed in 1448. The manuscript contains no indication of the scribe, the

date, or the place of writing, and may conceivably

have been booty worked up to the standards of a
Timurid prince. Alternatively, a manuscript that
was not ready for the library of Ulugh Beg may
have been appropriated, and a dedicatory medallion (la) and a colophon (247a), and grand titles
for the sections and illustrations, or at least the
coloring added to make it suitable. The disparity
between the fine illustrations and the carelessly
written text is otherwise difficult to explain.
Compass points are in red or blue, while the stars
in the figures that belong to other constellations
(kharij al-sura) are clearly shown in red.
Folio la bears an ex libris composed of nine
lines of rounded script in gold with many unorthodox ligatures, in some respects approaching
tacliq. It reads, partly conjecturally:
1. Bi-rasm khizanat al-Sultan al-aczam
2. wa'1-Khaqan al- afkham mawla muluk al-carab
wa'1-turk
3. wa'l-cajam zill Allah fi'l-ard al-mamlu' fiha
c
adlan bi'l-tul

4. wa'l-card wa mu'dhat zilal dawlatihi mamduda

wa'1-ghassan
5. ashjar cuzmatihi ghayr macduda sultan caqd
LQ I'D TNA
6. sar-idaqat mimrnatihi la lukhsa wa cumud
c
urush rifcatihi la yuqsa
7. calim natacij cilmihi bi'l-acmal al-sahha
mujtamcuhu cadil
8. aclam imanihi fi basa'it al-calam man/min
taf c uhu al-Sultan Ulugh Beg
9. Gurkan khallada mulkuhu. Amm
Normally such a medallion would have been on an
illuminated ground or surrounded by illumination.
The colophon folio 247a also bears a dedication
to the library of Zahir al-Dawla wa'1-Dunya waTDin Ulugh Beg, though this titulature is much
simpler. A marginal note in a nastacliq hand, stating that the text and illustrations are from types
determined by Ibn al-Sufi (that is, the copyist of
the Bodleian manuscript) but that the revisions
and the numerical tables incorporated into the
text by Khwaja Naslr al-Tusi have been respected,

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

21/

could well be later fifteenth-century in date and

could therefore be attributable to Ulugh Beg's
Astronomer Royal, cAll Qushji, who ended his
life as the astronomer attached to the Mosque of
Ayasofya in Istanbul. Blochet's attribution of this
manuscript to Samarkand c. 1437 is based merely
on the fact that Ulugh Beg's observatory was
located there and the height of its activity was
probably around 1437. Although Samarkand has
been claimed by various authors as a center of
manuscript illustration under the Timurids or
even earlier, these claims have been systematically
demolished by A. A. Ivanov (Ivanov 1977). Significantly, the manuscript bears neither the seal of
Ulugh Beg nor that of his son cAbd al'Latif, who
also had astronomical interests, nor of Abu Sacid,
Ulugh Beg's successor as ruler of Samarkand.
Instead it bears the seal of Muhammad Sultan
(d. 1452), the son of Baysunqur and governor of
Central Iran (Pars). Later the manuscript was
at Herat under Husayn Bayqara and is believed
to have reached Istanbul with his son Badic alZaman Mirza following the Ottoman sack of
Tabriz in September 1514. Ivanov states that it
bears the seal of the Topkapi Sarayi Library, but
this does not appear to be the case. It was acquired
for the Bibliotheque Nationale in Cairo. The
presence of the seal of Muhammad Sultan, who
expelled Ulugh Beg from Herat after his brief
occupation of the city in 1448, may suggest that it
came into his hands as booty there; and indeed,
stylistically speaking, there would be no incongruity in supposing that the manuscript was written and illustrated there. Further evidence, of a
negative kind, is that the illustration of the autograph of Nasir al-Din Tusi's Persian translation of
al-Sufi (now Istanbul, Siileymaniye Library, MS
Ayasofya 2595), dated 1249-1250, which came
into Ulugh Beg's hands from the library of Sultan
Ahmad Jala'ir (killed 1410), would have made a
second illustrated copy for his library superfluous.
In any case the illustrations in the present book
are clearly not copied from it.
If the copy was made at Herat, when were the
ex libris and the colophon added to it? The written
text suggests that a rough draft, rather than a fair
copy, was illustrated, and it is quite possible that
the dedications were added some considerable
time later. Ivanov remarks that Ulugh Beg's laqab
is given here only in the colophon and as Zahir
al-Dawla wal-Dunya wa'l-Din, whereas his
attested laqab was Mughith al-Dunya wa'l-Dm.
This may well be an indication that it was added
somewhere outside Ulugh Beg's domains, by a
scribe unfamiliar with his Chancery titulature,
and the markedly unofficial titles of the ex-libris
certainly bear that out. Ivanov also notes that a
second Timurid ruler by the name of Ulugh Beg
was ruler of Kabul from 1469 to 1502. Though his
laqab is not known, a finely illustrated Shahname
made for him around 1500, volume in of a set of
four, has recently come to light (compare Paris
1990) and is clear proof of the abilities of the
2l8

CIRCA

1492

Herati artists working for him there. It could well

be that the dedications were added for him rather
than for the grandson of Tamerlane.
In the opening exhibited here, Centauros grasps
Therion (Lupus) in the form of a crouching
panther [al-Sabc] by the hind legs. The man's face,
in profile, is grotesque. The club shaft is dissociated into three slim stems, the head being three
serrated palmate leaves. His tunic is short-sleeved
with an undervest creased at the wrists, with a
narrow collar splayed out. Therion has two dark
rings round the bushy tip of its tail. The headdress, the palmate leaves, the horse's tail and mane,
and the right arm of the man have very little to do
with the stars of the constellation. Apart from the
color and wash the figure is remarkably close to
the Bodleian manuscript.
Much has been made of the chinoiserie elements in the illustrations of this manuscript.
These are attributed to the close relations between
the early Timurids and their Ming contemporaries
in China, who had such a pronounced effect on
painting and drawing at the courts of Tabriz and
Shiraz. However, in contrast to works illustrated
for Iskandar Sultan (d. 1414) at Shiraz, the chinoiserie elements are not particularly like the
Chinese fabulous fauna. They may trail cloud or
flame scrolls, but the Mongol chinoiserie of Nasir
al-Dm Tusi's autograph translation of al-Sufi
(Siileymaniye Library, Istanbul, Ayasofya MS
2595) is much more striking. Not only does the
manuscript offered to Ulugh Beg's library exhibit

little in common with that copy; many of the

illustrations (including that of Centaurus) are so
close to the Bodleian al-Sufi manuscript of 10091010 A.D. as to suggest that it or a common prototype was on hand when the present manuscript
was illustrated. This seems all the more likely in
that al-Sufi's manual remained for centuries a
standard work for any well-equipped observatory
library in Islam and this may have led to the
remarkable diversity of local illustrative traditions. It is also clear that the marked disparity
between the skeleton of component stars and the
elaborate complete illustrations were an incitement to innovation and variation of detail. J.M.R.

^5
North Italian artist
SAGITTARIUS AND CAPRICORN
from Hyginus, Astronomica
c. 1480-1500
manuscript on vellum, 80 fols.
23.5x15 (5>V4*5 7 /sj

references: London 1933, 123-124, no. 60, pis. 3536; De Ricci 1935-1940, 2:1341, no. 28; Baltimore
Museum of Art 1949, 69, no. 189, pi. 73
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and
Tilden Foundations, Spencer Collection, MS 28, fols.
52v and 5jr

Hyginus' Astronomica is a compendium of

knowledge probably written at the end of the first
or at the beginning of the second century A.D. It is
divided into an introduction and four parts. In
Books ii and in Hyginus names forty-two constellations, discussing the mythological stories associated with each and its place in the nighttime sky.
This beautiful fifteenth-century manuscript of
Hyginus' work contains eighty vellum leaves, the
last four blank, with thirty-eight illustrations of
the constellations. The text on this opening, dealing with Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius,
comes from Book in (26-28) of the Astronomica.
The form and position of each constellation (at
least as it appeared in Hyginus' time) is clearly
indicated; then comes an account of the positions
of individual stars within the constellation. The
draftsman has carefully followed the textual indications, although he must have had recourse to a
visual model as well. Each constellation is shown
in its traditional form. Sagittarius, for example, is
a bounding centaur shooting with a bow, while
Capricorn combines the form of a goat (in its
upper half) with fishlike hindquarters.
The grouping of the fixed stars into constellations stems from an impulse to project wellknown images onto the unknown. When, for
example, the configuration of some stars
reminded ancient observers of the form of a lion,
they gave the name lion (Latin leo) to that constellation. Among the constellations are the signs
of the zodiac, which form the band of sky that
seems, from the earth, to contain the paths of the
seven planets. It was probably the Babylonians, in
the sixth century B.C., who defined the zodiac in
the form in which we know it, though of course
the names and images familiar to us are those
used by the ancient Romans (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces).
J.M.M.

116

THE MOON AND VARIOUS

OCCUPATIONS ASSOCIATED
WITH THE PLANET
from De sphaera
c. 1450-1466
Lombard
manuscript on parchment, 16 fols.
24.5 x 17 (95/s x 65/s)
references: Orlandini 1914; Pellegrin 1955, 384;
Ludovici 1958; McGurk 1966, 47-48; Alexander
1977'> 32> 93-94, pis. 27~28
Biblioteca Estense, Modena, MS Lat. 209
fols. 9v-ior

The Este De sphaera, perhaps the most beautiful

astronomical manuscript of the Renaissance, was
executed for Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca
Maria Visconti, daughter of the duke of Milan,
whose coats of arms are shown on the verso of
folio 4. As they were married in 1441 and Francesco died in 1466, the manuscript must have
been produced between these two dates. It probably entered the Este library in 1491, when Anna
Sforza married Alfonso d'Este. The miniatures
have been connected with the illuminator Cristoforo de Predis or one of his direct predecessors.
The manuscript includes a number of pages
with diagrams, but its most important feature is a
group of illuminations, from folio 5v to folio i2r,
each containing a personification of a planet and
its influence on the lefthand page, with various
occupations associated with that planet on the
righthand page. This iconographic scheme had its
origin in classical antiquity, when seven heavenly
bodies were observed to move at different rates
through a band of the sky and were identified as
the "planets" (Moon [Luna], Mercury, Venus,
Sun [So/], Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The band of
stars was divided into twelve constellations, which
became the signs of the zodiac (see cat. 115). At
this time, the sun and the moon were thought to
be planets, like the other five, while the outer
planets were still unknown. In the De sphaera the
Moon (fol. 9v) is personified as a young woman,
practically nude and holding a burning torch in
one hand and a golden horn in the other. She
stands on two small wheels, the rotae fortunae
(wheels of fortune), an astrological notion. The
zodiacal sign between Luna's legs is Cancer, her
"house," that is, the sign in which the Moon was

thought to exert its greatest power. Below is a

seascape with four boats; the classical authority
Ptolemy explained the Moon's connection with
water (Tetrabiblos, i, 4): "Most of the moon's
power consists of humidifying, clearly because it
is close to the earth and because of the moist
exhalations therefrom." The Italian text below the
miniature explains the influence of the planet and
mentions its beneficial influence on navigation:
"La Luna al navigar molto conforta/Et in peschare
et ucellare et caccia,/A tutti is suoi figliuoli apre
la porta/Et anche al solazzare che ad altri piaccia."
On the next page (fol. lor) are shown people
born under the Moon and influenced by it, the
Moon's so-called children; there are two fishermen, a hunter with a gluestick, a peasant beating
his donkey, a group of players around a table, and,
in the lower right corner, a tired pilgrim massaging his sore foot.
J.M.M.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

219

117 *

ZODIAC MAN AND VOLVELLE

from the Guild-Book of the
Barber Surgeons of York
probably 1486
English
manuscript on vellum and paper, 124 fols.
27.5 X 19 (l03/4 X 73/2J

references: British Museum 1882, 334-335, no. Eg.

2572; Bober 1948, 25, pis. 8d-e; Pattie 1980, 31, fig.
8; Jones 1984, 71-74, fig. 30
The British Library Board, London, MS Egerton
2572, fols. 5ov-$ir
The Guild-Book of the Company of BarberSurgeons of the city of York was begun in the
fifteenth century, but much material was added
subsequently; the last addition to the register
of members was made in 1786. The oldest part
consists of a Latin calendar for the use of York
(fols. 44r~49v), followed by a bifolium on thicker
vellum with drawings, partly in color, of a "bloodletting man'' (fol. 501), a "zodiac man" (fol. 5ov),
a revolving wheel (fol. 511), and finally the Four
Temperaments (fol. 51 v). The "zodiac man"
(Homo signorum) is intended to illustrate the
domination of the twelve signs of the zodiac over
various parts of the human body, a notion that
dates back to classical antiquity. For example, in
his Astronomica (2,453-465), the Roman poet
Manilius described the way in which the limbs are
subject to different signs: "the Ram, as chieftain

of them all is allotted the head, and the Bull

receives as his estate the handsome neck; evenly
bestowed, the arms to shoulders joined are
accounted to the twins; the breast is put down to
the Crab, the realm of the sides and the shoulder
blades are the Lion's, the belly comes down to the
Maid as her rightful lot; the Balance governs the
loins, and Scorpion takes pleasure in the groin;
the thighs lie to the Centaur, Capricorn is tyrant
of both knees, whilst the pouring Waterman has
the lordship of the shanks, and over the feet the
Fishes claim jurisdiction." A corresponding iconographic tradition developed in the thirteenth century and became increasingly popular, especially
in the late Middle Ages. The "zodiac man," as is
the case here, was usually illustrated in a medical
rather than a strictly astrological context, for he
readily indicated the part of the body which
should not be operated on or subjected to bloodletting when the moon was located in the sign
ruling over it.
The volvelle on fol. 51 r is surrounded by four
saints: John the Baptist and John the Evangelist,
the patrons of the barber-surgeons' guild, are
shown on the top; below are Cosmas and Damian,
well known as patrons of the medical arts. The
matrix itself shows, from the inside out, the band
of the zodiac with the twelve signs identified by
name, then an indication of the thirty degrees
occupied by each sign. Next come the twelve
months, also identified by name, and their respective number of days. The central movable disk,
known as the index of the sun, had its pointer set
at the sign and exact degree of the zodiac where

the sun stood on the day of the year an observation was made. Another disk, the index of the
moon, is now missing, but the user would have
set it on the number on the index of the sun that
corresponded to the phase of the moon in its
monthly cycle on the day of observation. With
the index of the moon in place, a doctor, for example, could read the zodiacal sign and the degree
occupied by the moon on that day. This would
have enabled him to determine auspicious dates
for treatment and avoid days when the moon
was in signs related to the relevant parts of the
patient's body.
J.M.M.

118-119

Albrecht Diirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528

CELESTIAL MAP OF THE NORTHERN SKY

1515

woodcut
42.7 x 42.7 (i63/4 x i63/4)

CELESTIAL MAP OF THE SOUTHERN SKY

1515

woodcut
43.1x43.1 (17x17)
references: Saxl 1927; Voss 1943, 59150; Zink
1968, 121-127; Nuremberg 1971, 171-174, nos. 309310; Washington 1971, 190-191, nos. and figs. 198199; Strauss 1980, 488-492, nos. 171-172; New
York and Nuremberg 1986, 315, no. 134
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris
Brisbane Dick Fund, 1951
In the diary of his journey to the Netherlands,
Diirer recorded that he gave to Agostino Scarpinello, secretary to the bishop of Tuy, Aloisius
Marliano, "the two parts of the Imagines'' by
which he meant his woodcut maps of the northern
and southern sky (Imagines coeli septentrionalis
and Imagines coeli meridionalis cum duodecim
imaginibus zodiaci). The latter has an inscription
on a scroll indicating that Johann Stabius was
responsible for the general arrangement
("Joannfes] Stabius ordinavit"), that Konrad Heinfogel calculated the place of the stars ("Conradus
Heinfogel Stellas posuit"), and that Albrecht
Diirer drew the figures ("Albertus Diirer imaginibus circumscripsit"); below are the coats of arms
of the three contributors, including Diirer's. The
two celestial maps, as well as a terrestrial map of
the eastern hemisphere made at the same time,
were dedicated to Cardinal Matthaus Lang of Wellenberg, who had served Emperor Maximilian as
secretary. His arms appear in the upper left corner
of the map of the southern sky; in the upper right

220

CIRCA 1492

corner is a dedication to him, and in the lower

right the imperial privilege granted to Stabius and
the date 1515. The map of the northern sky has in
its corners the most famous exponents of the four
main astronomical traditions: the Greek Aratus
(Aratus Cilix), Ptolemy the Egyptian (Ptolemeus
Aegyptius), the Roman Manilius (M. Manilius
Romanus) and the Arab al-Sufi (Azophi Arabus).
The woodcuts do not quite show the skies of the
northern and southern hemispheres, as the dividing line is not the equator but rather the ecliptic,
the band of the zodiac. Diirer's woodcuts are in
fact based on two maps of the northern and
southern skies drawn by an anonymous artist,
presumably in Nuremberg in 1503, after the specifications of Konrad Heinfogel and Sebastian
Prenz; Dietrich Ulsen composed the accompanying Latin verses (Zink 1968,121-127, nos. 99100). These maps stem from a tradition that dates
back to the beginning of the fifteenth century and
is best reflected in a pair of sky charts in the
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (MS
5415, fols. i68r and i/or; see Saxl 1927,150-155,
pis. ix-x). The exact positions of the stars on the
1503 maps were not newly calculated. As a result,
the northern sky is shown as it appeared at the
spring equinox of 1424. For Durer's woodcuts,
however, the stellar positions were recalculated.
The numbers next to the constellations refer to

those in Books vm and ix of Ptolemy's astronomical treatise, the Almagest.

The two celestial maps of 1515 were the first
ever published. They testify to the importance of
Nuremberg not only as a major center of printing
but also of the manufacture of scientific instruments. More than in any other European city,
scholars there seem to have worked with craftsmen and artists, a collaboration Diirer commented
on with enthusiasm in his theoretical publications.
J.M.M.

120

Attributed to Hans Dorn

Viennese, 1430/1440-1509

MARTIN BYLICA'S CELESTIAL GLOBE

1480

Buda?
brass
height 121 (475/sj; diameter of globe 39.9 (1^/4)
references: Ameisenowa 1959; Rosinska 1974; Nagy
1975; Pilz 1977, 62-63; Schallaburg 1982, 339-340,
no. 284; Turner 1987, 35-38
Jagiellonian University, Cracow

This celestial globe, the astrolabe (cat. 121), and

the torquetum (cat. 122) were bequeathed to the
Jagiellonian University by the cleric, astronomer,
and astrologer, Martin Bylica of Olkusz (14371493). The three objects arrived in 1494 at the
universitywhere Copernicus was a student
from 1491 to 1494 and the rector excused all the
students and masters from their work in order
that they might see these exceptional instruments. Martin Bylica, a pupil of the Cracow
astronomer Andreas Grzymala of Poznari, lectured at Cracow from 1459 to 1463. He met
Regiomontanus in Rome in 1464, and both
astronomers were summoned to Hungary in
1466. When Regiomontanus left Hungary to
settle in Nuremberg, Bylica remained there and
became the often-consulted astrologer to the
king, Matthias Corvinus i. He was also a theologian and became Protonotary Apostolic (the insignium of which surmounts Bylica's coat of arms
which are engraved on the horizon-plate, as well
as the date, 1480, in a decorative scroll which
gives instructions for the use of the sundial on
this globe).
The globe and the associated instruments have
been attributed to Hans Dorn because he was a
member of the King Matthias, Regiomontanus
and Bylica "circle," because there are no other
known instrument makers as likely manufacturers

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

221

and, more especially, because of the Roman antiqua capital letters in which the instruments are
engraved. This style of letter was used in printing, for example by Regiomontanus for his Kalender of 1474, but is extremely rare on astronomical
instruments, which in the medieval period are
engraved in Gothic (Black Letter) script and later
in standard Roman or italic lettering. The only
known instrument signed by Hans Dorn, a silvered brass astronomical compendium, dated 1491
(British Museum), is engraved in Roman antiqua
capitals.
Hans Dorn was born between 1430 and 1440;
he became a Dominican and from 1491 he resided
at the Dominican monastery in Vienna where he
died in 1509 He was a pupil of the Austrian astrologer and mathematician Georg Peuerbach and of
Regiomontanus between 1450 and 1460 in
Vienna. From 1458 to 1490, he was in the service
of King Matthias in Budawhere, presumably,
Bylica's instruments were made. King Matthias
sent Dorn to Nuremberg from 1478-1479 in an
attempt, which proved unsuccessful, to buy the
books, manuscripts, and scientific instruments left
by the deceased Regiomontanus.
The globe proper, made from a hollowed-out
sphere of brass, sits within a square horizon-plate,
supported by a "Gothic" stand on four claw-feet
222

CIRCA 1492

clutching small spheres. A meridian-circle permits

the adjustment for latitude of the globe, and azimuths can be read from the 360 circular scale
surrounding the globe on the horizon-plate,
which also carries a small compass, for orienting
the globe, and a horizontal sundial with a stringgnomon. A small circular scale of hours is at the
north celestial pole on the meridian-ring. Over it
moves an index fixed to the axis of the globe
below the turning-handle. Once adjusted for latitude, rotation of the globe simulates the apparent
rotation of the stars about the celestial pole at the
place of use, thereby providing a didactic or analogue computing device. For the resolution of
other astronomical or astrological problems, there
is an astrolabe mounted vertically on an arc attached to the horizon-plate at right angles to the
meridian. It includes a plate of the twelve astrological houses, with a rete consisting solely of the
ecliptic circle, and a plate engraved with an
orthographic universal astrolabe projection. This
projection, known today as the Rojas projection
after Juan de Rojas who published an account of it
at Paris in 1550 is very rare in medieval manuscripts and on medieval instruments. It was
however used by the Andalusian astronomer, Ibn
as-Zarqalluh, in eleventh-century Toledo. Dorn's
use of universal projections on his globe and on
his astrolabes is innovatory. (For explanations of
the astrolabe terms used here, see Bylica's astrolabe, cat. 121).
The globe is engraved with the equator, the
tropics, the polar circles, twelve meridians, the
Milky Way, and thirty-six constellation images
indicating the magnitude of their constituent stars
and the astrological nature of the planetary symbols. This information was derived from the thirteenth-century Latin translation of the Haly (the
tenth-century Cairene astronomer, All Abu
Hassan b. Ridwan) commentary on the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy of Alexandria from the second century A.D. The iconography of the constellation
images is sometimes unusual, using European and
Arabic sources (Ameisenowa 1959).
F.R.M.

121

Attributed to Hans Dorn

Viennese, 1430/1440-1509

MARTIN BYLICA'S ASTROLABE

1486

Buda?
brass
height 52 (202/2J; diameter 45 (iy3/4J
references: Rosinska 1974; Pilz 1977, 62-63;
Wattenberg 1980, 343-362; Schallaburg 1982, 33^339, no. 283; Turner 1987, 35-37
Jagiellonian University, Cracow

This accurately-engraved large planispheric

astrolabe belongs, with cats. 120 and 122, to the
group of instruments bequeathed in 1493 to the
Jagiellonian University by Martin Bylica. It is
dated 1486 on the alidade, six years after the
celestial globe (cat. 120), and is attributable to the
same maker, Hans Dorn. Like the other instruments, it is engraved in fine Roman antiqua lettering. It bears, on the back of the suspension
piece, the coat of arms of Bylica, and the Latin
words MARTINI PLEBANI, indicating Bylica's
possession.
The astrolabe is the best known of the astronomical instruments of Islam (cat. 112) and
medieval Europe; many have survived. It reduces
the image of the celestial sphere to a plane surface
using an ingenious geometrical procedure: stereographic projection as described in Ptolemy of
Alexandria's Planisphderium from the second century A.D. The astrolabe was known early in Islam
and transmitted from Muslim Spain to medieval
Christian Europe no later than the twelfth century. The astrolabe is usually too small to make
serious astronomical observations but was useful
for teaching astronomy, in the practice of astrology, and for simple time-telling by night or by
day. The upper cut-away plate, called rete in Latin
and also in Middle English, on the front of the
instrument is a star-map where the tips of the
curly pointers represent the positions of selected
brighter stars, which are named in engravings by
the pointers. On the rete, the eccentrically placed
circle represents the ecliptic, the apparent path of
the sun through the stars in the course of a year,
and is divided into the twelve signs of the zodiac,
each sub-divided into thirty degrees. The outer
circular band represents the Tropic of Capricorn,

which bounds the projection. Although the rete

resembles a modern planisphere made of transparent plastics, it is a mirror image because it
shows the celestial sphere, not as seen from the
earth, but as seen "externally"; for instance, as
seen on a celestial globe. The rete can be rotated
over a plate, designed for use in a specific latitude,
on which are engraved the horizon for that latitude; circles of altitude at equal intervals between
the horizon and the zenith (almucantars); lines
showing unequal, planetary hours: hours determined by dividing the interval between sunset
and sunrise into twelve equal divisions and the
interval between sunrise and sunset into a further
twelve divisions, six o'clock being at midnight and
at midday, and the hour-length varying throughout the year; and sometimes lines delineating the
twelve astrological houses. Usually a number of
plates are provided for different latitudes, that for
the place of immediate use being placed on top of
the pile of plates which are, with the rete on top,
placed in a recess, mater, in the body of the astrolabe. Together with a sighting-rule, alidade, the
whole is held in place by a pin and wedge, horse,
through the center of the astrolabe, which represents the celestial pole. Rotation of the rete over
the plate which is prevented from turning by a
lug simulates the apparent rotation of the stars
about the pole, creating a form of analoguecomputer.
Time-telling by night provides a simple example of one use of an astrolabe: The instrument is
freely suspended by the ring and the altitude of a
star represented on the rete is measured, using
the alidade in conjunction with the scale of
degrees. The rete is then turned until the pointer
for the observed star lies on the circle of altitude
corresponding to the observed altitude, east or
west of the meridian as appropriate. This done,
the rete shows the positions of the stars in relation to the horizon of the place of observation. A
straight line taken with a rule from the center of
the astrolabe through the position of the sun in
the ecliptic, as marked on the ecliptic circle of the
rete (that is, the declination on the day of observation, ascertainable from the zodiac calendar
scale usually engraved on the back of European
astrolabes) will indicate the time in equal hours
on the scale of hours on the limb (circumferential
border) or by an analogous procedure in unequal
hours on the hour-lines on the plate below
the rete.
Forty-eight stars are indicated on the rete of
Martin Bylica's astrolabe. The bases of the pointers of the brightest stars are more elaborately decorated than the others (compare to the stars on
the globe, cat. 120). This astrolabe is unusual in
that the limb of the front bears the zodiac calendar
scale correlating the solar declination with the
date, as well as the customary scales of degrees
and of equal hours (0-12, twice). The zodiac calendar scale was not engraved on the back because

in it is a second recess for plates. These include a

plate for latitude 48 and another of the twelve
astrological houses. A small magnetic compass is
inset in the front of the suspension-piece; this is
an unusually early example of such practice.
The need for a different plate for every latitude
led to the design of universal astrolabes requiring
only a single plate; these instruments, however,
were not always as convenient for the solution of
certain problems. Such a plate is found at the back
of this astrolabe: a stereographic projection of the
celestial sphere from the vernal point onto the
colura of the solstices, known in medieval Europe
as saphdea Azarchelis, because it was devised by
the astronomer, Ibn az-Zarqalluh, in eleventhcentury Toledo. His Arabic treatise was translated
into Hebrew first, then into Latin, ensuring its
diffusion in the Christian West. Like the insertion
of the small magnetic compass, a universal projection was innovative at this time because there
are very few medieval examples outside the manuscript tradition (for example, orthographic projection on the astrolabe on the globe, cat. 120). A
large, similar astrolabe, also attributed to Dorn, is
equally innovative and dated three years earlier to
1483 (Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence).
F.R.M.

122

Attributed to Hans Dorn

Viennese, 1430/1440-1509

MARTIN BYLICA'S TORQUETUM

1487

Buda?
brass
height 71 (277/s); base 43.3 x 56 (17 x 22)
references: Rosinska 1974; Schallaburg 1982, 339340, no. 285; Poulle 1983, 32-35; Turner 1987,
17-18
Jagiellonian University, Cracow
The torquetum "may rather be considered an
example of conspicuous intellectual consumption
than a much used instrument" (Turner 1987, 18).
This perhaps explains, apart from the piece's obvious fragility, why only two known medieval
examples have survived although several more
are known from the sixteenth century and the
instrument is described in medieval manuscripts
and early printed books. One of the two surviving
torqueta was bequeathed to the Jagiellonian University by Martin Bylica (as were cats. 120,121).
The other belonged to Nicholas of Cues at the
beginning of the fifteenth century and is now at
Bernkastel-Cues.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

223

The torquetum is an invention of the thirteenth

century, devised in 1284 by Franco de Polonia or a
little earlier by Bernard de Verdun, and perhaps
ultimately inspired by an instrument invented by
the twelfth-century Islamic astronomer, Jabir b.
Aflah of Seville. It represents schematically the
several reference planes and circles of the celestial
and terrestrial spheres and enabled mechanical
solutions when converting coordinates between
the equatorial, ecliptical, and horizontal planes.
That is, it gave geometrical rather than mathematical solutions to astronomical problems, but
not as with an astrolabe, which uses an analogue
system.
The planes represented, from the base upwards,
are: the horizontal; the equatorial, adjustable for
the latitude of the place of use; the plane of the
ecliptic, which is fixed to the equatorial plane at
an inclination of about 23.5, depending on the
maker's data, and is engraved with a circumferential scale of degrees; and finally the vertical plane,
which can be rotated on the ecliptical plane over
which moves an alidade, with sighting vanes,
bearing the support for the vertical plane.
Martin Bylica's torquetum is engraved, like his
other instruments, in Roman antiqua script and is
certainly by the same maker as the rest of the
instrumentarium. The disc representing the vertical plane has a circumferential scale, which is
used with an alidade equipped with sight-vanes;
from the center hangs a plumb-line and bob. A
horizontal sundial and a small compass are on the
base-plate. On either side of the sundial are parallel racks for the adjustable supports of the equatorial plane.
This torquetum, which was probably made by
Hans Dorn of Vienna, resembles another designed
in 1467 by the astronomer Regiomontanus; he
described its use in a brief treatise.
F.R.M.

123

ASTROLABE
late i$th century ?
Perugia ?
brass, partially gilt
diameter 27.6 (w7/s)
inscribed (on a scroll on the back): ALPHENVS:
SEVERVS GENIO SVO: ET COMMODITATI -F"

references: Danti 1579, Conestabile 1848, 14-15;

Uzielli 1875, 300-304; Uzielli i88Q; Rohde 1923,
90-92; Gunther 1932, 2:322-325, no. 171
Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
This planispheric astrolabe of the European Renaissance is highly ornate and untypical. The tracery of the rete (see cat. 121) is of zoomorphic
design, worked in relief. Each end of the Capricorn band terminates in the head of an animal,
224

CIRCA 1492

presumably a goat but much elongated. The

"bodies" attached are of snakes and form the
Capricorn band. One head holds what could be a
fruit or the severed head of a snake between its
jaws. The remaining tracery is based on what
appear to be four goat's legs and hooves, an intertwined snake-pattern, possibly two rythons, a
flaming torch, and two dolphins. A human head
decorates the top of the central pin which holds
the components of the astrolabe together.
The symbolism of the overall design has not
been elucidated. As is usual, the tips of various
pointed parts of the tracery represent the positions of a selection of apparently thirty stars.
Their names are engraved close by and the ecliptic
circle is divided into the zodiacal divisions. The
limb of the mater is engraved with the customary
scales of degrees and equal-hour divisions (0-12,
twice) and is attached to a suspension-piece, modeled in relief, representing a bearded head
between two dolphins, with a pivoted ring. There
are six plates, engraved on either side, for a total
of twelve different latitudes. The back of the
astrolabe is engraved, conventionally, with a
zodiac calendar scale (o Aries, 10.5 March) within

the outer scales of degrees. Inside the zodiac calendar scale is a diagram of unequal hours, used
in conjunction with the semi-diametrical rule
normally on the front of the instrument, but easily transferred to the back as a sundial. Below
the diagram is a "shadow-square" used to survey
and reach observations and calculations which
would otherwise require trigonometry.
Within the central, six o'clock hour-circle of
the diagram is a coat of arms engraved with cornucopic decoration: the shield is charged with a
doubled-tailed lion rampant, the arms of the
Alfani family. There is a reference, as far back as
the seventeenth century, to an astrolabe supposedly made by Piervincenzo Danti de' Rinaldi
having been in the Alfani family collection. If the
Hamburg astrolabe, which was acquired in 1893
from Frau Margarethe Gaiser and which had
passed through the collection of Frederic Spitzer,
is indeed this instrument, then its eclectic nature
and the fact that it surfaced in the later nineteenth century would not be cause for concern.
Prof. Thomas Settle has generously shared
with us the following information concerning the
astrolabe's history. Ottavio Lancellotti (1593-

1671), in a 1646 entry in his manuscript chronicle/diary (the original manuscript is preserved in
the Biblioteca Augusta in Perugia), mentioned an
astrolabe known by him to be in the house of
Luzio Alfani as having been executed by Piervincenzo Danti de' Rinaldi. Piervincenzo had in 1498
completed an Italian translation of Joannes de Sacrobosco's treatise La Sfera, dedicating the work to
Alfano Alfani and referring in this dedication to
an astrolabe then under construction. Egnazio,
Piervincenzo's grandson, published this translation, and in the Proemio to the three editions
(1571,1574,1579) referred to an astrolabe still in
the Casa Alfani made by his grandfather for
Alfano (Danti 1579). What is possibly this same
astrolabe was described in 1848 by Count Gian
Carlo Conestabile (Conestabile 1848,14-15), who
was related by marriage and inheritance to the
Alfani family. In 1875 Gustavo Uzielli published
engraved illustrations of Conestabile's astrolabe
(Uzielli 1875, 300-304 and plate), which were
later reproduced in reduced form by Gunther
(1932) in his discussion of the Hamburg instrument (the receipt which Uzielli gave to the conte
Conestabile for the astrolabe "to be reproduced
[reprodotto]... by the 'shop' of the Military Engineers of Rome/' probably a reference to the production of the engraving plates rather than to a
three-dimensional reproduction, still survives in
the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze). By
1889 Uzielli reported that the astrolabe was no
longer in Italy (Uzielli 1889). The inscription on
the engraved scroll on the back of the astrolabe,
which refers to Alfano Alfani, is somewhat
ambiguous on the issue of authorship: Alfano
Severo, for his own inspiration and pleasure,
made it [had it made (?)].
F.R.M.

124

WISE MEN ON MOUNT ATHOS

from a volume of illustrations to Sir John
Mandeville, Travels
c. 1410-1420
Bohemian
silverpoint and pen and black ink with watercolor,
body color, and gold leaf, on light green prepared
vellum; manuscript, 16 fols.
22.5 x 18.1 (87/8xyV8)
references: Warner 1889, XLII, 9, pi. 18; Cologne
1978-1980, 3:106-107; Krdsa 1983, pi. 19; Deluz
1988; Rowlands 1988, ly, no. i
The British Library Board, London, Add. MS 24189,
fol. i5r
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a guide for
pilgrims bound for Jerusalem that was written in
1356, was undoubtedly one of the most popular
travel accounts of the Middle Ages. More than 250
extant manuscripts attest to its popularity. Nineteenth-century scholars, however, discredited it as

a firsthand account of the East, characterizing it

instead as a mere compilation of earlier sources
organized within the traditional framework of the
Imago mundi (Image of the World) by an
unknown author. In the narrative, classical and
biblical sources are freely mixed with information
from medieval encyclopedias as well as historical
and pseudo-historical texts. Many earlier accounts
of pilgrimages and travels to the East are quoted
more or less verbatim.
This manuscript consists simply of twentyeight miniatures carefully painted on both sides of
fourteen folios. No accompanying text is present
to help identify the subject matter, but recent
studies have shown that the images are based on
the Czech translation of the Travels made by Vavrinec of Bfezova. The miniaturist, undoubtedly a
Bohemian artist, has been identified by Otto
Pacht as the Master of the Dietrichstein Martyrology of Gerona, who worked on the famous
Wenceslaus Bible of 1402. More recently Josef
Krasa proposed that the author of the present
manuscript should be called the Master of the
Mandeville Travels and that two illuminations in
the last part of the Gerona manuscript should also
be ascribed to him.
The illustration on folio 15r is based on Mandeville's account of Mount Athos, in chapter 5 of
Vavrinec's translation: "There is also another hill
which men call Athos; and that is so high that its
shadow stretches to Lemnos, which is distant from
it nearly seventy-eight miles. Upon these hills the
air is so clear and so pure that no wind can be felt
there; and so no animal can be seen there; and so
no animal nor bird can live there, the air is so dry.
And men say in those countries that once wise
men went up on the hills and held to their noses
sponges soaked with water to catch the air, for the
air was so dry. And also up on those hills they

wrote letters in the dust with their fingers, and at

the end of a year they went up again and found
the same letters that they had written the year
before as fresh as they were on the first day, without any defect. And therefore it certainly appears
that these hills pass beyond the clouds to the pure
air" (see also Warner 1889, 9). This account is
basically a compilation of passages from, respectively, Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum naturale
(vi. 21), Gervase of Tilbury's Otia imperialia, and
another passage from Vincent of Beauvais based
on Peter Comestor (Deluz 1988, 74-76). The
illustrator portrayed wise men on Mount Athos
observing the stars, while another three with long
sticks write in the dust the letters that were still
as fresh after a year as on the day they were
made. For a fifteenth-century writer the scene
would probably also have suggested geomancy.
The astronomers in the background examine the
heavenly bodies with quadrants and astrolabes.
The carefully depicted quadrants are deployed in
the proper fashion but the astrolabe is notwhen
used for observation, it would have been held by
its ring. The position of the stars and thus of the
heavens is found by aligning a star with the sight
holes of the alidade and reading off its angles on
the rim.
J.M.M.

125

ASTRONOMY
c. 1520-1525
Flemish
tapestry, wool warp, 5 ends per cm

240 x 340 (942/2 x i337/sj

references: Burger 1950, 863-864, fig. 4; Stromberg

1965, 14-28, 46-47; Cavallo 1967, 1:79; Paris 19731974,157155, no. 64; New York 1974, 157155, no.
69; Joubert 1987, 165, 167, fig. 162
The Rohss Museum of Arts and Crafts, Gothenburg
Astronomy is personified as a female figure who
holds a scroll bearing her name (Astronomie): she
points toward the stars, which are the object of
study of two astronomers in the foreground. The
first holds a rolled parchment in one hand and
an armillary sphere (showing the zodiacal signs
Pisces [?], Aries, and Taurus on the ecliptic) in the
other. He observes the stars, especially the moon
and an adjacent feature that may be a comet. His
seated companion also notes his observations in a
book. The scientific instrument on the lectern
before him is probably meant to be a nocturlabe,
an instrument used to determine time at night, or
an astrolabe, the basic instrument used for calculating the position of the stars (see cat. 121).
The heavens are observed by shepherds, too, a
cirumstance that may allude to the Star of Bethlehem which announced the birth of Christ or to

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

225

the fact that the first astronomer was said to have

been Endymion the shepherd.
Traditionally the arts and sciences were classified and personified as the Liberal Arts. The
categories were already established by the fifth
century A.D., in Martianus Capella's allegorical
novel, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, in
which he introduced the personifications of the
trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic) and
the quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music).
This extremely well-preserved tapestry was
probably part of a set of seven illustrating the
seven Liberal Arts. Other tapestries are known
with related designs, showing Rhetoric (Musee
des Arts Decoratifs, Paris), Arithmetic (Musee de
Cluny, Paris), and Music (Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston). Rhetoric and Arithmetic (which bears
the date 1520) were probably both woven from a
common series of full-scale cartoons. Astronomy
has some similar design features, but different
226

C I R C A 1492

side-column and costume types, and slightly more

naturalistic figures and rendering of space.
Though it has sometimes been dated earlier than
these pieces, about 1510-1515, it is more likely
from a slightly later copy series, of perhaps about
1520-1525. Music seems to come from still a
third cartoon series, based on similar compositional models. It is uncertain where these tapestries were designed and woven. They appear to be
Flemish, but may not all be from the same center.
Both Tournai and Bruges have been suggested;
but Astronomy might even come from some
smaller center, perhaps with greater influence
from Brussels.
J.M.M. and C.A.

126

PORTRAIT OF PTOLEMY
from Claudius Ptolemy, Geography
c. 1453

Italian
manuscript on vellum, 104 fols.

5^-5 *43-5

foxi/Vsj

references: Wieser 1932, 211, 275-2^4; Ferrari

1939; Venice 1968, 52, no. 48; Zorzi 1988,

122-123,z^-

Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Cod. Gr. Z.

388 (coll. 333), fol. 6v
Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90-168 A.D.) is best known
today for his Almagest, an astronomical work; the
Tetrabiblos, an astrological compendium; and his
Geography in eight books, in which he mapped
the known world. While improving on an earlier,
now lost, account of the world by Marinus of
Tyre, Ptolemy proposed three systems of carto-

graphic projection: one in which the world is

shown upon a conic graticule with converging
meridians and semicircular parallels, another with
curved meridians and parallels, and a third in
which armillary rings surround the earth, which
appears as a sphere seen in perspective. Especially
important are the tables of coordinates giving the
latitude and longitude of principal towns and
cities, region by region, which provide the basic
instruction for mapmakers. Ptolemy's Geography
was not known in western Europe until the fifteenth century. The oldest Greek manuscript is
Byzantine and dates from the thirteenth century,
when the scholar Maximus Planudes realized
the importance of Ptolemy's contribution to
geography.
This manuscript in the original Greek, which
was copied by Giovanni Rhosos in the fifteenth
century for Cardinal Bessarion (as it appears in an
early catalogue: "Geographia Ptolemaei optima
cum picturis, liber B[essarionis] card[inalis] Tusculani. In loco 49") combines textual accuracy
with artistic beauty. It is based on the so-called
"A" recension of the Geography and includes
twenty-seven maps, among them the well-known
Ptolemaic planisphere, or map of the world. Of all
the Greek manuscripts of the Geography, Cod.
Gr. Z. 388 is the only one containing an imaginary portrait of Ptolemy himself. The scholar is
shown outside his study, holding an astrolabe.
Books and various scientific instruments can be
seen inside, including another astrolabe, a quadrant, and two torqueta. Ptolemy is bearded,
dressed in a rich coat lined with ermine, and
wearing a gold crown. This portrayal reflects the
widespread confusion of the Greek geographer,
who was born in Ptolemai's but lived either in
Alexandria or in Canopus, fifteen miles east of
that town, with one of the Ptolemies who were
kings of Egypt. Below the illumination is a Greek
epigram written in gold letters: "Ptolemy/I know
that [I] am mortal, a creature of a day; but when I
search into the multitudinous revolving spirals of
the stars my feet no longer rest on the earth, but,
standing by Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the Gods/' These verses, from a
collection of ancient and medieval Greek poems
known as the Greek Anthology (ix, 577), are
accompanied by Nicolo Perotti's Latin translation
and are especially appropriate here, not just
because they relate to Ptolemy but also because
Maximus Planudes, who promoted a new interest
in Ptolemy's Geography, was also famous as an
anthologist of Greek epigrams.
j. M. M.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

227

^7
WORLD MAP
from Claudius Ptolemy, Geography
c. 1466
manuscript on vellum, 124 fols.
44 x 29.5 fi72/4 x n5/s)
references: Fischer 1932, 215, 335-340, 344;
Fischer in Stevenson 1932, 3-15; Pagani 1975;
Dz'Mce 19,27, 268
Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, MS V.F. 32,
fols. ji.v-j2r
Ptolemy's Geography, written in the second century A.D., is in some ways the quintessence of
classical cartographical knowledge. Its table of
coordinates provided the basic information for
mapmakers, giving the positions of major cities
and towns according to their longitude and lati-

228

CIRCA 1492

tude. In the absence of a thorough critical edition

of the Geography, some aspects of the original
text remain obscure and certain questions unresolved, especially as regards its cartographic illustration. The oldest Greek manuscripts known
today date from the late thirteenth century. It
seems to have been a Byzantine scholar, Maximus
Planudes, who "rediscovered" Ptolemy's book.
Because the manuscript he obtained had no maps,
he had some drawn to illustrate the text. The
result pleased the Byzantine emperor Andronicos
ii Paleologus (1282-1378) so much that he had the
manuscript copied.
The illustrated manuscripts of the Geography
can be divided into two groups: the "A" recension, which contains twenty-seven maps, and the
"B" recension, with sixty-five. For Ptolemy, the
known world occupied half of the northern hemisphere and extended south of the equator. Various

manuscripts have a note added to Book vm that

"Agathos Daimon, a technician of Alexandria,
drew the whole world from Ptolemy's Geography." Although the historical Agathodaimon, as
we would call him, probably lived in late antiquity, it seems improbable, for various reasons, that
the world map found in the Byzantine manuscripts of the Geography copies a classical prototype; the Byzantine maps were probably drawn in
the late thirteenth or fourteenth century based on
the instructions found in Ptolemy's text.
About 1400 the Florentine merchant Palla
Strozzi first brought a Byzantine manuscript of
Ptolemy's Geography to western Europe and it
was later translated into Latin by Emanuele Chrysoloras and Jacopo Angelo de Scarperia (Dilke
1987, 268). MS v.F.32, which contains this translation, includes the twenty-seven maps of the "A"
recension. The new interest in Ptolemy's Geogra-

phy in western Europe was part of the rediscovery

of classical antiquity that was fundamental to the
Renaissance. In this case, however, the learning of
antiquity was to some extent demonstrably out of
date: The Ptolemaic image of the world was often
difficult to reconcile with the more accurate portolan charts reflecting current navigational experience. In slightly later Italian editions of the
Geography, three new maps, respectively of
Spain, northern Europe, and Italy, are added to
the canonical twenty-seven. The general reverence the Italian humanists felt for classical authority was thus qualified by the necessity to add new
information, a process that also led to the gradual
improvement of the original twenty-seven maps
throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Especially notable among the Latin Ptolemy
manuscripts produced in Italy were the maps
drawn by the German Benedictine monk Donnus
Nicolaus, who in 1466 presented an illustrated
copy of the Geography to Borso d'Este, duke of
Ferrara, which is preserved in the Biblioteca
Estense, Modena. The present manuscript is very
close in style to that copy and has been convincingly attributed to Donnus Nicolaus. It formed
part of the Farnese library and was brought to
Naples from Parma in the eighteenth century.
The world map, on folios /iv-yzr, follows a
simple conical projection with straight meridians
and curving parallels in a grid that is visible
beneath the geographical features.
The world is set between the parallel of Thule
to the north and the parallel opposite Meroe to
the south. The equator, the parallel of Syene, and
jhe Tropic of Capricorn (which runs below the
southern border of the map) are drawn in gold,
as is the diagonal band of the zodiac. The map
largely follows Ptolemy, showing Africa linked to
Asia by a narrow strip of land. The Mediterranean
area is better defined but exaggerated in length.
Farther east the configuration becomes increasingly less precise, being based mainly on travel
accounts and lists of towns rather than on observation. This manuscript may have served as the
prototype for the maps in the printed edition of
the Geography produced in Bologna in 1477.
J.M.M.

128

Donate Bramante

Urbino, 1444-1514

DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS

c. 1490-1499
detached fresco
102 x 127 (4O2/4 x 50)
references: Murray 1962, 29-31, fig. 7; WolffMetternich 1967-196.5, 74-76; Woodward 1987,
357; Pinacoteca di Brera 1988, 121-130, no. and fig.
94a; Borsi 1989, 163-166
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
This fresco formed part of a cycle of famous
men painted by Donate Bramante in the Casa
Panigarola in Milan near the end of the fifteenth
century certainly before 1499 when the artist
left the city. Various military heroes were shown
in painted niches, while the two philosophers
were placed over a doorway. The attribution of the
frescoes to Bramante was first made by Giovanni
Paolo Lomazzo, in his Trattato dell'arte della pittura (Treatise on the Art of Painting) published in
Milan in 1584, and it seems completely convincing. The house came in to the possession of the
Panigarola family in 1548; in the late fifteenth
century at any rate in 1486 Gasparo Ambrogio
Visconti, a soldier, ducal councilor, and poet, was
living there. Visconti, a friend of Bramante, probably commissioned the painting.
The image of the globe between the two philosophers was painted a fresco, in one working session (giornata). The configuration of the world
still largely reflects Ptolemy's Geography (see
cats. 126, 127), with Africa connected to Asia by a

strip of land, so that the Indian ocean in which

Taprobana (the modern Sri Lanka) is found but
Madagascar is not to be seen becomes an
enclosed sea. Despite some scholarly claims to the
contrary, the globe does not seem to record the
most recent Portuguese discoveries along the coast
of Africa. As far as Asia is concerned, the closest
analogy is with the mappamundi included in
manuscripts of the De cosmographia of the firstcentury geographer Pomponius Mela, for example
the map by Pirrus de Noha in the Vatican Library
(see Woodward 1987, 357, fig. 18.79, pi- 19)^ tne
configuration of Europe, however, especially
Scandinavia, seems to reflect a more recent
source. In his Ricordi, first published in 1546, Fra
Sabba Castiglione called Bramante a cosmographer; this may, of course, simply reflect a knowledge of Bramante's depiction of the globe in this
fresco, but the possibility cannot be excluded
that he was also involved in mapmaking, as quite
a few artists of the period had an interest in
cartography.
Democritus, now famous as an atomist, is mentioned as a laughing philosopher by Cicero and
Horace, while Heraclitus is first characterized as
the weeping philosopher by Sotion, the master of
Seneca. Many ancient writers, particularly Lucian
and Juvenal, make a contrasting pair out of the
two philosophers, with Democritus laughing at
and Heraclitus weeping about the stupidity of the
world. Above the two philosophers can be seen a
pseudo-antique relief, whose significance is not
clear, nor is that of the monogram in the middle.
On one side is an antique triumphal procession
and on the other a scene of submission, both of
which may relate to a passage in Juvenal. J.M.M.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

229

31
Juan de la Cosa
Spanish, c. 1450/1460-1510

WORLD CHART

1500

parchment
960 x 1830 (373/2 x 72)
references: Vascdno 1892; Morison 1942, 1:186188; Skelton 1958, 71; Ganong 1964, 8-43, 469473; Morison 1974, 139-140; Parry 1979, 113-114;
Campbell 1982, p. 14-15; Nebenzahl 1990, 30-33
Museo Naval, Madrid
This large mappamundi one of the most important of all cartographic records of the early European exploration of the Americasbears the date
1500 and the signature of Juan de la Cosa, who
sailed aboard the Nina on Columbus' second
voyage (some scholars believe that the Juan de la

129
Henricus Martellus

German, active c. 1480-1496

WORLD MAP
from Insularium illustratum
c. 1489
manuscript on vellum, 75 fols.
30 x 47 (ii4/sx iSVz)
references: Almagia 1940; London 1960, 19, no. 28,
pi. ma; Bagrow and Skelton 1964, 81-82, pi. mi;
Destombes 1964, 230-232; Hamann 1968; Klemp
1968, no. 7; Campbell 1987, 72-74, 77-78, 213
The British Library Board, London, MS Add. 15760,
fols. 6817-69r
Henricus Martellus (Henry Hammer) was a
German cartographer who worked in Florence in
the late fifteenth century. He is best known today
as the author of the maps that are included in two
manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geography and three
manuscripts of his own Insularium illustratum,
as well as of the large world map now in the
Beinecke Library at Yale. The mappamundi in the
London manuscript of the Insularium still
adheres for the most part to the Ptolemaic model
for the eastern half of the world, but Asia is no
longer linked to Africa by a narrow strip of land.
The southern half of Africa, which had just been
explored by Portuguese navigators, is somewhat
exaggerated in length, literally outgrowing the
boundary of the known world, as its southern tip
had now been reached and even circumnavigated.
The Cape of Good Hope (capo d'esperanza) is
230

CIRCA

1492

clearly identified, while a few inscriptions the east

coast of southern Africa testify to the most recent
coastal voyages. The names on the African coast
clearly reflect knowledge of the travels of Diogo
Cao his voyage as far as Cape Santa Maria in the
Kongo (1482-1484) and his second voyage, to
Cape Cross (1485-1487) and also of Bartolomeu
Dias' circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope
(1487-1488). The farthest point reached by Dias,
the great Fish River, is duly recorded (ilha de
fonti). An inscription next to the Kongo mentions
the commemorative stone (Padrao) Cao erected at
Cape Negro during his second voyage (Hamann
1968, 195-199, fig. 15). Other sections of the map
are not as accurate. Madagascar is not recorded,
and Asia is still poorly depicted, while Scandinavia follows the configuration found in the second
map of Claudius Calvus, with Greenland depicted
as a peninsula linked to northern Europe.
The world maps of Martellus have often been
associated with Martin Behaim's globe of 1492
(Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg);
both are non-Ptolemaic but graduated with
degrees for longitude and latitude. (The present
example, however, does not include such graduations. ) The differences between the two, however,
especially in their mapping of southern Africa,
make a direct relationship improbable.
J.M.M.

130 not in exhibition

Cosa who is recorded as the master-owner of the

Santa Maria on the first voyage was a different
person). In a celebrated incident that occurred on
12 June 1494 off the southern coast of Cuba, de la
Cosa, together with all the other members of the
expedition, signed a document prepared by Columbus stating that Cuba was part of a continent.
Columbus had been sailing west and was less than
fifty miles from rounding Cuba's southwestern
edge, but he decided at that point to turn back,
evidently satisfied that Cuba was indeed part of
the so-called "Golden Chersonese/7 the elongated
peninsula at the southeastern end of Asia that was
represented on European maps of the period (see
cat. 129). He pressured his crew into supporting
this idea, which would have proven that he was
close to the realms of the Chinese emperor, but
his assertion was quickly challenged when he
returned to Spain.
Juan de la Cosa's map shows Cuba as an island.
Whether it depends on later information or repre-

sents de la Cosa's recantation of the coerced

pledge is unclear. It has been suggested that the
map, though dated 1500, was completed some
years later. Some scholars believe that the map is
an early copy of the lost original of 1500. Juan de
la Cosa himself participated in three expeditions
to the Caribbean coast of South America and was
killed in 1510 by a poisoned arrow during a slave
raid in Cartagena Bay, in what is now Colombia.
His impressive map grapples with the problem
of representing the newly-known territories
within the framework of the traditional portolan
mappamundi. It is unclear whether the contours
of the mainland that extend north and south of
the Caribbean are meant to be seen as an extension of Asia, which runs off the map at the right.
It is not even certain whether they are thought to
be connected to each other a representation of
Saint Christopher bearing the Christ child covers
the area to the west of the Caribbean. This presumably is meant to refer to Columbus, whose

signature read Xpb Ferens ("Christ bearing") and

who increasingly saw himself in the role of carrying the divine word to foreign lands. The Virgin
and Child are also depicted on the map, in the
wind rose just to the left of the designation Mare
Oceanum (Ocean Sea), another reference to the
missionary character of Spanish sponsorship of
the voyages.
As is the case with the Catalan Atlas (cat. i),
some of the inscriptions on de la Cosa's map
appear upside-down or at an angle of 90, suggesting that it was meant to be placed on a table and
looked at from all sides. Although de la Cosa
includes information based on the latest voyages
to Africa, India, and the New World, the depiction
of the eastern regions of Asia has changed little
from the time of the Catalan Atlas, and the figures at the upper right corner of the map are still
the legendary Gog and Magog (see Massing essay
"Observations and Beliefs: The World of the
Catalan Atlas" in this catalogue).

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

23!

The Western Hemisphere is out of scale with

the Old World on the map, either out of ignorance
or a desire to show the details more clearly. The
map is full of place names in the Antilles and
along the South American and African coasts.
The prominent vertical line that touches South
America is the "line of demarcation" created by
the Treaty of Tordesillas to separate areas of Spanish and Portuguese sovereignty. The detail of the
coastline to the north, around Newfoundland and
Cape Breton, is thought to reflect a lost map
drawn by John Cabot.
j. A.L.

132

Martin Waldseemiiller

German, 1470-1518

WORLD MAP

1507

woodcut on 12 sheets
120 x 240, each sheet 45 x 60 (4^/4 x 9 4^2, each
sheet i73/4 x 23%)

references: Fischer and Wieser 1903, 1-18, 45-55,

pis. 1-13; Laubenberger 1959; Fite and Freeman
1969, 24-27, no. 8; Klemp 1976, no. 4; Harris 1985
Furstlich zu Waldburg-Wolfegg'sche
Kupferstichkabinett
In his Cosmographiae introductio published in
Saint-Die in Lorraine in May and September
1507, Martin Waldseemiiller (or perhaps Matthias
Ringmann: see Laubenberger 1959) noted that
the book was to constitute "a sort of introduction
to the cosmographical configurations which we
have depicted both on a globe and on a map/'
Today the map is known in only one impression,
in the library of the prince of Waldburg-Wolf egg.
It was discovered there early in this century in a
large folio volume bearing the ex libris of Johann
Schoner (1477-1557), the famous cartographer
from Nuremberg. This remarkable volume contained Martin Waldseemiiller's woodcut world
maps of 1507 and 1516 (both unique examples)
and Diirer's map of the heavens of 1515 (see cats.
118,119), as well as gores of Schoner's celestial
globe of 1517.
Martin Waldseemiiller was born in Radolfzell
in Germany in 1470 and died probably in 1518, in
Saint-Die. He settled at the court of Rene n, duke
of Lorraine, where he produced various maps of
Europe and of the world. Most important is his
edition of Ptolemy's Geography published in
Strasbourg in 1513, for its new maps brought the
traditional Ptolemaic world view up to date.
According to Waldseemiiller's own account, his
world map of 1507 was drawn and printed in the
small town of Saint-Die, although the woodcuts
seem to have been made in Strasbourg. An
232

CIRCA 1492

inscription on a later map indicates that the original printing was 1,000 copies.
The map's full title is Universalis cosmographia
secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Amend
Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes (A Map of the
World According to the Tradition of Ptolemy and
the Voyages of Americus Vespucius and others).

Appropriately, representations of Ptolemy and

Vespucci appear at the top at either side, emphasizing the fact that the configuration combines
the traditional Ptolemaic vision of the world with
the results of the latest geographical explorations.
Africa is shown to be circumnavigable, but the
topography of India and what is now Sri Lanka

still follows traditional Ptolemaic models. The

depiction of the Far East reflects medieval fiction
more than fact. America is shown as a long,
narrow strip divided into two sections. The islands
of the West Indies are given suitable prominence,
especially Spagniolia (Hispaniola), and Isabella
(Cuba). On the slightly earlier Juan de la Cosa and

Cantino maps, the land that was depicted west of

these islands was probably meant to represent not
America but China, since Columbus and his
fellow navigators thought they had approached
the coast of Asia although the possibility cannot
be excluded that the authors of these maps had
some knowledge of the coast of Florida. Waldsee-

miiller, however, recognizes this land as a new

entity, and he shows it, on the gores of his globe
made the same year, as quite separate from either
Japan (Zipangri) or China.
Brazil, discovered by Cabral in 1500, is here
for the first time ever on a map given the name
America. The Cosmographiae introductio

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

233

explains the rationale for this name, Waldseemiiller's mistaken belief that it was Amerigo Vespucci
(rather than Christopher Columbus) who first set
foot on the continent: "the fourth part of the
earth, since Amerigo discovered it, we may call
Amerige, the land of Amerigo, so to speak or
America/' Waldseemiiller continues, "Now, these
parts of the earth have been more extensively
explored and a fourth part has been discovered by
Amerigo Vespucci, as will be set forth in what
follows [Amerigo Vespucci's Letters were printed
in the same volume]. Inasmuch as both Europe
and Asia received their names from women, I see
no reason why any one should justly object to
calling this part Amerige, i.e. the land of
Amerigo, or America, after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great ability/'
Waldseemiiller intended his map as a compendium of information about the findings of the
voyages of exploration. In the lower left corner,
an inscription states that the map includes: "A
general delineation of the various lands and
islands, including some of which the ancients
make no mention, discovered lately between 1497
and 1504 in four voyages over the seas, two by
Fernando of Castille, and two by Manuel of Portugal, most serene monarchs, with Americus Vespucius as one of the navigators and officers of the
fleet; and especially a delineation of many places
hitherto unknown. All this we have carefully
drawn on the map, to furnish true and precise

234

CIRCA 1492

geographical knowledge/' The upper left corner

contains more data on the "new" continent: "For
there is a land, discovered by Columbus, a captain
of the King of Castile, and by Americus Vespucius, both men of very great ability, which,
though... it lies... between the tropics, nevertheless extends about 19 degrees beyond the Tropic of
Capricorn toward the Antarctic Pole
Here a
greater amount of gold has been found than of
any other metal." In addition to being graced with
the name America, Brazil is also symbolized on
this map by a red macaw as on the Cantino map
(this time with the label rubei psitaci).
J.M.M.

*33

Francesco Rosselli
Florentine, 1448-before 1513

WORLD MAP
c. 1508
engraving
21 x 35 (8V4 x ij3/4)
references: National Gallery of Art 1973,
47-59; Shirley 1983, 32, no. 28; Nebenzahl 1990,
56-57

Arthur Holzheimer Collection

News of the voyages of exploration first reached

the educated community in Europe through books
like Columbus' Letter (cat. 136) and Vespucci's
Mundus Novus (New World), and then through
printed maps such as this one. Signed by the
engraver Francesco Rosselli, this oval projection
was probably produced a few years after the coniform projection which Rosselli engraved after the
design of a certain Giovanni Matteo Contarini in
1506, known from a unique impression in the
British Library.
A brother of the painter Cosimo Rosselli, Francesco Rosselli was also active as a miniaturist and
painter. An important group of early Florentine
engravings executed in the so-called "Broad
Manner" has convincingly been attributed to
him. He is also the author of a famous engraved
view of the city of Florence, known today only
from a woodcut copy. He is recorded as having
been in Venice in 1505 and 1508; in the latter year
he was described as having been in the audience in
Venice at a lecture on geometry given by Fra Luca
Pacioli (cats. 143) in the Venetian church of San
Bartolomeo. At the death of Francesco's son Alessandro in 1525, an inventory of the stock of the
family print shop in Florence was prepared which
listed a number of maps, prints by other contemporary artists, woodblocks, and engraving plates.
Rosselli's elegantly simple oval projection is
graduated in 360 longitude and 180 latitude.
Having determined to show the entire globe in

one image, Rosselli had to determine the relationship between the lands described by Columbus,
Vespucci, and Cabot and the traditional image of
Asia. Newfoundland appears at the upper left, as
the easternmost limit of Asia. The West Indies are
below, with Cuba shown as an island, and below
that is a South American continent, labeled
Mundus Novus. In his Fourth Voyage of 15021503, Columbus had explored the coast of Central
America, designating many place names. These
appear in Rosselli's map at the lower right, along
the southeast Asian coast. The island at the
extreme right edge of the map is Japan.
This map is known in only two other impressions, one in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,
Florence, and a hand-colored example in the
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, which
was long thought to be a manuscript map rather
than an engraved one.
J.A.L.

*34
HUNT-LENOX GLOBE
before 1507(7]
engraved copper globe
diameter 12.7 (5)
references: Harrisse 1892, 470-471, no. 87;
Stevenson 1921, 1:73-74, figs. 34-35; Fite and
Freeman 1969, 22-23
New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations, Rare Books and Manuscripts
The Hunt-Lenox globe was discovered in Paris in
1855 or 1856 by the architect Richard M. Hunt; he
presented it to James Lenox, who donated it, with
his collection of books, to the New York Public
Library. The globe is an engraved pair of copper
hemispheres joined at the equator. Two holes
pierced for an axis provide evidence of a mount,
which is now missing. Originally the globe may
have been part of an astronomical clock, as was
the case with the Jagiellonian globe in Cracow.
The old world, from Europe to Asia, occupies
much of the sphere's longitude, leaving little space
for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Europe is
rather summarily delineated: We need only
observe the shape of Portugal, France, or the British Isles. The proportions of Africa are not very
accurate either, but its southern tip is at least separated from Asia, which had not been the case in
Ptolemaic world maps. The Cape of Good Hope,
circumnavigated by Bartolomeu Dias in 14871488, is clearly identified. The Indian Ocean is
poorly recorded; similarly the depiction of Asia
depends on traditional accounts, and the strip of
land between Asia and Africa from the Ptolemaic
world map has been fragmented into a string of
unidentified islands. Most of the inscriptions on
the globe look back to the medieval picture of

Asia, combining antique sources, travel accounts,

and fabulous legends. The anonymous engraver
filled the ocean with ships and sea monsters and
stressed the dangers of navigation by illustrating a
shipwreck off the coast of China. Most interesting
is the depiction of America. The two main islands
of the West Indies, Hispaniola and Cuba, are identified by inscriptions (respectively, Spagnolia and
Isabel); the third, to the west, is probably meant
to be Japan (Zipancri). The newly discovered continent is variously called Mundus novus, Terra
sanctae crucis, and Terra de Brazil, this last is
indeed Brazil, which was first reached by Pedro
Alvarez Cabral on 22 April 1500. North America
does not yet appear; nor indeed is the name
America employed. This may suggest that the
Hunt-Lenox globe was produced before 1507,
when Waldseemiiller published his map of the
world (cat. 132) and the gores for his globe, the
first documents to give that name to the new
continent.
J.M.M.

*35
Battista Agnese
Genoese, active c. 1536-1564

WORLD MAP
from a portolan atlas
c. 1543-1545
manuscript, 14 fols.
21.6x28.2 (SVzxuVs)
references: Spitzer and Wiener 1875; Wieser 1876,
541-561; Collection Spitzer 1890-1892, 5:143-144,
no. 30; Wagner 1931, 74-75, no. 32; Fite and
Freeman 1969, 58-59, no. 17
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University,
Providence
Battista Agnese, a cartographer and miniaturist
born in Genoa, seems to have spent most of his
life in Venice, where he produced atlases and maps
of great beauty; those which are signed attest to

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

235

his activity between 1536 and 1564. In many ways

his maps recall sea charts, but they seem never to
have been used in navigation: rather, they convey,
like a modern atlas, a global vision of the world as
seen from a European perspective and through
European eyes. More than seventy atlases by Battista Agnese are known today (see Wagner 1931,
1-110; 1947, 28-30), two of them in the John
Carter Brown Library in Providence. The socalled Charles v atlas exhibited here is splendidly
decorated. In fact it was made not for the emperor
but for his son, the future Philip n of Spain. A
frontispiece to the atlas shows Providence handing
over a globe to the young prince, together with
the arms of Castile and Aragon, and a dedication
to Philip: "Philippe Caroli Aug[usti] F[ilio]
Optimo princ[ipi] Providentia" (Providence to
Philip, excellent prince, son of Charles the Au236

CIRCA 1492

gust). Next comes a double page with a representation of the zodiac, then declination tables,
and a page with an illustration of Jupiter. This is
followed by eleven maps, beginning with the
world map. The others represent, respectively,
Spain and northwest Africa, northwest Europe,
the western and then the central part of the
Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Greek archipelago, the eastern Mediterranean, and finally, in
three maps, the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific
Oceans. The atlas is undated but internal evidence, as well as a study of the chronology of
Agnese's maps, suggests a date of 1543-1545. The
world map is of the so called post-Californian
type, showing California as a peninsula. This
"discovery/' made during Francisco de Ulloa's
exploration of the Gulf of California in 1539, was
first included by Agnese in his world map of 1542.

The world map itself is surrounded by the

winds blowing from twelve directions, with four
personifications (Faith, Charity, Justice, and
another Virtue) at the corners. The world is
superimposed on a projection constructed with
curved meridians and straight parallels. There are
large areas of unmapped territory, especially to
the north of Asia and America. The shape of the
Mediterranean, of Africa, and of Madagascar is
more or less accurate, but as in so many other
maps of this period Asia still depends on the
world map of Ptolemy The triangular form of the
Indian subcontinent is not understood; the island
that is now Sri Lanka (Taprobana) is still far too
large; and China and the Malaysian peninsula are
drawn without any direct knowledge of their configuration. America is depicted with more accuracy, although it is connected to the west with

China (Cataio provi[ncia] is written north of California, and Cataio p., on China). North America
is, however, linked to South America, which was
not the case on the Cantino and Waldseemuller
(cat. 132) maps. South America is identified as
Mundus Novus; Peru is also indicated, having
been conquered by Francisco Pizarro, who set out
from Panama in 1530 and sacked Cuzco which is
shown on the map in 1533. The Rio de la Plata
and the Straits of Magellan are indicated, the
latter with an uncharted land stretching towards
the Antarctic circle. Especially interesting is the
fact that the map records, with a continuous line,
the route of Magellan, who left Seville in September 1519 with five ships, only one of which, the
Victoria, completed the circumnavigation of the
globe to return to Spain in 1522 with its captain
Sebastian del Cano, a crew of fifteen men, and a
precious cargo. The other sea course that is indicated in gold, running from the New World to
Spain, is the route of the Spanish treasure fleet.
J.M.M.

(Santangel was treasurer of the Santa Hermandad,

the urban league set up by Ferdinand and Isabella), and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of the crown of
Aragon. One copy reached a printer's shop in
Barcelona and appeared as a pamphlet in Spanish
by the summer of 1493. A Latin translation by
Leandro de Cosco, made from a better text than
the manuscript used by the Barcelona printer,
served as the basis for nine editions of the letter
("Letter concerning the newly discovered islands
in the Indian Ocean") that appeared in 1493-1494
in Rome, Paris, Basel, and Antwerp and for an
Italian verse translation by Giuliano Dati, of
which three versions were printed in 1493 in
Rome and Florence.
The numerous translations and printings indicate that the demand for news of Columbus'
voyage was high. The literate public of Europe
thus learned of the voyage essentially in the
explorer's own words. He described the islands he
had visited, the timid "Indians" he had encountered, who "go naked... as their mothers bore
them," and his hope that they would be converted
to Christianity and that Hispaniola would serve as
a base for trade with the mainland belonging to

the Chinese emperor, the "Grand Khan." Columbus noted that he had not found the "human
monstrosities" that many had expected to inhabit
these distant regions, though he had encountered
cannibals and had heard of an island inhabited
solely by women. He promised to be able to
supply "as much gold as [their highnesses] may
need," spice, cotton, mastic, aloeswood, and
slaves. Columbus' letter was soon eclipsed in
popularity by the Mundus Novus ("New World"),
a sensationalized adaptation of Amerigo Vespucci's account of his voyages to South America, of
which sixty editions had appeared by the late
15205, as compared to a total of twenty-two editions of the Columbus letter.
In this Basel edition of 1493, an anonymous
woodcut labeled Insula hyspana represents
Columbus' encounter with the timorous, naked
natives. This woodcut depicts Columbus' ship as a
galley with an auxiliary sail, a craft more suitable
for use in the Mediterranean (a similar galley is
visible at the lower right of (cat. 151) Jacopo de'
Barbari's View of Venice). Other illustrations in
this edition contain more appropriate representations of ocean-going sailing ships.
j. A.L.

136

COLUMBUS' LANDING
from Christopher Columbus, De insulis inventis
Epistola, Basel, 1493 (fol. iv)
woodcut
13.5

X 10.5 ($l/4 X 42/8J

references: Morison 1942, i, 413-414; Hirsch 1976;

Gerbi 1986, 45-49; Taviani 1984; Jane 1988, cxxmCXLHIand
1-19
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University,
Providence
In late January or early February 1493, during his
homeward passage from the West Indies, Christopher Columbus composed a short letter describing
his voyage. Not addressed to anyone specifically
(it begins with the salutation "Sir" and bears the
date 15 February), it was evidently intended as a
general announcement of his achievement. It was
enclosed with another letter, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella and since lost, as well as a
detailed Journal of the voyage (the original of
which has long since disappeared); these documents were sent to the king and queen when he
arrived in Lisbon. Ferdinand and Isabella had this
general letter copied and distributed to various
officials who had been involved in mounting the
expedition, including to Luis de Santangel, who
had arranged the financing of Columbus' fleet
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

237

37
SCHLUSSELFELDER SHIP

1503
Nuremberg
silver, partly gilt, enamel, and paint
79*43-5 (3^8 xi7V8)
references: Oman 1963, 18-19, 21-24, P^s- xv-xvii;
Nuremberg 1971, 367, no. 660; Fusi 1977, #9-90,
95, pi. 9; New York and Nuremberg 1986, 224-227,
no. 81
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, on
permanent loan by Schlusselfeldersche Stiftung
Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century carracks are best
known today from their representation in manuscripts (see Villain-Gandossi 1985), paintings, and
engravings. The Livro das Armadas (Academia
das Ciencias, Lisbon), for example, is an invaluable
document showing the principal fleets of the Portuguese. More impressive still is a Netherlandish
painting in the National Maritime Museum in
Greenwich showing the arrival of the Infanta Beatriz of Portugal at Villefranche in 1522, with a
squadron of Portuguese carracks; one of them, in
the foreground, can be identified as the Santa
Caterina de Monte Sinai, a ship built in Cochin
(India) in 1511 (Greenhill 1982, 60-61). Threedimensional ship models are rare. One such is
the fifteenth-century wooden carrack that was
made as an ex-voto for the church of Mataro in
Catalonia (Maritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik,"
Rotterdam). Another is a more splendid object
altogetherthe Schliisselfelder ship.
Completed in 1503, this ship was originally
used as a wine container; the whole superstructure can be lifted off and the hull filled. The ship's
utilitarian function is emphasized in an inscription on a colored drawing after the vessel (Kunstbibliothek, Berlin), made by Jakob Mores, a
goldsmith from Hamburg: 'The silvergilt ship
weighs 26 marks. When you remove the upper
part, the lower section becomes a drinking vessel
that holds two measures of drink/ 7 More precisely,
the ship can hold 2.33 liters. In the Middle Ages
silver ships were used as table decorations, but
generally to hold table utensils and napkins, as
in the case of the nef (ship) described in a 1380
inventory of the goods of Charles v of France,
which also contained the king's languier to test
food for poison (see cat. 12), his spoon, and his
little knife and fork. Other nefs, such as the vessel
owned by Jean, duke of Berry, and illustrated in
a miniature of his Tres riches heures (1416), con-

238

CIRCA 1492

tained tranchoirs (dishes used for cutting and

eating meat) in silver or gold (for nefs in medieval
France, see Lightbown 1978, 30-31).
The ship is a carrack, a merchant ship "heavily
built, with carvel planking, with large and welldeveloped castles, three-masted, square-rigged on
fore and main with lateen mizzens" (Parry 1963,
64). It closely resembles the vessel shown in the
engraving of a carrack (kraeck) by Master WA
with an Anchor. The ship itself is supported by a
double-tailed mermaid, cast in silver. Only the
swelling foresail is inflated; the sails of the other
two masts are furled. Various small flags fly in
the wind; engraved on them are images of saints
Catherine, George, Sebastian, and Nicholas, as
well as a lion, the symbol of Saint Mark, and the
enameled coat of arms of the Schliisselfelder
family. A dragon forms the figurehead, furnished
with anchors and grappling irons. Both the
forecastle and poop have battlement arcading. The
boat is heavily armed and full of activity. The
masts all support crow's nests with soldiers in
them. Some sailors are on the rigging, probably
unfurling the sails, while others are lifting ballast.
Some are armed, while others are involved in
various occupations eating and drinking,
making music, playing cards, or just standing
around. Among the varied crowd can be discerned
a cook, a monk, a fool, a washerwoman, and even
an embracing couple.
The Schliisselfelder ship was provided with a
black leather case, ornamented on the front with
a pattern of scrolls against a punched background
and lined with red leather and velvet. The case
bears the date 1503. The ship's first owner seems
to have been Wilhelm Schliisselfelder (14831549), who bequeathed it to his seven sons, who
drew lots for it in 1567. In 1503 Wilhelm Schliisselfelder was only twenty years old; since his
father had died in 1493, it has been convincingly

suggested that the ship may have been commissioned by Wilhelm's rich uncle, Matthaus Landauer, who died in 1515 and who is best known for
having ordered Diirer's altarpiece, the Adoration
of the Trinity (Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna). The ship was certainly made in Nuremberg, as a reversed N, a well-documented mark,
has been punched on the foresail.
The name of the goldsmith who made the ship
is unknown. One name that has been proposed
is that of Albrecht Diirer the Elder (1423-1502),
father of the famous painter. Not enough is
known of the style of individual masters in
Nuremberg at this period to identify the ship's
maker on that basis; for example, Albrecht Diirer
the Elder's only identified work is the little silver
statuette which he is shown holding in a drawing
in silverpoint (Albertina, Vienna) which is most
probably a self-portrait. A more likely candidate
would be another goldsmith, Hans Frey (14501523), who was the painter Diirer's father-inlaw and was famous for constructing complex
mechanical devices, especially table fountains.
According to Johann Neudorffer's Nachrichten
von Kiinstlern (Accounts of Artists) (1547), "he
understood how to force water up by means of air.
He made numerous figures of men and women
out of hammered copper. These were then filled
with water that emerged from their heads due to
the pressure of the air. These ornamental fountains were portable and could be carried from
room to room." Albrecht Diirer himself made a
few drawings for such table fountains (Strauss
1974, 1:456-465, nos. 1499/1-1499/5); the most
famous of them (British Museum, London)
clearly indicates the action of the silver plunger,
which is to force the liquid up through tiny pipes.
Most interesting, however, are the painted silver
figures, which recall the seventy-two tiny figures
on the Schliisselfelder ship.
J.M.M.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

239

THE RATIONALIZATION OF SPACE

Renaissance faith in the power of the intellect
to comprehend the universe and to order
human life is nowhere more apparent than in
the new visions of space that appeared in
fifteenth-century Italian art. The humanists
believed that man's only hope for deliverance
from the chaos of earthly existence lay in the
discipline of the liberal arts, epitomized by the

138
Follower of Filippo Brunelleschi
CHRIST HEALING A POSSESSED WOMAN
before 1462
cast silver relief with traces of enamel;
silver-gilt and enamel frame
6.9 x 10.7 (25/s x 42/8) (without frame); 17 x 20
(65/s x 77/s) (including frame)
references: Pope-Hennessy 1965; Hi/man 1981
Musee du Louvre, Paris, Departement des Objets
d'art
The miracle is set within an invented but overtly
Florentine-style townscape that shows similarities
to the background of Masolino's fresco of the
Healing of the Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha
in the Brancacci Chapel and, ultimately, to the
famous lost panel showing the Florentine Baptistery which Brunelleschi created as one of his original demonstrations of linear perspective. Here
the main building, dominating the spacious
piazza, appears to be a centralized structure on a
square base, with cruciform upper story and
corner domes (presumably over chapels set
between the arms of the Greek cross). Its architectural style is Brunelleschian only in the broadest
sense. The pilasters and panels derive from the
Florentine Baptistery, while the porticoes are
closest to the door surrounds added by Donatello
to Brunelleschi's Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The
precise subject of the narrative remains obscure
and cannot be definitely identified as one of the
specific episodes of healing by Christ described in
the New Testament. It is not even clear if the
person from whom the devil is being expelled is
male or female.
Despite its extremely small size, the relief
reflects a high degree of ambition and achievement in the characterization of architectural space,
and its figure composition makes knowing reference to a number of works by the pioneers of the
early Renaissance, especially those by Masaccio
and Donatello. The alarmed female figure throwing her arms in the air is a notably Donatellesque
feature, while the ring of standing apostles makes
240

CIRCA 1492

rationality of geometry. Brunelleschi's invention of linear perspective in Florence early in

the century provided theoreticians and artists
with a potent device to express their belief in
the ordering force of numbers.
Practical as well as theoretical concerns made
the science of perspective a critical tool for the
artist, from Giotto onward, religious and secu-

reference to the composition of Masaccio's Tribute

Money in the Brancacci Chapel. The relief has at
various times been attributed to such important
artists as Brunelleschi, Donatello, Castagno, and
Filarete (Hyman 1981). It is likely to have been
cast before 1462, when the background architecture was copied rather crudely on the reverse
of a portrait medal of King Rene of Anjou by
Pietro da Milano. It is also known in an inferior
and marginally smaller bronze plaquette in the
National Gallery of Art, which appears to have
been cast from a mold taken from the silver original. The question of attribution remains intractable, largely because of the absence of a directly
comparable work by any of the major Florentine
sculptors. Of the proposed attributions, that to
Filarete has most to recommend it but seems less
than wholly convincing. It is possible that it is an

lar art in Italy emphasized the narrative, in

which individualized human actors played their
parts convincingly within a realistically conceived space. Perspective enabled the artist to
create a mathematically-de signed stage, the
perfect setting for human action.

unusually accomplished work by a specialist in

precious metals, such as Maso Finiguerra or
Baccio Baldini. The apparent contrast in style
between the uncompromisingly Renaissance relief
and the medieval filigree decoration of the frame
might at first glance suggest that the relief and
the frame were only united at a later date, but the
traditional decorative motifs of the frame recur
persistently in Italian metalwork throughout the
fifteenth century, and it is likely that image and
frame were made in the same workshop at the
same time. The precious materials and rich
appearance of the ensemble indicate that it was
conceived as a prestige object for a wealthy patron
like Piero de' Medici, who is known particularly to
have treasured small-scale objects of rich workmanship for close inspection in his writing room
(scrittoio).
M.K.

139-140

Attributed to Paolo Uccello

Florentine, 1397-1475

PERSPECTIVAL STUDY OF A CHALICE

1758A

29 X 24.5

(ll3/8 X 95/8J

PERSPECTIVAL STUDY OF A MAZZOCCHIO

i757A

only in raking light. At each separate level of the

upper and lower edges of the facets, a "rosette" of
incised lines radiates outward from the central
axis. Even the relatively simple mazzocchio on
sheet 1756A necessitated five such "rosettes." The
positioning of the lines in the "rosettes" appears
to have been determined in relation to a series of
scaled points on horizontally (and possibly vertically) incised lines, which had previously been
plotted on an unforeshortened plan of the polyg-

onal outline inscribed within a square. The location of the relevant points on each of the lines in
the "rosettes" could have been obtained by reference to a foreshortened version of the square in
which the polygonal plan was inscribed, or by the
use of a foreshortened vertical scale at the side of
the drawing, as in book n of Piero della Francesca's De prospectiva pingendi (see cat. 141) The
mazzocchio drawings, which have been trimmed
down, provide no unequivocal evidence regarding
this question, but the closely packed diagonal
lines incised at the left and right margins of the
drawing of the chalice favor the latter alternative.
Although Piero could have used this method for
the drawing of a mazzocchio, he reserved it in his
treatise for relatively simple forms, preferring to
use the technique of projection from plan and
elevation in his book in for more complex structures such as a mazzocchio or the capital of a
column. The plan and elevation technique would
not have necessitated the welter of incised lines
and speaks against any attempt to attribute one or
more of these drawings to Piero himself (Parronchi 1964).
In other respects, however, the Uffizi drawings
are rather dissimilar. The mazzocchio exhibited

9 X 24 (32/2 X 9l/2)

c. 1450-1470
pen and dark brown ink
references: Kern 1915; Arcangeli 1942; Chastel
1953; Rome 1959; Parronchi 1964; Pope-Hennessy
1969,155-156; Florence 1978, nos. 7678;
Himmelheber 1985; Cheles 1986; Rossi et al, 1986
Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence
Uccello's fondness for perspectival conundrums
is well affirmed both by paintings and by the
famous anecdotes in his biography by Vasari, who
claimed to own a drawing of "a mazzocchio traced
in line alone, so beautiful that without the patience of Paolo it would not have been possible to
accomplish/' There are two drawings of a mazzocchio in the Uffizi no. 1756A also depicting a
"skeletal" mazzocchio but with different-shaped
outer facets and two related drawings in the
Louvre Cabinet des Dessins no. 1969 depicting a
faceted sphere and no. 1970 depicting a solid mazzocchio (Rome 1959). The mazzocchio was a
hollow wooden or basket-work frame that supported a fashionable male headdress of the period.
Examples appear in Uccello's paintings of the
Battle of San Romano and more unexpectedly
around the neck of a near-naked man and on the
head of a woman in the fresco of the biblical Flood
in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
Despite the obvious similarities among the
drawings and their relationship to Uccello's
known practice, their attribution to him is less
straightforward than is generally assumed. The
main feature that the Uffizi drawings have in
common is their basic constructional approach,
which involves a myriad of incised stylus lines on
the surface of the paper, which are fully visible
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

24!

here (no. 175 /A) exhibits freer pen work than the
others and is the only one to exhibit the sharp
diminution that results from a relatively close
viewpoint. Although the mazzocchio not
exhibited here (no. 1756A) is seen at a shallow
angle similar to that in no. 175/A and to that illustrated in Piero's treatise, the viewing distance is
very long, inasmuch as the far side of the mazzocchio is hardly diminished in size compared to the
near side. The chalice is even more puzzling in
this respect, in that the facets on the far side of
the chalice are not diminished at all, and the viewing angle at the different levels of the chalice does
not change. We do not appear to be looking down
at the base of the chalice to a greater extent than
at its mouth. The chalice is therefore depicted in
nonconvergent or orthographic perspective, in
which the notional viewpoint (according to a later
formulation) may be said to be at infinity. The
complex, see-through nature of the cage of confusing lines has tended to disguise the fact that
the chalice is not constructed according to the
laws of single-vanishing point perspective at all.
The drawing of the chalice is also inconsistent in
that only some features the mazzocchio-like
rings and flat central plane are shown in a fully
see-through manner.
These observations suggest the need for further
investigation both of the constructional methods
and the attributions. It is difficult to determine
the extent to which the mazzocchi in Uccello's
paintings are seen from a relatively close viewing
point and fully foreshortened, since their far sides
are not visible and the paint surface in the Flood is
badly damaged. Such evidence as is visible suggests that they may have been drawn as if viewed
from a distant point, as in no. 1/56A. On the other
hand, the nonconvergent perspective of the chalice corresponds to the technique used by some of
the designers of intarsia decorations. Although
the famous inlaid woodwork of the Studiolo in
Urbino, which contains a mazzocchio among the
other symbols of the liberal arts, appears to use
convergent perspective throughout, other intarsia
designs exhibit the parallel orthogonals of nonconvergent perspective (cat. 145). The popularity
of perspectival intarsie in the period 1450-1520
and the geometrical expertise of the specialist
craftsmen leave open the possibility that some or
all of the surviving drawings may have originated
in their workshops and certainly indicate that
there is no need to attribute all such drawings to
Uccello. On the other hand, Uccello himself may
well have been involved in the design of intarsia
decorations for chests and other furniture. Until
more evidence comes to light, it is probably best
to retain the traditional attribution of the drawings to Uccello, albeit in a very qualified manner.
Such drawings may well have served as templates to be used repeatedly in the workshops; the
chalice has in fact been pricked through for transfer at the corners of each facet. This sheet shows
obvious signs of wear and is repaired on the verso
242

CIRCA 1492

with six patches. Like the two other sheets in the

Uffizi, it has been laid down at the corners, but in
this case the added paper at the bottom corners
has been removed or come away. The lower edge
of the sheet has been made up at a later date to
complete the lower front edge of the chalice.
Whatever the attributional and technical problems posed by the studies of the mazzocchi and
the chalice, they provide vivid testimony to the
patient care with which designers in the Renaissance approached such perspectival tasks. The
draftsmen of such objects were prepared to plot
projections point by point in a laborious manner
to achieve the kinds of results that were to
become readily attainable only with the advent of
computer graphics in this century.
M.K.

141

Piero della Francesca

Umbrian, c. 1416-1492

THE CONSTRUCTION OF A VAULT

OVER A SQUARE PLAN FROM
De Prospectiva Pingendi
(On the Perspective of Painting)
c. 1470-1480
manuscript on paper, 91 fols.
28.9X21.5

(l!3/8X83/8)

references: Pacioli 1494; Winterberg 1899;

Nicco-Fasola 1942; Daly Davis 1977; Kemp 1990

Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, MS Parm. 1576, fol. 2^r

The two principal manuscripts of Piero's treatise
On the Perspective of Painting are the Italian version of 91 folios in the Biblioteca Palatina, Parma,
and the Latin text of 115 folios in the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, Milan (Cod. Ambr. c 307 inf). There
is a second Italian version without illustrations in
the Ambrosiana (D 200 inf), and three additional
Latin versions in the British Museum (Cod.
10366), Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Cod. lat.
9337), and Bibliotheque de Bordeaux (Cod. 516),
respectively. Although the attribution of precisely
drawn diagrams to a particular hand is always
difficult, the quality of the designs and careful
humanist script in the Parma manuscript may
reasonably be regarded as by Piero himself, as
may the diagrams accompanying the Latin text in
the Ambrosiana (Nicco-Fasola 1942). Relying
upon the testimony of Piero's follower, Luca
Pacioli, who indicated in his Summa de arithmetica that Matteo dal Borgo translated De prospectiva into Latin, one would think that the Italian
text was the earlier, but there are signs that some
elements in the Parma version, including the
poems "to the author" at the end, are based on
the Latin text. It is thus probable that the Latin
codex in the Ambrosiana was prepared first from
Piero's draft and that the Palatina manuscript was

subsequently produced by Piero himself as the

model Italian version.
In addition to his treatise on perspective, Piero
had already written a Trattato del abaco, an outline of mathematics as applied to such practical
problems as calculating size, and was subsequently to write a Libellus de cinque corporibus
regularibus, on the mathematics of the five regular (or "Platonic") polyhedra (Daly Davis 1977).
When he offered his Libellus to Duke Guidobaldo
da Montefeltro, Piero suggested that it should be
placed next to his book on perspective, which he
had presented to Guidobaldo's father, Federigo,
who had died in 1482. The writing of De prospectiva could be assigned to either the 14605 or
14705, with the balance of probability favoring the
later decade.
Although Piero's treatise is highly technical in
its mathematical outline of perspectival techniques, it is cast in the guise of practical instructions, working through the examples in a step-bystep manner, with a minimum of abstract theory.
His introduction makes it clear that he is dealing
with only the second of the three skills needed by
the painter to imitate nature disegno (the drawing of the shapes of objects), commensuratione
(the proportional location of objects in measured
space according to the laws of perspective), and
colorare (the distribution of color, light, and
shade). The prevailing tenor of the treatise may
be described as "applied Euclid," exploiting basic
geometry for the perspectival projection of forms
onto a plane (or termine) rather than becoming
involved in physiological optics.
De prospectiva is divided into three books. The
first deals with basic geometrical terms and the
foreshortening of a square plane onto which various flat figures, such as the plan of an octagonal
building, are projected. The second extends this
method to the erection of three-dimensional
bodies on the foreshortened plane. The last book
shows how to use the plans and elevations of an
object to project that object point by point onto an
intersecting plane established at a definite distance from the point of projection (or eye). It is
this full technique of projection from plan and
elevation that Piero uses for such complex forms
as the mazzocchio (compare cat. 140), column
base and capital, and human head. The diagram
illustrated here is from near the end of book n and
is the final demonstration of how to erect threedimensional structures on the foreshortened
square plane with a vanishing point at A. Piero
explains that "the foreshortened [degredato] plane
is BCDE, on which I intend to place a chapel with a
cruciform vault, the square of the chapel being
FGHI." The basic technique consists of the erection
of a rectangular box in perspectival projection
within which the points necessary for the drawing
of the vault are plotted. Piero takes the reader
through the construction line by line, like a
schoolmaster coaching a pupil for an examination.
The end result is not unlike the structure of the

chapel in Masaccio's Trinity, though for the purposes of this basic demonstration Piero does not
use Masaccio's low viewpoint. Piero does not
intend this construction to be used as it stands for
a particular painting; rather he provides the
student with the resources necessary to tackle
such a construction when the need arises, as, for
instance, when painting a sacra conversazione.
The existence of four Latin manuscripts of
Piero's treatise indicates that it was taken up in
learned circles outside the artists' studios. It was
known to, among others, Luca Pacioli, who extensively adopted ideas from Piero's other writings in
his publications, to Albrecht Diirer (either directly
or via an intermediary), to the mathematician
Ignatio Danti, and probably also to Leonardo da
Vinci. Its most direct influence was on Daniele
Barbaro's La practica della perspettiva published
in Venice in 1569. Barbaro relied heavily upon
Piero's methods, although he avoided Piero's
laborious line by line expositions, which he considered to be addressed to "idiots." Through
Barbaro's well-regarded treatise, Piero's lucid
methods entered the general currency of perspective theory during succeeding centuries.
M.K.

142
After Leonardo da Vinci
DODECAHEDRON
from Luca Pacioli, De divina proportione,
Venice, 1509
28.5 X 19.5

(llV4 X 73/4J

references: Fontes Ambrosiani 1956; Rose 1975;

Kemp 1989; Kemp igSya; Dalai Emiliani 1984
Library of Congress, Washington
Pacioli's treatise was produced in two manuscript
versions, the better of which was made for
Galeazzo Sanseverino in Milan in 1498 and is now
in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (MS S.P. 6) . The
second manuscript, in the Bibliotheque Publique
et Universitaire in Geneva, has a fine frontispiece
dedicating it to Galeazzo's father-in-law, Duke
Ludovico Sforza, but it is otherwise a disorderly
and inferior version and must be regarded as a
later compilation. The text and illustrations were
published in amplified form by the printer Paganini in Venice in 1509 and dedicated to the Gonfaloniere of Florence, Piero Soderini.

Although Pacioli was not a mathematician of

great originality on his own account, he was an
important author in terms of the early history of
mathematics in print. A member of the Franciscan
order, he spent a peripatetic career in a number of
the major Italian centers of learning, including
Venice, Urbino, Rome, Bologna, Milan, and Florence. Of particular significance for the production
of De divina proportione were his contacts with
Piero della Francesca in Urbino and with Leonardo
da Vinci in Milan. His treatment of the geometrical solids is closely dependent upon Piero's treatises, to the extent that Pacioli has been accused of
plagiarism, a charge hardly justified in light of the
standard techniques of copy and commentary in
the manuscript tradition of the late Middle Ages
and early Renaissance.
Pacioli arrived in Milan in 1496 and persuaded
Leonardo to draw the illustrations for his book on
the five regular or "Platonic" solids and some of
their semiregular variants. In his De viribus
quantitatis, Pacioli indicated that the illustrations
were "made and formed by the ineffable left
hand" of the "most worthy of painters, perspectivists, architects and musicians, one endowed
with every perfection, Leonardo da Vinci the
Florentine, in Milan at the time when we were
both in the employ of the most illustrious Duke of
Milan, Ludovico Maria Sforza Anglo, in the years
of our Lord 1496 to 1499, whence we departed
together for various reasons and then shared
quarters at Florence."
The illustration of the geometrical solids in
previous geometrical treatises, including Luca's
own Summa de arithmetica of 1494, gave little
sense of the existence of real forms in measurable
space and were difficult to read coherently. Pacioli
stated that he had already constructed the Platonic
bodies as actual solids, probably in various materials such as wood and glass (as depicted in his
portrait in Naples [cat. 143]). He was later to be
paid by the Florentine government for a set of
geometrical solids (Kemp 1989). It is not known
whether the brilliant idea of illustrating the polyhedra perspectivally in both solid and skeletal
forms should be credited to Pacioli or to Leonardo.
Although the solids are depicted very convincingly in three dimensions, with carefully
described cast shadows, their perspectival projection is not mathematically precise in every
respect. This suggests that they were not drawn
using the kind of point-by-point technique of
mathematical projection described by Piero della
Francesca, but rather that Leonardo used a drawing frame or "veil" or "glass," such as that he
showed a draftsman using to depict an armillary
sphere (Codice atlantico 51). The illustrations in
the treatises could have been produced by pricking
through the corners of the facets of each body on
the master drawing and transferring the prick
marks to the intended page. Prick marks, incised
lines, and pentimenti in the Milan manuscript
bear witness to the care that went into its produc-

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

243

143

Jacopo de' Barbari (?)

Venetian, active before 1495 -died by 1516

PORTRAIT OF FRA LUCA PACIOLI

WITH A YOUNG MAN
1494?

oil on panel

99 x 120 (39 x 472/4J

references: Pacioli 1494; Pacioli 1509; Gronau 1905,

28; Servolini 1944, 105-106; Rose 1975; Daly Davis
1977; Levenson 1978; Naples and Rome 1983, no.
79; Dalai Emiliani 1984; Kemp 1989, 1:237-242

Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples

Dodeacdron Abfdfiim Eicwtoia "Vacuum

tion, whereas the illustrations in the Geneva

manuscript are drawn far more casually. It is possible that the Milan illustrations were laid in by
Leonardo himself, although the attractive and
skillfully disposed shading in colored washes
seems not to be by his hand.
For Pacioli the interest of the solids extended
far beyond the realms of pure geometry. Plato had
regarded the five regular bodiesthe tetrahedron
(four equilateral triangles), the hexahedron or
cube (six squares), the octahedron (eight equilateral triangles), the dodecahedron (twelve pentagons), and the icosahedron (twenty equilateral
triangles) as the archetypal forms of the elements and the quintessence from which the
cosmos was constructed. Pacioli allied this cosmological geometry with the "divine" harmony of
the golden section (i.e., the division of a line AB
at C such that ACiCB as AB:AC), which can be
used to construct the /2-degree angle of the pentagon. Although Leonardo was not disposed to
244

CIRCA

1492

identify the elements literally with the Platonic

solids, he was wholly convinced of the mathematical base of harmonic beauty and accepted the
idea that the underlying organization of nature
conformed to proportional principles.
The folio reproduced shows plate xxxn, the
truncated and stellated dodecahedron in its skeletal
form. This solid is assembled from a regular body
of twelve pentagonal faces, the corners of which
have been truncated to produce equilateral triangles. Stellations with equilateral faces have been
built out from each of the pentagonal and triangular faces of the truncated body. Following the
publication of Pacioli's treatise in 1509, such complex bodies became popular motifs in intarsia
designs and provided generations of authors on
perspective with one of their greatest challenges.
M.K.

The identity of the main figure as the Franciscan

mathematician Luca Pacioli and the nature of the
mathematical allusions are the only indisputable
aspects of this remarkable picture. The inscription
on the large volume to the right, "Li\be]r R[everendi] Luc[a] Bur[gensis] ," indicates almost
certainly that the book is Pacioli's Summa de
arithmetica, geometria, proportione et proportionalita, the large compendium of pure and practical
mathematics that was published in Venice in
1494. The open book is a printed edition of
Euclid's Elements, of which Pacioli was to publish
an Italian translation in 1509. The geometrical
solids the dodecahedron perched on the cover of
the Summa and the semiregular polyhedron composed of squares and triangles (a rhombicuboctahedron) hanging in the upper left allude to his
special interest in the regular (Platonic) and semiregular geometrical bodies. This interest had been
fired by his contacts with Piero della Francesca
and was to result in his most attractive book, the
treatise De divina proportione, illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci and published in 1509. Pacioli is
known to have constructed actual models of the
polyhedra (Kemp 1989). The "crystal" polyhedron
in the present picture, suspended from a cord that
runs through the upper vertex to a point of
attachment at the bottom of the solid, appears to
have been constructed from glass faces, with a
glass plane running horizontally across its center
to stabilize the structure. The dodecahedron, an
apparently humbler object for everyday teaching,
is made from wood. The geometrical diagram on
the writing tablet takes up the analysis of an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle from book xm
of Euclid's Elements, open in front of the mathematician, while the lines and figures deal with the
proportional ratios and sums that occupied a good
deal of attention in Pacioli's Summa (Daly Davis
1977)Other historical aspects of the portrait are far
more problematic, including the identities of the
author of the painting and of the young man
beside Pacioli. Taken at face value, the signature
on the cartellino beside the book jaco[po] bar[bari] vigennis p[inxit] 149. would appear to

indicate that the author was the much-traveled

Venetian artist Jacopo de' Barbari at the age of
twenty. However, there has been some difficulty
in reconciling this picture with Jacopo's known
style, and the status of the inscription has been
doubted on technical grounds, since it does not
appear in the X-ray of the panel and may have
been a much later addition (Naples and Rome
1983). Against these doubts, we can point to the
elusive nature of Jacopo's artistic personality, to
the absence of any certain works before 1500 (the
year of the great View of Venice (cat. 151) and the
Saint Oswald), and to the fact that the white lead
of the cartellino is impervious to X-rays and thus
precludes any chance of the lettering's being visible. We know that Jacopo's intellectual propensi-

ties were consistent with the sophisticated content

of the picture. In an address to Frederick the Wise
of Saxony he insisted that an artist must be versed
in the liberal arts: "first geometry and then arithmetic, which are both necessary for measurement
and proportions, because there cannot be proportion wihout number, nor can there be form without geometry" (Servolini 1944,105-106). The
publication of Luca's Summa in Venice in 1494
would have provided both a reason and an opportunity for Jacopo to have painted the portrait in
Venice, which in turn suggests that the damaged
date on the cartellino originally read "1494." The
best alternative suggestions of a painter for the
Naples picture have drawn parallels with portraits
by Alvise Vivarini and his Venetian circle (Leven-

son 1978), but it is possible that Jacopo's style

some six years before his first certain works was
itself similar to Vivarini's. On balance, the attribution to Jacopo seems acceptable.
The identity of Luca's young companion (and
pupil?) has proved elusive. An inventory of 1631
records a lost inscription, "Divo principi Guido,"
referring to Duke Federigo da Montefeltro's son,
Guidobaldo, who was born in 1472 and was to die
in 1508. Guidobaldo was the dedicatee of Luca's
Summa and the recipient of Piero della Francesca's treatise on the regular solids, the Libellus de
quinque corporibus regularibus (Daly Davis
1977). However, it would hardly be fitting for a
duke to play such a secondary role in the painting,
and there is little reliable evidence of Guidobaldo's

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

245

appearance in his early twenties. On the other

hand, the young man's glove and rich costume
indicate that he was someone of high status, so
identification with the young duke is possible.
There are records of a portrait of Pacioli in the
ducal collection in Urbino from the late sixteenth
century, when it was attributed to Piero della
Francesca, until 1654 (Naples and Rome 1983). (It
should be noted that the traditional identification
of a portrait of Pacioli in the background of Piero's
altarpiece of the Madonna and Saints with Duke
Federigo da Montefeltro (Brera, Milan) should be
treated with extreme caution, not only on chronological grounds but also in view of the improbability that a Franciscan monk would be portrayed
as the notable Dominican saint, Peter Martyr.)
Although it is unclear how and when the present
panel arrived in Naples, there seems no need to
presume the existence of two separate versions of
the portrait.
There are numerous filled-in paint losses across
the panel and an area of severe damage in the left
corner. The main figurative elements have survived in reasonably reliable condition, although
Pacioli's left eye shows signs of having been
reworked. The most frustrating area of damage
and retouching occurs around the last digit of the
date. The paint is handled in a solid and unfussy
manner, with restrained passages of textural
description and beautifully observed reflections in
the suspended polyhedron. The draftsmanship
places considerable emphasis upon simple volumetric shapes and carefully observed cast shadowscharacteristics that suggest the influence of
Piero della Francesca, either directly or through
Venetian intermediaries such as Antonello da
Messina and Alvise Vivarini.
Whatever the remaining historical problems,
the portrait of Pacioli in Naples is exceptional as
the most substantial and evocative record of any
man of science from the early Renaissance.
M.K.

144

Alessandro Botticelli

Florentine, 1444 or 1445-1510

THE VISION OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

c. 1480
detached fresco
185 x 123 (73 x 4.8l/2) (irregular)
references: Milanesi 1905-1915, 3:311; Home 1908;
Roberts 1959; Rotondi 1959; Meiss 1970; Lightbown
1978, no. ^25; Kemp 1984

Church of the Ognissanti, Florence

In the 1560$ Botticelli's fresco was detached from
its original location on the screen wall (tramezzo)
separating the nave from the choir of the Church
246

CIRCA 1492

of the Ognissanti and placed on the right wall of

the nave. This occurred following the replacement
of the Umiliati in the monastery associated with
the church by the Minor Franciscan Observants
and the consequent reorganization of the church
interior, which included removal of the screen.
The low viewpoint of the study represented in the
paintingwe are looking up from the level of the
saint's ankles may well have been chosen in
relation to the original height of the choir and its
screen above the level of the nave. Following the
flood of 1966, the fresco was removed again and
restored. Although its present condition shows
clear signs of its adventures, the major areas of the
composition are in surprisingly good condition. It
was originally painted at the right of the door into
the choir as a companion piece to Domenico Ghirlandaio's Saint Jerome, which stood on the left of
the door. Ghirlandaio's fresco is dated 1480, and

Botticelli's is likely to have been painted at about

the same time, before his departure for Rome in
1481 to work in the Sistine Chapel. The shield on
the cornice above the saint indicates that his
fresco was undertaken for a member of the Vespucci family, a number of whom patronized the
church.
Although the images by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli both belong to the tradition of the contemplative scholar-saint in his study, a tradition that
had been inspired in Florence largely by the presence of a lost painting of Saint Jerome by Jan van
Eyck then in the Medici collection, Botticelli's
depiction has exceptionally introduced a narrative
element. With great eloquence he has illustrated a
spurious but apparently popular story from the
saint's life. A letter purporting to have been written by Augustine to Saint Cyril (which was probably a thirteenth-century invention) recounted

that at the very moment of Saint Jerome's death

(A.D. 420) Augustine was writing a letter to him,
seeking advice about the nature of the bliss of
souls in paradise. Augustine's study was instantaneously flooded with light, which was accompanied by an "ineffable fragrance" and the voice of
Jerome, who indicated that an understanding of
the infinite mysteries of heaven was inaccessible
to the finite, earthbound intellect of man without
the aid of divine revelation. The miraculous rays
of light that diverge from a point to the upper left
of the armillary sphere in the fresco would have
originally been more apparent when the work was
freshly gilded, but the impact of the directional
light on the saint's features retains its formal and
expressive power. This same story was later illustrated by Carpaccio in the Scuola di San Giorgio
degli Schiavoni in Venice (Roberts 1959). Ghirlandaio's Saint Jerome contains no narrative implications beyond his representation as translator of
the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, and it is reasonable to suppose that the choice of subject for
Botticelli's fresco was determined by a desire to
make an explicit link with Ghirlandaio's already
existing image.
Both saints have been fittingly depicted as
humanist scholars, and Botticelli has provided
Augustine with suitable equipment for cosmological speculation an armillary sphere (showing
the earth at the center of the sphere of the
heavens in the Ptolemaic manner), a manuscript
treatise on geometry, and an accurately portrayed
clock. The time on the clock indicates the passing
of the twenty-fourth hour of the day; that is to
say (in the system used in this period), the hour
of sunset, the supposed time of the miraculous
appearance of Saint Jerome (Lightbown 1978).
However, Botticelli has muddled the numbering
of the dial, allowing for only three of the four
divisions hidden by the shelf and subsequently
having to jump from xvm to xxi in order to finish
on xxnii (Kemp 1984). The saint's equipment is
entirely consistent with that of actual Renaissance
studioli, such as that depicted in the intarsia
decorations in the studioli of Federigo da Montefeltro at Urbino and Gubbio. The clear depiction
from the low viewpoint of the armillary sphere,
lectern with open drawer, inkwell, and clock with
crenellated foliot wheel recalls comparable details
in the Urbino and Gubbio intarsie and lends support to the idea that Botticelli was involved in the
design of inlaid decorations for Federigo (Rotondi
1959). It is unclear whether the cosmological paraphernalia were included as an allusion to the
kind of speculations that Jerome was to criticize in
the story, or, as is more probable, whether they
were deemed by Botticelli to be the kind of equipment required by any serious philosophertheologian (Kemp 1984).
The strange scribbled inscription in the geometrical treatise "the house of St. Martin has
collapsed, and where has it gone? It is outside the
Porta al Prato" may refer to the Church of San

Martino a Mugnone outside the Porta al Prato,

but it is difficult to see why such an apparently
trivial rhyme has been included. Lightbown's
alternative reading "where is brother Martin ?
He has slipped away. And where has he gone ? He
is outside the Porta al Prato" poses even greater
problems. The geometrical diagrams in the treatise are generically Euclidian rather than illustrative of recognizable problems of interpretation.
The inscription on the cornice was added after the
transfer of the fresco to the nave wall, since it tells
us that the intensity of the saint's studies has
made him oblivious to his change of location.
The best evocation of the essential meaning of
Botticelli's image is still provided by Vasari's
account in 1568:
This work succeeds most admirably in that he
has demonstrated in the head of the Saint that
profound cognition and sharp subtlety which is
only present in persons of wisdom who continually devote their thoughts to the examination
of topics of the highest order and greatest
difficulty.
M.K.

*45

LECTERN
c. 1500-1515
Central Italian
walnut, carved and inlaid with numerous
other woods
240.5 x 135 (diameter) (94% x 5}Vs)
references: Arcangeli 1942; Chastel 1953; Chastel
1965; Pignatti 1967; Rotondi 1969; Cantelli 1973,
figs. 28, 35-36, 3^-39; Ciati 1980; Tosti et al. 1982;
Haines 1983; Trionfi Honorati 1983; Cheles 1986
Church of San Domenico, Gubbio
Since the grain of wood lends itself to being cut
straight, the fifteenth-century Italian masters of
intarsia, pictorial marquetry, quickly realized that
the new techniques of geometrical perspective
were particularly well suited to their art. Perspectival illusions in marquetry proved to be particularly attractive and compelling, not only because
of the warmth and tonal contrasts of the various
woods but also because of the way that wood, as a
common structural material, conveys a sense of
solidity. Masters soon vied to show their virtuosity in ever more complex vistas, geometric
bodies, and other solid objects. The finest surviv-

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

247

some knowledge of the single vanishing point

system as for instance in the three-arched loggiasbut it is not applied consistently within all
the panels. For example, the tiered palace in panel
4 of the base exhibits at least two vanishing points
for the orthogonals. Some of the trickier forms,
such as the circular well in the townscape (panel
i), have given the designer all too obvious
trouble. And some of the assemblages of forms
are illogically constructed, as is the case with the
hourglass and books on one of the sloping faces of
the stand, where the hourglass is placed on an
inclined book but still manages to stand vertically.
The impression is that variations on local themes
have been worked ingeniously within the shop of
a master-craftsman, to produce a splendid piece of
display furniture encompassing the latest style,
but without the detailed intervention of a masterartist who was learned in all the geometrical subtleties of perspective.
M.K. andc.A.

146

Antonio and Paolo Mole?

CASSONE OF THE HERZOGIN JACOBAA
ing examples of perspectival intarsie are the
schemes of decorative paneling for the studioli of
Federigo da Montefeltro in his palaces at Urbino
and Gubbio (Rotondi 1969 and Cheles 1986). The
intarsia patterns were probably executed by
Florentine masters, though the artist-designer has
not been identified with any certainty.
This octagonally based lectern normally stands
at the center of the choir of the church of San
Domenico (formerly San Martino) in Gubbio.
Though its early history is unknown, it was
almost certainly made for such a setting, where it
would be used to support antiphonaries, the large
books of oversized music from which the monks
sang. It was restored in 1980-1981 (report in Tosti
et al. 1982). Until recently, it was thought to be
by Mariotto di Paolo Sensi, called Terzuolo, who is
first recorded working in Rome in 1492. He was
also active in Perugia and his native Gubbio,
where he died in 1547 (Sannipoli, forthcoming).
Terzuolo's one identified work, the intarsie in the
sacristy in the Duomo, Perugia, of 1494-1497
(Cantelli 1973, fig. 28), are finer than the lectern,
which should probably be attributed to another
master working in Gubbio or elsewhere in the
Marches. The presence of grotteschi on the base
appears to reflect trends in neighboring Perugia
and suggests a date for the lectern from the late
14908 at the earliest. The variously carved pilasters may reflect the choirstalls and similarly
shaped lectern for SantAgostino, Perugia, executed by the Florentine master Baccio d Agnolo in
1502-1532 (Cantelli 1973, figs. 35-36 and 38-39).
248

CIRCA 1492

Within the three arched loggias represented in

intarsia on either side of the antiphonal stands are
books, an hourglass, a lamp with a lighted candle,
and a box with an inkwell and quill pen. It is possible that the objects are symbols of worthy but
transitory pursuits, while the three arches might
allude to the enduring virtues of the Trinity. The
contents of the panels on the base, beginning with
the deftly concealed door, are (progressing to the
right): (i) an architectural scene; (2) symbols of
geometry (compasses, try square and mazzocchio)
with architectural motifs; (3) books, an incense
boat with its spoon, and a fan-like object, perhaps
aflagellum-, (4) tiered architecture; (5) an altar
bell (?), an unidentified object, a holy water
bucket with its aspergillum and a box with altar
tapers; (6) a campanile-like construction containing two chalices; (7) a bowl of "eucharistic" grapes
and a series of spiked objects (holders for processional candles?); (8) a censer, with a pomegranate
(symbolic of the unity of the church) and three
cherries. One of the pilasters is decorated with
twining branches and foliage in a Germanic
manner, while others display ivy bearing acorns
or classical motifs (one strip of which is more
exquisitely finished than the others). The acorns
may allude to the della Rovere family, who were
the heirs to the Montefeltro dynasty.
The lectern as a whole is a pleasing ensemble,
but on detailed analysis it can be seen that the
perspectival designs have not been not undertaken
with the geometrical sophistication of the Urbino,
Gubbio, and Perugia intarsie. The designer has

c. 1500-1510
wooden chest with inlaid decoration
99.5 x 229 x 86.5 (39l/s x yoVs x 34)
references: Bertolotti 1889; Arcangeli 1942; Chastel
1953; Chastel 1965; Ruckert 1965; London 1981;
Himmelheber 1985
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich
This magnificent and well preserved chest has
traditionally been associated with the marriage in
1522 of Jacobaa von Baden and Herzog Wilhelm iv
of Bavaria, and it appears in the inventory of the
possessions of the Herzogin Jacobaa (Ruckert
1965). However, the heraldic devices indicate that
its origins are within the court of the Gonzaga at
Mantua. The emblematic motifs at either end of
the chest a muzzled hound with a decorative
leash and a turtledove seated above a coiled, burning tree trunk with the motto "vrai amour nese
chiange" (true love does not change) are both
Gonzaga devices, featured on ceramic floor tiles
in Isabella d'Este's studiolo at Mantua (London
1981). A legend stated that the turtledove would
remain faithful to its deceased mate and would
perch only on dead branches. The devices appear
to have been associated with various members of
the Gonzaga family, and Isabella adopted them for
use in her own decorative schemes.
The fine intarsia decorations of the perspectival
cupboards on the Munich chest have, not surprisingly, been connected with Baccio Pontelli, a
Florentine master of marquetry, who is commonly
said to have worked in Urbino and perhaps also in

Gubbio for Federigo da Montefeltro (Himmelheber 1985). The fluted pilasters on the Munich
chest are very similar to those in the Urbino studiolo. On the other hand, a close parallel for the
perspective of the cupboard doors, which diminish
so little in depth as to be almost in nonconvergent
perspective, is to be found in the intarsia dado of
the second Grotta of Isabella d'Este in the Corte
Vecchia at Mantua. The masters Antonio and
Paolo Mole worked on the Mantuan decorations in
1506, and it seems likely that they had previously
designed the intarsia cupboards in the sacristy of
San Marco in Venice (Bertolotti 1889,17). The
contents of the cupboards in the cassone, two of
which contain musical instruments, also recall the
enthusiasm for music manifested in the decorations of Isabella's Grotta, although such subjects
had by this time become common motifs in such
intarsie. The continuity of motifs in the workshops of the masters of intarsie makes dating
based on style and content problematical. A date
around 1500-1510 is as conceivable as Himmelheber's suggestion that the chest was made for the
marriage of Federigo Gonzaga and Margaretha of
Bavaria in 1470. Indeed, neither of the devices on
the chest were particularly associated with Margaretha. It is more likely that the intarsiatori of
the chest are Antonio and Paolo Mole, with
Isabella as the likely patron. The Gonzagas had
long fostered dynastic links with German houses,
and there are a number of occasions on which the
cassone might have traveled north as a gift,
including Jacobaa's wedding in 1522. For the
maker of intarsie, the advantage of the virtually
nonconvergent perspective of the chest is that

many pieces of wood could be cut from the same

template. For example, the parallelograms of the
boards for checkers in the left cupboard appear not
to diminish in size toward the rear. The distant
viewpoint implied by such a technique does little
to destroy the delights of the illusion and may
indeed make it less vulnerable to "incorrect"
viewing positions.
M.K.

147-148

Central Italian artist

IDEAL CITY WITH A CIRCULAR TEMPLE
c. 1500
oil on panel

67.5 x 239.5 f 2 6 2 /2 x 942/4J

Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

Central Italian artist

IDEAL CITY WITH A FOUNTAIN
AND STATUES OF THE VIRTUES
c. 1500
oil on panel
77.4 x 220 (3o2/2 x 865/s)

Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore

references: Baldi 1724; Kimball 1927-1928;
Quinvitalle 1964; Saalman 1968; Clark 1969;
Krautheimer 1969; Shearman 1975; Sangiorgi 1976;
Zeri 1976; Urbino 1978; Dupre dal Poggetto 198};
Trionfi Honarati 198}; Kemp and Massing 1991

These two magnificent panels are often associated

with another large townscape in the Staatliche
Museen (Gemaldegalerie), Berlin, and occasionally with a smaller painting built into a cassone
formerly in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin
(now destroyed). The former is similar in length
(234 centimeters) to the Urbino and Walters
panels but is nearly twice as high (124 centimeters), due to a strip of painted paneling below the
perspectival view. Its foreground is occupied by a
loggia or portico, through which the vista leads
across a wide piazza to a distant seascape with
ships. The origins, dating, attribution, function,
and possible meaning of the panels have been
much debated, with generally inconclusive
results. The four known versions may be representative survivors of a kind of painting that was
originally produced in some quantity for Renaissance interiors.
The depiction of ideal townscapes in forceful
perspective as a motif for the decoration of
princely interiors is particularly associated with
Urbino, and the panel in the Galleria Nazionale
delle Marche, in fact, has a provenance from the
Church of Sta. Chiara in Urbino. The intarsia
panels in the doors leading to the throne room,
the audience chamber and dressing room in the
Palazzo Ducale, which belong to the phase of
decoration undertaken between 1474 and 1482,
display grand buildings of a predominantly classical type flanking piazzas with conspicuous tiled
pavements (Trionfi Honorati 1983). Inventories of
the palace from 1582 and 1599 describe a painted
prospettiva by Fra Carnevale above one of the
doors (Sangiorgi 1976), while Bernardino Baldi,
writing in 1588, mentioned that Luciano Laurana,
the Slavic architect of the palace, had painted "certain small pictures in which several scenes are
drafted according to the rules of perspective and
coloring." An Urbino document of 1651 also mentions a long perspective by Fra Carnevale (Kemp
and Massing 1991). There is no reason to think
that such townscapes have any more specific
meaning than to reflect the ideals of civic order
and Neo-Stoic mores to which Duke Federigo da
Montefeltro aspired in the administration of his
state. The vision is closely founded upon that of
Leon Battista Alberti in De re aedificatoria (On
the Art of Building), and the various townscapes
in the intarsie and paintings can be shown to realize Alberti's social, functional, spiritual, and aesthetic requirements for the component buildings
in the cities of a well-ordered society. It is therefore unnecessary to suppose that the painted
panels were early attempts to visualize stage sets
in the Roman manner, as described by Vitruvius
(Krautheimer 1969). Indeed, it appears that the
intarsie and paintings provided the inspiration for
the earliest perspectival scene designs.
The Berlin townscape is technically and stylistically somewhat different from the other two. In
addition to its painted basimento, the lateral edges
of the panel are painted in a way that suggests it

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

249

formed the upright back of a piece of furniture,

such as a richly decorated bench, couch, or bed.
Stylistically it is very close to the Urbino intarsia
door panels, particularly with respect to the insistent orthogonals of the dark bands of tiles in the
piazza and the depiction of ships in the distant
seascape. Nothing in the architecture requires a
later date for this panel than 1480, and it may be
the best of all the candidates for attribution to the
shadowy architect-painter Fra Carnevale (Bartolo-

250

CIRCA

1492

meo di Giovanni Corradini), who died in 1484.

The Urbino and Walters panels have much in
common. The raised and ragged lips of paint
around the Urbino panel indicates that it was
removed from an item of furnishing, where it
would have been set within an integral frame. The
filled and painted-in upper and lower borders of
the Walters panel, which has been trimmed laterally, indicate a similar original setting, as do the
nail holes in its right margin. The classicizing

architecture in both panels shares a strong affinity

with the style and archaeological impulses of Giuliano da Sangallo, an affinity that suggests a date
no earlier than 1490 and an origin in Florence.
Zeri's reading of the incomplete date "149." on
the tablet on the top of the right-hand palace in
the Urbino panel would exclude an attribution to
Fra Carnevale and also rule out the persistent
association of the panel with Piero della Francesca. This tablet also contains traces of a hybrid

script that appears to mix Latin and Greek characters incoherently, while the tablet on the lefthand palace is indecipherable.
Despite the obvious similarities, the organization of the space in the Urbino and Walters panels
is rather different in feel. The composition in the
Urbino picture has an amplitude and unity that
are absent in the Walters townscape, which
appears to have been compiled additively from a
repertoire of classicizing buildings. The subtle

mix of buildings in the Urbino painting, such

as the juxtaposition of the grand centralized
"temple" with the facade of a "parish church,"
gives a feeling of credibility to the ideal town
center. The superbly controlled description of the
three-dimensional bulk of the objects in space,
such as the wellheads, and their integration into
the perspective scheme explain the temptation felt
by earlier commentators such as Kenneth Clark to
attribute the Urbino painting to Piero della
Francesca himself. The Walters townscape, by
contrast, displays its exemplary buildings and
decorative features in a more literal and less "naturalized" manner, not unlike the background in
Perugino's fresco of the Donation of the Keys in
the Sistine Chapel. The statues of the four Virtues atop the columns apparently Justice, Temperance, Abundance, and Fortitude allude
directly to the characteristics of the political
regime that would be conducive to the creation of
such a cityscape, while the fountain from which
the women (and the man?) draw water refers to
the way in which the provision of fountains was
regarded as a sign of a ruler's magnanimity in the
Renaissance. The strange proportions of the figures recall those in the panels of the Story of
Griselda (National Gallery, London) by an anonymous master in the orbit of Signorelli. The differences between the conceptions may suggest a
different mind at work in the two paintings or
indicate that the same artist was using two rather
different approaches. Until a direct comparison of
style and constructional methods can be made in
the context of the present exhibition the first
time they have been brought together the most
likely attribution is to different artists working
around 1500, one perhaps in the environment of
Urbino and the other in Florence.
M.K.

*49

Piero di Cosimo
Florentine, 1462-1521

THE BUILDING OF A DOUBLE PALACE

c. 1510-1515
oil on panel
82.6 X 196.9

f^22/2 X 772/2J

references: Morgan 1960; Fahy 1965; Frederickson

and Zeri 1972; Panofsky 1972; Craven 1975; Bacci
1976; Ryknert et al. 1988
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota
Piero di Cosimo's most famous works were series
of spalliera paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects, that is to say, panels set into the
furnishing of a room at a level above the dado or
as upright elements in pieces of furniture. If such
panels survive untrimmed, they show, as here,
the ragged lip of paint and priming that once
abutted an integral frame. Vasari refers to one

such series commissioned by Piero del Pugliese

for the family house on the Via de' Serragli in
Florence, which probably included the Hunt and
the Return from the Hunt (both Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York), and possibly the Fire
in the Forest (Ashmolean, Oxford), which show
the early history of man. The Ringling painting
has been associated with the Pugliese series (Fahy
1965), but differences in size and style seem to
exclude this possibility. It may have belonged to
an otherwise unknown series or on its own may
have adorned a single piece of furniture. In 1510
Piero was collaborating with the famous woodworker Baccio dAgnolo on the making of "cassoni
con spalliere" for Filippo Strozzi (Craven 1975).
Such spalliere would have formed the upright
backs above the main body of chests.
Although this scene of building cannot be specifically associated with any of the known series
by Piero, it does fit well with those that deal with
aspects of the early history of human skills, such
as the discovery of fire or the activities of Vulcan.
The painting of Vulcan shows primitive men constructing the framework of a wooden building, at
a stage of civilization at least two steps removed
from the accomplished builders in the Ringling
picture. The general source for Piero's visions of
the origins and progress of human civilization
appears to be the first chapter of book n in Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture. The Roman
author describes how the discovery of fire
originally gave rise to the coming together of
men, to the deliberative assembly and to social
intercourse. And so, as they kept coming
together in greater numbers into one place,
finding themselves naturally gifted beyond
other animals in not being obliged to walk with
faces to the ground, but upright and gazing on
the splendors of the starry firmament, and also
being able to do with ease whatever they chose
with their hands and fingers, they began in that
first assembly to construct shelters
And
since they were of an imitative and teachable
nature, they would daily point out to each other
the results of their building, boasting of the
novelties in it; and thus, with their natural gifts
sharpened by emulation, their standards
improved daily.
For Alberti in the Renaissance, the architect was
of particular importance in shaping the ideal of
civic order and could indeed take a lead in showing
how a better social life might be achieved. Piero's
picture of a great classical structure being erected
by our ancestors in a virgin plane, like the eighth
wonder of the world, is a vision of architectural
optimism that aligns it in function with the spalliera paintings of ideal townscapes in Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin (see cat. 147-148). Although
the general tenor of Piero's representation is clear,
it is not easy to interpret precisely what is happening. In particular, the building itself is not
readily recognizable as any known kind of struc-

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

251

ture. It appears to consist of two identical palace

blocks separated by a colonnaded forum and completely surrounded by a single-story colonnade
with a horizontal architrave, which is topped by
rows of statues. The flat platform between the
architrave and the palaces provides an elevated
walkway with access to the second-story doors.
The function of the compound structure appears
to be secular. Perhaps the closest parallel is provided by the forms of the forum and basilica
described by Vitruvius in chapter one of his fifth
book. He explains how
the Greeks lay out their forums in the form of a
square surrounded by very spacious double colonnades, adorn them with columns set rather
closely together, and with entablatures of stone
or marble, and construct walls above in the
upper story.
He later notes that the architect should "have the
balconies of the upper floor properly arranged so
as to be convenient, and to bring in some public
revenue/' Alberti paraphrased Vitruvius' account
of Greek and Roman forums in the eighth book of
his De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building).
However, no one closely reading Vitruvius would
arrive at a structure like that depicted by Piero,
and it is likely that he created a fantasy architecture designed to impress visually rather than to
invite precise functional analysis. The style of the
architecture is generally in accord with that of
Giuliano da Sangallo, whose portrait Piero
painted, together with that of Giuliano's father
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The scattering of
the workshop activities across the foreground
plane is also designed more for pictorial effect
than for realism, although the detailed portrayal
of the laboring masons and carpenters is clearly
based upon contemporary practice.

252

CIRCA 1492

The chronology of Piero's career is less clearly

charted than we might like, but the formal symmetry of the design points to a relatively late date,
no earlier than his work for Strozzi in 1510.
M.K.

150

Vittore Carpaccio
Venetian, 1455/1465-1525 or 1526

MIRACLE OF THE RELIC

OF THE TRUE CROSS

1494

oil on canvas
365 ^ 389 (i435/sx 153 Vsj
references: Lauts 1962; Muraro 1977; Pignatti 1981;
Daly Davis 1980; Bergasconi 1981; Nepi Sa're and
Valcanover 1985; Davanzati 1986; Fortini Brown
1988; Humfrey 1991
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The painting of large-scale narrative cycles for the
Venetian scuole, the lay organizations that
exerted so much influence on Venetian religious
and civic life, is one of the most remarkable episodes in Renaissance art patronage. Venetian
artists developed for these pictures a distinctive
narrative and scenic approach centered upon the
ceremonies and rituals through which Venetian
society expressed some of its most important
aspirations (Fortini Brown 1988). Carpaccio's
painting is part of the cycle for the Albergo of the
Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista, one of the
Scuole Grandi, which was undertaken by a team
of artists, possibly led by Gentile Bellini, who
executed three of the paintings himself. Giovanni

Mansueti painted two of the canvases, while

Lazzaro Bastiani, Benedetto Diana, and Pietro
Perugino completed one apiece. Carpaccio's contribution can be dated with some certainty to
1494 (Bergasconi 1981) and is among the earliest
works in the cycle. The latest was painted by Gentile Bellini in 1500. With the exception of Perugino's painting, which was destroyed, the cycle is
now preserved in the Accademia. In 1544, while
Carpaccio's canvas was still in situ, a portion was
cut from the bottom left edge to accommodate a
door. The seventeenth-century repair of the lost
portion is clearly apparent. In its original location,
the picture was situated on the east wall of the
Albergo, beside the altar on which the relic
was housed, with Perugino's painting on the
other side.
The stories in the cycle are concerned with a
deeply revered relic that the Scuola guarded in its
Albergo, a fragment of the True Cross. The
authenticity of such a relic was thought to be confirmed by the miracles it facilitated, and each of
the narratives in the cycle portrays one of the documented episodes of the relic in effective action.
The event illustrated by Carpaccio occurred in
1494, the year in which he was commissioned to
paint his picture, and concerns a man possessed of
a demon who was cured when the Patriarch of
Grado raised the relic above the deranged man's
head. The procession of white-robed celebrants
can be seen wending its way over the wooden
Rialto Bridge and up to the handsome balcony
where the Patriarch performs the miracle. As was
the case in other of the paintings in this and comparable cycles, many of the figures were intended
to be recognizable portraits, and the details of the
costumes were carefully depicted, such as the
robes of a member of the Cavalieri della Calza,
with his back to us in the foreground, for which a

scale paintings, most notably in his Reception of

the Ambassadors from the Saint Ursula cycle (Accademia, Venice), which included some set-piece
demonstrations of geometrical forms in perspective in the manner of Uccello and Piero della
Francesca (Daly Davis 1980). The great narrative
view paintings by Carpaccio and his Venetian
rivals represent a logical climax of one aspect of
Brunelleschi's invention of perspective some
eighty years earlier.
M.K.

51
Jacopo de' Barbari
Venetian, active before 1495 died by 1516

VIEW OF VENICE

1500

woodcut on six separate blocks (first state)

143 x 309 ($6l/4 x I2i5/s) (approx)
references: Kristeller 1896; Servolini 1944; Pignatti
1964; National Gallery of Art 1973; Levenson 1978;
Schulz 1978; London 1983
Hamburger Kunsthalle

preliminary study survives (Albertina, Vienna).

The use of gold leaf to reinforce the decorative
details, such as the splendid candelabra that have
been carried up to the balcony, not only emphasizes the magnificence of the event but also attests
to the fact that the Scuola spared no expense in its
artistic competition with other Scoule. The combination of a particular and vividly topical miracle
with the annual rituals that conferred a special
status on the Scuola within Venetian society is
brilliantly expressed by Carpaccio through an
unrivaled depiction of the Grand Canal and its
flanking palaces and warehouses.
The essential accuracy with which Carpaccio
has depicted the buildings in the area of the Rialto
Bridge can be confirmed both by reference to the
same scene today although the wooden bridge
has long since been replaced by the present stone
structure, to less picturesque effect and by comparison with the relevant section of Jacopo de'
Barbaras great View of Venice, which was published in 1500 (cat. 151). Barbari and Carpaccio
agree on the basic structure of the bridge, with the
four pylons from which the central span was suspended and could be raised. The boxed-in flanks
of the bridge contained shops, much in the
manner of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Barbari
does not show the architecture of the Patriarch's

palace in the same detail as does Carpaccio, but his

depiction of many of the other features tallies well -,
with the painting, including the position of what
Barbari labels as the "fontico dalamanj" on the
rightthe Fondaco dei Tedeschi the German
merchants' warehouse that was to receive the
famous wall paintings by Titian and Giorgione.
The architecture on the left of the Grand Canal
is carefully aligned so that the orthogonals all run
to a common vanishing point halfway across the
picture and at the level of the cornice above the
arches of the balcony. It appears that to achieve
this spatial coherence on the left Carpaccio
indulged in some slight regularizing of the building lines. By contrast, the buildings visible on the
right behind the bridge are arranged in a more
erratic manner around the curve of the canal and
were probably laid in by eye to give an impression
of the variety of angles at which they were set.
Although he has given a formal rigor to the portion of the canvas in which the main event takes
place, the overall effect is one of daring asymmetry, perhaps sanctioned in part by the painting's
lateral position beside the altar. The relative
informality is obviously a matter of calculation
rather than chance, since Carpaccio demonstrated
a sophisticated command of perspective in orchestrating architectural settings throughout his large-

The authorship of the design of this most astonishing of all Renaissance map-views of a city is not
in doubt, although the woodcut is unsigned
unless we read Mercury's caduceus as Jacopo's
own device, for it appears on other of his works.
In 1500 Anton Kolb, a German printer in Venice,
applied successfully to the Venetian authorities
for a four-year copyright and a license to export
the print without paying duty, stressing the effort
involved over a three-year period, the high price
per copy (at least three florins) needed to recover
his costs, and the fact that it had been undertaken
chiefly for the fame of "this supreme city of
Venice" (Schulz 1978). The print's emphasis upon
the benefits that Mercury and Neptune bring to
Venice the former shining on "this above all
other emporia" and the latter stilling the waters
of "this port" are clearly designed to appeal to
the city's self-regard and to promote its image
elsewhere.
Jacopo is known as an itinerant painter and
engraver of high intellectual aspirations, who
spent much of his career in the service of northern courts (Levenson 1978). He is not known to
have been a woodcutter, and the question must
remain open as to whether Jacopo himself cut the
six blocks or whether Kolb hired the services of
one of the Venetian specialists. The original blocks
survive in the Museo Correr, Venice. Three states
of the print are known (Pignatti 1964), of which
twelve examples of the first state have been
recorded.
There is evidence that maps produced during
the cartographic revolution of the Renaissance a
revolution that centered on the study of Ptolemy's
methods and achievementswere already attract-

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

53

ing the attention of noble patrons before 1500,

both as painted decorations for palaces and as collector's items. The relatively high cost of Jacopo's
map indicates that it was aimed at such a market,
appealing to those who had political and intellectual reasons for being interested in other territories and to those for whom maps, then as now,
provided a form of vicarious travel. In a sense, the
word "map" is misleading, since Jacopo's six large
sheets were hardly designed to assist the visitor
in finding his or her way around the maze of
Venice's streets and canals. However, the anachronistic and popular title of the print, "bird's-eye
view," is by no means preferable. The early docu-

254

CIRCA 1492

ments simply refer to the fact that Venice had

been "portrayed" or "printed." Perhaps it might
best be called a "Portrait of Venice."
"Bird's-eye" views of cities had been published
before Jacopo's. The Florentine graphic artist and
printseller, Francesco Rosselli, appears to have
played a pioneering role with multiblock prints of
Florence, Rome, and Pisa in the 14805 and 14905.
However, what evidence survives of Rosselli's
views suggests that they fell far short of the
detail, coherence, and grandeur of Jacopo's. The
basic principle observed in the design of his map
is that the ground plan of the city has been tilted
into space in such a way that we appear to be

viewing the solid forms of buildings at an angle

from the south and from a considerable distance
and height. The foreshortening is broadly consistent with the way the puffing heads of the winds
are disposed around an imaginary ellipse, as if
they are situated on a foreshortened equator
whose poles are marked by Mercury and Neptune.
However, as Schulz has shown in his fundamental
analysis of the print, the perspectival rendering is
not consistent either overall or in its individual
parts. Although there is a general tendency for
the plan to be more compressed toward the top,
as it should be, there are also severe compressions
on either side of the central join at the left. Some

passages of groups of buildings, most notably

those around the tiled area of Saint Mark's
Square, are depicted in reasonably coherent perspective in themselves but are not coordinated
with the perspective of the whole city, while other
buildings have been set down by eye without
much concern for measured recession. There is a
tendency to exaggerate the height of those vertical features that provide suitable landmarks in
various regions of the city.
The procedure followed in compiling the map is
likely to have involved a complex compound of
techniques. Jacopo must have made or had access
to a reasonably accurate flat plan, but comparison

with a modern map show that his tilted projection

is markedly inconsistent throughout. There are
two possible explanations: either he set the main
outlines of the city into space by eye without precise calculation, or he systematically foreshortened a plan that was not accurately proportioned
throughout. In view of the extreme difficulty in
foreshortening such an irregular shape by eye, the
latter alternative seems more likely. On the basis
of the foreshortened outline, however it was
achieved, he then would have laboriously drawn
in details of the buildings, squares, canals, bridges,
etc., using studies taken from high vantage points
and from less readily adaptable locations at

ground level. The area around Saint Mark's

Square, for example, appears to have been taken
largely from the tower of San Giorgio Maggiore
in the middle of the foreground. Despite its
inconsistencies if analyzed in the light of information and techniques available to us today, the
View remains an achievement of astonishing visual and intellectual control, demanding incredible
patience and a notable ability to visualize forms
from inaccessible viewpoints. Its size and dramatically open horizons also give it a sense of grandeuras a magnificent slice of the vast surface of
the world in a way provided by no equivalent
view in the Renaissance.
M.K.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

255

THE HUMAN FIGURE

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, first in Italy and then in Northern
Europe, the nude figure became a central vehicle of artistic expression. The art of classical
antiquity supplied the Renaissance masters
with actual sculptural prototypes and with a
theoretical ideal, the notion that perfect human
beauty followed a mathematical canon of proportions. The most famous expression of this
belief is Leonardo da Vinci's constructed figure
of a man who conforms to the proportional

schema laid down by the Roman architect

Vitruvius. Renaissance theorists also required
the painter and sculptor to master human anatomy, though evidently only at the end of the
century did artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo actually begin to conduct dissections.
What is remarkable is the broad range of
meanings with which the nude figure could be
endowed in Renaissance art, a variety that far
exceeded its expressive possibilities in antiquity.
Artists like Pollaiuolo, in his series of paintings

of the exploits of Hercules, reintegrated heroic

classical form and subject matter. The nude
could also serve the very different aims of
Christian art, as is so eloquently attested by
moving representations of the Crucifixion. This
breadth of potential is reflected in renderings of
the female nude, as well. An unclothed woman
could represent a classical goddess, an alluring
nymph, or even a threatening temptress, allied
with the forces of evil in a Christian universe.

152

reality than all the Crucifixions when one contemplates it with thoughtful patience for a long
time. For this reason it was, on the gracious order
of the honorable duke, engraved half a sheet large
on a copper plate in the year 1605 by Raphael
Sadeler; and I greatly pleased His Highness, the
Great Elector Maximilian of blessed memory, by
making known the artist's name" (Sandrart 1675,
82). Sandrart correctly identified the painting as
an autograph work by Matthias Griinewald (more
properly, Mathis Gothardt Nithardt). His account
conveys a clear sense of the way in which the
contemplative spectator was expected to absorb
the striking corporeality of Christ's suffering.
The composition of the painting is related to a
drawing by Griinewald (Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe),
which is close in scale to the painted image;
X-rays of the panel show that in the underpainting the thumb of Christ's left hand was bent
towards the palm, as in the drawing. The Karlsruhe drawing is in other respects closer to another
painting by Griinewald in the Offentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel. The monogram signature, mg,
at the top of the cross in this painting seems not
to be original and was probably added after Sandrart had identified the author of the panel. There
have been numerous paint losses which have been
infilled, but these are for the most part in subsidiary areas of the composition (Eisler 1977).
The Crucifixion, which became the archetypal
Griinewald subject, probably first appeared in his

art in the Basel painting, which can be dated, on

stylistic grounds, to the early years of the sixteenth century. The Washington version appears
to postdate the harrowing depiction on the outside
of Griinewald's immense Isenheim Altarpiece
(Musee d'Unterlinden, Colmar), where Christ's
bodily ravages are extended to include the disfigured joints occasioned by "St. Anthony's fire"
(ergot poisoning), the illness the Anthonite monastery that commissioned the altarpiece was
particularly dedicated to treating. The dependence
of the painting on the Isenheim image would suggest a date of 1516 or shortly thereafter for the
Washington picture. The translation of the subject
to a small panel for intimate devotion inevitably
entailed some scaling down of the rhetoric the
grief of Mary Magdalen is notably less overtbut
without compromising expressive intensity. No
other artist has ever used an unremitting emphasis
upon the physical description of injury more effectively for spiritual ends, providing a visual counterpart to Saint Bridget of Sweden's visionary
descriptions of Christ's agonies (Eisler 1977). The
other details of the composition, such as the torn
clothes and jagged rocks, all reinforce the central
meaning of the image. The eclipse of the sun,
which ominously darkens the scene, has been
related to an actual eclipse in 1502 (Ziilch 1938),
but can be seen in more general terms as referring
to the Gospel accounts and the prophecy of
Amos (819).
M.K.

Matthias Griinewald

German, c. 1465-1528

CRUCIFIXION
c. 1516
oil on limewood panel
61.6 x 46 (24 x iy15/i6)
inscribed: mg at top of cross
references: Sandart 1675, 82; Schonberger 1922;
Ziilch 1938; Franger 1946, 11; Kress 1956, no. 36;
Ruhmer 1958; Suida and Shapley 1975; Walker
1975,144, no. 3152; Eisler 1977

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.

Kress Collection
Until comparatively recently, this image was
known only through an engraving made in 1605
by Raphael Sadeler, through copies, and through
Joachim von Sandrart's perceptive description of
the painting when it was owned by Duke Wilhelm
v of Bavaria: "He had a small Crucifixion with
our Dear Lady and St. John, together with a
kneeling and devoutly praying Mary Magdalen,
most carefully painted by Griinewald's hand, and
he loved it very much, even without knowing who
it was by. On account of the wonderful Christ on
the Cross, so suspended and supported on the
feet, it is so very rare that real life could not surpass it, and certainly it is more true to nature and
256

CIRCA

1492

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

257

in exhibition

153

not

154

not in exhibition

155

Donatello
(Donate di Niccolo di Betto Bardi)

Florentine, 1386-1466

THE SHOOTING OF SAINT SEBASTIAN

c. 1453

bronze, partially gilt

26 x 24 (iol/4 x 92/2J
references: Kauffman 1935; Janson 1963; New York
1956, no. 46; Pope-Hennessy 1980, 93-95; Bobzr
and Rubenstein 1986, no. 34; Avery 1986, 14-18;
Boucher 1986; Florence 1986
Institut de France Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris
The remarkably wide technical, formal, and
expressive range of Donatello's documented work,
reflecting his highly flexible responses to the different media, subjects, patronage, functions, and
settings of each project, makes the attribution and
dating of undocumented work a perilous undertaking. Opinions about the authenticity of this
relief have varied widely, although its high quality
has generally been acknowledged. Following the
recent rediscovery of the Chellini Madonna (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), which is
securely dated to 1456, there is now little reason
to hesitate in attributing the Jacquemart-Andre
relief to Donatello himself and dating it to the
period immediately after his return from Padua in
1453. The two bronze reliefs have in common a
compressed composition, a refinement of execution, and the use of gilding. Equally characteristic
of Donatello is the highly imaginative use of
antique prototypes. He has transformed the motif
of a bound Marsyas into the figure of the saint
(e.g., Bober and Rubenstein 1986, no. 34) and has
modeled the archers after the type of Roman warriors with braced legs commonly found on antique
sarcophagi. Vasari recorded that Donatello had
restored an antique Marsyas.
258

CIRCA

1492

Saint Sebastian was especially revered as an

intercessor in times of plague, and this small relief
may have been made for a private patron as an ex
voto or as a kind of insurance policy. In no other
rendering of this subjectwhich, strictly speaking, should not be called the "martyrdom" of
Saint Sebastian, since he miraculously survived
the archers' assault are the injured saint and his
assailants so starkly juxtaposed. The remarkable
motif of the angel rushing forward to console
Sebastian with the martyr's palm recalls the
expressive characterization of the pairs of prophets depicted by Donatello on his doors for the Old
Sacristy of San Lorenzo. As in the San Lorenzo
reliefs and statues for the high altar in the Santo
in Padua, the surface of the bronze has been
worked to give a marked sense of textural differentiation between such features as the smooth
skin of the saint, the linear surface of the hair, the
feathery wings of the angel, the coiled strings of

the bows, and the "pock-marked" draperies. The

Apollonian character of the saint and the Herculean quality of the archers articulate similar
classical references in the bronzes by Bertoldo
(cat. 164) and Pollaiuolo (cat. 162).
M.K.

156

not in exhibition

*57
Adriano Fiorentino
(Adriano di Giovanni de' Maestri)
Florentine, c. 1415/1416-1499

VENUS
c. 1492
bronze
height (including base) 42.2 (i65/s)
references: Fabriczy 1903; Florence 1986;
Washington 1986, 51-57

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Adriano's formative experiences as a sculptor
occurred when he worked in Florence with
Bertoldo di Giovanni (cat. 164), whose bronze
of Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna) he was responsible for

casting (Washington 1986, 51-57). He was a specialist in bronze casting, working not only as a
sculptor but also as a medalist and canon-founder.
This statuette, cast solid with a hollow base,
attests to his technical expertise. After 1486 he
worked in Naples for Virginio Orsini, the condottieref and for the Aragonese court, where he portrayed the poet Giovanni Pontano. He was well
regarded in Gonzaga circles at Mantua and in
Urbino and his small bronzes did much to promote the connoisseur's taste for nudes in the
antique style, which Antico was to satisfy so
effectively with his statuettes. In 1498,
while at the court of Emperor Maximilian i,
Adriano executed a bust of Frederick the Wise,
Elector of Saxony (Grimes Gewolbe, Dresden).
Adriano died the following year. Although a
number of his bronzes are signed, the chronology
of his works is unclear. The present statuette is

likely to date from his employment in the Italian

courts during the early and mid-i49os.
Unlike Antico's reduced replicas and reconstructions of known Roman statues, Adriano's
figures are "antique" only in a general sense. The
open and relaxed pose of his Venus does not seem
to imitate any of the Roman statues of Venus
known to the Renaissance, but, like Botticelli's
pictures of Venus, remakes antiquity through the
artist's imagination. Adriano probably followed
the prototype of Botticelli's Birth of Venus in
his portrayal of the goddess on a shell, while the
motif of her wringing water from her wet hair
was probably inspired by a description of the classical Greek artist Apelles' famed painting of the
newborn Venus arising from the waves, her body
glistening. Adriano's statuette is the finest early
example of this genre of hedonistic art, which was
to become so popular in courts throughout Europe.
M.K.

158
Lucas Cranach the Elder

German, 1472-1553

NYMPH OF THE SACRED WELL

c. 1537
oil on panel
48.5

X 72.9

(19 X 28I/2)

references: Kurz 1953; Liebman 1968; Basel 1974;

MacDougall 1975; Suida and Shapley 1975;
Friedldnder 1978; Leeman 1984
National Gallery of Art, Washington

In 1504 Cranach entered the service of Frederick

the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and he was to spend
nearly fifty prosperous years in Wittenberg in the
service of successive rulers of Saxony, producing
a large number of altarpieces, smaller religious
paintings, portraits, secular images, and prints.
The first of his images of the female nude appears
to be the Venus and Cupid of 1509 in Leningrad
(Friedlander 1978, no. 22), in which the figures
are more rounded and overtly Italianate than in
his later and more characteristic images. Frederick
employed the Italian artists Adriano Fiorentino
(cat. 157) and Jacopo de'Barbari, both of whom
portrayed graceful female nudes in the antique
style, and they appear to have exercised a decisive
influence on Cranach's conception of female
beauty, although his translation of their vision
was highly idiosyncratic. He later produced a substantial number of such subjects, including Lucretia, The Judgment of Paris, and Venus with Cupid
the Honey-Thief, regularly working slight variations on the same theme. The Latin inscriptions
on a number of the paintings reflect the humanist
learning at the court of Saxony. The librarian of
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

259

the University at Wittenberg, Georg Spalatin,

obtained many books from the leading Italian
presses, and it was from one of the Venetian volumes, Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia
Polifili (1499), that Cranach derived the major
visual inspiration for his reclining nymph. Like
the inscription on the versions of Venus with
Cupid the Honey-Thief, the Latin hexameter on
the painting "I am the nymph of the sacred
font. Do not interrupt my sleep for I am at
peace" may be directly taken from one of the
texts in the library (Leeman 1984). The nymph of
the well became one of Cranach's popular subjects
and exists in a number of variants. The earliest
may be the panel in Leipzig (Museum der bildenden Kiinste; Friedlander 1978, no. 119), which is
dated 1518, and there is a further dated version in
the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Friedlander
1978, no. 259), which is inscribed 1534 on the rim
of the fountain. The Washington painting, which
is clearly autograph, can be dated to 1537 or
slightly later, since it was in this year that the
dragon device from his coat of arms (which he had
been granted in 1508) appears with its wings
folded, perhaps in deference to the death of his
eldest son and collaborator, Hans.
The motif of the sleeping nymph was well
known in humanist circles in the early sixteenth
century through what was widely assumed to be
an ancient epigram, although it was actually a
fifteenth-century invention. The epigram was
said to have accompanied a carving of "a sleeping
nymph in a beautiful fountain above the banks of
the Danube." In Alexander Pope's picturesque
translation it reads:
Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep,
And to the murmur of these waters sleep.

260

CIRCA 1492

Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave,

And drink in silence or in silence leave.
(Kurz 1953)
The general idea of Cranach's Nymph, with the
condensed version of the epigram, clearly conforms to this type of "Danube fountain," but he
has amplified and modified the basic image in
ways that seem to enhance its amatory associations. The conjugal partridges at which the
nymph casts a sleepy glance are associated with
Venus (Liebman 1968), while the bow and quiver
are more likely to belong to Cupid than to the
chaste Diana. In the earliest version the nymph
looks enticingly through half-closed eyes at the
spectator, and in all the variants the erotic elements are underlined. In contrast to the inscriptions, her heavy-lidded eyes are never completely
closed and give a teasing ambiguity to the injunction not to disturb her dreams. In the Washington
painting, she not only possesses the customary
jewelry and provocative veils but also reclines on
a splendid velvet dress with slashed sleeves, which
serves to emphasize her courtly accessibility
rather than her mythological remoteness. In one
late painting, The Fountain of Youth (1546,
Gemaldegalerie Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Friedlander 1978, no. 407),
cartloads of stolid and aging women enter a pool
filled by a fountain, subsequently to emerge on
the other side as fashionable objects of desire. One
of the metamorphosed ladies reclines on the side
of the pool in the same pose as the nymph of the
sacred well.
The marked emphasis on the doll-like delicacy
and the exaggeratedly linear contours of Cranach's
female nudes tend to make them appear to
modern eyes curiously abstracted from fleshly

concerns rather than seductive, but German

small-scale sculpture of comparable subjects suggests that the portrayal of women with this kind
of mannered grace had a distinct appeal in court
circles at this time. Indeed, the costumes in Cranach's more flamboyant images of clothed women
speak a similar language of artifice and unreal
promise. The language is less conspicuously
multidimensional than the complex images of
naked females by Hans Baldung Grien, in which
the sensual vanity of earthly beauty is regularly
undermined by premonitions of death. Even
when the inscriptions in Cranach's pagan subjects
suggest a moral, as in the story of Cupid the
honey-thief, the actual portrayal of the theme
exudes an air of playful delectation and humanist
wit rather than heavy moralizing.
M.K.

*59

Bernardino Luini

Milanese, c. 1480-1532

NYMPH OF THE SPRING (OR VENUS)

c. 1525
oil on panel
107 x 136 (42 x 532/2J
references: Ottino della Chiesa 1956; Shapley 1968,
143; Luino 1974, 94; MacDougall 1975; Shapley
1979, no. 231

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.

Kress Collection
Of the Milanese painters who fell under Leonardo's spell, Luini retained the most distinct artistic
personality. This painting appears to date from
the 15 2os, when his style was fully evolved,
and is comparable to the frescoes he executed at
Saronno, which are dated 1525. Although Leonardo's lost painting of Leda was one of the first
depictions of a nude female figure in a luxuriant
setting, Luini seems here to be influenced by the
popular Venetian type of Venus reclining in a
landscape as painted by Giorgione, Titian, Lotto,
and Palma Vecchio. Luini shares with Palma a
tendency to simplify and generalize female anatomy in keeping with the classical ideal. The
mountains in the distance are quite Leonardesque,
but the landscape as a whole and the minutely
observed plants suggest the direct inspiration of
northern art, perhaps even of Lucas Cranach, who
had portrayed similar subjects at least as early
as 1518.
The nude in this picture has, not surprisingly,
been identified as Venus, but the water spouting
into the pool in the front of the scene indicates
that she is more likely to be a guardian nymph of
a sacred spring, as celebrated in a supposedly
ancient epigram (MacDougall 1975) and as depicted

by Cranach (cat. 158). The association of nymphs

with Diana, the chaste goddess of the hunt, does
make it feasible that this is a portrait of an actual
woman (Ottino della Chiesa 1956), but the facial
features are typical of Luini's style and may
not depict a particular person. Like so many of the
Italian pictures that ostensibly deal with the theme
of chastity, alternative aspects of the nymph's
appeal seem to come to the fore. As in Cranach's
pictures, the veils serve to draw attention to what
they fail to conceal, and the hints of discarded
clothing and jewelry suggest that the nymph
belongs as much to our own world as to the distant realms of myth.
M.K.

Almost every aspect of this remarkable engravingthe largest of the Florentine fifteenth century is open to dispute, except its authorship.
Its date is problematic. Pollaiuolo's own testimony
in 1494 indicates that he had painted three large
canvases of the almost nude Hercules in violent
action (now lost) for the Medici in 1460. The

Paduan painter, Squarcione, who died in 1469,

possessed "a cartoon" by Pollaiuolo with nude
figures, a fragment of which may survive in the
Fogg Museum, Harvard University (Ettlinger
1978, 36). A date in the mid-i46os for the engraving is therefore plausible. Even if its correct date
were in the next decade, it would still be notably
precocious as an overt image of naked men. The
Cleveland version of the engraving is a unique
survival of the earliest state known, before the
recutting of the plate (Richards 1968). The original engraving of the plate is a technical tour de
force (Fusco 1973), and clearly owes much to the
artist's expertise as a metalworker (including
the chasing of incised decoration).
The subject of the engraving has occasioned
much debate. Some have claimed specific literary
sources, while others have seen it as a demonstration piece (either to promote Pollaiuolo's skills or
to instruct aspiring artists). None of the textual
sources (Ettlinger 1978,15) seems to fit the image
convincingly, and it is probably not an illustration
of a known story. The idea that it was designed as
an exemplary demonstration piece, to be copied by
artists who wished to acquire an advanced figure
style, has much to recommend it. A drawing by
Pollaiuolo in the Louvre, Paris, showing a nude
man from the front, side, and back, appears to
have performed just this function (Ettlinger 1978,
37). A number of artists, including Verrocchio,
Bertoldo, and Pollaiuolo himself, are recorded as
having conceived compositions of fighting nudes
in a variety of media; these seem to have been
intended to show "anatomical" figures in stirring
action. The engraving could almost serve as an
illustration of the variety of positions demanded
in Alberti's De pictura (1435): "Everything that

i6o
Antonio Pollaiuolo

Florentine, 1431/1432-1498

BATTLE OF THE NUDES

c. 1465
engraving
42.8x6i.8(i611/i6X241/
inscribed: OPVS ANTONII POLLA/IOLI HORENT/TINI
references: Hind 1938, 1:9; Richards 1968; Fusco
1973; Ettlinger 1978, 15, 36, 37; Emison 1990; Kemp

Z991/ 43

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge,

Gift of Francis Bullard in Memory of His Uncle
Charles Eliot Norton
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

261

changes position has seven directions of movement, either up or down or to the left or right, or
going away in the distance or coming towards us;
and the seventh is going round in a circle. I want
all these seven movements to be in a painting.
There should be some bodies that face towards us,
and others going away, to right and left. Of these
some parts should be shown towards the spectators, and others should be turned away; some
should be raised upwards and others directed
downwards" (Kemp 1991, 43). Such an exemplary
function would not exclude a specific meaning for
the image, and Pollaiuolo may have been as keen
to display his powers of invenzione ("invention"
in the rhetorical sense of devising subject matter)
as his prowess with the human body. In this
respect, the engraving would be similar to Mantegna's engravings of all'antica themes, such as
the Battle of the Sea Gods and Bacchanals.
The selection of the carefully characterized
plants in the background appears to be deliberate.
The corn and grapes may refer to the Eucharist,
while the two olive trees may allude to the Christian peace, which is notably absent in the foreground. The chain the possession of which does
not seem to be the prime subject of dispute can
be read as a reference to the chaining of the soul
to the unredeemed body of mortal man (Emison
1990). According to this reading, we see a conscious juxtaposition of the spiritual reality of
Christ's flesh and blood in the Eucharist with the
corporeal reality of man's sinful and untamed
body. This line of interpretation suggests that it
is not the heroism of the fighting warriors that
is held up for admiration, but the artist's high
achievement in combining the depiction of their
beastly actions with the devising of a meaningful
context. The artist could thus demonstrate not
only his great command of anatomy but also an
intellectual ability to invent significant content in
a manner to equal the poet.
M.K.

l6l fc*
Antonio Pollaiuolo

Florentine, 1431/1432-1498

HERCULES AND THE HYDRA

c. 1460-1475
oil on panel
17.5 X 12 (67/8 X 43/4)

references: Milanesi 1878, 3:293-295; Muntz 1888;

Fusco 1971; Ettlinger 1972
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
When Antonio Pollaiuolo wrote to Gentile Virginio Orsini in 1494 seeking a favor from Piero
de' Medici, the artist said Piero would "remember
that 34 years ago I made the Exploits of Hercules
262

CIRCA 1492

which are in the sala of his palace, made by me

and my brother [Piero]." Three huge canvases
depicting three of Hercules' exploits overcoming
the hydra, strangling Antaeus, and killing the
Nemean lionwere recorded in the Medici inventory in 1492 in the sala grande of Lorenzo il
Magnifico. A little over a year after the letter,
following the expulsion of Piero de' Medici from
Florence, the images were requisitioned by the
government of the Florentine republic, and they
have since disappeared. From Vasari's description
of the Medicean paintings, it is clear that the
composition of the figure groups in two of
them Hercules and the Hydra and Hercules and
Antaeus are closely reflected in two small panel
paintings in the Uffizi, Florence. Vasari greatly
admired the vitality of the former, describing it as
"truly a marvelous thing, particularly the serpent; the coloring of which is so vividly done, and
so appropriately, that it is impossible that anything could be more lively" (Milanesi 1878,
3:294). His assessment of the Hercules and
Antaeus perfectly captures the "anatomical"
quality of the portrayal: "Hercules... strangles
Antaeus, a beautiful image; in which one can
genuinely see the force of Hercules in the act of
strangling, in that his muscles and tendons are all
bunched up in the effort to finish off Antaeus;
and in the head of this Hercules one can discern
the gnashing of the teeth, in keeping with the
character of the other parts of his body, right
down to his toes, which turn up with the strain.
Nor does the artist devote less attention to
Antaeus, who, constrained by the arms of Hercules, is seen to be declining and losing all vigor,
and with open mouth his spirit is departing"
(Milanesi 1878, 31294). The third of the paintings

recorded by Vasari, Hercules and the Nemean

Lion, does not correspond to a surviving image.
There seems no reason to doubt Pollaiuolo's
precise account of when he and Piero painted the
large versions, and the smaller panels may have
been executed around the same time (that is, c.
1460), though they could be as readily assigned to
the 14705 on stylistic grounds. The handling of
the Uffizi panel paintings suggests Antonio's sole
authorship. Such small panels would most likely
serve as integral decorations of an item of wooden
furniture, probably something like a casket rather
than a larger chest or cassone. The removal of the
panels from their setting may have been partly
responsible for the damage they have suffered,
though the vertical cracking and paint loss are less
severe in this panel than in its companion piece.
The chief area of paint loss occurs in the body and
wings of the hydra. The damage around the edges
of the panel reflects an earlier but not original
frame. The present edges of the two panels do not
provide clear evidence of their mounting.
The lost paintings described by Vasari were of
great historical significance, as the first recorded
images in the Renaissance that depicted classical
subjects on a large scale in an overtly Antique
manner, drawing upon Roman relief sculpture for
their figure style. The choice of subject, however,
was not motivated solely by humanist antiquarianism. Hercules served as a kind of pagan guardian of Florence, appearing on the seal of the city
and in the sculptural decoration of the Porta della
Mandorla at the cathedral (Ettlinger 1972). The
commissioning of large images of Hercules florentinus for the Medici palace either by Cosimo il
Vecchio or Piero il Gottoso confirmed their wish
to be identified with the virtues of the Florentine
republic. The family's possession of Uccello's
three patriotic panels, The Rout of San Romano,
served much the same function. The smaller
images, including the bronze version of Hercules
and Antaeus (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), obviously can not have performed such a
publicly rhetorical role and belong rather in the
realm of humanist connoisseurship asssociated
with Lorenzo il Magnifico. It is likely though not
certain that the small panels, too, were painted for
one of the Medici.
Even in its damaged state, the landscape of this
panel exhibits Pollaiuolo's remarkable and characteristic use of a foreground "plateau," behind and
below which a plain extends into the limitless
distance. He may have gleaned this technique
from Netherlandish painting, but his use of it as
a foil for the monumentally sculptural description
of near-naked figures is entirely his own. M.K.

162

Antonio Pollaiuolo
Florentine, 1431/1432-1498

HERCULES
c. 1480
bronze
40.5 fi57/sj
references: Muntz 1888; Bode 1923, 18;
Fusco 1971; Ettlinger 1972; Joannides
1977,1981; Ettlinger 1978, nos. 18, 24, 27; Bober
and Rubenstein 1986, nos. 89, 129-130
Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Like the three large paintings of the exploits of
Hercules by Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, a
bronze sculpture of Hercules was listed in the
Medici inventories: "a Hercules who crushes
Antaeus, completely of bronze, half a braccio
high'7 (Miintz 1888). This entry refers to the
bronze group now in the Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence (Ettlinger 1978, no. 18). No
comparably early record is known of the single
figure in Berlin, though Pollaiuolo's authorship
has not been seriously doubted since the original
attribution by Bode in 1902. The subject of Hercules seems to have been especially favored by the
Medici, but Hercules' more general association
with Florentine ideals as Hercules florentinus
(Ettlinger 1972) suggests that the Medici need
not necessarily be identified as the patrons of the
present statuette. There are no fixed points in the
chronology of Pollaiuolo's small bronze statuettes,
but the similarity of Hercules' facial features to
those of God the Father on the reliquary cross of
1478 for San Gaggio (Ettlinger 1978, no. 24)
suggests a date in the late 14705 or early 14805.
The only conspicuous damage is the fracturing of
the lion's foot at the rear of the base, which may
have been the result of a casting flaw.
Like the Medicean bronze of Hercules and
Antaeus, this is a connoisseur's piece, made as a
virtuoso exercise in the "antique" manner. It not
only emulates the Roman statues of Hercules
known in the Renaissance (Bober and Rubenstein
1986, nos. 129-130), but also recalls the statue
described in Libanios' Ekphraseis xv:
His head bends towards the earth and he seems
to me to be looking to see if he can kill another
opponent. Then his neck is bent downward
along with his head. And his whole body is bare
of covering, for Herakles was not one to care
about modesty when his attention was directed
toward excellence. Of his arms, the right one is
taut and bent behind his back, while the left is
relaxed and stretches toward the earth. He is
supported under the arm-pit by his club... Of
Herakles's two legs, the right one is beginning
to make a movement, while the left is placed
beneath and fitted firmly on the base (Pollitt
1965,148-149).
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

263

At least two antique statuettes and a relief of this

type of relaxed Hercules with the right leg
crossed over the left were known in the Renaissance (Joannides 1977, 1981), and Pollaiuolo had
himself adapted this model in his drawing of
Adam in the Uffizi (Ettlinger 1978, no. 27). The
Berlin bronze appears to combine the general air
of this model with a reworking of the pose of
Donatello's famous bronze David (Bargello, Florence). The placing of the lion's head under the
foot of Hercules, a motif which is not found in the
antique prototypes, appears to make deliberate
allusion to the subject of David with the head of
Goliath and underlines the characterization of
Hercules as a kind of "pagan saint/' In his left
hand Hercules holds the three golden apples of
the Hesperides, the fruits of immortality obtained
from the last of his twelve labors.
The three-sided base, with the motif of a
monopodial sphinx at each corner, is consciously
antique in style (Bober and Rubenstein 1986, no.
89), and serves to underscore the archaizing spirit
of the piece. The judicious polishing and chasing
of this splendid, patinated cast are also intended
to convey an antique air. However, the wiry
strength of the figure's anatomy, with knobby
muscles and angular joints, the spatial complexity
of the apertures between the limbs and the club,
and the "saint-like" head are ultimately unlike
any classical exemplar, and proclaim Pollaiuolo's
own distinctive gifts in the characterization of
M. K.
male figures.

163

264

not in exhibition

CIRCA 1492

164
Bertoldo di Giovanni
Florentine, c. 1420-1491

EQUESTRIAN BATTLE IN THE

ANCIENT MANNER
c. 1485-1490
bronze
43 x 99 (16 x 39)
references: Wickhoff 1882; Muntz 1888; PopeHennessy 1971, 302-304; Bober and Rubenstein
1986, no. 157
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
This relief is unquestionably identifiable in the
Medici inventory of 1492, when it was located
above a chimneypiece in the "room opposite the
great hall" (Miintz 1888). Bertoldo, a pupil and
assistant to the aged Donatello, occupied a special
position in the Medici household. He appears to
have been in charge of the collection of antiquities
and was on unusually intimate terms with
Lorenzo il Magnifico. He seems to have been
largely occupied in making private works for the
Medici family rather than executing public commissions with the assistance of a workshop in
the traditional manner.
The battle relief reflects the new kind of
patronage practiced by Lorenzo. A connoisseur's
piece, it is a showily impressive reworking of an
actual Roman battle sarcophagus that is still in the
Camposanto in Pisa (Bober and Rubenstein 1986,
no. 157). There are numerous significant differences between the ancient prototype and the

adaptation. Bertoldo's version is in bronze rather

than marble and is less than half the size of the
original. Since none of the figures and horses in
the Roman relief are intact, and the center of the
scene is completely missing, Bertoldo was compelled to reinvent parts of the composition. He
seems to have based the lateral figures largely on
another Roman prototype, and he substantially
revised even the figures that are relatively intact
on the Pisa sarcophagus. He also removed many
of their draperies in order to display the anatomies more fully. Bertoldo allowed the feet of
some of the figures to extend over the front of the
shallow foreground ledge. Moreover, the tangle of
warring figures in the bronze version is radically
more complex in both rhythm and depth than in
the marble original.
The relative depths of relief of Bertoldo's figures, the more prominent of which appear to lean
out from the back plane, suggest that the bronze
was always intended to be seen from a relatively
low viewpoint, and it may have been conceived
specifically for the space it occupied in 1492. The
iconography of Bertoldo's composition is considerably more developed than that of the Roman original, particularly by the introduction of figures
of winged victories standing on vanquished male
foes at either end of the relief. The carefully
counterposed lateral figures, a Venus-like woman
and a gruffly pensive man, have been identified as
Helen and Menelaus, which would suggest that
the battle is between the Trojans and Romans,
with Hector at the center of the action (Wickhoff
1882). However, the central horseman with a club
possesses the lion's-skin that identifies Hercules,
and the battle may therefore illustrate one of his

Alberti's requirement that in portraying a dead

man there should be "no member that does not
seem completely lifeless; they all hang loose;
hands, fingers, neck, all droop inertly down, all
combine together to represent death" (Kemp
1991, 37). The work that Alberti held out as an
exemplar to modern artists was a Roman sarcophagus relief of the dead Meleager, which Signorelli
adapted as a tomb relief in the background of his
fresco of the Pieta at Orvieto.

battles, such as that against Laomedon, king of

Troy, or simply evoke his valor. The fondness of
the Medici, particularly Lorenzo, for images of
"Hercules florentinus" favors the suggestion that
Hercules is the central protagonist.
The prime function of the relief was to demonstrate the artist's virtuosity in the depiction of the
human figure, an effort to rival and indeed to surpass the ancients. The action is described with a
fierce energy, and the figures are sculpted with
a robust vigor that is difficult to appreciate from
photographs. Bertoldo's inventiveness in characterizing the motions of man and animal far
exceeds that of the prototype. The complex twisting poses and virtuoso passages of falling warriors
display a positive relish for overcoming difficulties, and look forward to the obsession with
technical challenges of Michelangelo and the
Mannerists. In view of Bertoldo's likely role as a
tutor to younger sculptors in the Medicean orbit,
most notably Michelangelo, the great variety of
poses of single figures and groups may be seen as
his conscious effort to set a far-reaching agenda
for the rising generation of artists in Florence.
M.K.

M.K.

l66

Michelangelo
Florentine, 1475-1564

STUDIES OF A NUDE MAN (RECTO)

AND COMPOSITIONAL STUDY FOR
'JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES' (VERSO)
c. 1505 recto; 1508-1509 verso
Black chalk, with touches of white on recto, on paper
inscribed: di Bona . . .
40.4 X 26 (l$7/8 X 1O2/4J

references: Frey 1909; Berenson 1938; Hartt 1971,

42 (recto), 66 (verso); De Tolnay 1975-1980, 50;
Hirst 1988; Washington 1988
165

Luca Signorelli
Umbrian, probably 1441-1523

NUDE MAN CARRYING ANOTHER MAN

ON HIS BACK
before 1503
watercolor heightened with white
35 x 25 (14 x 10)
references: Fumi 1891; Kurz 1937, 15; Berenson
1938, 2059 H-2; Martindale 1961; Scarpellini 1964;
Carli 1965; Meltzoff 1988- Kemp 1991, 37
Musee du Louvre, Paris, departement des
Arts Graphiques
The crowning achievement of Signorelli's career
was the fresco cycle in the San Brizio Chapel in
the Cathedral at Orvieto, the vault of which Fra
Angelico had begun in 1447 (Fumi 1891). Signorelli's commission dates from 5 April 1499,
following Perugino's failure to undertake the
work, and the cycle was largely complete by late
1503. The elaborate scheme encompasses a complex iconographic program centering upon judgment, resurrection, and damnation, which draws
upon a variety of theological and poetic sources,
including the writings of Dante (Meltzoff 1988).
The scenes involving complex friezes of nude figures, particularly the Damned Taken by Devils,
are the most ambitious such compositions undertaken by any artist prior to Michelangelo's Battle

Teylers Museum, Haarlem

of Cascina, and there can be little doubt that
Michelangelo studied the frescoes on one of his
journeys between Florence and Rome.
The few surviving drawings that are definitely
preparatory works for the frescoes reveal Signorelli's vigorous working procedures and free
graphic style (Martindale 1961). The relationship
of the more highly finished figure studies to the
paintings is problematic. At first sight the present
drawing bears a strong relationship to the motif
of a figure being carried on another's back in the
right middle ground of the tangle of terrified
men and women in the Damned Taken by Devils.
However, the motif in the fresco is in reverse,
with the head of a limp figure disposed to the
right, and the arms of the supporting figure are
arranged differently.
The drawing is a virtuoso demonstration of the
brush-drawing technique, closely related to the
hatched modeling in the fresco. It has the air of an
"academic" drawing made in the studio as a selfconscious exercise. Such a work could have provided the basis for the motif in the fresco, but it
would not have been in the literal sense a study
for the figures. It could also have served as an
exemplary study in the context of the workshop
for the apprentices. Although the anatomy of Signorelli's figures includes some schematization
that is not based on direct observation, he rivals
Pollaiuolo in revealing the potential of nude figures as vehicles of expression. The pendulous
limbs of the unconscious figure perfectly satisfy

Together with its companion drawing in the Teylers Museum (A i9r), the principal drawing on
the recto of this sheet is a study for one of the
soldiers in Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina, the
unrealized project for a mural on which he was
working for the council hall of the Florentine
republic. The painting was to depict Florentine
soldiers scrambling out of the water, dressing, and
arming themselves to resist what was thought to
be an imminent attack from the Pisans in an episode that preceded a battle which took place in
1364. Michelangelo was engaged on the cartoon
(the appearance of which is best recorded in a grisaille painting by Aristotele da Sangallo, cat. 167)
in 1504 (Frey 1909). The figure on this drawing
corresponds closely to a soldier on the right of the
Sangallo copy. Soldiers placed in front of him in
the finished cartoon concealed his right arm, the
lower portion of his left leg, and his right foot and
ankle, while the position of his left arm is unclear
in the copy. The slight sketch to the right of the
figure's right arm appears to depict the contours
of his belly. The sketch of shoulders below it does
not appear to have been used in the cartoon.
Michelangelo's use of black chalk for such vigorous, large scale, and close-range studies of figures from the live model appears to be new in his
art of this period (Hirst 1988, no. 7) and may represent his response to the challenge of the red
chalk figure drawings of Leonardo, who was
already working on his Battle of Anghiari for the

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

265

council hall. The choice of black chalk gives

expression to the boldness of attack adopted by
Michelangelo in the Teylers sketches. The changes
in the density of Michelangelo's touch (he may
have moistened the chalk for the deepest shadows), together with discriminating touches of
white heightening, create an extraordinary sense
of plasticity. The sheet has been trimmed and
folded, and is stained and patched, but the damage
has done little to diminish the power of the figure
study on the recto. The verso contains life studies
for the group of Judith and Holofernes in one of
the spandrels of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
in Rome, which dates from three or four years
later. Here Michelangelo has roughly blocked out
the main elements of the composition: Judith and
her companion bearing away the severed head on
the left, a chamber with the decapitated corpse of
Holofernes in front of stairs in the center, two
guards who are shortly to discover the body on
the right. There is a slight indication of the
curved shape of the actual pictorial field at the top
of the shaded portion in the center. In the scene
as painted on the ceiling, however, Michelangelo
eliminated the right portion of the composition
and placed a sleeping guard at the left, giving
Judith a more central position and filling the awkward shape more satisfactorily.
M.K.

167

Aristotele da Sangallo
(after Michelangelo)
Florentine, 1481-1551

STUDY OF MICHELANGELO'S CARTOON

FOR THE "BATTLE OF CASCINA"

recto

verso

1542 (based on the lost original of 1504-1505)

oil on panel
jS.j x 129 (31 x 5O3/4)
references: Milanesi 1878; Clausse 1900-1902;
Frey 1909; De Tolnay 1943-1960, 1:209-236; Wilde
1944; Isermeyer 1964; Gould 1966; Hirst 1986;
Bambach Cappel 1987; Bambach Cappel 1990
Viscount Coke and the Trustees of the Holkham
Estate, Norfolk
To decorate the great Council Hall, built during
the 14905 in the Palazzo Vecchio, the government
of Florence commissioned two huge murals from
its leading artists, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, each to depict an incident from a famous
Florentine victory (Wilde 1944, Isermeyer 1964).
Leonardo was to illustrate a battle fought against
the Milanese in 1440, and Michelangelo was to
portray the prelude to a battle against the Pisans
in 1364. The involvement of Leonardo, who was to
paint the Battle of Anghiari, is documented from

266

CIRCA 1492

24 October 1503; he signed a revised agreement

for the commission on 4 May 1504. Our first
notice of Michelangelo's involvement dates from
31 October 1504, when payments were made for
paper for his cartoon. On 28 February 1505 he
was paid 280 lire for his work "in painting the
cartoon" (Frey 1909). Work lapsed after he was
summoned to Rome by Julius n, but after his
famous dispute with the Pope's officials he
returned to Florence. On 27 November 1506 the
Gonfaloniere, Pietro Soderini, recorded that "he
has started a history [painting] for the public hall,
which will be an admirable thing". This reference
is sometimes taken to indicate that Michelangelo
had begun to paint on the wall, but it is more
likely that Soderini was referring to the cartoon.
Michelangelo's humbling reconciliation with
Julius in Bologna in November 1506 marked the
end of his work on the Battle. His rival, Leonardo,
had actually begun to paint the mural in 1505, but
his journey to Milan in 1506 effectively ended his
involvement with the project.
The terms of Leonardo's revised contract of
May 1504 indicated that he could choose either to
complete the whole cartoon as his first obligation,
or to begin painting from that part of the cartoon
he had already completed. It seems likely that he
followed the second option, making a cartoon for

the central section of his battle, which depicted

the equestrian skirmish around the Milanese
standard, and starting to paint this section on the
wall in what appears to have been an experimental
and troublesome oil technique. The surviving
records of Michelangelo's lost cartoon suggest that
he too completed only the central section of his
cartoon and may have intended to begin painting
this portion on the wall.
Vasari indicates that Michelangelo worked on
his cartoon in the Ospedale de' Tintori in the district of S. Onofrio and that when it was finished it
was taken to the Sala del Papa in S. Maria Novella,
where Leonardo had previously worked on his
cartoon. It is likely that Michelangelo's cartoon
was moved from the Sala del Papa in 1515 on the
occasion of the visit of Pope Leo x and placed in
the great hall of the Medici Palace. The cartoons
by Leonardo and Michelangelo were probably not
themselves intended to be used directly for the
transfer of the compositions to the wall. Rather
"sub-cartoons" were to be made from them and
cut up for the process of transfer (Bambach Cappel
1987 and 1990). Michelangelo's cartoon became
the "school" of figure drawing for the younger
Florentine draftsmen. At some point, probably
during the second decade of the century, it was
dismembered and the parts dispersed. The last

documented fragment was recorded in Turin in

1635, when the "nudes" were described as "larger
than life size" (De Tolnay 1943-60, i, 209-36).
The young Bastiano Sangallo, a member of the
famous family of architects and artists, who came
to be known by his nickname, Aristotele, was one
of the young draftsmen who avidly copied the
figures in the cartoon (Clausse 1900-1902). Originally a pupil of Perugino, he found that Michelangelo's complex figure style opened his eyes to
new possibilities for his art. Vasari, who was
closely acquainted with Aristotele, provides a well
informed account of the genesis of the grisaille
painting shown here. He indicates that Aristotele
alone of the students drew a copy of the complete
group, rather than individual figures. In 1542
Vasari himself persuaded Aristotele to make a
monochrome oil painting from his prized drawing, and the painting was subsequently sent by
Paolo Giovio to the King of France, "who valued it
greatly and richly rewarded Sangallo." Since the
original drawing by Sangallo is lost, the painting
has a unique authority as a record of Michelangelo's cartoon. It is an accomplished painting in its
own right, although Aristotele himself later
decided to specialize in stage design and architecture rather than in figure painting. Michelangelo's own drawings, together with drawn and

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

267

printed copies of other figures, confirm the essential accuracy of the grisaille version.
Although there is little reason to think that the
Florentine government would have given Michelangelo the license to choose a battle or an incident to suit his personal tastes, the subject of the
soldiers scrambling to arm themselves after bathing was ideally suited to his mastery of the human
figure. The incident occurred on the day before
the actual battle, when the Florentines were off
guard. Realizing their vulnerability, one of the
Florentine leaders, Manno Donati, shouted that
the Pisans were attacking. Although Donates cry
was an intentional false alarm, he achieved his
aim of making the Florentines ready for what was
to be a successful fight. Donati may be the figure
just to the right of center, who lunges forward.
The figure in the center may be the commander,
Galeotto Malatesta, whose act of winding (or
unwinding) a length of cloth from his head may
be a punning allusion to his surname.
The subject gave Michelangelo an ideal opportunity to take up the theme of nudes in various
postures, pioneered by Pollaiuolo (cat. 160),
developed by Bertoldo (cat. 164), and already
explored by Michelangelo himself in his Battle of
the Centaurs (Casa Buonarroti, Florence). Compared to the earlier examples, Michelangelo has
attained new levels of complexity in his orchestration of variously posed figures on a shallow
stage. In so doing he has managed to sustain a
balance between expressive if rhetorical function
and self-conscious artistry, though it was to be
the latter characteristic that most impressed the
younger generation of artists, who strove in an
academic manner to emulate the celebrated "difficulty" of the "master's" figure style. Sangallo's
painting, even if it misses something of the monumentality that must have characterized Michelangelo's huge drawing, is a fitting homage to
Michelangelo's achievement and provides vivid
testimony to the exemplary status achieved by
the cartoon for what for us remains a tragically
incomplete project.
The paint on Sangallo's panel is presently
covered by layers of discolored varnish, and there
is a good deal of dirt in the interstices of the
impasto. There are also some surface scratches, a
few scattered paint losses, and limited areas of
percussive damage. However, the panel as a whole
is in good condition, in spite of the loss of two
vertical battens from the rear, and the paint
surface is generally well preserved. Sangallo's
rhythmic and impasted application of oil paint is
fundamentally unlike Michelangelo's, but his
emphasis upon, the outlining of the contours of
the figures often ensuring that a dark contour
appears on a light background and vice versa,
clearly reflects the incisive draftsmanship of the
original cartoon.
M.K.

268

CIRCA 1492

l68

Michelangelo
Florentine, 1475-1564

MADONNA OF THE STAIRS

c. 1495
marble
55-5 X 40 X 3.4-2.5 (21% X l$3/4 X !3/8-l)

references: De Tolnay 1943-1960, 1:125-132;

Barocchi 1962; Call 1967; Hartt 1969, no. i;
Weil-Garris Posner 1970; Hartt 1971, no. 232;
Hibbard 1985
Ente Casa Buonarroti, Florence

Neither Giorgio Vasari in his first Life of the

artist in 1550 nor Condivi, the writer of the "authorized" biography of Michelangelo in 1553,
mentioned this relief, but it was briefly discussed
in Vasari's second edition in 1568, and its authorship is not in any serious doubt. Vasari's account
immediately follows his discussion of the Battle
of the Centaurs.
It [the Battle] is held in memory of Michelangelo in his house, as the rare thing it indeed
is, by Lionardo, his nephew, who not many
years ago also had in his house in memory of
his uncle a Madonna in low relief in marble, a
little more than a braccio high, from the hand
of Michelangelo, who, still being a young man
at this time, wished to replicate the style of
Donatello, which he did to such effect that it
appears to be by Donatello's hand, except that
more grace and draftsmanship can be discerned
in it. This relief was then given to Duke
Cosimo [n] Medici who maintains that it is a
most singular object, in that there is no low
relief from his hand other than this sculpture
(Vasari 1568).
The dating of the relief is more problematic than
the modern consensus might suggest. It is widely
assumed, following Vasari's association of it with
the Battle of the Centaurs (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), to be one of his earliest works, undertaken
while he was in the household of Lorenzo de'
Medici, that is to say in or before 1492, when he
was sixteen or seventeen. However, since as a
very low reliefa relievo schiacciato it is
unique in Michelangelo's oeuvre as Vasari recognized, direct comparisons with other kinds of
work should be handled with caution. The motif
of the sibylline woman seated on a block recalls
the Sistine Ceiling of 1508-1512both the Sibyls
themselves and the female ancestors of Christ.
The bluntly defined boys in the background also
resemble those in the ancestor lunettes of the Sistine Chapel. The motif of Christ's arm tucked
behind his back may even be compared to the
study from the early 1520$ for the back of Night
in the Medici Chapel (Teylers Museum, Haarlem;

Hartt 1971, no. 232). Moreover, the complex iconography and restrained sense of tragedy seem
difficult to recognize as the product of an artist in
his mid teens. On the other hand, the sense of
experimental awkwardness in some aspects of the
poses, particularly in the arrangement of the Virgin's feet, and the rather fussy carving of the
drapery, support an early date. The Battle of the
Centaurs, though very different in its high relief
and tempestuous subject, testifies to the remarkable sophistication of Michelangelo's grasp of both
form and content in even his earliest works. The
best solution is probably to date the Madonna
early in his career, but a few years later than
1491. It may well be contemporary with his Angel
Bearing a Candelabrum for the tomb of Saint
Dominic in San Domenico, Bologna, which shares
the rather waxy texture of its draperies and which
was carved in 1495. This date also works well
with its possible literary source in Benivieni's
Scala della vita spirituale sopra il nome di
Maria of 1495.
Low reliefs of Madonnas were popular devotional items for domestic settings in the mid and
late quattrocento. However, Michelangelo has
looked past his immediate predecessors and back
to the revered example of Donatello, who provides
precedents for the somber emotion, abrupt carving of the background children, and suggestively
variable degree of finish. The marks of the claw
chisel are not only apparent in the figures of children but also in various aspects of the Virgin's
flesh and drapery. The warm, honey-colored
patina acquired by the marble nicely enhances
Michelangelo's own feel for the "living" quality of
the material, which, in other hands, often
possesses an unyieldingly stony quality. Although
he has achieved strong effects of monumental
plasticity, the most prominent parts of the relief
protrude little more than a quarter of an inch
from the background plane. The flattened area at
the back of Christ's head is probably the result of
abrasion rather than miscalculation on the sculptor's part. Other minor abrasions are visible elsewhere, particularly in the fingers of Christ's right
hand. The top corners of the shallow frame have
also been damaged, more conspicuously on the
right, but the greater part of the surface gives a
wonderfully intact sense of Michelangelo's hand
at work.
The iconography is of unprecedented complexity for a low relief Madonna and Child. The motif
of the Child suckling, the Virgo lactans, has been
combined with a prefiguration of the death of
Christ as conveyed by the sleeping Child's sagging
head and limp arm, which allude to the Pieta. The
stone block may be an allusion to Christ as the
rock on which the Church is to be founded. The
five stairs of the background make reference to
the five letters of Maria's name, which Domenico
Benivieni, a theologian in Lorenzo de' Medici's
Florence, interpreted in his Scala as meaning that
the Virgin is our stairway between earth and

heaven. The long swathe of drapery held by the

boy on the stairs and the barely defined child
behind the Virgin seem to prefigure the funeral
shroud of Christ, while one of the pair of putti at
the top of the stairs appears to be consoling the
other. In such a context, the impassive solemnity

of the Virgin's classicizing profile assumes an air

of stoic foreboding.
Although the genre of low relief sculpture of
the Virgin and Child might seem to offer little
scope for the exercise of originality in figure style,
Michelangelo conveys the essence of the subject's

meaning through the physical impact of figures of

unprecedented grandeur. Particularly striking is
the Herculean potential of Christ's back and arm,
modeled with a far from infantile muscularity
which may be intended to emphasize the corporeal reality of God's son on earth.
J.M.M.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

269

LEONARDO AND DURER

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) were the
quintessential artist-scientists of the
European Renaissance, whose wideranging explorations of the natural world
epitomize the period's quest for knowledge. There is no record that these men
ever met. Durer's notebooks reveal,
however, that he was acquainted with
Leonardo's studies of human anatomy
and physiognomy and of the horse, probably from reproductions of Leonardo's
drawings.
The two masters shared a remarkable
variety of interests, from the science of
perspective, to the study of human and
equine proportions and anatomy, to
landscape and the details of plant and
animal life. Each counted prominent scientists and mathematicians among his
friends. Each believed that painting must
be raised to the level of a liberal art
rather than remain a mere craft; each
consequently required the artist to
acquire broad knowledge of the theoretical foundations of his discipline. Both
Leonardo and Durer worked on written
treatises addressed to the needs of the
artist, though only Durer's were actually
published.
Despite the many similar subjects that
appear in their art and writings, however,
Leonardo and Durer had fundamentally
different outlooks on the world. Durer's
focus was always on the individual and
the specific. He was fascinated by the
incredible diversity of God's creation, and
his studies of landscapes, plants, and
animals are as much portraits as are his
paintings and drawings of people. He saw
the artist's role as interpreting for man
God's presence in the endlessly varied
phenomena of nature. Leonardo's glacial
intellect always concentrated on the
unity underlying nature's diversity. Probing beneath surface appearances, he
aimed at uncovering the fundamental
laws governing the physical world. By
mastering nature's first causes, he
believed, man could use them to remake
the world.

270

CIRCA 1492

169

Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519

PORTRAIT OF GINEVRA DE' BENCI

(on reverse) Emblematic Motif
c. 1475-1476
oil on poplar panel
38.8 x 36.7 (i52/4 x i42/2J (cut down at base)
inscribed on the reverse: VIRTUTEM FOR/MA DECORAT
references: Walker 1967; Richter 1970/1977, 416;
Shapley 1979, 251-255; Brown 1985; Fletcher 1989
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon
Bruce Fund
The identification of this portrait (Washington
i967-6.i.a-b) with the picture of Ginevra de'
Benci described in the early sources (Antonio
Billi, the Anonimo Gaddiano, and Vasari; see
Shapley 1979) has been widely accepted since the
nineteenth century and seems entirely secure.
The juniper bush (ginepro) is an emblematic play
on her name. The Benci were wealthy and prominent members of Florentine society. Giovanni
d'Amerigo de' Benci, Ginevra's brother, is mentioned four times in Leonardo's memoranda as
possessing items of interest, including Leonardo's
own "map of the world" (Richter 1970/1977,
1416,1444,1454, and p. 416). Vasari indicates
that Leonardo's unfinished Adoration of the Kings

(Uf f izi, Florence) was in the house of Amerigo,

the son of Giovanni. Ginevra was born in 1457
and married Luigi di Bernardo di Lapo Nicolini in
1474. She was the subject of ten Petrarchan poems
by Cristoforo Landino and Alessandro Braccesi,
extolling her virtues and recounting the devotion
of Bernardo Bembo, who was Venetian ambassador to Florence in 1475-1476 and 1478-1480.
Lorenzo de' Medici also dedicated two sonnets to
her (Walker 1967). The motto on the reverse of
the painting, "she adorns her virtue with beauty,"
is in the form of the opening of a hexameter verse
and is entirely consistent with the tone of the
poetic devotions. The porphyry background of
the heraldic motif is probably meant to signify
the enduring nature of her virtues. The motif of
the wreath of bay and palm on the reverse has
recently been identified as the personal device of
Bernardo Bembo, and Bembo himself has been
proposed as the patron of the portrait (Fletcher
1989). However, the "license" for the use of a
personal device could be given to someone else as
a special favor, and the replacement of Bembo's
motto virtus et honorby Ginevra's suggests
just such a transfer of the emblem to her. There is
no evidence that Bembo ever possessed the portrait, and it does not appear to have been known
in Venice. Although Bembo's devotion to Ginevra
cannot be doubted, given the evidence of the

poems, it should be remembered that expressions

of Platonic love were entirely conventional features in the Petrarchan tradition and should not
be taken as indications of an illicit affair. Indeed,
the chaste and ultimately unattainable character
of the beloved lady is a central feature of such
poetry. The portrait is in fact a key document in
understanding the position of women in the art
and society of Lorenzo's court.
The newly demonstrated link with Bembo suggests that the portrait was not commissioned for
Ginevra's marriage in 1474, as is often hypothesized (Brown 1985) and that it dates instead from
after 1475. The chronology of Leonardo's paintings in the 14705 is very uncertain, and it is
always difficult to date portraits by comparison to
religious subjects, but the stiff pose and polished
foreground detail favor a date during Bembo's first
embassy to Florence (1475-1476) rather than as
late as 1478-1480, which would bring it closer to
the period of the Adoration of the Magi.
The incompleteness of the heraldic motif indicates that as much as a third of the panel has been
cut from the bottom; this must have occurred
before 1780. It is likely that Ginevra's hands were
originally included in the picture, as in the marble
bust of a Lady Holding Flowers by Verrocchio
(Bargello, Florence) and the closely related portrait of a Lady Holding a Ring attributed to
Lorenzo di Credi (Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York). It is possible that Verrocchio's bust
also represents Ginevra (Fletcher 1989). The slender hands drawn by Leonardo from life in a highly
finished study at Windsor (12558) have often
been identified as belonging to Ginevra and do
indeed justify the praise accorded to her hands in
the poems: "hands with the skill of Pallas/' and
"fingers as white as ivory/' The lower margin of
the picture has suffered substantial paint loss, and
a painted strip has been added where the tips of
her fingers might be expected to appear. Otherwise, much of Leonardo's paint surface has survived in remarkably good condition.
The appearance of the painting combines the
hieratic quality of a sculpted bust with passages of
intense and highly innovative paint handling. The
extremely delicate linearity of her hair (in vortex
curls, prophetic of his later water studies) is set
against the nuanced modeling of the flesh (which
has been softened by Leonardo's pressing his hand
into the paint surfaces while wet) and against the
spiky light on the juniper leaves. In the glimpse of
lakeland in the background, Leonardo has striven
for especially novel effects. There the forms are
depicted with blurred brushstrokes, to convey a
sense of atmosphere, but the oil-rich pigment
layers have since puckered and wrinkled, much as
in the experimental background of his Madonna
with the Vase of Flowers (Alte Pinakothek,
Munich). Even at this early stage of his career,
Leonardo was pushing the medium of oil painting
to new limits in his ambition to evoke visual
effects with unremitting fidelity.
M.K.

I/O

Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519

PORTRAIT OF A LADY WITH AN ERMINE

(CECILIA GALLERANI)
c. 1490
oil on walnut panel
54.8

X 40.} (213/8 X 157/8)

later inscribed: LA BELLE FERRONIERE/

LENONARD DA WINCI

references: Popham 1946,109; Zygulski 1969;

Kwiatowski 1955; Richter 1970/1977, 1234, 1263;
Kemp 1985; Rzepinska 1985, 66-jo; Clark 1989;
London 1989, 37; Brown 1990; Campbell 1990;
Bull 1991
Czartoryski Museum, Cracow

Notwithstanding the crudely painted inscription,

which was probably added when the background
of the portrait was overpainted, the identification
of the sitter in this painting as Cecilia Gallerani is
reasonably secure. The animal she holds is recognizably an ermine, the Greek name of which,
galee, makes a characteristically humanist pun on
her name, and may also allude to Ludovico Sforza,
the ruler of Milan. The unnaturally large scale of
the ermine should not cast doubt on its identification (Campbell 1990) and may be compared to
the exaggerated size of the babies in Leonardo's
Madonna and Child compositions. Cecilia was a
significant figure in Milan during Ludovico Sforza's reign (1481-1499). She was an educated and
accomplished student of Latin and Italian literature and a devotee of the arts and philosophy.
Before her marriage in 1491 to Conte Camierati

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

271

Bergamini, she had briefly been Ludovico's mistress while she was still in her teens. Leonardo's
portrait was the subject of a sonnet by Ludovico's
court poet, Bernardo Bellincioni, who died in
1492. In the poem, Nature declares that she has
been put into the shade by the victorious "Vinci"
(another pun), since the artist has captured Cecilia's "splendid eyes, beside which the sun appears
as a dark shadow." The poet assuages Nature's
envy by pointing out that the glory of her creation will be transmitted to posterity by the "talent
and hand of Leonardo"with due thanks to
Ludovico. Some measure of the esteem in which
both the sitter and the artist were held can be
gained from a letter that Isabella d'Este, the notable marchioness of Mantua, wrote to Cecilia in
1498. Isabella asked to borrow the portrait to
compare with "certain beautiful portraits from
the hand of Giovanni Bellini." In her reply Cecilia
explained that the portrait was no longer a good
likeness. This problem did not arise from any
"defect of the master, of whom I do not in truth
believe anyone comparable can be found, but only
from the fact that this portrait was made at such
an immature age that I have since totally changed
in appearance."
The dating of the portrait on stylistic grounds is
problematic, and it has generally been related to
Leonardo's work on the first version of the Virgin
of the Rocks (Louvre, Paris) around 1483-1485.
The modeling of the head is comparable to that in
the study in Turin for the Angel Uriel's head (cat.
171). However, on the basis of new evidence about
Cecilia's age discovered by Grazioso Sironi and
Janice Shell (forthcoming), a date earlier than
1489-1490 should be excluded. The way in which
the bony structure of the ermine's head has been
understood by the artist is comparable to Leonardo's studies of the human skull of 1489. It is
even possible that Ludovico commissioned the
portrait in 1491 as a betrothal or wedding gift.
The ermine was a well-known symbol of moderation and chastity. As Leonardo wrote, "because of
its moderation it only eats once a day" (Richter
1970/1977,1234), and "the ermine would die
rather than soil itself" (Richter 1970/1977, 1263).
A drawing by Leonardo in a private collection
(Popham 1946,109) shows an ermine subjecting
itself to a beating by a cruel hunter rather than
besmirch itself in a "muddy lair." The attribution
of chastity to an admired lady was entirely
conventional in courtly poetry, and many other
features of the portrait, "the bewitching eyes,
smooth brows, sweet lips, graceful neck, gentle
breast and ivory hands speak, in visual terms,
the language of Petrarchan sonnets" (Kemp 1985).
The original appearance of the painting has
given rise to a good deal of debate. The major
change has occurred in the background, which has
been repainted with black pigment (Brown 1990).
Traces of the originally gray-blue background are
visible under high magnification around the outlines of the figure (Bull 1991). The available tech272

CIRCA

1492

nical evidence (Kwiatowski 1955) for the original

presence of a window or other opening on the
right is inconclusive, and it is likely that the whole
of the background was more or less uniform in
hue.1 There seems no reason to accept the commonly voiced view that the motif of the hair
gathered in a veil around and under her chin is
not original. Indeed, it plays a significant role in
the symphony of curves around her face.
Overall, the picture is in much better condition
than the standard accounts suggest, and gives the
clearest indication of the freshly brilliant quality
of Leonardo's painting during his period at the
Sforza court in Milan. As in the Ginevra de'
Bend, Leonardo has pressed his hand into the wet
paint to soften some of the tonal transitions. The
motif of the sitter's glance, turned apparently in
response to someone beyond the confines of the
picture, is entirely novel, conveying a remarkable effect of what Leonardo called "il concetto
dell'anima" (the intentions of the subject's mind).
The highly charged sensibility of the "fastidious"
ermine transforms it from a conventional emblem
into a living metaphor for the lady's own character. The nearest parallel for the animal is the
beautiful silverpoint drawing of a bear's head in
a private collection (Popham 1946, 78a; London
1989, 37), which also probably dates from c. 1490.
The subtle yet structurally firm modeling
of Cecilia's head and hand, and of the ermine's
head, achieves the sense of relief Leonardo
emphasized in the 14905 as the ultimate illusionistic achievement of the painter.
M.K.
1. A detailed study of the painting's condition is being
undertaken in conjunction with this exhibition. The
results will appear in a forthcoming publication.

l/l

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

HEAD AND SHOULDERS

OF A YOUNG WOMAN
c. 1483-1485
silverpoint with white heightening
on prepared paper
18.1 x 15.9 (jl/s x 6V4)
references: Popham 1946, 157; Pedretti 1975, 2
Biblioteca Reale, Turin
It has been widely recognized that this study
(Turin 15572), apparently drawn from life, was
used as the basis of the Angel Uriel's head in the
first version of the Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre,
Paris; second version in National Gallery,
London), which was commissioned in 1483 by the
Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception for
the large carved altarpiece in its chapel in S. Francesco Grande in Milan. Although the subsequent
history of the commission is very tangled, and we

cannot be certain when the first version was finished, this preparatory drawing can be dated with
some confidence to the earliest phase of Leonardo's work on the project. In the painting, the
angel turns his head and eyes to look out at the
spectator and points to the infant St. John the
Baptist, thus acting as interlocutor for the spectator. The compellingly direct gaze of the posed
model shows that the angel was conceived as performing this role at an early stage in the planning
of the picture. In the second version of the painting, the literally demonstrative motifs of the
angel's glance and gesture were to be abandoned.
The delicacy and descriptive power of the parallel hatching Leonardo used in his silverpoint
drawings during the earlier part of his career are
nowhere more perfectly exemplified than in this
study. Among his contemporaries, perhaps only
Domenico Ghirlandaio came close to this level of
refinement in the handling of this very demanding medium.
On the verso of this sheet is a pen drawing
of a knot motif in an oval surround, made for an
unknown decorative purpose.
M.K.

1/1A

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

PORTRAIT OF A LADY IN PROFILE

c. 1481
silverpoint on pinkish paper
30 x 20 (n3/4 x 7%)
references: Clark and Pedretti 19681969, 12505;
Popham 1946, no. 73
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth u, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle

Although a significant proportion of Leonardo's

production of paintings was concerned with portraiture, direct portrait drawings (rather than
"studies from life" for religious paintings or other
narratives) have rarely survived. The closest comparison to this sheet is the sharply characterized
Young Man in Profile at Windsor (Popham 1946,
no. 12498), probably datable to c. 1480. The
drawn Portrait of Isabella d'Este in the Louvre
(Popham 1946, no. 172) and the painted portraits
all display a level of generalization at least one
step removed from such uncomplicated life
studies.
The amplitude and coherence of form, created
by a masterly combination of descriptive contour
and parallel hatching, have led scholars to suggest
a dating in Leonardo's Milanese period. Yet, the
simple headdress of this unidentified sitter is
more comparable to his earlier Florentine drawings (for example, Windsor i2276v). Other
silverpoint drawings that can be assigned to 1481
or earlier especially the Louvre study for the
Madonna Litta (Popham 1946, no. 19) and the

Warrior in the British Museum (Popham 1946,

no. 129) show the maturity and sophistication of
the handling of this medium that he had achieved
by his late twenties.
The unaffected directness and sensitivity of
Leonardo's characterization serve to counterbalance his more familiar depiction of women as
ideal, remote, mysterious and unfathomable
beings in keeping with the image of woman in
Renaissance love poetry. It is therefore tempting
to think that this sitter was a member of Leonardo's immediate circle or household.
M.K.

172

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDY FOR THE HEAD OF LEDA

c. 1505-1507
pen and brown ink over black chalk on paper
19.8 x 16.6 (73/4 x 6l/2J (irregular)
references: Clark and Pedretti 1968-1969, 12516;
London 1989, 5#; Shell 1991
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
Leonardo's project for a painting on the theme of
Leda and the Swan first appears in drawings associated with the Battle of Anghiari around 1505,
when he was planning to show Leda in a kneeling

posture. The painting he eventually undertook

portrayed her standing in a sinuous pose. The
motif of the standing Leda was copied by Raphael
in or before 1507, either from a design or from
Leonardo's painting, whether finished or unfinished. The present drawing (Windsor 12516), with
its almost obsessively rounded shading, can be
dated on stylistic grounds to circa 1505-1507.
The completed painting is the first and most
highly valued item on the list made in 1525 of the
possessions of the deceased Salai, who had been a
member of the master's household (Shell 1991).
It appears subsequently to have entered the collection of Francis i and was housed in his Appartements des Bains at Fontainebleau. There is no
definite record of the original painting during
the last two centuries, though numerous copies
and variants are known (such as those of Wilton
House and the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
[ex-Spiridon]).
The main sketch on this sheet is very close to
the head of Leda in the copies of the lost painting.
The elaborately plaited hair an extreme development of the knotted styles favored by Leonardo's
master, Verrocchio is in fact a wig. A note on
Windsor 12517 records that "this kind can be
taken off and put on again without damaging it."
Leda's own hair is visible at the forward margins
of the wig and spouting through the center of the
lateral whorls. As in the study of plants associated
with this painting (cat. 184), the intertwined elements become the subject of interest in their own
right, and Leonardo experiments with various

arrangements for the back of the wig. The visual

counterpoint between the free cascades of Leda's
own hair and the compact spirals of her wig recalls
his famous parallel between the motions of water
and the curling of hair: "Observe the motion of
the surface of water, which resembles the behavior
of hair, which has two motions, of which one
depends on the weight of the strands, the other on
the line of its revolving; thus water makes revolving eddies, one part of which depends upon the

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

273

impetus of the principal current, and the other

depends on the incident and reflected motions"
(Windsor 12579). Tne artificial design, in effect,
takes its cue from the natural pattern, elaborating
the inherent behavior of the physical world. The
parallels go beyond water and hair, extending to
such phenomena as deluges, plant growth, and
configurations of drapery.
M.K.

173 t
Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519

PRINCIPAL ORGANS AND VASCULAR AND

URINOGENITAL SYSTEMS OF A WOMAN
c. 15071508
pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk on
washed paper, main outlines pricked for transfer
47.8.X 33.3

(l83/4Xl}V8)

inscribed with notes on anatomical and

physiological matters
references: Popham 194.6, 247; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, 12281; Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980,
i22r; London 1989, 52
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
This extraordinarily large and complex demonstration (Windsor 12281) represents the climax of
Leonardo's attempt, in a phase of his anatomical
studies in 1507-1508, to create composite demonstrations of what may be called the "irrigation" of
the human body, synthesized from his dissections
and readings. The left side of the sheet was drawn
first, and the major outlines were pricked for
transfer. The sheet was then folded vertically
along the center line, and the design was duplicated on the right half. Further pricking was
undertaken, presumably for the transfer of the
whole scheme to another sheet. On the verso
some of the outlines have been traced in a graceless and inaccurate manner, probably by another
hand. Leonardo reminds himself in a note to
"make this demonstration also viewed from the
side, so that knowledge may be given of how
much one part is behind another, and then make
a demonstration from behind/' We may doubt
whether the desired clarity could ever have been
achieved, because he endeavors to make such
drawings carry more information than is really
possible, using a bewildering variety of diagrammatic conventions. Some forms are shown in
three dimensions, others in schematic outline,
some in transparency, and a few in cross section.
Even the parallel hatching, designed to provide a
background for the organs, can ultimately do little
274

CIRCA 1492

to resolve the problem of definition. In spite of

these problems, however, the final effect exudes a
remarkable sense of heroic grandeur and provides
vivid testimony to the awe with which Leonardo
regarded the complex machinery of the human
body.
Several traditional notions, gleaned from his
reading of anatomical texts, are apparent in this
drawing, including the two-chambered heart and
the spherical uterus, with its inner "cells" and
tendinous "horns." His chief source is a textbook

by Mundinus (Mondino de' Luzzi), probably in

the version printed in Johannes Ketham's Fasciculus medidnae (1494), but Leonardo is not afraid to
challenge his predecessor's ideas: "You, Mondino,
say that the spermatic vesicles or testicles [the
ovaries in women] do not cast out true semen, but
only a certain salivary humor, which nature has
ordained for the delectation of women in coitus, in
which case it would not be necessary that the origins of the spermatic vesicles should arise in the
same way in women as in men." In contrast to

long established opinion, Leonardo believed that

men and women contributed "seed" in equal measure to the creation of the fetus.
One of the notes indicates his intention to make
a series of studies of human generation, starting
with "the formation of the infant in the womb,
saying which part is composed first," while
another contains speculations on the cyclical
nature of life and death in the human body. The
aim of such studies was to show the totality of the
microcosm (the "lesser world") through the complex mapping of physiological functions, just as
Leonardo also aimed to map the "body of the earth/
M.K.

*74

Leonardo da Vinci

The notes on the two sheets reveal Leonardo's

typically wide range of concerns, including the
role and proportional length of the umbilical cord,
the interdigitations of the placenta and the uterine
wall, the impossibility that the fetus should be
able to breathe or speak in its watery envelope,
the "great mystery" of the relationship between
the souls of the mother and the fetus, the motion
of an eccentrically weighted spherical object on
a slope, and binocular vision in relation to artistic
representation. Leonardo adopts the traditional
idea that the experiences of the mother will be
mirrored in the child: "The same soul governs
these two bodies, and the desires and fears and
sorrows are common to this creature as to all the
other animal parts, and from this it arises that
something desired by the mother is often found
imprinted on the limbs of the infant." The integrated nature of the mother and the fetus before
birth is emphasized in the drawing not only
by the snug compactness of the fetus within its

opened container but also by the intimate interweaving of the fingers of the placenta and the
uterine wall. One of the most impressive features
of this magnificent sheet of studies is the novel
diagrammatic means Leonardo used to describe
the relationships between inner, outer, and interpenetrating forms. It is not surprising that the
companion page contains one of his insistent
challenges to writers to match the painter's
detailed and harmonious account of the visible
world, though on this sheet he reminds us that a
depiction cannot "demonstrate such relief as the
relief seen with both eyes." Insofar as the limitation imposed by the representation of threedimensional forms on a two-dimensional surface
can be transcended, Leonardo has succeeded in
doing so through a complex system of shading.
No drawing from any area of his activity better
shows the power of the type of curved hatching he
adopted increasingly after 1500.
M.K.

Florentine, 1452-1519

THE FETUS IN THE WOMB WITH

STUDIES OF DYNAMICS AND OPTICS
c. 1512
pen and ink with wash over traces of red and
black chalk on paper
30.5 x 22 (12 x 85/s)
inscribed with notes on embryology, dynamics,
and optics
references: Popham 1946, 248; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, 19012; Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980,
i98r; London 1989, 26

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
The anatomical investigations undertaken by Leonardo in the last decade of his life were directed in
particular toward understanding the central mysteries of life. Major focuses of his interest were
the functioning of the heart, which he studied in
a series of drawings undertaken around 1513 (see
Windsor 19073-19074^ dated January 9, 1513),
and the life of the fetus in the womb. This sheet
(Windsor 19012^ is datable to circa 1512 on
grounds of style and content. Further studies of
the same fetus appear on Windsor 19101, though
there Leonardo has reversed the crossing of the
feet. He recorded that "the child was less than
half a braccio long [about 25.5 cm, or 10 in],
and nearly four months old" (Windsor i9ioiv),
though the fetus actually appears to be somewhat
more developed. The compellingly direct drawing
of the infant in the breech position indicates that
Leonardo had gained access to a human fetus of
about twelve weeks, but the powerfully rendered
womb, with its multiple or cotyledonous placenta,
is based upon animal material, probably from
a cow, which has been rearranged in what was
then thought to be the spherical form of the
human uterus.
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

75

2/6

C I R C A 1492

175
Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDY OF HUMAN PROPORTION

IN THE MANNER OF VITRUVIUS
c. 1490
pen, brown ink, wash, and red chalk on paper
34-3 X 24.5

(1^/2 X 95/8J

inscribed with notes on proportions

references: Popham 1946, 215; Morgan 1960;
Cogliati Arano 1966/1980; Richter 1970/1977, 343;
Zollner 1987; Kemp 1989, 309
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

This large and spectacular sheet (Venice 228)

was clearly drawn by Leonardo as a definitive
demonstration of the overall proportional system
in the human body. It belongs with the research
he was conducting around 1490. The organizing
principle of the drawing, the inscription of the
figure within a circle and a square, is based upon
the prescription of the ancient Roman architect,
Vitruvius: "In the human body the central point
is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat
on his back with his hands and feet extended, and
a pair of compasses centered on his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch
the circumference of a circle described therefrom.
And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it.
For if we measure the distance from the soles of
the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that
measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth
will be found to be the same as the height, as in
the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly
square" (Morgan 1960, 73). Vitruvius then proceeds to discuss the proportions of the parts of the
figure in terms of fractions of the whole. Leonardo acknowledges his Vitruvian source of
inspiration but incorporates his own detailed
observations and improves the formula by incorporating alternative positions for the arms and
legs. "Vitruvius the architect has it in his work on
architecture that the measurements of man are
arranged by nature in the following manner: four
fingers make one palm and four palms make one
foot; six palms make a cubit; four cubits make a
man, and four cubits make one pace; and twentyfour palms make a man; and these measures are
those of his buildings. If you open your legs so
that you lower your head by one fourteenth of
your height, and open and raise your arms so that
with your longest fingers you touch the level of
the top of your head, you should know that the
central point between the extremities of the outstretched limbs will be the navel, and the space
that is described by the legs is an equilateral triangle." He adds, below the figure, "The span to
which the man opens his arms is equivalent to his
height. From the start of the hair to the margin of

the bottom of the chin is a tenth of the height of

the man; from the bottom of the chin to the top
of the head is an eighth of the height of the man;
from the top of the breast to the top of the head is
a sixth of the man; from the top of the breast to
the start of the hair is a seventh part of the whole
man; from the nipples to the top of the head is a
quarter part of the man; the widest distance across
the shoulders contains in itself a quarter part of
the man; from the elbow to the tip of the hand
will be a fifth part of the man; from this elbow to
the edge of the shoulder is an eighth part of this
man; the whole hand is a tenth part of the man;
the penis arises at the middle of the man; the foot
is a seventh part of the man; from the sole of the
foot to below the knee is a quarter part of the
man; from below the knee to the start of the penis
is a quarter part of the man; the portions that are
to be found between the chin and the nose and
between the start of the hair and to the eyebrows
are both spaces similar in themselves to the ear
and are a third of the face" (Richter 1970/1977,
343; Kemp 1989, 309).
In addition to the compass marks needed for
drawing the circle and mapping out the main divisions of the figure, numerous other small indentations caused by the points of dividers pockmark
the drawing. The vertical axis of the head exhibits
particularly dense clusters of indentations. These
marks appear to reflect detailed measurements
that were taken from the drawing rather than
used to lay out the forms. The results are recorded
in Leonardo's notes below the drawing, quoted
above. It appears that the drawing was the first
element to be set out on the page, followed
by the scale and caption below the illustration.
The upper and lower notes were then written into
the remaining spaces with a neatness unusual
for Leonardo.
Subsequent illustrations of "Vitruvian men"
by theorists and editors of Vitruvius in Italy and
northern Europe suggest that Leonardo's particular interpretation of the Roman author's formula
was widely influential (Zollner 1987). Perhaps
the most remarkable development of Leonardo's
vision occurs in the Codex Huygens by Carlo
Urbino da Crema (Pierpont Morgan Library, New
York), in which Leonardo's alternative positions
for the arms and legs are translated into a series of
sequential or "cinematographic" poses, in keeping
with Leonardo's own notions of movement across
"continuous quantity" in space.
M.K.

176

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

NUDE MAN FROM THE REAR

c. 1503-1506
red chalk on paper
27 x 16 (io5/s x 6l/4)
inscribed: franc sinsstre sonat[ore]...
references: Popham 194.6, 233; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, 12596; Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980,
41-; Kemp 1989, 302, 338; London 1989, 32
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
This magnificent study (Windsor 12596) of a
thick-set, muscular man is related in general
terms to Leonardo's work on the Battle of
Anghiari, the huge mural he was planning in the
period 1503-1506 for the Council Hall of the
Florentine republic in competition with Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina. The two artists' rendering of heroic figures at this time set the norm
for contemporary and subsequent generations of
artists. The static and symmetrical pose of this
figure, however, was not suitable for the Battle
but corresponds to the formula Leonardo was
adopting at this time for his demonstrations of
human musculature (Windsor 12593-12594^
I2629r-i263ir). The lightly drawn central vertical and the triangular disposition of the legs

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

2/7

emphasize the structural solidity of the pose.

Leonardo's notes on the human figure, intended
for his treatise on painting, emphasize that every
part of a figure should be in keeping with every
other part and with the total character of the
person represented: "Thus if a man has a thick
and short figure he will be the same in all his
limbs, that is to say with short and thick arms,
wide and thick hands, and short fingers with
joints in the prescribed manner, and so on with
all the rest of the parts. I intend to say the same
about plants and animals universally, reducing
or increasing them proportionately according to
their diminution or increase in size" (Kemp 1989,
302). "Muscular men have thick bones and are
short and thick and have a dearth of fat, because
the muscles, through their growth, are compressed together, and the fat that would otherwise
be interposed between them cannot find any
room" (Kemp 1989, 338).
The note on this drawing, which has been
translated as "Francesco sounds sinister (?)," may
have no connection with the drawing. However, it
might be interpreted as "Francesco sinistre musician" and refer to the model.
M.K.

177

Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDIES IN HUMAN PROPORTION

c. 1492
pen and brown ink on paper
15.9x22.6(61/4 x 8 1/2)
inscribed with notes on human proportion
references: Panofsky 1940; Popham 1946, 224;
Panofsky 1957; Clark and Pedretti 1965-1969,
1913 2r; Richter 1970/1977, 332; Lomazzo 1974;
Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980, 2?r; Kemp 1989, 328;
London 1989, 91

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
Leonardo's most sustained attempts to work out
a comprehensive system of proportions for large
and small features of the human body appear to
have been made around 1488-1494. The present
drawing (Windsor 19132^ belongs to a series
at Windsor, which includes nos. 12304^ 19129^
I9i3or-v, I9i3ir-v, 19133^ 19134-19135^
19136-19139^ and 19140^ of which at least four
(this drawing and 12304, 19130, and 19131) originated from the same notebook. The series is
closely related to studies in Manuscripts A
(particularly 63 r) and B (2v), which were compiled in and before 1492. The verso of 12304 contains related studies of the proportions of a horse,
made during the early 14905 in connection with
2/8

CIRCA

1492

Leonardo's project for an equestrian monument to

Francesco Sforza. The drawings are generally
characterized by thin, broken contours and proportional divisions that have been laid out freehand rather than with ruler or compasses. The
three notes on the present drawing, like many
others on the Windsor proportion studies, are
marked with the marginal symbol of a slashed
circle, which indicates that they have been transcribed elsewhere, probably by Leonardo's pupil,
Francesco Melzi, although they do not appear in
Melzi's surviving compilation, the Codex Urbinas
(the Trattato della pittura). Nor is this drawing
among those copied (either directly from the originals or from Melzi's transcriptions) by Carlo
Urbino da Crema into the Codex Huygens (Panofsky 1940). It may have been Leonardo's original
notebook or a transcribed version of it that was
recorded in Lomazzo's Idea del tempio della pittura in 1590 (Lomazzo 1974).
The primary source for Leonardo's ideas was
the section on human proportions in the treatise
on architecture by the ancient Roman author,
Vitruvius, whose image of a man inscribed within
a square and a circle Leonardo adapted in the
famous drawing in Venice (cat. 175). He may also
have drawn inspiration from Alberti's treatises
and the writings of Francesco di Giorgio, whom he
met in 1490 if not earlier. The standing figure
with arms outstretched in the present study is in
the "Vitruvian" pose, which is also illustrated by
Francesco di Giorgio, while one of Leonardo's basic
modules, based on head height as one eighth of

the body, corresponds to Alberti's recommendation in De pictura (para. 36).

Leonardo considerably extends Vitruvius' general prescriptions by taking detailed measurements of even such small features as the space
between the bottom of the nose and the mouth,
which he then relates to adjacent and remote parts
of the body (Panofsky 1957). He also extends
Vitruvius' programperhaps following Alberti in
De statuabeyond the straightforward measurement of the static body. He explores what happens
to the proportions of the whole and of the parts
when the body is in different positions, exhibiting
his characteristic concern with the nature and
consequences of motion. Accordingly he demonstrates that the extrusion of the elbow when the
arm is bent occasions different proportional ratios
than those related to the straight arm. In the
present drawing Leonardo is concerned to define
the changed proportional relationships when a
man kneels or sits: "If a man kneels down he will
lose a quarter of his height.
"When a man kneels down with his hands
in front of his breasts, the navel will be at the
midpoint of his height and likewise the points
of his elbows.
"The midpoint of the seated man, that is to say
from the seat to the top of the head, will be just
below the breasts and below the shoulders. This
seated part, that is to say, from the seat to above
the head, will be more than half the height of the
man by the amount of the length and breadth of
the testicles" (Kemp 1989, 328).
M.K.

i78
Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDIES OF THE PROPORTIONS

OF THE HUMAN HEAD AND EYE
c. 1490
pen and brown ink on paper
19.7 x 16 and 14 x 11 (y3/4 x 61/* and 5^2 x 43/s)
inscribed with notes on proportions
references: Richter 1970/1977, 319-320;
Pedretti 1975, 4-5

Biblioteca Reale, Turin

Following Carlo Pedretti's (1975) recognition that
these two sheets (Turin 15574,15576) were once
part of a single page, they have been reconstituted
in their original relationship. These studies of
human proportion belong to a series of researches
exclusively concerned with male figures, conducted around 1490. This particular facial type
that of a mature or even elderly "warrior" is
shared by Leonardo's famous "Vitruvian Man"
(cat. 175) and became his standard physiognomy
for a virile male. The study of the eye on the left
portion of the page is shaded with a degree of care
that is unusual in his studies of proportion and
may indicate that it was drawn from life, to confirm the measurements.
Leonardo extended the traditional system of
proportions, derived from the writings of Vitruvius, by undertaking a minutely detailed analysis
of the relationships between all the components of
the body, however small and however distant from
one another. On this page he is chiefly concerned
with understanding how the small intervals
between the parts of the eye, eyelid, and eyebrow
can be related to other intervals in the head,
particularly the dimensions of the mouth and
nose. The notes in the lower left quarter of the
right portion exemplify his approach, stating that
"n, m, o, p, q are equivalent to half the width of
the lids of the eyes, that is to say from the lacrimator [inner corner] of the eye to its outer edge.
And similarly the division that there is between
the chin and the mouth, and similarly the narrowest part of the nose between one and the other
eye. And each of these distances in itself is a 9th
part of the head, nm is equivalent to the length of
the eye or the distance between the eyes, me is
one third of nm, measuring from the outer
margin of the eyelids to the letter c. bs will be
equivalent to the width of the nostrils of the nose."
The verso of the reconstituted page contains
some relatively slight mechanical drawings,
probably representing devices for the making
of screw threads.
M.K.

179

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL

SECTIONS OF THE HUMAN HEAD,
WITH THE COVERING LAYERS
COMPARED TO AN ONION
c. 1489
pen, brown ink, and red chalk on paper
20.6x14.8 (SVsx 57/8)
inscribed with notes on the layers of the scalp, skull,
and brain
references: Popham 1946, 227; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, 12603; Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980,
327*; London 1989, 94

of sight over the other senses, and his depiction

of the eye as an extrusion of the coverings of the
brain illustrates his concept of the eye as "the
window of the soul/' The eye itself is depicted as
a geometrically designed organ with a spherical
lens, as was traditional. Within the brain is a set
of three linked flasks or "ventricles," within which
the various mental faculties, or "inner senses,"
were thought to be located. Leonardo works his
own variation on this conventional concept. He

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
Leonardo's earliest surviving studies of internal
anatomy are the series of skull drawings, one of
which (Windsor 19059) is dated 1489. Although
the present sheet (Windsor 12603), which illustrates traditional concepts of the brain and the
senses, seems to differ sharply in approach from
the very direct observation of firsthand material
in the skull drawings, it belongs to the same campaign of investigating the design and function of
the human head. It shares with the demonstrations of the skull the innovative use of sections,
although the combination of a vertical section
with externally viewed nose, mouth, and chin in
the main drawing appears rather uncomfortable.
Not the least of Leonardo's concerns in the 1489
investigations was to demonstrate the superiority
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

279

assigns the imprensiva (receptor of impressions)

to the first ventricle and identifies the second as
the senso comune (common sense), in which the
sensory impressions are compared and the faculties of intellect, voluntary action, and imagination
are exercised. The final ventricle is deemed to be
the house of memory. It is through this system
of outer and inner senses that the soul, which
resides in the central ventricle, gains access to the
knowledge of the world and can find true satisfaction, so that its "bodily prison" becomes bearable.
The analysis of the coats of the brain by analogy
to the skins of an onion is typical of Leonardo's
sense of the analogous natures of all the products
of creation. The layers are recorded correctly in
the upper diagram as "hair, scalp, lacterous flesh,
pericranium, dura mater, pia mater, brain"
although in the lower diagram he inadvertently
reverses the pia and dura maters.
M.K.

techniques of ray-tracing in modern computer

graphics) and also regarded them as revealing
integral parts of the mathematical laws of nature
as whole. The laws decree that all effects decrease
in a precisely proportional (that is, pyramidal)
manner. The notes on the left-hand folio (13v)
explain that:
Every shadow made by an opaque body smaller
than the source of light casts derivative shadows
tinged by the color of the original shadows.
The origin of the shadow ef is n, and it will be
tinged with its color. The origin of he is o, and
it will be similarly tinged with its color... Fg is
the first degree of light, because there it is illuminated by all the window ad, and thus the
opaque body at m is of similar brightness. Zky
is a triangle which contains in itself the first
degree of shadow, because the light ad does not
arrive within this triangle. Xh is the second
degree of shadow, because it is illuminated by
only a third of the window, that is to say cd
On the right hand folio (i4r), Leonardo informs
us that:

ISO

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDIES OF THE GRADATIONS OF LIGHT

AND SHADOW ON AND BEHIND SPHERES
c. 1492

pen and brown ink and wash, with traces of stylus,

on paper
each folio 24 x 38 (yl/2 x 15)
inscribed with notes on light and shade
references: Richter 1970/1977, 148-149, 275;
Kemp 1989, 296-297; London 1989, 91
Bibliotheque de I'lnstitut de France, Paris
This manuscript originally comprised folios
81114 of MS A in the Institut de France, but was
illegally removed and sold by Count Guglielmo
Libri in the 18305 and later returned. MS A can be
dated with reasonable certainty to circa 1492, and
the reproduced folios are of this date. The diagrams and notes were transcribed in folios 213 and
214 of the Codex Urbinas (the so-called Treatise
on Painting'), which was compiled after Leonardo's death by his pupil, Francesco Melzi. The
circles visible in the margins are marks made by
the transcriber.
The meticulous study of the geometrical rules
governing the gradations of light and shade on
surfaces and of cast shadows and reflections occupied a good deal of Leonardo's time in the early
14905. Comparable sets of analyses occur in MS c
(Institut de France), two folios of which are dated
1490 and 1493. Leonardo designed such studies
to give the painter access to precise rules for the
depiction of light and shade (not unlike the
280

C I R C A 1492

Every light which falls on opaque bodies

between equal angles produces the first degree
of brightness and that will be darker which
receives it by less equal angles, and the light
and shade both function by pyramids. The
angle c produces the first degree of brightness
because it is exposed to the window ab and to

all the diameter of the sky at mx. The angle d

makes little difference compared to c, because
the angles they subtend are not of such distorted proportions as the others that are lower
down, and d is deprived only of that part of the
diameter that is between x and y. Although it
acquires as much from the opposite side, nevertheless its line is of little strength because its
angle is smaller than the corresponding one.
The angles e and i will be of diminished light,
because they are not fully exposed, lacking the
light ms and the light vx, and their angles will
be somewhat distorted
Og will be the minimum degree of light because it is not exposed
to any part of the diameter of the light, and
these are the lines that on the other side reconstitute a pyramid comparable to the pyramid
c
The apexes of these pyramids are aligned
and oriented toward each other along a straight
line, which passes through the center of the
opaque body....
The way that light strikes a surface, making the
surface appear lightest where it strikes perpendicularly and least light where it strikes a glancing
blow, obeys the laws of 'percussion' in the same
way as a bouncing ball or current of water hitting
a river bank. Leonardo did not intend these analyses to suggest that geometrical bands of light and
shade can actually be discerned, since the gradations on a curved body are infinitely smooth, but
rather to illustrate the fundamental laws at work.
M.K.

i8i <
Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

MAP OF IMOLA
c. 1502-1503
pen and ink with watercolor on paper
44 x 60.2 (iy3/s x 233/4J
inscribed with notes on distances and the names
of the winds
references: Popham 1946, 263; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, 12284; Mancini 1979; London 1989, 98
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
This map (Windsor 12284), one of the most magnificent surviving creations of the cartographic
revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-

turies, probably dates from around 1502-1503,

when Leonardo was in the employ of Cesare
Borgia as architect and engineer with a special
dispensation to visit all the fortifications in
central Italy that Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander vi, was holding as part of his effort to secure
and extend the Papal States. The technique is
closely related to that employed earlier by Leon
Battista Alberti in his map of Rome (now lost), as
recounted in his Descriptio urbis Romae, and later
used by Raphael in his map of Rome (also lost). It
results from the coordination of two sets of measures: one recording the length of features on the
ground, obtained either by pacing out distances or
by using a wheeled measuring device (see Codex
Atlanticus, ir); and the other consisting of a
series of records of the angular positions of features within a "wind rose" centered on a fixed

point, made by using a horizontally mounted surveying device, such as an astrolabe or circumferentor. Some of the linear measurements along
roads are recorded on sketch-maps on another
drawing at Windsor (12686). The circle within
which the map of Imola is inscribed is divided into
sixty-four parts, and the eight more heavily drawn
lines are conventionally labeled with the names of
the winds: septantrione (north), grecho (northeast), levante (east), sirocho (southeast), mezzodi
(south), libecco (southwest), ponente (west), and
maesto (northwest). The notes, which record
the distances of other strategic towns at various
bearings, are written in Leonardo's characteristic
"mirror" script (written from right to left with
reversed letters), but they are unusually neat and
legible, which suggests that they were intended
to be legible to others.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

281

It has been argued (Mancini 1979) that the

domestic buildings the map records in the town
do not include most of those erected during the
preceding quarter-century and that the map was
actually made in 1472 by the Milanese architect
and military engineer, Domenico Maineri, with,
at most, retouchings by Leonardo. The existence
of preparatory studies by Leonardo and the
entirely characteristic handling of the graphic
media throughout the sheet in particular the
"living" quality with which the flat features are
imbued indicate almost beyond doubt that Leonardo was the sole author of the map of Imola.
The main function of his representation was most
likely to record the present disposition of the
defensive structures for his warlike patron, and
it may be that he took advantage of a previous
record of the domestic buildings to simplify his
task in delineating the less important structures.
M.K.

282

CIRCA 1492

182

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STUDIES OF WATER PASSING OBSTACLES

AND FALLING INTO A POOL
c. 1508
pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk
on paper
29.8 X 20.J (l!3/4 X 8Vs)

inscribed with notes on hydrodynamics

references: Popham 1946, 281; Clark and Pedretti
1968-1969, i266ov; Pedretti 1982, q.2r; London
1989, 61

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
This most elaborate of Leonardo's water studies
(Windsor iz66ov) is part of a set of investigations
undertaken in MS F (Institut de France, dated
1508) and other sheets at Windsor (for example,
12659 and 12661-12663). The main drawing is
synthesized from separate studies of the vortices
of water and the behavior of air bubbles. The
note acknowledges the composite nature of this
demonstration: "The motions of water that has

fallen into a pool are of three kinds, and to these a

fourth is added, which is that of the air in becoming submerged in the water, and this is the first
in action and it will be the first to be defined.
The second is that of the air after it has been submerged, and the third is that of the reflected
water as it returns the compressed air to the other
air. Such water then emerges in the shape of large
bubbles, acquiring weight in the air and on this
account falls back through the surface of the
water, penetrating as far as the bottom, and it
percusses and consumes the bottom. The fourth
is the eddying motion made on the surface of the
pool of water, which returns directly to the location of its fall, as the lowest place interposed
between the reflected water and the incident air.
A fifth motion will be added, called the swelling
motion, which is the motion made by the
reflected water when it brings the air that is submerged within it to the surface of the water/' The
drawing represents a complex synthesis of three
main factors: Leonardo's intense scrutiny of water
in action during patient hours of observation; his
knowledge of dynamic theory in the Aristotelian
tradition of the late Middle Ages; and his own
rational classification of the variables. The result
should in no sense be taken as a direct study of a

single observation, although with a receptacle of

the right shape it is possible to contrive a pattern
of vortices similar to that depicted in the main
study. The note at the lower left records a related
observation he made from a boat. In the light of
recent chaos theory, it is not surprising that Leonardo experienced trouble in defining the number
and result of the variables in turbulent flow.
The turbulence produced by the boards that
interrupt the flow of the streams in the upper
diagrams assumes the kind of hairlike configurations that led Leonardo to draw parallels between
the motion of water and the curling of hair (cat.
172), and the motions of wind and other phenomena of curvilinear motion and growth in the
natural world.
M. K .

183

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

CATS AND A DRAGON

c.1513-1515
pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk with
red chalk offset on paper
27.1 x 20.4 (io5/s x 8) (irregular)
inscribed with notes on the motions of animals
and human beings
references: Popham 1946, 87; Clark and
Pedretti 1968-1969, 12363; Pedretti 1987, 157;
London 1989, 38
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
Leonardo indicated that he intended to "write a
separate treatise describing the movement of
animals with four feet, among which is man, who
crawls similarly in his infancy on all fours/' The
note at the bottom of this sheet "on bending
and extension; this animal species, of which the
lion is prince, because the joints of its spinal cord
are bendable" suggests that these vivacious
studies were part of a campaign he seems to have
undertaken around 1513-1515 to compare human
and animal motion. The sheet of studies of horses
at Windsor (12331, also containing a cat and studies of Saint George and the dragon) appears to
belong to the same campaign. The aim was to
show how the compound jointing of animal and
human bodies enables them to perform an almost
infinite variety of movements in space across
what Leonardo calls a "continuous quantity/'
There can be little doubt that some of the poses
are based directly upon life studies, particularly
the sleeping cats at the center right, which are
beautifully observed. Others, most notably the
"wrestlers/ seem to be Leonardo's own free
extrapolations, based on his understanding of

the qualities of feline motion. It is typical of the

fertility of his imagination that the cats appear
to have been metamorphosed into a curvaceous
dragon. Such creativity characteristically leads
Leonardo away from his immediate purpose and
ultimately interferes with his ability to complete
M.K.
the circumscribed task in hand.

184

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

STAR-OF-BETHLEHEM
(Ornithogalum umbellatum), Crowsfoot
(Anemone bulbosa L.), Wood Anemone
(Anemone rammculoides), and Grasses
c. 1506-1508
pen and brown ink and red chalk on paper
ia.8xi6(73/4x6V4)
references: Popham 1946, 273; Clark and
Pedretti 1968-1969, 12424; Pedretti 1982, i6r;
London 1989, 57

There can be little doubt that this drawing (Windsor 12424), like other of Leonardo's botanical
studies from the period 1506-1508 (such as Windsor 12421), was occasioned by his work on the
painting Leda and the Swan (now lost) and that
the sense of flowering and fructifying vitality in
the growth of the plants is designed to underscore
the painting's theme of the generative powers of
nature. However, as is so often the case with his
apparently functional studies of components for
pictures, the subsidiary items come to assume a
primary interest in their own right. Leonardo
subsequently appears to have considered writing
a treatise on plants.
Although the present study breathes an
undeniable air of having been made "from life,"
Leonardo's processes of observation and representation are always infused with analysis, as he
searches for the principles of growth and for the
structural rationale behind the configurations of
natural forms. The emphatic "vortex" arrangement of the leaves of the main plant makes deliberate allusion to forms of growth and motion in
other natural phenomena, such as the turbulence
of water and the curling of hair.
M. K.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth u, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

283

i85
Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

AN ARTILLERY YARD WITH MEN

STRUGGLING TO LIFT THE BARREL
OF A HUGE GUN OR MORTAR
c. 1488
pen and brown ink on paper
25 x 18.3 (97/s x 72/s)
references: Clark and Pedretti 1968-1969, 12647;
Richter 1970/1977, 1309; London 1989, 113
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
There is nothing quite comparable in Leonardo's
other work to this scene of frenetic activity in a
defined military setting (Windsor 12647), but the
representation of the weapons recalls those in MS
B (Institut de France) and suggests a date of about
1488, when he was in Milan in the employ of
Duke Ludovico Sforza, whom he was trying to
impress with his military inventions. It is difficult
to suggest a function for the drawing. It could
hardly have been designed to demonstrate his

284

CIRCA 1492

inventions to his patron, and instead exudes an

almost satirical air, as the desperate gangs of
naked men struggle with the monster to which
they have given birth. The scene can best be
related to the visions of the malignity of men's
creations in Leonardo's mock-serious "prophecies" : "(Of great guns that emerge from the pit
and the mould) It will emerge from under the
ground, and with terrific noise will stun those in
the surroundings nearby, and with its breath it
will kill men and destroy the city and the castle"
(Richter 1970/1977,1309). As in the later Deluge
drawings (cat. 188), there is a tense and ironic
blending of analytical observation in the systems of windlasses, pulley, stays, and rollers
with an expressive feeling for the human condition in the face of immense power. The uneasy
combination in Leonardo's mind of fascination
with the technology of war and revulsion in the
face of its inhuman destructiveness is one of the
earliest expressions of what has become a central
dilemma for scientists involved in the design of
weaponry. The technology of casting involved in
the making of cannons and mortars was to be
adapted for his scheme to cast the huge equestrian
monument to Francesco Sforza.
M.K.

186

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

SCYTHED CHARIOTS
c. 1487-1488
pen, brown ink, and wash on paper
20 x 28 (7% x 11)
inscribed with notes on military engineering
references: Popham 1946, 310; Pedretti 1975, 14;
Kemp 1989, 612; London 1989, 68
Biblioteca Reale, Turin
This study (Turin 15583) belongs to a series that
includes Windsor 12653; British Museum 18606-16-99 (London 1989, 68); Codex Atlanticus
ii3v; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris; and MS B lor
(Institut de France). By reference to MS B, they
may be dated to around 1487-1488, although in
terms of content they might almost be illustrations to the well-known letter about his military
inventions that Leonardo wrote to Ludovico
Sforza in or shortly after 1482 (Kemp 1989, 612).
The chariots are characteristic of a certain type
of design popular among the military virtuosi of
the Renaissance, in which they demonstrated their
inventiveness and their knowledge of the principles of ancient weaponry. The scythed chariots
draw their main inspiration from written accounts
of systems used in classical antiquity, particularly
as transmitted in the compendium De I'arte milltare published by Roberto Valturio in 1483. In
MS B Leonardo notes that "these scythed chariots
were of various kinds, and often did no less injury
to friends than they did to the enemies, and the
captains of the armies, thinking by use of these to
throw confusion into the ranks of the enemy, created fear and destruction among their own men/'
On the British Museum drawing he accordingly
cautions that "when this travels through your
men, you will wish to raise the shafts of the
scythes, so that you will not injure anyone on
your side/' The Turin drawing contains the most
vivid if improbable illustrations of the efficacy of
the whirling scythes, and we may presume that
the chopped-up limbs are intended to belong to
"the enemy" rather than to "friends/' On this
sheet Leonardo notes that "this chariot will be
drawn by six chargers with three horsemen. And
one of the two wheels of the chariot is to turn the
gear, which possesses 25 spindles, and the said
wheel will have 100 teeth, and each point at the
tip the scythes will extend by 12 braccia!' Below,
he notes, "This chariot will be drawn by 4
chargers, and the distance that each point extends
at the tips of the scythes will be 8 braccia, and 2
horsemen who are placed in the middle do not
have personal weapons of assault so that they are
better able to support the scythes between them/'
It is likely that such images were conceived
more to convince patrons of the engineer's stylish

The almost ornamental grace of the arcs

described by the missiles reflects Leonardo's studies of ballistics during the late 14905 and, in more
general terms, his belief that every activity could
be reduced to the rule of mathematical law even
the chaos of war.
M.K.

188

Leonardo da Vinci
Florentine, 1452-1519

TOWN AT THE CENTER OF A DELUGE

c. 1515

pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk

on paper
16.2 x 20.3 (63/s x 8)
inscribed with instructions on the depiction of rain
references: Clark and Pedretti 19681969, 12380;
Pedretti 1982, 597%- Kemp 1989, 583, 589; London
1989, 63
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,
Windsor Castle
brilliance than to serve as designs for constructing
actual machines. They would also have made suitable illustrations for a lively treatise. There is no
indication that such "patent" devices had any significant effect upon warfare at this time.
M.K.

^7

Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519

present drawing (Windsor 12275) *s distinguished

by a neatness and resolution that might have been
intended to impress such a patron, though the
applicability of the representation to actual warfare may be doubted. Like other military theorists
of the Renaissance, Leonardo responded to the
advent of guns by designing compound weapons
that were intended to provide decisive results,
although they would have required a level of
technological efficiency beyond what was then
available.

This drawing (Windsor 12380) is one of ten studies of a "deluge" or "tempest" (Windsor 1237712386) that are so close in style and size as to indicate that they were conceived as a set. The drawings are normally placed late in Leonardo's career
(c. 1515), and the atmospheric use of black chalk
in most of them supports such a dating. This particular image is exceptional in that the black chalk
provides no more than an underdrawing for the
elaborate pen lines and shading in wash. The pen
work gives a more formalized definition to the

FOUR MORTARS FIRING STONES

INTO THE COURTYARD OF A FORT
c. 1504
pen and brown ink and wash on paper
32.9x48 (13 xi87/s)
inscribed: 157
references: Clark and Pedretti 1968-1969, 12275;
Marani 1984, 126; London 1989, 70

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library,

Windsor Castle
Leonardo worked on military architecture and
weapons for several of his patrons during the
course of his career, and his finished, formal studies are difficult to date on stylistic grounds alone.
There are, however, related studies on a series of
sheets that can be associated with his mural, the
Battle of Anghiari (Windsor 12337V and Codex
Atlanticus 72r, ioo2v), and can therefore be dated
to 1503-1505. In autumn 1504, during his work
on the mural, Leonardo was sent by the Florentine
authorities to provide advice on fortifications
to the lord of Piombino, Jacopo iv Appiani. The
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

285

regardless of the number of percussions to which

it is subject. In the motions of water and air, this
inevitability is manifested in the violent configuration of vortices. Although the means are analytical, we sense that the end is expressive, and,
indeed, other of Leonardo's notes make it clear
that this expressive power was a conscious part of
his intention: "Oh what fearful noises were heard
throughout the air as it was pounded by the fury
of the discharged bolts of thunder and lightning
that violently shot through it to strike whatever
opposed their course. Oh, how many might you
have seen covering their ears with their hands in
abhorrence of the uproar caused by the raging,
rain-soaked winds, the thunder of the heavens
and the fury of the fiery bolts" (Kemp 1989, 585).
This union of a deep, analytical understanding
of natural phenomena and the artist's ability to
depict significant events with full communicative
potency provided the foundation for Leonardo's
theory of art.
M.K.

189
Leonardo da Vinci

Florentine, 1452-1519
vortex motion here than in the other drawings
from the series.
It is tempting to read these drawings romantically as the private expression of an old man's
deep pessimism, but they may more properly be
regarded as powerful illustrations for the sections
in Leonardo's projected treatise on painting. The
note at the top of the sheet confirms its "instructional" character: "On rain. Show the degrees of
rain falling at various distances and of varied darkness; and the darker part will be closer to the
middle of its thickness."
Leonardo's written descriptions of "the deluge
and its display in painting" contain passages that
are very close to the phenomena depicted in this
drawing: "Let some mountains collapse headlong
into the depth of a valley
The river bursts the
dam and rushes out in high waves. Let the biggest
of these strike and demolish the cities and country
residences of that valley. And let the disintegration of the high buildings of the said cities
raise much dust which will rise up like smoke
or wreathed clouds through the descending
rain.... The waves that in concentric circles flee
the point of impact are carried by their impetus
across the path of other circular waves moving out
of step with them, and after the moment of percussion leap up into the air without breaking formation
But if the waves strike against any
object, then they rebound on top of the advent
of the other waves, following the same increase
in curvature they would have possessed in their
former primary motion" (Kemp 1989, 583).
286

CIRCA

1492

In this passage, Leonardo describes the furious

destructive power of the deluge in the objective
terms of his dynamic theoryimpact, percussion,
rebound, curvature, and primary motion. In the
same way, the representation of the vortices in
the drawings is founded upon his vivid depiction
of the motions of turbulent water in his hydrodynamic research. At the heart of his theory was
the concept of impetus, which decreed that any
moving object must complete its assigned motion

ALLEGORY WITH A WOLF AND EAGLE

c. 1515-1516
red chalk on gray-brown paper
17 x 28 (65/s x 11)
references: Popham 1946, 125; Clark and
Pedretti 1968-1969, 12496; Pedretti 1982, 547%London 1989, 82
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ur Royal Library,
Windsor Castle

We know that Leonardo executed a "presentation"

drawing (now lost) of Neptune for the Florentine
Antonio Segni, a patron of Botticelli. The purpose
of the present image (Windsor 12496) is not documented, but its high degree of resolution and the
virtuoso handling of the red chalk suggest that it
was also intended to be "presented" to a patron.
As a unique survival of such a sheet in Leonardo's
oeuvre, it is not easy to place in the chronology of
his drawings, but the characterization of the turbulent water suggests a late date, perhaps about
1515-1516. A similar compass had earlier been
illustrated by Leonardo on a sheet of emblems
(Windsor 12701, c. 1508), where it signifies
unswerving purpose: "He does not deviate who
is attached to such a star." The star in the earlier
emblem contains the fleur-de-lys of the French
monarchs. It is not difficult to recognize the kind
of meaning the strange narrative of the wolf and
eagle was intended to convey. It can be related to
printed and literary images in which animals and
objects are used as symbols of prominent persons
or entities, set within allegorical compositions
that convey political messages. However, the specific allusions in this drawing remain elusive, and
numerous interpretations have been suggested.
The most straightforward reading is to identify
the wolf with the pope (Leo x), the eagle with the
French king (Francis i), the boat with the navis
ecclesiae (ship of the church), and the tree-mast
(albero means both 'tree' and 'mast' in Italian)
with the olive of peace. The narrative would then
allude to Francis' ambitions to become Holy
Roman Emperor and to Leo's policy of steering
the "ship of the church" by the light of the king.
Their shared aspirations were expressed in their
famous concordat of 1515, and were represented in
the visual arts in Raphael's Coronation of Charlemagne in the Vatican, in which the key roles of
emperor and pope are played by Francis and Leo
respectively. In 1515 Leonardo was resident in the
Vatican, and he was shortly to enter the service
of Francis.
Even in a composition that depends so much
upon the artist's fantasia, the characterization of
the components is full of his searching observations of natural forms and phenomena. Not the
least remarkable of these is the impressionistic
rendering of the tree leaves, which is related to
some of Leonardo's later notes intended for his
treatise on painting in which he discusses the
appearance of trees at various distances and under
various lighting conditions. The marine compass
in this and the related drawing (Windsor
12701) appear to be the earliest representations of
this navigational instrument (Francis Maddison,
personal communication, December 20,1990).
M.K.

190

Albrecht Diirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG VENETIAN LADY

1505

oil on panel
32.5 X 24.5 (l23/4 X 95/SJ

references: Panofsky 1943, 116, fig. 159; Levey 1961,

512, fig. 29 (also 27-28); Anzelewsky 1971, 187, no.
92, pi. 94; Nuremberg 1971, 286, no. 531, color pi.;
Strieder 1982, 116, fig. 131
Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, Gemaldegalerie
Diirer first travelled to Venice in 1494-1495 to
familiarize himself with the achievements of the
Italian Renaissance. There he became interested in
the works of Andrea Mantegna and Antonio Pollaiuolo, and especially in their reintegration of
classical forms and classical subject matter. On
this trip Diirer also sketched Alpine valleys and
North Italian towns, Venetian ladies and orientals,
exotic animals, and details from Italian paintings.
He was particularly interested, it seems, in the
costumes of the people he encountered, such as

those of a Circassian slave girl or a Venetian

courtesan.
The Portrait of a Young Venetian Lady in
Vienna was painted during Diirer's second Italian
trip, which he started in the summer of 1505,
returning to Nuremberg in January 1507. The
young woman is portrayed against a black background, her golden hair bound with a fillet made
of fine metal thread. Her necklace is of white
pearls and biconal metal beads. She is dressed in a
low-necked gown of velvet or silk embellished
with gold braid in a lattice pattern. Two bows tie
the sleeve to the bodice. One of them appears to
be of black silk; the other was not finished by the
artist. The compositional formula that Diirer used
here has many affinities with that of two Venetian portraits, now lost, which were attributed to
Giovanni Bellini in 1627 when they were in the
Vendramin Collection in Venice. The similarity of
the costumes in these pictures to that worn by
Diirer's sitter negates the old but still prevalent
hypothesis that the lady in Diirer's portrait is
dressed in the Milanese fashion. It is hardly surprising that Diirer was influenced by Bellini, as he
always planned his travels with the aim of making
contact with the most stimulating personalities

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

287

and experiences. This explains the adjustments he

made to Venetian art during his Italian travels and
to artistic developments in the Netherlands when
he stayed in Antwerp in 1520-1521. For example,
the musical angel at the feet of the Virgin in
the Brotherhood of the Rose Garland of 1506
(Narodni Galerie, Prague), is essentially Venetian
in style. As the most important painting he produced during the second Italian journey, this
altarpiece combines the German formula of the
Rosenkranzbilder with the traditional characteristics of Venetian paintings such as, for example,
Giovanni Bellini's Doge Agostino Barbarigo
Presented to the Virgin of 1488 (San Pietro Martire, Murano). Diirer's friendship with Bellini, in
fact, is attested to by a passage of a letter he sent
to Willibald Pirckheimer from Venice on 7 February 1506: ". . . Giovanni Bellini, has highly
praised me before many nobles. He wanted to
have something of mine, and himself came to me
and asked me to paint him something and he
would pay well for it. And all men tell me what an
upright man he is, so that I am really friendly
with him. He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all" (Conway 1889, 48). The letters
Diirer wrote to Pirckheimer from Venice, incidentally, also describe in great detail his purchase
of jewels, pearls and precious stones. While staying in Venice Diirer became increasingly interested in Giorgione's art. Diirer's Portrait of a
Venetian Lady in Berlin (Staatliche Museen
Preussischer Kulturbesitz) and his Portrait of a
Young Man of 1506 (Galleria di Palazzo Rosso,
Genoa) show clearly the influence of that young
Venetian master, as does the Old Woman with a
Bag of Coins which Diirer painted on the reverse
of the Portrait of a Young Man (Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna), a work dating from after his
return to Nuremberg (1507). This striking image
recalls Giorgione's famous La Vecchia, a portrait
of an old woman (Gallerie deirAccademia, Venice).
J.M.M.

1Q1

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

YOUNG WOMAN WITH BRAIDED HAIR

1515
charcoal on paper
42 x 29 (i6l/2 x n3/s)
references: Winkler 1936-1939, 3:30-31, no. and
fig. 562; Strauss 1974, 3:1578-1581, no. 1515/53;
Anzelewsky and Mielke 1984, 81-82, no. and fig. 78

Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer

Kulturbesitz, Berlin
This large portrait is the same size and in the
same medium as another study of the same sitter
in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Strauss
1974, 3:1578-1579, no. 1515/52); both are signed
288

C I R C A 1492

with the artist's monogram and dated 1515. The

192
two charcoal portraits render with great subtlety
Albrecht Diirer
the features and personality of the sitter. The likeNuremberg, 1471-1528
ness is so close that the drawings must depict the
same sitter and not two sisters, as is commonly
PORTRAIT OF A BLACK MAN
supposed. Nor is there any evidence for an identification of the subject with Diirer's niece, his
1505-1506 ?
sister-in-law, or his maid Susanna. Why Diirer
charcoal on paper
32X21.8 (l2V2X8y2)
executed the drawing is not known, but the artist
references: Nuremberg 1971, 286-288, no. 534;
seems to have used another study of the same
Devisse and Mollat 1979, 252-253, f i g . 264;
model for his Virgin and Child with Saint Anne of
Strauss 1974, 2:1062-1063, no. 1508/24
1519 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York),
a painting in which he used a study of his wife
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
Agnes for the face of Saint Anne. Diirer's first
known portraits in charcoal date from 1503; his
best known work in this medium is the portrait of
This drawing is difficult to date, since the monohis mother drawn in 1514, less than two months
gram and the date 1508 seem to have been added
before her death. Later, during his travels to the
later. Diirer was already drawing with charcoal in
Netherlands, Diirer developed a new type of
1503 an example is his splendid portrait of his
highly finished drawing rendering the subject in
friend Pirckheimer (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin).
tonal terms against a dark background. Employing
The present portrait may have been executed
during the second trip to Venice in 1505-1506,
this technique, Diirer could produce an elaborate
portrait in an hour or two. Such studies provided
as has been suggested, for example, by Strieder
him with a steady income during his trip, although . (Nuremberg 1971, 286). A later date, however,
most were probably done primarily to satisfy his
c. 1515, as is often proposed, cannot be excluded,
numerous admirers.
J.M.M.
as Diirer could easily have seen a black man in

Nuremberg, which was a major cosmopolitan

trade center.
During his first visit to Italy, Durer drew two
orientals in Ottoman costume who are followed
by a black servant (cat. no), but he did not sketch
these from life, probably copying a drawing, now
lost, by Gentile Bellini preparatory to his Procession in Saint Mark's Square. Later, in his altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi of 1504 in the
Uffizi, Durer included a black Magus holding a
gold cup. By 1500 it was quite traditional to show
one of the three wise men as black. But in that
work as in the present drawing, Diirer goes
beyond cultural and artistic stereotypes and shows
himself sensitive to the personality as well as the
exotic potential of his sitter.
j. M. M.

193

Albrecht Diirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528

PORTRAIT OF KATHERINA
1521

silverpoint on prepared paper

20 x 14 (j7/8 x 52/2J
references: Goris 1925, 31-32; Goris and Marlier
1971, 185, no. 66, fig. 66; Nuremberg 1971, 294,
no. 543; Strauss 1974, 4:2012-2013, no. 1521/8;
Kaplan 1985, 105
Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence
During his visit to the Netherlands Diirer drew
Katherina, the Moorish servant of the Portuguese
factor Joao Brandao. Between 16 March and
5 April 1521, not long before he returned to
Nuremberg, the artist wrote in his diary: "I have
drawn the portrait in charcoal of Faktor Brandao's
Secretary. I drew a portrait of his Negress with
metalpoint." He inscribed that drawing Katherina
alt 20 Jahr and dated it 1521.

From 1441, the year of the first Portuguese

slave raid, to 1505 between 140,000 and 170,000
African slaves were brought to Europe (Kaplan
1985,105). Blacks are first mentioned in Antwerp
documents in the early sixteenth century; they
were mostly seamen and servants owned by their
masters, sold and even given away by them.
Some, however, were baptized and then freed
amid great pomp (Goris 1925, 31-32).
Durer's drawing captures Katherina's features
with precision. Diirer noted, as he often did, both
the name and age of his sitter, leaving us with
a thoughtful and sensitive portrait of the young
woman, whose hair has been confined within
a European headdress (see also the portrait of
Paulus Topler: Strauss 1974, 4:1940-1941,
no. 1520/19).
J.M.M.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

WORLD

289

ther through the use of mathematical projections

and a section on grotesque physiognomies, while
in the final book Diirer attempts to analyze
human movement by means of geometrical
constructions.
The figure reproduced here, from the second
book, follows Vitruvius' dictum that a circle
whose center is the navel will touch the tips of the
outstretched fingers and the toes, although Diirer
in this case does not show his figure with feet
extended as did Leonardo in his Vitruvian proportion study (cat. 175).
J.A.L.

*95
Albrecht Diirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528

ADAM AND EVE

1504

engraving
24.9 x 19.3 ($7/8X y5/8)
references: Panofsky 1948, 1:84-85, 204; Rupprich
1956-1969, 1:102; Washington 1971,131-132, no. 30;
National Gallery of Art 1973, 342/' Strauss
1974, 2:760; Kef/19^5, 54-61
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of
R. Horace Gallatin

194

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

STUDY IN HUMAN PROPORTION

from Hierin sind begriffen vier biicher von
menschlicher Proportion, Nuremberg, 1528
(fols. K6vKjr)
woodcut
22 X 16.2 (85/8 X 63/8)

references: Panofsky 1948, 1:263-270; Washington

, 355, no. 217
New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Although Diirer's interest in theoretical subjects
began fairly early in his career, his completed
books did not appear until near the end of his life.
His treatise on geometry and perspective, Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt ("A Course in the Art of Measurement
with Compass and Ruler") was published in 1525,
followed in 1527 by his work on fortifications,
Etliche underricht zu befestigung der Stett,
Schlosz undflecken. The treatise exhibited here,
Hierin sind begriffen vier biicher von
menschlicher Proportion, the "Four Books of
Human Proportion," was published posthumously
in 1528, edited by his friend Willibald Pirckheimer.
The study of human proportions occupied
Diirer for nearly thirty years. Around 1500, he
was primarily interested in creating figures that
could be used directly in works of art. He devised
290

CIRCA 1492

a geometrical schema to determine not only their

proportions but also their poses and even, in some
cases, the contours delineating their forms. On
his second trip to Italy, however, he encountered
the proportion studies of Leonardo da Vinci, probably in the form of copies. As a consequence his
own approach underwent a fundamental change of
direction. He lost interest in the somewhat naive
notion of finding mathematical constructions to
describe human beauty and sought instead, by
actually taking the measurements of individuals,
to determine the objective proportions of the ideal
human figure. Moreover, he became convinced
that no single canon of beauty could do justice to
the wealth of human types, and so he began to
assemble alternate sets of proportions and to
devise mathematical procedures for varying these,
in turn, even further. In these later studies, following Italian practice, Diirer began to show his
figures rigidly erect and in two or three different
views. These new studies were intended solely
as illustrations, in the scientific sense, of his
research; as he admitted himself, they were
of no direct practical use to the artist.
In the first book of this treatise Diirer illustrates the five different types of figures and provides detailed measurements of male and female
heads, the hand and foot, and a baby. In the
second book he adds an additional eight types,
indexing them according to the system of measurement developed by Leon Battista Alberti in
his treatise on sculpture. The third book contains
methods for varying these basic figures even fur-

Diirer's woodcut series of the Apocalypse of 1498

established him as a great narrative artist, and it is
at first glance surprising to find so little drama in
his conception of the Fall of Man. The explanation
is that this engraving was inspired principally by
his theoretical studies in the field of human proportions. He intended the print to introduce his
German public to the perfectly constructed, classical forms of man and woman.
Diirer later wrote that his lifelong interest in
the study of human proportions began when he
met the Venetian painter and printmaker Jacopo
de' Barbari, the author of the woodcut View of
Venice (cat. 151), "... a charming painter. He
showed me a man and a woman which he had
made according to measure, so that I would now
rather see what he meant than behold a new kingdom/' Barbari would not reveal his working
method to the young Diirer, who consequently
"set to work on [his] own and read Vitruvius, who
writes a bit about the human figure" (Rupprich
1956-1969, i, 102). This meeting must have
taken place either in Venice in 1494-1495 or
in Nuremberg in 1500, when Barbari accepted
an appointment to the court of Emperor
Maximilian i.
For his early series of constructed nudes, Diirer
utilized a system of proportions that is based at
least in part upon the canon described by Vitruvius in his first-century B.C. treatise on architecture (see cat. 175), while the method of
construction is uniquely Diirer's own. The measurements of the head, face, chest, hips, and legs

are predetermined as simple fractions of the total

body length. The chest and pelvis of the figure are
schematized as a square and a trapezoid and are
set at opposed angles to the central axis of the
figure. Diirer's intention was to use this geometrical construction to create, in almost mechanical
fashion, the classical contrapposto pose, which
differentiates the figure's weight-bearing leg from
its free leg, raising the shoulder above the free leg
and the hip above the standing leg. Diirer even
attempted to construct a number of the figures'
contours, which follow arcs drawn with theicompass.
While Durer's earliest constructed female nudes
have a Gothic lilt, he seems soon to have realized
that a genuinely classical figure required a classical model as well as a Vitruvian scheme of proportions. By 1503, he seems to have had access to
a drawing after a classical statue, perhaps a figure
resembling the Medici Venus (Uffizi, Florence),
to judge from the fact the close predecessors of
the Eve have an equilibrium and a genuinely statuesque quality. Adam is the direct descendant

of a series of figure studies by Diirer, depicting

Apollo and other classical gods, based on the
Apollo Belvedere (Vatican Museums), which had
been discovered in Rome in the late fifteenth
century.
When Diirer decided he was ready to embody
his studies in a published image, however, he
changed the subject from the secular to the religious, choosing a Biblical story in which nudity
was justified by the subject matter. He was
apparently concerned that his audience might not
be ready to accept classical nudity presented for its
own sake. He combined the two separately conceived male and female images into one composition, a circumstance that accounts for the selfcontained character of each figure. Diirer did alter
Adam's pose in an attempt to bring the figures
into an active relationship with each other, changing the balanced classical stance of his earlier
studies into an energetic forward stride. He also
enriched the scene with numerous symbolic
details that, taken together, constitute a learned

gloss on the narrative. The parrot, for example,

symbolizing the virgin birth of Christ, is the antidote to the diabolical serpent, whose guile precipitates the Fall. Adam and Eve's relationship at this
critical moment is paralleled by that of the cat and
mouse in the foreground, while the ibex perched
on the cliff at the upper right is a traditional
symbol for the unbelieving.
The presence of the other animals reflects a
twelfth-century scholastic doctrine that related
the Fall of Man to the theory of the four humors
or temperaments. Before the Fall man had a
perfectly balanced constitution, rendering him
immortal and sinless. As a consequence of Original Sin this equilibrium was shattered; his body
became susceptible to illness and death and his
soul to vices, caused by the preponderance of one
or another of the humors. Animals, however, were
mortal and "vicious" even before the Fall, and in
the engraving the elk denotes melancholic gloom,
the rabbit sanguine sensuality, the cat choleric
cruelty, and the ox phlegmatic sluggishness.
J.A.L.

196

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

KNIGHT, DEATH, AND DEVIL

1513

engraving
24.6 x 19 (95/s x 72/2J
references: Sandrart 1925, 64; Panofsky 1948, i,
151-154; Karling 1970, 1-13; Washington 1971,
143-145, no. 58; Meyer 1978, 35-39; Scalini 1984,
15-18
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of
W. G. Russell Allen
Bearing the date 1513 on the tablet at the lower
left (the "S" preceding the year probably stands
for Salus, as in Anno salutis [in the year of
grace]), this is the earliest of the three prints traditionally known as Durer's "master engravings."
The other two, Saint Jerome in his Study and
Melencolia i (cats. 198 and 199), are dated 1514.
Although Diirer did not refer to them as a set,
their similarities of date, style, and complexity
have led scholars to interpret them as complementary subjects.
From a formal point of view, the Knight, Death,
and Devil represents Durer's definitive statement
on the ideal proportions of the horse. The motif of
the mounted knight in armor can be traced back
to his watercolor study of 1498 (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna), but the idealized horse
in full profile shows the further development of
Durer's studies reflected in the engravings of
Saint Eustace and the Small Horse of 1505. The
type of horse looks directly to Italian art, to
famous mounted warriors like Verrocchio's ColE U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

291

197

Albrecht Dtirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

ARTIST DRAWING A LUTE

c. 1520-1525
pen and ink on paper
13.2 x 18.2 (y/s x yVs)
references: Bock 1921, 34; Anzelewsky and Mielke
1984, 122-123, no- and fig. nya
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin

leoni Monument in Venice and more specifically

to Leonardo da Vinci's studies for the Sforza
equestrian monument in Milan. Leonardo's sculpture never progressed beyond the stage of the clay
model of the horse, but Diirer would have known
some of the drawings through early engraved
copies. In a two-sided preparatory drawing for the
Knight, Death, and Devil (Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
Milan), Diirer constructed the horse geometrically on one side of the sheet and then traced the
image through to the other side of the page to
complete it.
Diirer called this print simply Renter (Rider) in
the diary of his Netherlandish trip of 1520-1521.
Joachim von Sandrart, the seventeenth-century
biographer of the Northern artists, referred to it
as "the Christian Knight/' a description that led
nineteenth-century scholars to connect the print
with Erasmus of Rotterdam's Enchiridion militis
Christiani (Handbook of the Christian Soldier) of
1504 in what has become the canonical interpretation of its subject. Erasmus' treatise described
the virtuous Christian soldier, metaphorically
enrolled in God's service, who is exhorted in one
evocative passage: "All those spooks and phan-

292

CIRCA 1492

toms which come upon you as in the very gorges

of Hades must be deemed for naught after the
example of Virgil's Aeneas." Erwin Panofsky
believed that the Knight, Death, and Devil represented the obverse of Saint Jerome in his Study,
the active as opposed to the contemplative life in
the service of Christ, with Melencolia i representing a contrast to both, "the tragic unrest of
human creation."
Other scholars have pointed out that in the twilight of feudalism, the image of an armored warrior was more likely to suggest to a citizen of
Nuremberg the robber-knights who terrorized the
countryside, supporting themselves as highwaymen. They have proposed that the print should be
seen as a warning against lawlessness or in the
spirit of the memento mori. While this controversy is unlikely ever to be resolved definitively,
the visual evidence seems clear. The soldier,
riding an idealized mount that embodies Diirer's
own belief in the perfection inherent in mathematical proportions, passes the cadaverous figure
of Death and the bestial Devil with an indifference that surely reflects his concentration on
eternal goals.
J.A.L.

This drawing illustrates an apparatus that Diirer

designed in his treatise on perspective, the Unterweysung der Messung, published in 1525, to aid
the artist in depicting objects in correct perspective. Dismissed as a copy after Diirer's woodcut
(Bock 1921, 34), the drawing has only recently
been reinstated as an original (Anzelewsky and
Mielke 1984, 122-123). The composition is essentially that of the woodcut in Diirer's treatise, but
here the figures are sketched over construction
lines drawn with a ruler. That this drawing is not
a copy is indicated by various pentimenti, especially evident in the hands of the man who is
using two movable strings to fix the exact point of
their intersection with the frame. The modifications in the position of his hands clearly reflect a
decision to show the strings being held in a different way. The shortcomings of the drawing (for
example, in the position of the right leg of the
seated man), which were thought to cast doubt on
its authenticity, are equally evident in the woodcut. Moreover, a copyist who bothered to change
the position of the hands would probably also
have added the lute represented in perspective on
the piece of paper attached by hinges to the frame.
Diirer was obviously more interested in making
the action clear and comprehensible than in
adjusting the leg under the table. He may even
have thought that this clumsiness would be corrected by the artist who transferred the composition to the woodblock.
Diirer's Unterweysung der Messung was
extremely popular, for it was one of the very few
treatises on linear perspective actually published
in the Renaissance. Earlier and probably more
significant works, such as Leon Battista Alberti's
De pictura or Piero della Francesca's De prospectiva pingendi, circulated only in manuscript.
Diirer's Unterweysung was republished
repeatedly, in German and in a Latin translation
by Joachim Camerarius. Diirer hoped that his
treatise would "benefit not only the painters but
also goldsmiths, sculptors, stonemasons, carpenters and all those who have to rely on measurement." To ensure its usefulness he provided in his
book both a theoretical framework on perspective
and the kind of practical information previously
found only in pattern books. The treatise is
divided into four chapters. The first, which

borrows its introduction from Euclid's Elements,

gives an account of linear geometry while the
second covers two-dimensional figures. The third
is more practical, illustrating the application of
geometrical principles to architecture and various
crafts, including typography, mapmaking and the
manufacture of scientific instruments. The final
Book deals with the construction of three-dimensional bodies, emphasizing the stereometric
approach which underlines his own so-called late
style evident in works dating from 1519 onwards.
It has often been pointed out that Diirer's apparatuses for drawing objects in perspective, which are
described and illustrated at the end of his book,
constitute his main contribution to perspective
theory as developed by Italian writers; they also
best reflect his practical mind.
The apparatus depicted in this drawing seems
to have been invented by Diirer. The visual rays
intersecting the "window," the plane between
the eye and the object, are represented by a piece
of string, with a weight at one end and a pin at the
other, which passes through the eye of a needle
driven into the wall. This needle stands for the
eye of the notional viewer. The pin held by an
assistant is put at different places on the object
while his companion measures, for each position,
the exact point at which the piece of string intersects the frame. These points are then recorded
by two movable threads, and their positions are
entered on the piece of paper hinged to the frame,
yielding a foreshortened image on the paper.

(1520-1521) more, in fact, than for any other

of his prints. The print is remarkable for its
perspectival construction based on a central
vanishing point and two lateral points for convergence of the diagonals. Diirer defined this
method later in his treatise on measurement (Unterweysung der Messung) of 1525.

The theme of Saint Jerome in his study was

developed in northern Europe in the fifteenth
century in works such as the Belles heures of Jean,
duke of Berry, painted by the Limbourg Brothers
or the little Eyckian panel now in Detroit. There,
as in Diirer's engraving, we find the saint portrayed as a patron of humanism. Diirer strikes a

J.M.M.

198

Albrecht Dtirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

SAINT JEROME IN His STUDY

1514

engraving
24.7 xi8.8 (95/8xy3/8)
references: Parshall 1971; Washington 1971, 146147, no. 60, fig. 60; Behling 1975; Strauss 1976,
212-215, no- 77'' New York and Nuremberg 1986,
314-315, no. 133; Kemp 1990, 60-61, figs. 105-107
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
Missouri, Gift of Robert B. Fizzell
In Diirer's time Saint Jerome was generally represented as a penitent or as a scholar, his main
achievement being his translation of the Bible into
Latin (the so-called Vulgate version) which was
commissioned by Pope Damasus.
The 1514 engraving shown here is often considered Diirer's most technically perfect effort in
this medium; Diirer's own satisfaction with it
may explain why he sold or gave away so many
examples during his trip to the Netherlands
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

293

scholarly note with the gourd (Cucurbita lagenaria L.) hanging from the ceiling. This plant
was well known during the Middle Ages and
celebrated by many writers, including Walafrid
Strabo, who stressed its utility as a container for
water or wine. Diirer's gourd, however, recalls a
famous controversy between Jerome and Saint
Augustine about the meaning of the Hebrew word
ciceion or kikayon in Jonah 4:6. It was usually
translated as "gourd/ but Jerome identified it
instead with the castor oil plant, for which he
knew no Greek or Latin equivalent; instead of
calling it a gourd (cucurbita), the saint used the
word hedera (a type of ivy). When faced with the
peculiar ivy-gourd in this Saint Jerome engraving,
Durer's learned friends likely grasped the philological point.
Problems like the debate over the gourd were of
great interest to Renaissance scholars; humanism
was primarily concerned with establishing the
accurate text of ancient works, both biblical and
classical. Much of Reformation theology depended
on reading the word ipsa as ipse in a crucial biblical passage. Contemporary viewers may also have
seen the gourd, like the skull, hourglass, and
extinguished candle, as symbols of transience.
This concept too is found in Jonah (6:10), where
we read that the gourd came up in a night and
perished in a night.
J.M.M.

294

CIRCA 1492

199

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

MELENCOLIA i

1514

engraving
24 x 18.7 (93/s x y3/s)
references: Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl 1964,
254373; Washington 1971, 145-146, no. 59, fig.
59; Strauss 1972, 166-169, no. 79; Strauss 1976,
218-224; Smith 1983, 111, no. 19; Bialostocki 1986,
356-369, p/. xix; New York and Nuremberg 1986,
312-313, no. 132
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald
Collection
Diirer's Melancholy is a winged personification
surrounded by various more or less symbolic features. The artist took as his formal model a woodcut from Gregor Reisch's Margarita philosophica
(Strasbourg, 1504) representing Geometry (Typus
Geometriae), one of the liberal arts; that personification is surrounded by various people recording
the position of the heavens, measuring, and drawing plans. Diirer's familiarity with the 1504 woodcut is confirmed by his use of another illustration
from the same book a rainbow and a comet,

two heavenly phenomena studied by Reisch in

different chapters. By adding various attributes,
Diirer effectively conveyed a mood, a state of
mind, which is that of Melancholy lost in her
thoughts. The many curious details with which
Melencolia 1 is filled have inspired complex interpretations. Some scholars have sought meaning in
all the details of the engraving, citing as supporting evidence a preparatory sketch in the British
Museum, London, for the "putto" at Melancholy's side, which bears an autograph inscription
stating that "the key signifies power, the purse
riches/' This statement has traditionally been
taken to allude to Melencolia i and to the purse
and the key hanging at Melancholy's side. The
possibility cannot be excluded, however, that it
refers to another engraving altogether, that of a
peasant couple dancing, which Diirer executed
the same year.
Melencolia i is without doubt Durer's most
perplexing work, especially if, as is often claimed,
it reflects Durer's own feelings of personal disarray. Melancholy was one of the four humors that
were believed to rule over human beings; the
other three were choler, phlegm, and the sanguine
humor. According to the theory developed in
classical antiquity, which was widespread in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, the melancholic
humor was dry and cold, related to the element
earth, to autumn, and particularly to an age of
about sixty. It was generated by an excess of black
bile and produced various effects, including
depression.
The title given by Diirer to his engraving
seems to indicate that he meant it to form part of
a series, either of the Four Temperaments or of a
number of different forms of Melancholy. Various
authors have connected the print with one of
three types of Melancholy discussed by Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim in his De occulta philosophia, written in 1509-1510 but published, in a
revised form, only in 1531. Diirer could easily
have known the text through his friend Pirckheimer, who was a friend of Abbot Trithemius to
whom the book was dedicated. According to
Agrippa, Aristotle knew "that all men who have
distinguished themselves in any brand of knowledge have generally been melancholies." This
"humor melancholicus," Agrippa relates, "occurs
in three different forms, corresponding to the
threefold capacity of our soul, namely the imaginative, the rational, and the mental." When "the
soul is fully concentrated in the imagination... it
immediately becomes an habitation for the lower
spirits, from which it often receives wonderful
instruction in the manual arts; thus we see a quite
unskilled man suddenly become a painter or an
architect, or a quite outstanding master in another
art of the same kind."
Erwin Panofsky concluded that Diirer represented the melancholy of the artist who is in control of geometrical principles but has no access

2O1

to the metaphysical dimension. If so, the engraving could have had personal connotations and
might reflect Diirer's discomfiture when he abandoned his search for absolute beauty and admitted
that "what absolute beauty is, I know not/' J.M.M

Albrecht Diirer

200

c. 1500
watercolor and gouache on paper
10.6 x 31.6 f42/4 x i23/s)
references: ^lore-Herrmann 1972, 135-136, fig. 11;
Koschatzky 1973, no. 32; Strauss 1974, 2:520-521,
no. 1500/9; Anzelewsky and Mielke 1984, 21-23,
no. and fig. 17; Leber 1988, 128-146, figs. 72-81

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

VALLEY NEAR KALCHREUTH

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer

Kulturbesitz, Berlin

WATERWHEEL IN THE ALPS

1494-1495

watercolor and gouache on paper

13.4 x 13.1 (52/4 x 52/sJ
references: Koschatzky 1973, no. 14; Strauss 1974,
1:338-339, no. 1495/39; Anzelewsky and Mielke
1984, 18-19, no. and fig. 14
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin
Diirer's contribution to the development of landscape cannot be overestimated. His early watercolors record the landscape around Nuremberg
with considerable topographical accuracy. Those
executed during his first trip to Venice in 14941495, like the present sheet, reveal new concerns
for landscape, even a new attitude toward the
subject. Some are careful renderings, such as the
highly finished View of Arco (Louvre, Paris),
while others are simply sketched in and left
incomplete.
The Waterwheel in the Alps one of the first
examples of plein-airisme shows an artist sitting
on a millstone and sketching a waterwheel. It
illustrates a number of characteristic features of
Diirer's art, especially in the degree of finish
applied to specific areas. Certain sections are
defined with great precision, while others, such
as the top of the treetrunk behind the sketching

artist, are barely begun. Especially attractive are

the bluish bushes, executed with the same technique and showing the same tonality as the olive
trees in the View of Arco.
In some of these early watercolors, Diirer mixes
form with light, giving an overall impression of
the open air and a great sense of recession, bringing to landscape the atmospheric qualities that are
usually thought of as an innovation of artists of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is difficult to determine the function of Diirer's watercolors. They clearly could be used for finished
compositions, since the background of his Nemesis engraving, of about 1502, is a bird's eye view of
Klausen, in the Tyrol, which he must have drawn
in 1494-1495. Some of the watercolors are
thought to be the first known autonomous landscapes, although that is difficult to determine,
precisely because Diirer's landscape watercolors
are unique for their time. Curiously, the Waterwheel was copied by Hans Bol (1534-1593) and
incorporated into a much enlarged composition
which is known through a drawing in Vienna and
a watercolor in Weimar.
J.M.M.

Diirer's view of the valley near Kalchreuth and

his Village of Kalchreuth (formerly Kunsthalle,
Bremen) are probably his most innovative landscape watercolors. He sketched the valley from
the Schollenbacher Wald, towards the hills of the
Franconian Jura beyond Kalchreuth; the villages
of Neunkirchen a Brand and Hetzles can be discerned at the foot of the Hetzleser Berg. Diirer
presents a panorama, sketching it from a wooded
hill and indicating the tops of the trees on the
slope with a few brushstrokes. The valley is
painted with earth colors, the trees indicated with
a few wet brushstrokes. Diirer relied on color
effects to suggest the receding hills: the most
distant ones are appropriately depicted in bluish
hues, while for those in the foreground fluid
washes are combined with pure brush drawing
for example, where the hatchings define the shape
of the mountains.
Diirer's two watercolors of Kalchreuth are
exceptional as regards both his own development
and that of the art of the time. It has thus proven
difficult for scholars to place them within the
chronology of Diirer's oeuvre. Most consider
them to be his last watercolor landscapes, while
some place them as early as his return from his
first trip to Italy, and others propose a date as late

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

295

as c. 1518-1519, relating them to the etching,

Landscape with a Cannon, Around 1500, however, seems most probable. At that time Diirer
drew his famous Large Piece of Turf, representing
nature in almost microscopic detail and subjecting
it to a penetrating analysis in his quest for a basic
understanding of the underlying structures of the
physical world.
J.M.M.

202

Martin Schongauer
c. 1450-1491

STUDY OF PEONIES
c. 1472
paper, watercolor and body color, heightened
with white
25.4 x 33.4(10x13Vs)
references: Koreny 1985, 191, n. 66, 210, 211;
Koreny 1991, n. 30
private collection

This watercolor, discovered only in 1988, is here

attributed to Martin Schongauer. The sheet of
paper has been restored in the upper right and left
corners; the lower left corner was cut off diagonally and later replaced, as a result of which an
inscription was lost. Remnants of possibly the last
three letters are still recognizable. There are
losses of color in the foliage around the bud and
also along the vertical fold, which runs partially
through the petals of the blossom at the right.
There is minor flaking color in the foliage around
the blossom at the upper left.
Two fully opened peony blossoms (paeonia
officinalis L.) and one bud with surrounding
foliage are represented. Copied from nature, the
study served as a preparatory drawing for the
peony bush in Martin Schongauer's painting of
the Madonna in the Rosegarden (St. Martin,
Colmar). There the two blossoms reappear, true to
detail but, in comparison to the study, in a slightly
changed overall relationship (Koreny 1991, n. 30).
The painting in Colmar has been trimmed on all
sides and today shows only the blossom to the
right. A sixteenth-century copy in Boston reproduces the panel before its reduction in size and
indicates not only the original size of the peony
bush and the arrangement of the flowers, but also
the characteristic features of the blossom at left,
which is viewed from the side. A comparison with
the Boston copy reveals that Schongauer's painting was cropped 25 cm at the left and right, losing
about half of the peony bush and one stem of
white lilies; 35 cm at the top, losing the bust of
God the Father with the Holy Ghost that originally appeared above the angels; and about 20 cm at
the bottom, losing part of the grassy foreground.
The essential features of the peony petals in the
study are delineated by wide brushstrokes in pink
296

CIRCA 1492

and dark red. Over this foundation Schongauer

then modeled the forms in dark red to madder, in
thin, parallel lines with a fine brush to elaborate
the indentations and elevations, the light and
shadow. To achieve greater contrast in the details,
he outlined the contours of several petals with
opaque white and applied the highlights with a
few broad strokes of the brush. The technique of
modeling with thin lines to articulate form corresponds to Schongauer's style of drawing and may
be compared to the modeling in his pen drawing
of Saint Dorothy in Berlin.
Schongauer transferred this drawing technique
to the painting when, as a final touch, in just this
manner with a fine brush and white pigment, he
placed accents of light in parallel strokes on the
petals in the painting. This process can still be
seen at the left edge of the painting, where the
original peony blossom in the center was cut
through when the painting was made smaller. The
left edge of the picture was better protected by its
frame from the abrasion that occurred over the
course of centuries, when the painting was
cleaned. In the same fashion, for example, the
Madonna's lips have been heightened with this
type of white brush hatching, thereby achieving
the most sublime effects of light. In addition, the
same artistic conception in the study as in the
painting characterizes the application of color, the
manner of painting, the dispersion of color in the
stem, the drawing of the leaves, their colored outlines, and the effect of light and shadow contrasted
against each other.
The study is executed on paper of Basel provenance, which contains a watermark, a gothic "p"

with flower (Piccard 1019). One can pinpoint relatively well the manufacture of this coarsely ribbed
paper, with the specific features of the shape of
the "p" and the peculiarities of the flower, as well
as the number of and distance between chainlines
and laidlines: paper of precisely this origin was
used by Bishop Johann of Basel in a note of 15
April 1474 to Emperor Frederick n; pages 53-60
of the Basel court judgments of March 1471 to
August 1472 are also written on the same paper.
The watermark not only confirms that this study
originated in the early 14705, but also indirectly
substantiates, to a degree, the date of 1473 on the
reverse of Schongauer's Madonna in the Rosegarden, which was apparently added later.
Martin Schongauer's drawing precedes
Albrecht Diirer's animal and plant studies by more
than a quarter of a century. It is therefore contemporaneous with Leonardo da Vinci's scientific
nature studies, also to be placed in the 14705, to
which it forms, so to speak, the Northern and
artistically commensurate counterpart. It is
interesting to observe Schongauer's clarity of
vision, which, by reducing diversity in favor of
the essential, achieves a calm, balanced overall
effect, whereas the much younger Diirer, as in the
Bremen Iris (cat. 203), despite his brilliant rendering of details, succeeds only with difficulty in
reining in his Gothic overabundance of information (compare to Koreny 1985,191, n. 66).
Albrecht Diirer most likely knew this study by
Martin Schongauer and, if the remnants of the
letters at the lower left may be interpreted correctly, probably also owned it (Koreny 1991). This
assumption is based on, in addition to the com-

parison of handwriting, the depiction of the peonies in Diirer's drawing of the Madonna with a
Multitude of Animals (Graphische Sammlung
Albertina, Vienna): the specific arrangement of
the blossoms next to one another in Diirer's drawing is not to be found in Schongauer's Madonna
in a Rosegarden but is nearly identical to that in
the study discussed here. The corresponding
ensemble of a single bud with a short stem and
the two blossoms including such astonishing
details as the top leaf, curled upward, of the blossom at the left certainly presupposes knowledge
of Schongauer's study (see Koreny 1985, 210, 211
where Diirer's borrowing of this detail from
Schongauer's painting was first pointed out).
As is demonstrated by Schongauer's use of the
same study of lilies in the Annunciation from the
Orliac altarpiece (Musee d'Unterlinden, Colmar),
the Madonna in the Rosegarden, and the engravings of the Annunciation (B.2 and 6.3), Martin
Schongauer, evidently under Netherlandish influence, learned to work economically in running his
studio on the basis of detailed studies after nature
of this type. This is a manner of working that
evidently originated with the masters of Early
Netherlandish painting. There are good grounds
for presuming its use by Jan van Eyck and the
Master of Flemalle, and indirect evidence for its
employment by Rogier van der Weyden (see
Koreny 1991 for a more detailed discussion).
The discovery of this study places in a new light
all that was previously believed regarding the
observation of nature and the changed attitude of
man towards nature, the environment, and the
universe at the beginning of the Renaissance.
Albrecht Diirer's representations of animals and
plants no longer mark the beginning of artistic
study of such details in western art, but turn out
to be documents of the third generation; they are
clearly based on Schongauer's observation of
nature, which itself can be shown to be indebted
to Netherlandish prototypes.
More than a generation before Diirer, Martin
Schongauer's study of peonies anticipates the
beginnings of modern scientific representations of
nature, which until now had been dated around
1500. It compels us to change our ideas fundamentally. Though derived from late medieval
practice, it must be considered by far the earliest
nature study of the German Renaissance.
F.K.

203
Albrecht Diirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528

IRIS
c. 1503

pen, watercolor, and gouache on paper

77-5 X 31.3 (3O2/2 X 123/8J

references: Winkler 1936-1939, 2:68-69, no- an^

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

29;

fig. 347; Strauss 1974, 1:312-313, no. 1495/26;

Horn and Born 1979, 2:181-182; Koreny 1988,
188191, no. 66; Behling 1989, 46-53, fig. 38
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunsthalle, Bremen
In the diary of his journey to the Netherlands
(1520-1521) Diirer wrote that his host in Arnemuiden gave him a sprouting bulb (not a tulip,
since this flower was introduced to Europe only
much later). The iris, a bulbous plant, was known
in northern Europe as early as the Carolingian
period, as it is indicated (as gladiold) on one of the
beds in the medical herb garden (herbularius) on
the plan of the monastery of Saint Gall (see Horn
and Born 1979, 2:181-182). Diirer's drawing of
the iris was made before his trip to the Netherlands, probably at the same time as the Large
Piece of Turf and his Madonna with a Multitude
of Animals (both Albertina, Vienna), that is,
around 1503. The Iris, which was drawn on two
sheets of paper glued together, is a life-size study
in which the flower is rendered with botanical
accuracy. The leaves and the branching stem are

shown in great detail, with special care given to

color and texture. The buds are shown at different
stages of development, the blooms having all the
characteristics of a hybridized variety of the Iris
germanica. The Bremen watercolor was carefully
copied, probably around 1600, in the Madonna
with the Iris in the National Gallery in London,
an anonymous painting formerly attributed to
Diirer. In the case of the Bremen watercolor,
Diirer's principal interest seems to have been
the plant itself and its botanical features.
The Latin name for the iris (gladiolus or gladiolum) simply means "little sword"; its German
name, Schwertlilie, literally means "sword lily."
The flower was therefore an appropriate symbol
of the Virgin, and specifically of her sufferings.
The iris is found in a Marian context in Diirer's
own Madonna with a Multitude of Animals. Earlier artists had used the iris in a symbolic context.
For example, Gentile da Fabriano included it on a
small panel of the frame of his famous Adoration
of the Magi (1423) in the Uffizi, Florence; and
Hugo van der Goes painted it, along with lilies, in

the foreground of the Portinari altarpiece (Uffizi,

Florence). There is also a watercolor of an iris by
Jacopo Bellini, probably created as a preliminary
study for a painting.
Diirer drew the Iris at an interesting period in
his artistic development. Around 1500 he seems
to have decided that ideal beauty could be attained
only through an understanding of linear perspective and the study of proportion. At the same
time, however, he became more and more interested in making carefully detailed, almost
microscopic renderings of specific features of the
natural world, thus combining in his art Italianate
principles and northern realism.
J.M.M.

204

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

BLUE ROLLER

1512

watercolor and body color in brush and pen,

heightened with white and gold, on parchment
27.4 x 19.8 (io3/4 x 7%)
references: Koreny 1985, 40-41, 54
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
The unusual subject, the almost microscopic
sharpness of observation and exemplary delicacy
of execution, and the timeless validity of its statements combine to make Diirerrs Blue Roller one
of the outstanding animal studies of the Renaissance. Here Diirer captures the brilliantly colored
plumage of a young blue roller (Coracias garrulus
L.) with swift, sure brush strokes and precise pen
work. The watercolor and body color are used to
draw rather than to fill in colors. The way the
neck stretches upwards and the wings hang down
suggests that Diirer hung the dead bird by its beak
to draw it, although he omits the cast shadows
and thereby leaves the image without a spatial
context.
This drawing has often been discussed in the
literature on Diirer and has long been admired as
one of the artist's undisputed masterpieces. Only
a few scholars have ever cast doubts on its authorship. These arguments are refuted not only by the
sheer quality of the sheet but also by the fact that
the late sixteenth-century artist Hans Hoffmann,
famous for his copies of Diirer's drawings, produced no fewer than four copies of the Blue Roller
and one variation on it. These copies, two of them
dating from 1583, were made at a time when the
sources for Diirer's work were still reliable. Hoffmann would hardly have copied an imitation or a
forgery of Diirer's style (Koreny 1985, 54).
Although the authenticity of the sheet is
generally acknowledged, several scholars have
recently questioned the date and monogram and
tried to connect the drawing with works by Diirer
298

CIRCA 1492

from the period 1502-1503, such as the Hare, the

Madonna with a Multitude of Animals, and the
Large Piece of Turf (all Albertina, Vienna). In
fact, there are great technical and stylistic differences between these drawings and the Blue
Roller. The Hare and the Large Piece of Turf use
warm colors applied with comparatively broad
brush strokes over a dominant base of watercolor.
The Blue Roller, on the other hand, together with
a companion drawing of the Wing of a Blue Roller
(Albertina, Vienna), also dated 1512, is characterized by body color technique with strong use of
the pen and virtuoso technical refinements, the
whole effect being coolly colorful. The graphic
detail may be compared with the so-called
"Master Engravings" of 1513-1514 (cats. 196,
198). Moreover, both the Blue Roller and the
Wing of a Blue Roller carry monograms and dates
in very different kinds of writing, although both
are actually quite in keeping with the signatures
on other authentic works by Diirer from the same
year. The signature on the Wing of a Blue Roller
is typical of those on Durer's contemporary paintings, while that on the Blue Roller may be compared with those on two drawings of 1512. Since
the two Roller drawings carry such different types
of signatures, both being typical of the time, the
case for dating them to 1512 seems even stronger
(Koreny 1985, 54).
The theme of Durer's drawing was exceptional
for the time. As a rule, earlier fifteenth-century
bird pictures feature living creatures. The motif of
the dead bird hanging on a wall is known from
Pompeiian frescoes and may have been brought to
Germany by Jacopo de' Barbari, the peripatetic
Venetian master who created the View of Venice
(cat. 151) and who departed his native city in 1500

to follow his career in the North (Koreny 1985,

40-41). He has left us both a watercolor study of
a Dead Partridge (British Museum, London) and a
painting of 1504 portraying a Still Life with Partridge, Mailed Gloves, and Cross-bow Bolt (Alte
Pinakothek, Munich). We do not know precisely
how Barbari came to know of the motif, since
Pompeii had not yet been discovered, and there
is no proof that examples of such paintings from
classical antiquity survived in Rome. Interestingly, Lucas Cranach the Elder, who succeeded Barbari as painter to the Saxon court in
Wittenberg, has left us related representations
of dead birds.
F.K.
(Adapted with permission from Little, Brown and
Company, Boston)

^5

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

Six ANIMALS AND Two LANDSCAPES

1521

pen and ink with colored washes on paper

26.4 x 39.7 (io3/s x i$5/8)
references: Washington 1971, 89-91, no. xxvni;
Strauss 1974,4:1932, 1933, 4:2024, 2025,
4:2072-2073, no. 1520/40; Koreny 1985, 166-169,
no. and pi. 570
Sterling and francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown
During his visit to the Netherlands, Diirer visited
the Coudenberg Palace in Brussels and sketched

its famous park, the Warande. Probably between 3

and 11 July 1521, he drew on this sheet images of
the wild animals kept at the Nederhof. Diirer had
seen the park before, during his first visit to Brussels from 27 August to 12 September 1520, when
he came to see the Aztec treasures exhibited in
the palace. On that occasion he noted in his diary,
"I saw out behind the King's house at Brussels the
fountains, labyrinths, and beast-garden; anything
more beautiful and pleasing to me and more like
a paradise I have never seen/7 Quite probably the
comparison to Paradise was suggested by all the
wild animals that were kept there, including some
from far-off countries. At this time Diirer made
a topographical sketch of the Warande, which he
inscribed, 'This is the animal park and the pleasure grounds at Brussels seen from the Palace"
(Strauss 1974, 4:1932-1933, no. 1520/15).
On the right half of the Williamstown sheet,
Diirer drew, from top to bottom, a sleeping lioness (Panthera leo leo L.), and a baboon (Papio
hamadryas L.), a seated lion (Panthera leo leo L.)
and a young chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra L.),
and a second young sleeping lioness possibly the
same animal as the one at the top of the sheet. To
the left he drew a lynx (Felix lynx L.) which he
incorporated into a landscape. Above he drew
another topographical view, probably, like the
lower one, from memory, as it does not seem to
represent a Netherlandish scene or a view on the
Rhine, the landscapes of his 1520-1521 trip. That
the landscapes are not simply imaginary can be
deduced from the fact that the fortress and the
curiously arched bridge leading to the mill and to
another fort are found reversed and seen from
another angle in an etching by Augustin Hirschvogel, dated 1545, of a mountainous landscape
(Washington 1971, 89-90). Unfortunately
the exact location of the view has not yet been
identified.
The drawing is remarkable for its depiction
of exotic animals, especially the lions and the
baboon, animals Diirer seems never to have
recorded or even seen before his visit to the Netherlands. The baboon is carefully highlighted with
blue, gray, and pink washes that define the texture of its body, the pen being used mainly for
outlines. In an inscription, now partly trimmed,
Diirer notes that he found it "an extraordinary
animal... big, one and a half hundredweight."
Each animal is drawn individually, as in a
medieval sketchbook, with a few lines used to
suggest the surroundings, rather in the manner
Diirer employed for another drawing from 1521
with nine studies of Saint Christopher (Strauss
1974, 4:2024-2025, no. 1521/14).
The sleeping lioness on the bottom of the sheet
is copied in a drawing from Durer's workshop
now in Warsaw (Koreny 1985,167, no. and fig.
573), which has none of the tension of the original. Diirer characterized the form and texture
of the cat with minute strokes and with greater
subtlety.
J.M.M.

E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD

299

year, Hans Burgkmair designed a woodcut of the

rhinoceros, which is preserved today in only one
impression, while an anonymous artist from Altdor fer's circle (known by his initials, A.A.) drew
the animal on fol. iO2r of the Book of Hours of
Emperor Maximilian. These artists, like Diirer,
had never seen the ganda but used secondary
sources for their renderings.
J.M.M.

207

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

HEAD OF A WALRUS

1521

pen and ink, with washes on paper

21.1

206

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

RHINOCEROS

1515

woodcut

21.4 X 2$.8 (83/8 X 113/4J

references: Meder 1932, 254-255, no. 273; Lutz

1958, 55-56; Gombrich 1960, 70-72, f i g . 59; Lack
1970-1977, i; 155172; Nuremberg 1971, 310, no.
5#r; Strauss 1980, 508-510, no. 176; Clarke 1986,
16-23, p/. i; Pass 19^9, 59-64
77ze Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund,
1919, New Yor/c
The rhinoceron (Rhinoceros unicornis L.), as
Durer calls the animal he drew in 1515, is native
only to Africa and Asia and had not been seen in
Europe since antiquity. Valentin Ferdinand, a
German printer living in Portugal, informed the
humanist Konrad Peutinger (Lutz 1958, 55-56) as
well as the merchants in Nuremberg, of the
arrival of a rhinoceros in Lisbon on 20 May 1515;
with his letter he sent a drawing and a description
of the animal. This Durer copied in a drawing
now in the British Museum, London, and reused
for his woodcut, which bears the following
inscription: 'After Christ's Birth, in the year 1513
[in fact 1515], on May i [in fact May 20], this
animal was brought alive to the great and mighty
King Emmanuel at Lisbon in Portugal from India.
They call it Rhinoceros. It is here shown in full
stature. Its color is that of a freckled tortoise, and
it is covered by a thick shell. It is the same size as
an elephant but has shorter legs and is well capable of defending itself. On the tip of its nose is a
sharp, strong horn which it hones whenever it
300

CIRCA 1492

finds a stone. This animal is the deadly enemy of

the elephant. The elephant is afraid of it because
upon meeting it charges with its head between
the elephant's legs, tears apart his belly and chokes
him while he cannot defend himself. It is also so
well armored that the elephant cannot harm it.
They say that the Rhinoceros is fast, cunning,
and daring/'
The ganda, as the single-horned Indian rhinoceros was known, was given by the sultan of
Gujarat, Muzafar n, to Afonso de Albuquerque,
governor of Portuguese India, as a gift for the
king. From Goa, the governor sent it to Lisbon
with the fleet that left Cochin in early January
1515 and arrived in Portugal in May of that year.
Manuel dispatched the rhinoceros to Pope Leo x
in December 1515; on its way to Italy it was seen
near Marseilles by Francis i of France. But the ship
that took the beast to Italy sank off Porto Venere,
and the rhinoceros drowned, although its body
seems to have been recovered, stuffed, and finally
sent to Rome.
Diirer never saw the animal; he designed his
woodcut solely on the basis of the drawing he had
seen. His print was so popular that it ran to eight
editions, and many copies were produced. Diirer's
woodcut was so influential that it perpetuated a
number of misconceptions about the rhinoceros
for example, the presence of a dorsal spinal horn,
and the armored plating that forms the animal's
skin. The latter imaginary feature persisted in
representations of the rhinoceros for more than
250 years, sometimes even after the artist producing the image had seen a real specimen. Diirer
himself included an image of the animal in the
coat of arms of Asia in one of the woodcuts for the
Triumphal Arch of Maximilian (1515). That same

X 31.2

(8l/4 X 122/4J

references: Veth and Muller 1918, 1:37, no. xxxvn;

Tietze and Tietze-Conrat, 1928-1938,11.1:32-33, no.
850; Kiparsky 1952, 29, 46-47; Goris and Marlier
1971, 186, no. 73; Strauss 1974, 4:2048-2049,
4:2180-2181, nos. 1521/27, 1522/1; Rowlands 1988,
102-103, no. 74
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
This splendid drawing shows a walrus sketched
by Diirer during his visit to the Netherlands. The
artist dated it 1521, placed a description of the
animal in the left corner, and signed the sheet
with his monogram. The walrus, we are told, was
caught in the North Sea, was twelve Brabant ells
long, and had four feet ("Das dosig thyr van dem
jch do das hawbt/contrefett hab ist gefangen
worden/jn die niderlendischen see und/was xn
ellen lang/brawendisch mit fiir fussen"). In
Diirer's time walruses were found in Europe
mainly on the north coast of Norway; as late as
the nineteenth century they could be encountered
occasionally in the seas around Scotland and near
the Shetland Islands. Even in the twentieth century stray walruses have been sighted from time
to time near the Netherlandish coast (for the
walrus, see Kiparsky 1952). The chronicles of England printed by Caxton in 1480 note that in 1456
a walrus (mors marine, as he calls it) was found in
the Thames near London: "This yere were taken
mi grete Fisshes bitwene Eerethe and London,
that one was called mors marine, the second a
swerd fisshe, and the othir tweyne were wales."
Already in Diirer's time walruses were hunted for
their ivory tusks and their skins. It is difficult to
determine whether Diirer saw a living animal,
such as the one that was brought to Holland in
1612, or a dead specimen, perhaps stuffed or possibly preserved in salt, like the walrus head sent
by the Norwegian archbishop Erik Walkendorf to
Pope Leo x in 1520 (Kiparsky 1952, 29, 46-47).
In any case, Diirer found this animal so extraordinary that he used his illustration of it a few

months later to characterize the dragon of Saint

Margaret in a preparatory drawing (1522) for a
sacra conversazione, a painting that was probably
never executed (Strauss 1974, 4:2180-2181,
no. 1522/1).
J.M.M.

208

Albrecht Durer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

IRISH WARRIORS AND PEASANTS

1521

pen and ink with watercolor on paper

21 X 28.2

(8l/4 X llVs]

The costume studies cannot have been executed

on that occasion, however, for they are clearly
dated 1521. The only information provided by
Durer is in the inscription on the present drawing: "This is the attire of soldiers in Ireland,
beyond England," and "This is the attire of peasants in Ireland." That the costumes are indeed
Irish cannot be doubted (for a study of early Irish
costume see McClintock 1950, 30-31; McClintock
1958,1-2: this entry employs his terminology
and descriptions of early Irish costumes from this
source, often verbatim). The first soldier from
the left has a helmet and wears a long quilted garment called cotun in Gaelic; he holds a lance and
wears a dirk at his side. His companion has a coat
of arms over a long tunic (perhaps the Gaelic
Leine?)', he holds a large sword in his right hand,

a bow in the left, a dirk at his side, and arrows

under his arm, a rather heavy load for one person.
More traditionally dressed is his neighbor, who
wears over his tunic an Irish Brat, a large woollen
sleeveless cloak or cape with a shaggy lining,
which was wrapped around the body and, if necessary, covered the head of the wearer; in Diirer's
drawing, he holds a large sword or claymore,
without scabbard. The two peasants armed with
axes have long tunics; one of them wears a short
tunic over the long one and has a bag hanging on
his belt, while the other holds a horn. Durer
clearly based his drawing on Hibernian costumes;
that the clothes were actually worn by Irish
people, however, is less probable, as the figures
have no trews (Gaelic Trius), the close-fitting
trousers reaching to the ankles.
Diirer's inscription states only that this is the
way soldiers and peasants dress in Ireland. His
wordingespecially in the original German
does not imply that he saw real Irishmen in this
garb. It has been suggested that he copied someone else's drawingsthe fact that when in Antwerp he lodged at Jobst Plankvelt's inn, in the
Engelsche Straat, the street where the English
merchants lived, would support this hypothesis
but the almost archaeological exactitude of the
drawing suggests that his discerning eye was
at work. Diirer may simply have dressed local
models in examples of Livonian and Irish costume, which may have been used in processions to
illustrate the antiquity of Irish Christianity and
the universality of Christian belief. Alternatively,
the costumes could have been curiosities acquired
by a collector whom the artist knew.
J.M.M.

references: McClintock 1950, 30-31, fig. 17;

McClintock 1958, 1-2; Goris and Marlier 1971, 77,
94, 185, no. and fig. 69; Strauss 1974, 4/2064-2065,
no. 1521/36; Anzelewsky and Mielke 1984, 111-112,
no. and fig. 108
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin
Diirer's fascination with exotic costumes is evident as early as his first trip to Italy (1494-1495),
when he recorded the costumes of Venetians as
well as those of orientals (cat. no); it continued
throughout his career. In the diary of his journey
to the Netherlands (1520-1521), Durer noted that
he "drew a girl in her costume at Goes''; a few
months later in Antwerp he "sketched, in black
and white on grey paper, two Netherlandish costumes" (Goris and Marlier 1971, 77, 94). His
most splendid costume studies from the Netherlandish trip are the present sheet and three
drawings of Livonian women. He may have seen
the latter in Antwerp during the great annual
Assumption Day procession of 1520, which he
recorded at length. In it were, in his words,
"boys and maidens most finely and splendidly
dressed in the costumes of many lands representing various Saints."
E U R O P E AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N W O R L D

3O1

209

Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, 1471-1528

DESIGN FOR A CHANDELIER

c. 1521-1522
pen and watercolor on paper
16.8x21.3 (65/8x83/8)
references: Kohlhaussen 1939; Heikamp 1960,
44-46, 48-51, fig. 3; Strauss 1974,3:1378-1379,
3:1350-1351, no. 1513/29; New York and
Nuremberg 1986, 332, no. and fig. 149
Stddtische Museen Konstanz, WessenbergGemaldegalerie, Constance
The chandelier depicted in the present drawing
was executed by the sculptor Willibald Stoss
(cat. 210). An inscription on the sheet by either
Anton or Johann Neudorfer, grandsons of Johann
Neudorfer (1497-1563), the famous calligrapher
who wrote biographies of Nuremberg artists, provides some details on the commission: "This
design was made by Albrecht Diirer himself, and
old Stoss, who was a carver, the father of Veit and
Phillip Stoss (who were my grandfather's pupils
and later assistants and were subsequently
ennobled on account of their writings), actually
carved it, and you can still see it at the Rathaus
here, in the governing chamber/' From another
document we know that the chandelier made
by Stoss after Diirer's design was commissioned
by Anton Tucher for the governing chamber of
the Nuremberg Town Hall.
One of the many objects recorded with interest
in Diirer's Netherlandish diary is the buffalo
horn. He bought a number of them, perhaps for
their sheer rarity, possibly to have them mounted
302

CIRCA 1492

as drinking horns, or simply to keep as raw material. By the time of his death, Diirer also owned
a collection of antlers. In a letter to Johann
Tschertte written in November 1530, Willibald
Pirckheimer observed that he would have liked to
have obtained these, especially one that was quite
beautiful, but that Diirer's widow Agnes had secretly sold them for a pittance, along with other
choice items. Pirckheimer, too, had a large collection of antlers, which were displayed around
his house (for the inventory of this collection at
Pirckheimer's death, see Heikamp 1960, 48-51).
Another design for a chandelier by Diirer, probably executed in 1513, shows a chandelier made of
antlers along with a siren that holds Pirckheimer's
coat of arms; the siren may have been a tribute
to Crescentia Rieter, Pirckheimer's wife, who
had died in 1504 and whose coat of arms included a mermaid (Strauss 1974 3:1378-1379,
no. 1513/28).
J.M.M.
21O

Willibald Stoss, after Albrecht Diirer

Nuremberg, c. 1500-1573

CHANDELIER IN THE FORM

OF A DRAGON
1522

gilded limeivood and reindeer antlers

48 x 125 x 153 (i87/s x 49^/4 x 6ol/4)
references: Kohlhaussen 1939, 135-141, figs. 1-3;
Heikamp 1960, 42-55, fig. 4; Grote 1961, 76-77,
fig. 36; Nuremberg 1983, 172-175, no. 13,
figs. 112-113; Kahsnitz 1984, 48-49; New York and
Nuremberg 1986, 332-333, no. and fig. 150
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

The inscription on the preparatory drawing (cat.

209) states that Diirer designed this chandelier,
which was made by "Old Stoss/ who has been
correctly identified as Willibald Stoss, son of the
famous Veit Stoss. Willibald carefully followed
Diirer's design: his three-headed dragon has long,
twisted necks and two tails curled around the antlers. The chandelier was in fact commissioned by
Anton Tucher n (1457-1524), chief treasurer of
Nuremberg. From his account book we learn that
it was intended to be hung in the Town Hall:
"Item, on March i [1522] I presented the city
fathers with an elk horn of thirty-four points with
a carved, gilded dragon holding seven lights and
costing twenty-four guilders, for their newly built
upstairs chamber/' This room, the governing
chamber, was the meeting place of the septemviri,
the executive committee of the council.
The great antlers, with a total of thirty-four
points, are not those of the elk (elch) mentioned
in Tucher's account book, but rather of a reindeer
(Rangifer tarandus L.), an animal that is found in
Europe only in Scandinavia. Diirer's fascination
with antlers and horns is well known: in 1520
he asked Georg Spalatin to remind his master,
Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, to send
Diirer the antlers he had promised him, "as he
wanted to make two chandeliers with them."
Frederick the Wise was one of the most powerful
of German princes, and it may have been from
him that Diirer obtained the exceptionally large
antlers used for the Nuremberg chandelier. The
governing chamber of the Nuremberg Town Hall
was, after all, the private meeting room for the
seven electors of whom Frederick the Wise
was one when the imperial Diet was in session
in the city.
J.M.M.

II
Toward Cathay

CIRCA 1492 IN JAPAN:

COLUMBUS AND THE LEGEND OF GOLDEN CIPANGU
Martin Collcutt
Marco Polo, Columbus, and the Dream of Golden Cipangu

. he Japanese have for centuries called their

country Nippon or Nihon, "Source of the Sun."
As early as the seventh century the characters
for Nippon appear in a letter from the Japanese
prince Shotoku to the Chinese emperor. The
English word Japan is derived from Cipangu,
the name by which Marco Polo (1254-1324)
designated a land of great wealth he had heard
about during his travels in Cathay (China) in
the service of the Mongol khan Khubilai during
the late thirteenth century. Probably Cipangu
was derived from Riben Guo, the Chinese pronunciation of the characters for "Kingdom of
Japan." Marco Polo never visited Japan, and no
doubt based his description on not very reliable
tales heard from the Chinese and Mongols he
met on his travels. Although there were nonofficial contacts between Japan and China in the
thirteenth century Japanese monks visiting
China in search of Chan (J:Zen) and other
Buddhist teachings, Chinese Chan monks
traveling to Japan, and Japanese freebooters
engaging in illicit trade along the Chinese
coast such contacts were at best sporadic and
were interrupted first by the Mongol conquest
of China and Korea and then by the Mongol
attempts to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281.:
In the account of his travels, written after his
return to Italy, Marco Polo described Cipangu as
a large island, one of more than seven thousand
in the seas far to the east of Cathay, richly
endowed with gold, spices, and pearls:
Japan [Cipangu] is an island far out at sea to
the eastward, some 1,500 miles from the
mainland [of China]. It is a very big island.
The people are fair complexioned, good looking, and well mannered. They are idolaters,
wholly independent and exercising no
authority over any nation but themselves.
They have gold in great abundance, because it
is found there in measureless quantities. And
I assure you that no one exports it from the
island, because no trader, nor indeed anyone
else, goes there from the mainland. That is
how they come to possess so much of it so
much indeed that I can report to you in sober
truth a veritable marvel concerning a certain

palace of the ruler of the island. You may take

it for granted that he has a very large palace
entirely roofed with fine gold. Just as we roof
our houses or churches with lead, so this
palace is roofed with fine gold. And the value
of it is almost beyond computation. Moreover, all the chambers, of which there are
many, are likewise paved with fine gold to
a depth of more than two fingers' breadth.
And the halls and the windows and every
other part of the palace are likewise adorned
with gold....
They have pearls in abundance, red in color,
very beautiful, large and round. They are
worth as much as the white ones, and indeed
more. In this island the dead are sometimes
buried, sometimes cremated; but everyone
who is buried has one of these put in his
mouth. 2
As Marco Polo's fabulous accounts of the wealth
and wonders of East and Southeast Asia filtered
into the Western view of the world, they added
to the lure of the Indies and the Spice Islands in
the Western imagination. Cipangu joined the
Kingdom of Prester John, St. Brendan's Isles,
and Antillia as yet another fabulous kingdom to
be reached and exploited. Polo's travels by
pushing the boundary of China much farther to
the east than Ptolemy's Catigara in Asia and
locating Cipangu 1500 miles farther east than
the coast of Cathay extended the boundaries
of the known world and reshaped contemporary
understanding of the size of the world, which
knowledgeable people were coming to think of
as a globe.3 By the fifteenth century Cipangu
was marked on maps of the world. On a Genoese map of 1457 it is shown off the coast of
China. On the Behaim Globe of 1492 Cipangu,
depicted on the same meridian as the Canary
Islands, is the largest of a cluster of islands off
the coast of Cathay.
Columbus owned a copy of Marco Polo's
travels, to which he added his own marginal
comments. He must also have been familiar
with world maps showing Cathay and the
golden kingdom of Cipangu. Cipangu (or
Cipango, as he called it) played a crucial, and
controversial, role in the voyages of Columbus,

and in their subsequent historical assessment.

In the traditional view, one that went largely
unchallenged until this century and is still generally accepted, when Columbus sailed from
Palos in 1492 he did so with the intention of
finding a shortcut to the gold and spices of the
east by sailing west into the Atlantic, which he
called the Ocean Sea. This view is enshrined in
Columbus' own Diario (Journal of the First
Voyage) and its prologue,4 in the Letter of
Columbus describing the first voyage,5 in the
biography by his son Fernando,6 in the accounts
of the discovery of the Indies by las Casas,7 Peter
Martyr,8 and Oviedo,9 and was expressed most
vigorously in this century in the Pulitzer Prizewinning study by Samuel Eliot Morison,
Admiral of the Ocean Sea.10 All agree that
Columbus set out with the intention of sailing
west to Asia and hit America (although he failed
to realize it) by chance or divine providence. In
this great "enterprise of the Indies," he would
naturally have expected to find and explore the
island of Cipangu before reaching the coast of
Cathay and the territories of the Grand Khan.11
In this century the above view of Columbus'
grand Asian design was sharply challenged by
Henry Vignaud and others,12 who argue that
Columbus had no grand enterprise in mind
from the outset, that he was simply searching
for undiscovered islands in the Atlantic in the
hope of winning a valuable estate for himself
and his family. Then, having found islands
much farther west than he had anticipated, Columbus concluded that he had reached Asia and
changed his Journal to suggest that Asia had
always been his goal. It is true that no reference
to the Indies as his hoped-for destination occurs
in his Journal entries for the voyage across the
Ocean Sea to his landfall on the island that he
would call San Salvador. And the prologue, in
which he does refer to an Indies enterprise, may
have been added at a later date. On the other
hand, within a day of the landfall Columbus
records that he is enthusiastically seeking the
golden island of Cipangu. And, given the many
references in Columbus' Journal to Cipangu,
the Great Khan, Cathay, and the Indies, some of
them self-contradictory or left obviously uncorrected as Columbus sailed farther and learned
TOWARD CATHAY

305

more, one would have to assume that if the

Journal was consciously falsified by Columbus
and those who had access to his manuscript, it
was rewritten almost completely. In short, if
credence can be given to the Journal of the first
voyage, it is hard to escape the conclusion that
from the moment he reached the islands of the
Caribbean, if not before, Columbus was fired
with dreams of gold, spices, and Christian converts. He believed he was in the "Indies/' He
seems to have had a fixed idea that the source of
gold, if he could only find it, must be Marco
Polo's Cipangu, and that he was getting closer
by the day. When he left his men at La Navidad,
he and they believed that the nearby region of
Cybao was in fact Cipangu and that their
dreams were on the point of realization. Not far
away, he believed, lay a land mass that could
only be the realm of the Great Khan.
Before he reached Spain on the return voyage
he was driven to shelter in Portugal, where he
told the doubting king that he was returning
from the Indies. The Spanish monarchs
accepted his word that he had been there. He
received a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella
addressed to "Don Cristobal Colon, their
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of the Islands that he hath discovered in
the Indies/'13 Apart from the Portuguese, most
contemporaries believed Columbus' assertions
that he had reached the Indies, though a few
doubted that the globe was so small that he
could have got there in only thirty-three days'
sailing from the Canaries. Even on his second,
third, and fourth voyages neither he nor the
vast majority of his contemporaries seem to
have seriously questioned the conviction that he
had discovered a western route to Asia. This
conviction blinded him to his discovery of a vast
new continent.
Columbus was the first Renaissance-era
European to encounter the "New World" of the
Americas, but after three more expeditions to it
he still went to his grave believing he had
simply discovered a route to the islands of the
East. Despite his four unsuccessful attempts to
find and exploit the realms of the Great Khan,
Cipangu, and Prester John, Columbus never
abandoned his belief that he had connected
Europe and Asia with a month-long voyage.
When others suggested that he had discovered a
new continent, he rejected the notion, only
acknowledging that the Asian islands were more
extensive than he had imagined. Throughout
1493, having found Cuba and Hispaniola, he
insisted that each in turn was Cipangu. In 1498
he believed that he was sailing south of Cipangu
and Cathay, that the mainland of South
America was part of a peninsula protruding
from Malaysia, and finally he believed that the
306

CIRCA 1492

fig. i. Martin Behaim, Terrestrial Globe. Dated to 1492. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

coast he sailed along in his last voyage of 15021503 was not a new mainland, but the Malay
Peninsula itself. To the end he was unable to
acknowledge his discovery of a new world
because he clung to the belief that he had
indeed found his way westward to the old world
of Cipangu, Cathay, and the Indies.
Japan in the age of Columbus
If Columbus had actually found his way to
Cipangu on one of his voyages, what kind of
reception might he have received and what kind
of land and society would he have described in
his journal and letters? The question is not farfetched. Columbus himself hoped to circumnavigate the world. Had he recognized that
South America was not an Asian island but a
continent that blocked his way to Asia, he
might have sailed southward looking for a passage eastward to the gold and spices he was
seeking. His Florentine contemporary Amerigo

Vespucci, who did recognize America as a "New

World," sailed down the coast of Argentina on
one of his voyages, searching for such a passage.
Magellan, sailing much farther south, found
that passage in 1520 and then sailed westnorth-west across the Pacific to the Philippines.
Had Columbus reached the Philippines, he
might have learned that Cathay was close at
hand and that there were many islands to the
north, including Cipangu.
If, as the Portuguese were to do in the 15405,
he had approached Japan from Southeast Asia
and the China coast, he would already have
heard stories of Japan and perhaps have encountered some of the freebooters (wako) who in the
14905 sailed Asian waters and alternately traded
with and ravaged the coastal settlements of
Korea and China. Although known as "Japanese
pirates," the marauders comprised Koreans and
Chinese as well. Columbus might even have
made a landfall at one of the small Japanese
trading communities which, in the late fif-

teenth and sixteenth centuries, were beginning

to mushroom in the Philippines and other
Southeast Asian countries. There he would have
learned something of Japan and, as he did in the
Caribbean, he would undoubtedly have taken
native people aboard as possible guides and
interpreters. If, on the other hand, he had
found his way across the Pacific on a course to
the north of Magellan's, he would have had little
warning or access to reliable information before
making land on one of the Japanese islands.
In either case he would quickly have found
that the inhabitants of Japan in 1492 were not
poorly armed, naked islanders with a culture
that he and his fellow Europeans could easily
dismiss or exploit. Like later Iberian visitors, he
would have realized that the Cipangu of his
dreams was both less and more than the fabulous realm of Marco Polo's hearsay. Gold in the
quantities he dreamed of Columbus would not
have found, but instead a civilization to rival
that of the Europe he knew and a people as
proud, productive, well organized, cultured, and
combative as contemporary Europeans.
Columbus' first encounter with Japan might
well have resembled that of the first Portuguese, blown ashore on the small island of Tanegashima fifty years later (1543). He would have
been greeted not by naked, unarmed islanders
but by fishermen or local samurai armed with
swords and spears. As he did in the Caribbean,
Columbus would no doubt have gone ashore
with a small band of armed men in one of the
longboats. The Japanese, long accustomed to
contacts with their Asian neighbors the
Chinese, Koreans, and Ryukyuans, would have
greeted these red-faced, hairy "Southern Barbarians" with great curiosity tinged with hostility. Columbus would no doubt have presented
some trinkets (on his voyages he carried only
very cheap trade goods, hardly gifts fit for the
Great Khan or the ruler of golden Cipangu).
Although the Japanese produced the finest
sword blades in the world and exported them to
China in great quantities, they did not yet have
firearms. They would have shown great interest
in the swords Columbus and his men wore, perhaps even tested their edges, but they would
have been more interested in the strange-looking guns. As the Portuguese were to do, Columbus might have been persuaded to demonstrate
the weapons he had on the ships, perhaps
impressing the Japanese samurai he met with
the military effectiveness of the cannon and
arquebus. The Japanese would certainly have
been intrigued by the new technology, as they
were by the later Portuguese demonstration of
firepower. Warrior leaders (daimyo) quickly
adopted the new technology after 1543. The
effective use of guns by warriors like Oda

Nobunaga (1534-1582) became a decisive factor

in the military reunification of the country in
the second half of the sixteenth century.
If the encounter had gone well, Columbus
and his crew might have been allowed to sail
away from this first landfall in Japan unharmed.
But if he had mishandled the encounter, he
might have been attacked, in which case he
would have found the Japanese far more formidable opponents than even the hostile Caribs of
the West Indies. Japanese samurai officials
would have resisted his practice of laying claim
to any land he found by planting the flags of
Castile and Leon. They might also have been
angered at any attempt to erect a cross in the
name of an alien religion. He would quickly
have realized that Cipangu, or Nippon, unlike
many of the islands to which he laid claim in the
Caribbean, had a complex political and religious
structure, and a well-developed national selfconsciousness, and that claiming territory in the
name of Ferdinand and Isabella would be risking
his life. He and those who had landed with him
might have lost their heads on the spot or, more
likely, been taken for interrogation to the local
daimyo's castle. If his arrival had sparked
Japanese alarm, later comers would have met a
more hostile reception than they did. Instead of
initially welcoming Christianity and commerce,
Japanese daimyo might well have rejected Western contacts from the outset, though this would
probably not have prevented the eventual push
by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English

into Japanese waters Europe was too expansive

to be easily halted.
If he had been able to establish good relations
with the first Japanese villagers he met, Columbus would quickly have asked them about his
overriding concerns: gold, the prospects for
commerce and Christian conversion, and the
location of the ruler's palace. If they had been
candid with him, they would have told him that
there was little gold or silver to be had in the
villages. Iron was abundant, and copper coins
imported from China circulated in some markets, but gold was rare and used only by powerful daimyo or the rulers in the capital. They
would have told him that merchants and freebooters from Japanese ports plied Asian waters
and were active in commerce, that Japan had
wealthy cities, including Miyako (Kyoto), Sakai,
Hakata, and many smaller towns, and that local
trade and commerce was spreading and flourishing, especially in the provinces around the
capital. Regarding religion, Columbus would
have heard that the Japanese were devoted to
the teachings of the Buddha, the native gods
(kami), and Confucius. In general, these beliefs
were not only mutually tolerant but considerably intermingled. Some Japanese might have
been curious about the teachings of "Deus," but
Columbus would probably have concluded that
he would make more converts if he could gain
the support of some daimyo.
In 1492 there was no single political authority ruling Japan. The country was at its most

T O W A R D CATHAY

307

divided. Instead of the one king described by

Marco Polo, Columbus would have learned that
he had two shadowy rulers to contend with, the
emperor and the shogun, both of whom had
palaces in the capital, Miyako, but neither of
whom held much political or military power.
Real power was wielded by some 250 daimyo,
who fought each other to defend and enlarge
local territories.
Since most visitors to Japan came from the
south and west, Columbus might well have
entered one of the steeply wooded natural harbors of Kyushu, controlled by a powerful
daimyo family like the Shimazu of Satsuma or
the Otomo of Bungo (present-day Kagoshima
and Oita prefectures, respectively). It was the
daimyo of western Japan who, a few decades
later, would prove most hospitable to the Iberian
traders and missionaries in their black ships. In
western Japan Columbus would have gained
some inkling of the power and wealth of provincial feudal lords. He would have been impressed
at first sight of the Shimazu garrison town of
Kagoshima, with the volcano of Sakurajima
fuming above it, one of the castle towns that
were to play such an important role in Japan's
subsequent urban development. He would soon
have realized that in southern Kyushu the writ
of the Shimazu family, who had been entrenched
there for centuries, ran larger than that of any
central authority. He would have seen evidence
of the daimyo's power and wealth in the massive stone ramparts of the castle and its tall
wooden superstructure, in the awed deference
accorded the daimyo and his samurai officials
by merchants and farmers. He would not,
however, have found much gold, other than in
paintings and inlaid metal and lacquerwork, nor
any gold mines. He and his crew members
might have been showered with gifts, and eventually sent on their way home knowing something of the reality of Marco Polo's Cipangu.
Had that happened, no doubt Portuguese and
Spanish traders and missionaries would have
headed for Japan sooner than they did, and the
curtain would have opened a little earlier on
what has come to be known as Japan's "Christian century/' Or Columbus might have been
permitted to stay, perhaps encouraged to make
his way through the Inland Sea to the port of
Sakai, whence he could easily have visited the
capital, Kyoto. En route he might have called at
the castle town of Yamaguchi, where the Ouchi
daimyo family ruled over one of the liveliest,
richest, and most cultured provincial courts in
Japan. He would have seen evidence of a thriving local commerce in the Inland Sea and perhaps of the Ouchi trade with China.14 He might
even have been shown some of the paintings of
Sesshu, greatest of Japanese painters of the age
308

CIRCA 1492

(cat. 230-233), who enjoyed the patronage of

the Ouchi.

Politics and society

In order to find a source of central authority
with whom to negotiate, appeal for gold, and
perhaps claim territory or discuss Christianity
and the conversion of the country, Columbus
would naturally have been eager to learn more
about the ruler of Japan, the owner of the
golden palace described by Marco Polo, and
about the political structure of the country.
Any knowledgeable and candid informant
would have told Columbus that he had reached
Japan at a time when central authority was at its
lowest ebb and the country seemed in danger of
total fragmentation through feudal rivalries and
provincial wars. A sovereign, the emperor
(tenno, referred to later by the Portuguese as
mikado), and a military overlord, the shogun,
both lived in palaces in the capital of Miyako.
Though they could be described as wealthy,
both had far less wealth and political power
than their predecessors, and neither exerted
much influence beyond the capital.
In 1492 the emperor was Go-Tsuchimikado
(1442-1500, r. 1465-1500), eldest son of
Emperor Go-Hanazono. He was succeeded by
his son Go-Kashiwabara (1464-1526, r. 15001526). The court was weakened and financially
distressed, both by the Onin War (1467-1477),
which had devastated the capital and interrupted
revenues from the court's provincial estates, and
by the encroachments of provincial warrior
clans on these same estates. Nevertheless, the
sovereignty of the emperors, who claimed
descent from the Sun Goddess, went unchallenged. Though politically enfeebled, the
emperor continued to serve an important political legitimating function; though financially
straitened, and with many of the nobility and
high clergy fled to the countryside for safety,
the court continued to serve as a center of cultural leadership.15 Like his father and his son,
Go-Tsuchimikado was a student of classical literature and a talented poet and calligrapher (see
cat. 237, 238).
The emperors had headed a strong centralized
government and ruled in their own right in the
Nara (710-794) and Early Heian (794-898)
periods. Over the centuries their power had
been whittled away: first by Fujiwara nobles
who ruled as regents for child emperors; then
by members of the imperial line itself who abdicated but continued to wield power, making
puppets of the sons they installed in their
place;16 then by the Taira warrior clan who
dominated the court in the twelfth century till

they were annihilated and replaced by warrior

shoguns of the Minamoto clan who established
a military government at Kamakura in eastern
Japan; then by regents from the Hojo warrior
clan who asserted control over the Minamoto
shogunate in eastern Japan and brought child
nobles and imperial princes from Kyoto to serve
as puppet shoguns. The imperial court made
several attempts to stem the erosion of its political authority. One such attempt, led by abdicated Emperor Go-Toba in 1221, failed
miserably. In 1333 Emperor Go-Daigo, leading a
coalition of imperial princes, eastern warriors,
and Buddhist monastic armies, toppled the
Kamakura shogunate and restored centralized
imperial government in Kyoto. This restoration
ended after barely three years with Go-Daigo
ousted from the capital by his former ally, the
warrior Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), who set
up a puppet rival emperor and then took the
title of shogun.17 The court and much of the
country was divided by a sporadic but bitter
civil war, known as the war between the Northern and Southern courts. It was only reunited
in 1392 by the powerful third Ashikaga shogun,
Yoshimitsu, who while dominating the court
also patronized it and restored its material fortunes somewhat.18 Any recovery, however, was
fleeting. In the fifteenth century the waning
power of the Ashikaga shogunate grew ever less
adequate to support the court and control the
country.
By 1492 the capital was beginning to recover,
but the country was still embroiled in local wars
and the emperors were too poor and weak to
affect political life. Politically and economically
the imperial court was at a nadir. For want of
funds, Emperor Go-Kashiwabara was unable to
hold either his father's prescribed funeral services or his own accession ceremony until many
years after he had ascended the throne. Emperor
Go-Nara (1496-1557, r. 1526-1557) had to wait
ten years for his accession ceremonies, which
finally came about only through the support of
contributions in gold from various daimyo,
including the Hojo of eastern Japan and the
Ouchi in the west.
In 1492 the political authority of the Ashikaga shoguns was not much stronger than that
of the emperors. From its inception the Ashikaga shogunate had been a fragile coalition of
the shogun and his most powerful vassals,
whom the shogun appointed as shugo or provincial military governors. The third and sixth
shoguns, Yoshimitsu and Yoshinori, had exerted
considerable power in the late fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries and had generally been
able to impose their wills on this coalition and
use loyal shugo to isolate and crush opposition
by recalcitrant shugo. After Yoshinori's assassi-

nation at the hands of a rebellious shugo in

1441, shogunal authority faltered and continued
at a low ebb until the mid-sixteenth century.
The daimyo Oda Nobunaga in his drive for
hegemony briefly restored Ashikaga authority,
then ended it completely.
During the turbulent fourteenth and fifteenth centuries some shugo extended their
influence over several provinces, and some, like
the Hosokawa, Ouchi, and Yamana, controlled
large areas of western Japan. Eastern Japan
(called Kanto), whose warriors were a constant
source of challenge to the government in Kyoto,
had been placed by the Ashikaga under the control of a deputy entitled Kanto Kubo, but was
by 1492 effectively out of shogunal control,
riven by power struggles between rivals for the
office of kubo and between rival shugo such as
Uesugi and Hqjo. By the mid-fifteenth century
some of the most powerful shugo, known to
modern historians as shugo -daimyo f were
stronger than the shogun and struggled for
power among themselves. Lacking a strong
army of their own, the Ashikaga shoguns were
forced to look on helplessly as shugo contended
throughout the provinces. The Onin War,
erupting during the shogunate of Ashikaga
Yoshimasa (r. 1469-1473; cat. 214), was a conflagration of shugo rivalries.
At first Yoshimasa attempted to govern, but
his authority as shogun was steadily undermined by his wife, her family, and other corrupt
power-brokers and power-seekers of the shogunal court. The Onin War was precipitated by
a rash of succession disputes within various
daimyo clans and, most importantly, within the
Ashikaga clan which served as pretexts for
two rival shugo-daimyo, Hosokawa Katsumoto
(1430-1473) and Yamana Sozen (1404-1473), to
square off against each other in Kyoto in 1467.
Shugo and warriors from across the country
joined the conflict on either side. The war
destroyed much of Kyoto but decided nothing,
and even after the fighting ended in the ravaged
capital, outbreaks continued in the provinces.
Yoshimasa, unable to control political events,
abdicated early in 1474. From his retreat at the
foot of the Eastern Hills in Kyoto (a villa
referred to as Higashiyama, "Eastern Hills/' or
Ginkaku-ji, "Silver Pavilion") he exerted
through his patronage a profound and creative
influence on Japanese culture.
After the Onin War shogunal authority was
increasingly usurped by shogunal deputies
(kanrei) from the Hosokawa and other warrior
families. Ashikaga Yoshitane (1466-1523),
installed as the tenth Ashikaga shogun in 1490,
was by 1494 displaced from the shogunal office
by the warrior Hosokawa Masamoto, who set up
the child Ashikaga Yoshizumi as shogun. Yoshi-

tane then turned for support to Ouchi Yoshioki

and Hosokawa Takakuni in driving out Yoshizumi. In 1508 Yoshitane regained the title of
shogun but eventually fell out with kanrei
Hosokawa Takakuni, was again displaced as
shogun, and died at Awa.
The Japanese use the term sengoku jidai (Age
of the Country at War) to describe their turbulent history in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and the word gekokujo (inferiors toppling superiors) to describe the volatile process
apparent at every level of society. In 1441 the
shugo Akamatsu Mitsusuke assassinated the
shogun Yoshinori and was killed by the shugo
Yamana Sozen, to the great benefit of the
Yamana fortunes. The kanrei Hosokawa Takakuni expelled Shogun Yoshizumi. The Hosokawa were in turn toppled by their vassals the
Miyoshi, and the Miyoshi then overthrown by
their vassals the Matsunaga. Many shugo
claimed large territories but lost them to their
deputies or other local warriors (kokujin) with
more tightly knit domains.
In 1492 this social upheaval was still in process. Had Columbus been in Japan, he could
have observed the emergent sengoku daimyo
carving their more compact and better controlled domains out of the larger but more
loosely held domains of the shugo. From among
these sengoku daimyo the unifiers of the late
sixteenth century, who would reforge the country through war, would emerge. Nor did gekokujo stop at the elite level. Peasant uprisings
(tsuchi ikki), which first broke out in the fifteenth century, also challenged established
authority. Serious uprisings occurred in 1426,
1428,1429, 1441, 1447, 1454, 1457, 1474/ 148/
1485,1488, and 1532. Some of the peasant
leagues were associated with the True Pure
Land school of Buddhism and known as ikko
ikki (Confederations of the Single-minded), and
their outbreaks had religious overtones. In 1488
an ikko ikki took over the province of Kaga in
northern Japan and governed it, in defiance of
all secular authority, for nearly a century.
Despite warfare and social upheaval, perhaps
partly because of it, Japanese society in the late
fifteenth century was vibrant and active.
Responding to the needs of war and the
domain-strengthening policies of the more successful daimyo, urban and commercial life was
vigorous and expansive. In 1492 Kyoto, recovering from the ravages of the Onin War, was
rebuilding some of its temples and palaces. Its
merchant community (machishu) was vigorous,
famous for sake brewers, money lenders, and
fine craftsmen. Sakai, Nara, Hakata, and other
towns enjoyed renewed prosperity. As sengoku
daimyo established their vassals around their
castles, they encouraged local merchants and

tradespeople to come, leading to the formation

of castle towns. Early examples include the
Ouchi's Yamaguchi, the Imagawa's Fuchu, the
Hojo's Odawara, the Otomo's Funai (Oita
Prefecture), and Shimazu's Kagoshima.
Coastal and river ports were springing up.
Yodo served Sakai, Kyoto, and the Yodo River
area; Sakamoto and Otsu on Lake Biwa were
transshipment points to Kyoto from the north;
Obama, Tsuruga, and Mikuni were small but
active centers on the Japan Sea coast; Hyogo,
Sakai, Odou served the Inland Sea area;
Kuwana, Yokkaichi, and Ominato gathered the
commerce of the Ise Bay area; and Hirata, Bonotsu, and Hirado were developing in Kyushu.
The Inland Sea was a vital channel for increasingly lively interregional coastal trade. As in
European and other societies, religious centers
became commercial nuclei. These temple gate
towns (monzen machi] included Zenko-ji in the
mountains of Nagano, Ujiyamada serving the
Ise Shrines, Sakamoto for the great Buddhist
monastic complex of Enryaku-ji. True Pure
Land temples in Osaka (Ishiyama Hongan-ji)
and Kyoto (Yoshizaki Dojo) had commercial
centers within their confines.
Guilds (za) under the sponsorship of temples
in Nara and Kyoto were active in the production
and distribution of such commodities as oil,
paper, and sake. These guilds, enjoying monopolies and exemptions from market taxes and toll
barrier fees, extended commerce but also controlled and restricted it. Commerce was hampered as well by poor roads and by private toll
barriers (sekisho) on roads and rivers, mostly
controlled by powerful temples but also by
Shinto shrines and perhaps by some shugo. The
daimyo domains likewise impeded nationwide
trade, as each daimyo sought to promote local
merchants, guilds, and markets in an effort to
strengthen his own domain.
Hakata, Yamaguchi, Sakai and other coastal
cities of Kyushu and the Inland Sea area benefited from trade with China and Korea. A carefully restricted official "tally" trade was
recognized by the Chinese authorities, who
issued tallies to a limited number of Japanese
vessels, authorizing them to trade in Chinese
ports. The trade was initiated by Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu, cut off by his successor, revived
again by the sixth shogun, Yoshinori. Shugo,
merchants, and Zen monks of Kyoto temples
such as Tenryu-ji and Shokoku-ji handled this
trade, with part of their profits going to the
shogunate in taxes. After the Onin War the
Ouchi and Hosokawa families fought over the
trade, the Ouchi eventually gaining a dominant
position. Both clans remained involved until the
official tally trade withered in the mid-sixteenth century. Major exports were sulfur,
T O W A R D CATHAY

309

swords, and fans. Imports included copper cash,

raw cotton and cotton textiles, Chinese ceramics, books, and religious texts.
From the Kamakura period (1185-1333) a
coinage-based economy had been developing in
Japan, with copper coins imported in great
quantities from China in the fifteenth century.
The Ashikaga shoguns did not attempt to mint
their own coins, preferring, or finding it easier,
to control the flow of Chinese coins. During the
Muromachi period a variety of Chinese copper
coins of the Song (960-1279), Yuan (12791368), and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties were in
use. Because the coinage was not standardized
and the quality of coins fluctuated wildly,
traders hoarded good coins, despite frequent
shogunal and daimyo edicts to the contrary.
As Columbus' Journal attests, greed for
gold was the spur that pricked his expeditions
along. Though the gold-roofed palace of Marco
Polo's account never existed, a more modestly
golden palace had been built in 1397 by the
third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu (r. 13681405) as a shogunal retreat in the Northwestern
Hills (Kitayama) of Kyoto, overlooking a lake.
The three-story building, covered with gold
leaf, came to be known as the Golden Pavilion
(Kinkaku-ji). It symbolized Yoshimitsu's political and cultural leadership and his interest in
Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, and became a
center of the cultural spirit of Yoshimitsu's age,
known as Kitayama culture. The ground floor
was an Amida worship hall, formal and symmetrical in its architecture (a style known as
shinderi)-, the second story was a Kannon worship hall in the more informal warrior style
(buke-zukuri); and the upper story was a
Chinese style meditation chamber.
Yoshimasa's Ginkaku-ji, completed two years
before Columbus sailed, reflected the straitened
circumstances of the shogunate in Yoshimasa's
day. Built as a Kannon worship hall, the twostory building was to have been faced with
silver leaf; although this was never done, the
building came to be known as the Silver Pavilion and became a center of the culture of the
Higashiyama era.
In Japan as in Europe, gold was prized. It was
found in rivers and streams in several provinces,
although the supply was not abundant before
the sixteenth century, and some was imported
from the continent. In the Nara (710-794),
Heian, and Kamakura periods it had been used
for personal accessories, coins, Buddhist sculpture, and works of art and craft. Gold was effectively combined with lacquer, paper, and metal
to produce some of the finest works of Japanese
art. Gold mines began to be exploited by the
sengoku daimyo and gold was mined in increasing quantities in the sixteenth century, which
310

CIRCA 1492

fig. 2. View of the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji), Kyoto

has been described as a "golden age" in Japan

for the lavish use of gold in paintings and decorative arts. The most bountiful gold mines were
in Kai and Hitachi provinces and on Sado Island.
Like gold, silver was used from early times
for art objects, ornaments, and exchange. Its use
was restricted only by the limited supply prior
to the sixteenth century. From the sixteenth
century silver mines were opened up by many
sengoku daimyo seeking financial resources for
armaments, warriors, and castle construction.
Two of the largest and most famous were the
Omori and Ikuno mines in the provinces of
Iwami and Tamba.

Shortage of gold and silver throughout the

medieval period prevented their use in a reliable
coinage. The commercial economy that
developed vigorously in the Kamakura and
Muromachi periods relied on imported Chinese
copper cash, with occasional reversions to barter
caused by the inadequate or erratic supply and
quality of the coins. In the late fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries gold and silver began to
inundate the Japanese economy. The warriorunifiers, Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, coveted precious metals and used them in large quantities
to finance their military campaigns. Hideyoshi,
in particular, sought to monopolize the mineral

wealth of the nation. He instituted the minting

of gold coins, used gold prolifically in his personal effects and buildings, and built himself a
golden tea room with pure gold tea utensils.
Still, although shoguns and emperors and many
of the daimyo lived in palaces and castles with
gilded screens and wall paintings and ate off
gold-inlaid lacquered dishes, none commanded
the immense treasure alleged by Marco Polo.
The closest to Marco Polo's legend were the
shogun Yoshimitsu, whose three-story Golden
Pavilion was completely covered with gold leaf,
and the warrior-hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi
(1537-1598), who minted great golden coins
and flaunted his wealth and power in a golden
tea house.

Religion
In describing religious life in China, Marco Polo
lumped all schools of Buddhism under the heading of idolatry. Any observant visitor to Japan in
1492 would have noted that there was considerable diversity to Japanese religious life and also
that the various religious traditions generally,
though not always, coexisted harmoniously.
Buddhism, in a variety of different schools, was
the dominant religious and intellectual force in
medieval Japanese society, but the Japanese also
revered the native Shinto gods (kami), observed
Confucian teachings, and were interested in
Daoism and in the Chinese cosmology of yin
and yang and the five elements.
Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were
everywhere, and coexisted easily. Most Buddhist temples had a protective Shinto shrine
within their precincts, and Buddhist monks
served as priests in many Shinto shrines. In
cultic centers like Kumano and Kasuga the kami
and the Buddhas reinforced each other according to a syncretic construct called honji-suijaku
(Original Ground-Manifest Trace), in which the
Shinto kami were considered to be local manifestations (suijaku) of the original and universal
Buddhist deities (honji', see cat. 211, 241).
Buddhism and Shinto also intermingled in the
growing cult of mountain asceticism and mountain pilgrimage (Shugendd', see cat. 252).
Already, however, some Shinto advocates
objected to such syncretism and to the dominance it accorded Buddhism, advocating a doctrine of Shinto primacy (yuitsu Shinto) which
encouraged veneration for, and pilgrimage to,
the Ise shrines.
A Western visitor to Japan in 1492 would
have been struck by the institutional authority,
landed wealth, and armed might of such older

Buddhist centers as Enryaku-ji, Koyasan,

Negoro-ji, and the monasteries of Nara, the old
capital. Among the various schools of Japanese
Buddhism he might have found most in
common with one of the branches of the devotional Pure Land (Jodo, or Amidist) movement,
which had been offering the promise of easy
salvation to all specifically including the commoners since the late twelfth century. Pure
Land practice called only for faith faith in the
compassionate vow of Amida Buddha that all
sentient beings could attain salvation in his
Pure Land, or Western Paradise. Salvation (5jo)
did not require a heroic religious life; simple
devotion to Amida, expressed in the formula
"Homage to Amida Buddha" (Namu Amida
Butsu, known as the nembutsu), sufficed. This
teaching held powerful appeal in an age of war,
when it was believed that Japan had entered the
last stage of moral dereliction (mappo), predicted in Buddhist teaching. The three major
currents of Amidist belief in the medieval
period were the Pure Land school (Jodo), the
True Pure Land school (Jodo Shin), and the
Timely school (Ji). All three branches were
flourishing in the late fifteenth century. The
True Pure Land school, revitalized and reorganized by Rennyo (1415-1499), who established
the Ishiyama Hongan-ji of Osaka as its principal
temple, was emerging as the largest and most
powerful popular Buddhist movement in
Japanese history. Pure Land Buddhism contained strong resonances with Christian concepts of personal sinfulness and repentance, a
saving power greater than oneself, rebirth in
Paradise for repentant sinners as well as for the
righteous, and punishment in purgatory or hell
for the unrepentant (see cat. 213).
Pure Land was not the only popular Buddhist
movement. Among the townspeople of Kyoto
and the samurai of eastern Japan belief in the
efficacy of the Lotus Sutra, popularized by
Nichiren (1222-1282), was deep-rooted. And
Zen, which had gained a foothold in Kyoto and
Kamakura under elite patronage in the thirteenth century, was by this time a nationwide
movement with both elite appeal and a strong
popular character. By the 14905 its two major
schools, Rinzai and Soto, spread throughout
Japan, and distinguished Zen prelates moved
easily and expertly among the courtly and warrior aristocracies as advisers in government
and diplomacy, as poets, essayists, scholars,
painters, and connoisseurs, and of course as
spiritual mentors.
In the 14905 the various Rinzai Zen lineages
could be divided into establishment and antiestablishment camps. The Rinzai establishment,
officially sponsored, comprised the "Five
Mountains'7 (Gozan) five leading metropoli-

tan monasteries in Kamakura and five in

Kyoto and their many provincial satellite temples, forming a network of several hundred
monasteries across the country. From the fourteenth century the most influential Gozan lineage was that of Muso Soseki (1275-1351).
Monks of his lineage frequently headed the
great Kyoto monasteries of Tenryu-ji, Shokokuji, and Nanzen-ji, as well as Engaku-ji in KamaJkura and many leading provincial monasteries.
The antiestablishment Rinzai lineages were
those of the Kyoto monasteries of Daitoku-ji
and Myoshin-ji and their subtemples. Whereas
the Gozan lineages had been sponsored in the
thirteenth century by the Hojo regents who
headed the Kamakura shogunate, and in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the Ashikaga shoguns, Daitoku-ji and Myoshin-ji,
because of their close ties with Emperor GoDaigo and their distinctive Zen traditions, had
been excluded from shogunal patronage and
official sponsorship. A perceptive observer of
Rinzai Zen in 1492 might have noticed that the
Gozan monasteries, weakened by the destruction of the Onin War, the erosion of shogunal
sponsorship, and institutional lethargy, were
declining in influence, while Daitoku-ji and
Myoshin-ji were coming into their own under
the patronage of the emerging sengoku daimyo.
Soto Zen, centered on Eihei-ji in Echizen and
S6ji-ji on the Japan Sea coast, was strong among
samurai and farmers. Both branches of Zen
emphasized the importance of seated meditation
(zazen). But whereas Rinzai Zen maintained a
strong Chinese monastic tradition and stressed
koan practice and monastic life, Soto Zen after
the mid-thirteenth century combined zazen
with prayers for worldly purposes and with
funeral rituals.
A Western visitor would have found the
monasteries, monks, and teachings of the two
major Zen schools in Japan both impressive and
perplexing. Several sixteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish Jesuit visitors, who generally
expressed little but contempt for most Buddhist
religious, admired the simplicity, directness,
and frugal, contemplative lives of the Zen
priests they met, and found them formidable
intellectual opponents:
There are two sects called Zenshu [the Gozan
schools] and Murasakino [Daitoku-ji], which
are much given to meditation and comparisons, such as: If you spoke to a man just after
they had cut off his head, what would he
reply? After a lovely flower withers, what
does it become? etc. Most of the nobles
belong to this sect. Some people hit the mark
in one meditation, others in many, and thus
they strive mightily until they succeed.19
TOWARD CATHAY

311

Certainly the most famous and possibly the

most brilliant monk in the medieval Daitoku-ji
lineage was Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481), a bitter
critic of the hypocrisy, worldliness, and selfsatisfaction of Gozan monks. By the middle of
the Muromachi period the Zen institution as a
whole, and especially its Gozan branches sponsored by the military government and patronized by people in high places, was showing
signs of religious complacency. Ikkyu (see cat.
221, 238) spent the greater part of his long life
criticizing, often with vitriolic intensity, the
corruption, stupidity, and pretensions of the
Zen clergy. For much of his life Ikkyu avoided
monastic office, preferring to spend his time
wandering the streets and pleasure quarters of
Kyoto and Sakai, writing satirical verses and
making Zen accessible to the common people
through straightforward and humorous sermons
in the vernacular. He was at the same time a
poet of passionate intensity and moral seriousness, and a brilliant calligrapher, whose brusque,
slashing style reflects his character. Toward the
end of his life he reluctantly accepted the headship of Daitoku-ji, working hard to restore it
and its subtemples after the ravages of the Onin
War. He forged ties between Sakai merchants
and the monks of Daitoku-ji, many of whom
were experts in the monastic style of Tea Ceremony, which the merchants were eager to learn.
Irreverent, fearlessly eccentric, sometimes
harsh and histrionic, the antithesis of a Zen
dignitary, Ikkyu exerted great and lasting influence on the Zen tradition.
Zen monks played a major role in the introduction of Neo-Confucianism to Japan. Keian
Genju (1427-1508), a Rinzai monk and NeoConfucian scholar who had studied Chan in
Ming China, was one of the most distinguished
of these, patronized by the Kikuchi daimyo
family of Higo Province, then by the Shimazu
of Satsuma. In Satsuma, in addition to teaching
Zen, he published a commentary on the Confucian classic The Great Learning and established
a tradition of Neo-Confucian studies.
In his Journal Columbus spoke frequently of
converting the island people he encountered to
Christianity. Had he visited Japan he would
quickly have inquired about its religious life and
weighed the prospects for Christian conversions. Like the later Portuguese and Spaniards,
spearheaded by the Jesuit missionary Francisco
Xavier, who arrived in Kagoshima in 1549, he
might have found some Japanese daimyo, perhaps even some lower-ranking samurai and
their wives, who were genuinely curious about
the teachings of Christianity. He would no
doubt have found more who were prepared to
tolerate and even promote Christianity if that
brought the "Southern Barbarians'" black ships,
312

CIRCA 1492

with guns and other trade goods from the West.

He would probably have concluded that,
although competition existed, Japan was a
promising field and that Christianity could be
most rapidly implanted by seeking the conversion of sympathetic daimyo and their wives, in
the hope that their domains would then be converted en masse. This policy might well have
worked successfully in 1492, as it was to work
in the 1550$, 15605, and 1570$. In 1492,
however, efforts to promote Christianity would
not have had the fortuitous tacit support they
would later receive from a unifier like Nobunaga who, bent on curbing the power of militant
Buddhism, was uncommonly willing to tolerate
Christian missionary activity, to entertain missionaries at his castles, and to permit the building of churches and seminaries in the capital and
the territories he was bringing under his
control.

Cultural life
A perceptive and open-minded European finding his way to Japan in 1492 would have been
intrigued by its cultural vitality and would
quickly have identified several overlapping centers and modes of cultural activity. Kyoto,
recovering from the Onin War, was a major
cultural center. Although the imperial court had
lost its political leadership and some of the cultural hegemony it had enjoyed in earlier centuries, it was still a cultural arbiter. The age did
not see the compilation of great imperial poetry
anthologies to rival those of the Heian and
Kamakura periods, but emperors and courtiers
still wrote poetry and prized fine calligraphy.
There was a vogue for linked verse (renga),
among courtiers and at all levels of literate society. When it could afford to restore or rebuild
damaged palace buildings, the court commissioned screens and hanging scrolls from early
masters of both the Tosa school of Japanese style
painting and the Kano school, which was greatly
influenced by Chinese painting styles of Southern Song (1127-1279).
Several of the Ashikaga shoguns were cultural pace-setters, connoisseurs and collectors of
Chinese and Japanese art. Yoshimitsu set his
stamp on the style of the late fourteenth century. In the creation of what came to be known
as the "culture of the Northern Hills" (Kitayama bunka), after his Golden Pavilion in the
northern hills of Kyoto, Yoshimitsu brought
together emperors, courtiers, warriors, Zen
monks, actors of the emerging No drama, and
the arbiters of shogunal taste known as doboshu. The eighth shogun, Yoshimasa, played a
similar, though less resplendent, role in the

post-Onin cultural salon centered about his

Silver Pavilion. This phase of Japanese culture is
commonly referred to as the "Culture of the
Eastern Hills" (Higashiyama bunka), from the
location of Yoshimasa's villa.
Late fifteenth-century elite culture blended
courtier, warrior, and Zen elements. The prevailing tone was monochromatic, reflected in
the vogue for ink painting, and the dominant
aesthetic was expressed in such terms as "mystery and depth" (yugen), "the beauty of worn
and rustic things" (sabi), and "cultivated
poverty" (wabi). These cultural preferences,
imbibed by daimyo in Kyoto, were transplanted
by them to their castles and garrison towns.
Some daimyo', like the Hosokawa, Ouchi, and
Hojo, became major and generous patrons of the
arts in their own right. The walls and screens of
the great castles would become grounds for the
powerful decorative painting of the sixteenthcentury Kano masters.
Buddhist monasteries, especially Rinzai Zen
monasteries, remained centers of cultural
leadership. The abbot's quarters (hojd) of Zen
monasteries set the style for domestic architecture. Zen dry-landscape gardens (kare
sansui), like those of Daitoku-ji, Ryoan-ji, or
Saiho-ji (the Moss Temple), brought Japanese
garden design to an unparalleled level of subtlety and sophistication, combining directness
and simplicity with abstraction. Many Zen
monks were also masters of calligraphy, Chinese
poetry, ink painting or portraiture. The Zen
monastic custom of formally serving tea to
monks and monastery guests was carried into
secular society, there to be transformed into a
passion among warriors, merchants, and villagers. Zen ideas of the "dropping of self,"
"original emptiness," "no-mind," "spontaneous
self-perception of Buddha-nature," and "direct
experience of reality" all influenced painting,
calligraphy, No drama, Tea, and the martial arts.
Culture was also vigorous at the popular
level. Mendicant monks and balladiers traveled
the country, teaching the lessons of Buddhism
from paintings depicting the life of the Buddha
or the various realms of paradise and hell. Blind
lute players wandered from town to village,
bringing to imaginative life the clash of arms
that ended the twelfth century with their tales
of the rise and fall of the Heike clan or the
exploits of the young tragic hero Yoshitsune.
Wandering poets like lio Sogi (1421-1502)
attended village gatherings for the composition
of linked verse (renga). Troupes of Sarugaku
and No performers entertained crowds in
shrines and temple compounds across the
country.
No theater matured in the fifteenth century:
the creative genius of Zeami (c. 1364-^ 1443),

fig. 3. View of the garden of the Daisen-in, Daitoku- ji, Kyoto

following the lead of his father Kan'ami, transformed No from a strolling entertainment into
a refined dramatic art whose beauty consisted in
"depth and mystery" (yugen) coupled with
"rusticity" (sabi, implying a solitude tinged
with desolation or deprivation).
Zeami enjoyed the patronage of Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu but fell from favor under the
shogun Yoshinori. His work was continued and
enlarged on by his son-in-law Komparu Zenchiku (b. c. 1405), who knew Ikkyu and Ikkyu's
successor Sogen and added new depths to No
drama by a further infusion of Buddhist ideas of
emptiness and the Buddha-nature of all things.
Kyogen (mad words), which developed along
with No, was an earthier dramatic form, parodying human foibles all up and down the social

scale. Kyogen pieces, farcical or satirical, served

as foils to the elevated, lyrical No, and were
often presented as interludes in a sequence of
No plays.
Fifteenth-century painting saw several
important developments. Ink monochrome
painting (suibokuga), stimulated by acquaintance with Chinese monochrome landscape
painting, was carried to a high level of strength
and subtlety.
Although admitting a debt to the Chinese
masters, Sesshu (1420-1506) developed his own
powerful individual styles and a wide range of
subject matter. He was a master of "splashed
ink" (hatsuboku), monochrome landscape, birdand-flower painting, and Zen style portraiture
and thematic painting.

About 1492 the Kano school, official painters

to the shoguns, was being established by Kano
Masanobu (1434-1530) and his son Motonobu
(1476-1559). The distinctive Kano style and
repertoire mingled Zen themes and Chinese ink
monochrome techniques with decorative
yamato-e styles in works that appealed strongly
to warriors as well as courtiers (cat. 222, 223,
236). At the same time painters of the Tosa
school, especially Mitsunobu (act. 1469-1521)
and Hirochika (i5th century), were reviving
Japanese style painting (yamato-e) and finding
patrons in the imperial and shogunal courts and
the upper ranks of warrior society.20
For any visitor to Japan in 1492 one of the
most striking cultural phenomena would surely
have been the passion for Tea Ceremony (Cha
no yu) and the aesthetic refinement surrounding it. This was a critical period in the development of Cha no yu. Merchants from Kyoto,
Sakai, and Nara were replacing Zen monks as
the arbiters of Tea taste, the tea room was
changing from a large audience chamber
(kaisho) to a small hut, Japanese ceramics from
kilns like Bizen and Shigaraki were becoming at
least as popular as Chinese utensils, and the
aesthetic of refined austerity known as wabi,
which would be fully articulated by Sen no
Rikyu in the late sixteenth century, was already
being formulated. The great Tea master of the
age was Murata Shuko (or Juko, d. 1502), a Nara
merchant who is reputed to have studied with
Ikkyu. Shuko was a transitional figure in the
development of Cha no yu. He is believed to
have favored the use of the small four-and-ahalf mat tea room as the proper setting for Tea
and to have deepened the aesthetic by drawing
more heavily on Zen ideas of emptiness,
restraint, and austerity (wabi).
A receptive Western visitor to Japan in 1492,
then, would have found much to interest him,
and much to compare with the Europe he knew.
Though disappointed of the royal palace roofed
and floored with gold, as promised by Marco
Polo, he would have seen other wonders. Even
without gold the castles and palaces of the
shogun, emperor, and powerful feudal lords
were impressively grand, and held works of art
in which gold was used as elegantly as anywhere in Europe. The visitor could have told of
earthquakes and volcanoes, of verdant, heavily
wooded islands producing an abundance of rice,
silk, and other crops. Europeans would have
been impressed by reports of the markets and of
vigorous domestic and foreign trade, and by the
diligence of farmers who made the most of their
small fields.
A truthful observer would surely have
reported that although Japan was politically
fragmented, it would not be an easy country to
TOWARD CATHAY

313

conquer or to claim. The Japanese daimyo and

their samurai would resist such claims with
armed force. They did not yet have access to the
technology of the gun, but their martial tradition and fine blades made them formidable
antagonists. Like Francisco Xavier a few decades
later, a Columbus in Japan might have concluded that Japan, although ripe for conversion,
was unlikely to become Christian without the
backing of at least some of the daimyo. Advocates of Buddhism and Shinto could be expected
to protest any Western missionary effort.
Without the encouragement of their feudal
lords few samurai or farmers would have dared
to espouse an alien faith.
Like the actual European visitors of the following century, our hypothetical visitor of 1492
would no doubt have reported that the Japanese
language seemed a veritable "devil's tongue/' At
the same time he could hardly have failed to
notice the widespread respect for literacy, for
the written word, and for fine calligraphy as an
expression of the writer's personality. Intertwined with the powerful martial tradition was
an equally strong tradition of civilian arts of
government and literary culture. He would have
seen this expressed in the poetry meetings of
courtiers, warriors, and Zen monks, in No and
Kyogen performances, and in the linked-verse
meetings in which commoners participated. He
would have compared the early Japanese castles,
with their great stone foundations and wooden
superstructures, with the stone ramparts of
Europe. He might have found wooden Japanese
residences flimsy in comparison with European
houses, but he would also have noted their airy
suitability to the climate and their simple,
uncluttered interiors. The passion for Tea, and
the ritual care with which it was served, might

314

CIRCA

1492

have bemused him, but an insightful visitor

would perhaps have perceived that an aesthetic
of austere simplicity, of wabi and sabi, could be
as satisfying as an emphasis on gilded, florid
beauty.

NOTES
1. On Marco Polo's travels, see Leonardo Olschki,
Marco Polo's Asia, An Introduction to his 'Description of the World' called 'II Milione/ trans. John A.
Scott (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960).
2. Marco Polo, The Travels, trans. Ronald Latham
(London, 1958), 243-248. For a close comparison of
variant texts, see A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot, eds.,
Marco Polo, The Description of the World, 2 vols.
(London, 1938), vol.i, 357-363.
3. The implications of Marco Polo's travels for contemporary estimates of the size of the globe and the balance between land and sea are discussed by Samual
Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (reprint,
Boston, 1983), 65.
4. The original Journal of the First Voyage, known in
Spanish as the Diario de Colon, does not survive.
What we have today is a paraphrase, with some
direct quotations, made from a copy of the original
prepared by a scribe. It was compiled by Friar
Bartolome de Las Casas about 1530. In writing his
journal Columbus had Ferdinand and Isabella in
mind. Columbus was not above exaggeration, even
outright falsification. Other misrepresentations may
have crept in before Las Casas' version was completed. There are several English translations of the
Journal. Citations in this essay are from The 'Diario'
of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America
1492-1493, transcribed and translated into English
by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr. (Norman,
Okla. and London, 1989). This edition has the Spanish transcription and English translation on facing
pages.
5. Discussed in Cecil Jane, ed., The Four Voyages of
Columbus (paper, New York, 1988), cxxiii-cxliii.
6. Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus, trans. Benjamin Keen (New Bruns-

7.
8.

9.
10.
11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.

17.

18.
19.
20.

wick, N.J., 1959). Fernando was only an infant at the

time of the first voyage.
Bartolome de Las Casas, Historia de las indias, 3
vols. (Mexico, 1951).
Peter Martyr, "The Firste Booke of the Decades of
the Ocean," in Richard Eden, The First Three Books
on America (\?1511^-1555 A.D. (Birmingham,
England, 1885).
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Historia
general y natural de las indias, 14 vols. (Asuncion,
1944).
Cited above, n. 3.
Some of the books known to have been read by
Columbus, most of them with marginalia in his
hand, have survived. Among them are a copy of
Marco Polo's Orientalum regionum and an Italian
resume of it dated to 1485.
Henry Vignaud, Toscanelli and Columbus (New
York, 1902). For brief discussions of the controversy
over Columbus' objectives, see Cecil Jane, The Four
Voyages of Columbus, xiii-cxii, and Kirkpatrick Sale,
The Conquest of Paradise: Columbus and the
Columbian Legacy (New York, 1990).
Cited in Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 354.
On the Ouchi in the fifteenth century, see Peter J.
Arnesen, Medieval Japanese Daimyo (New Haven,
Conn., 1979).
John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, eds., Japan in the
Muromachi Age (Berkeley, Cal., 1977).
G. Cameron Hurst, Insei: Abdicated Sovereigns in
the Politics of Late Heian Japan, 1086-1185 (New
York, 1976).
John W. Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval
Japan, Essays in Institutional History (New Haven,
Conn., 1974).
For the political events of the thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries, hinted at only cryptically here,
see Hall and Mass 1974 and Mass, Court and Bakufu
in Japan: Essays in Kamakura History (New Haven,
Conn., 1982).
H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval
Japan (New York, 1971).
Balthasar Gago, S.J. Cited in Michael Cooper, They
Came to Japan, An Anthology of European Reports
on Japan, 15431640 (Berkeley, Cal., 1965), 316.
See 'Art in Japan," by Sherman E. Lee, below.

ART IN JAPAN 1450-1550

Sherman E. Lee
TRADITIONAL

PAINTING

Certainly the most traditional paintings circa

1492 were Buddhist icons associated with sects
other than Zen. Zen, born of close contacts with
Chinese emigres and then with China itself,
also adopted from China the ink monochrome
painting style the "New Manner/' But the
older sects possessed a repertory of thousands
of icons whose efficacy was proven and whose
forms were therefore repeated over almost a
thousand years. Some of these were modified
very slowly over time, others were changed
more abruptly whether little or much in
answer to shifts in the climate of faith. The
most remarkable example of the latter is the
Amida Raigo, a particularly compassionate
vision of deity in which Amida Buddha descends
amid a heavenly host to escort the soul of a
dying devotee to Amida's Western Paradise.
These paintings, in which the deity approaches
the viewer directly (raigo), became popular with
the rise of Pure Land Buddhism (Amidism, or
Jodo) in the Late Heian period (897-1185).
The Amida from Shonen-ji (cat. 211) is virtually identical to an image dated to 1329 at Dan
O H6rin-ji, Kyoto, and thus exemplifies the
practice of repeating efficacious images. It differs notably in the decorative patterning of the
clouds covering the lower part of Amida's body
in the Shonen-ji painting, and in the forcing of
the snow at the bottom to the outer edges of the
overlapping hills. This is a "folk art" note, also
found, for example, in the famous Sun and
Moon screens at Kongo-ji in Osaka Prefecture.
By combining Buddhism (Amida) and Shinto
(the sacred Nachi mountain and waterfall), the
Shonen-ji Manifestation of Amida Buddha at
Nachi exemplified the syncretic system called
honji-suijaku (Original Ground-Manifest
Trace), a reconciliation of imported faith with
native cults whereby each Buddhist deity was
paired with a local Shinto counterpart. Honjisuijaku belief became popular after the eleventh
century, particularly in rural and mountain
areas. In Amida at Nachi the worshipers at the
lower left include a Buddhist monk, but all are
making Shinto offerings or devotions, while on
the right a mountain priest of the ascetic
Shugendo sect adores the manifestation. Thus
the Buddha has been joined with one of the
three most sacred shrines of the Kii Peninsula.

In more sophisticated centers theological

reconciliation of Buddhism and Shinto followed
social and political accommodations between
major temples and shrines. In the eighth century, when the court was at Nara, the powerful
Fujiwara clan established there one Buddhist
and one Shinto tutelary sanctum, Kofuku-ji and
the Kasuga Shrine, which cooperated closely on
matters religious and political. Fukukenjaku
Kannon, a form of the Bodhisattva of Compassion particularly efficacious for the spiritually
lost, was venerated as early as the eighth century. At Kofuku-ji, from the thirteenth century,
this Buddhist deity was identified with the
sacred deer of the Kasuga Shrine; either image
might serve to evoke the other, or the two
images might be depicted together. The syncretic Kannon-deer image continued into the
fifteenth century, when it was at least once
depicted in an eclectic and visually realistic way.
The Kannon, three-eyed and six-armed, was
rendered with extreme conservatism, but the
deer of Kasuga shrine who bears the enthroned
deity was shown sitting on its haunches, in
three-quarter view. The immediate effect is that
of a pictorial rendering of a sculptural image,
seen slightly askew. Previously, figural icons
had always been shown full front, while in
Kasuga mandala images the deer were shown in
strict profile. This image combines frontality
with a three-quarter view. How much of this
combination almost bizarre by traditional
image-making standards was inadvertent and
how much a deliberate attempt at change and
realism is undeterminable. The tension between
the two parts of the icon reflects the inherent
stress in these syncretic images.
The inherently traditional reproducing of
efficacious icons is nowhere clearer than in the
paintings graphically depicting the punishment
of evil. Depictions of judgment, condemnation,
and punishment may have originated in
Chinese Daoist lore but were soon adopted by
the Buddhists. In Southern Song China, that
great source of Japanese pictorial styles as well
as Buddhist iconography, representations of the
Ten Kings of Hell became common. They were
exported from the southern port of Ningbo to
Japan in considerable numbers, and many of the
sets still are extant in temple collections. These

were widely copied in Japan and those copies

copied in turn by professional painters attached to the temples. Two hanging scrolls (cat.
212) painted by Tosa Mitsunobu in 1489 are
copies of extant paintings by a fourteenth-century forebear, Tosa Yukimitsu, .who in turn
copied, or was much influenced by, Song
Chinese originals. At least six Chinese sets of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are still
extant in Japan at Eigen-ji, Zendo-ji, Honenji, Nison-in, Jodo-ji, and K6to-in. The Chinese
Emma-O at Nison-in in Kyoto is the closest to
the Japanese version displayed here.
Mitsunobu's representation is totally
Chinese, a recreation of Chinese magisterial
trials with one of the Ten Kings of Hell as
magistrate and demons as officers of the court.
The landscape screen behind Emma-O, the
table, and the view of balustrade and garden
beyond combine to evoke the typical Chinese
scholar-officials' environment. Bright colors
and firm brushwork, with "nail-head" strokes
in the demons and "iron-wire" lines depicting
officials and deities, characterize the professional style of Buddhist icon painters. Above the
infernal courtroom is a traditional representation of the deity who most particularly provides
solace, rescue, and salvation for the sufferers in
Hell: the seated Jizo within his flaming mandorla. In itself, it is a good late rendition of the
fine-line, color-rich method of icon painting
adopted from Southern Song China. Particular
styles had become mandatory for particular
subjects.
The painter, however, was a master of the
Tosa school, adept at the old courtly Japanese
style (cat. 215, 216). His proficiency at both
these traditional professional modes is characteristic of the period's growing eclecticism, a
mind-set increasingly common from this
time on.
The Ten Realms of Reincarnation (Jikkai Zu,
cat. 213), a pair of six-fold screens, is a striking
and complex example of those combinations of
manners. In itself, the folding screen was fundamentally a decorative format. A few screens
were used in religious ceremonies the
twelfth-century "ordination" screen at T6-ji in
Kyoto is the most famous but these were not
necessarily religious or even apropos in subject
T O W A R D CATHAY

3*5

fig. i. Attributed to Kenko Shokei (act. c. 14781506). Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala. i6th century.
Japanese. Hanging scroll; color on silk. 180.6 x
118.2. Fuji-san Hongu Hengen Sengen Jingu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

matter. The To-ji screen shows a charming

green landscape with figures that were deemed
appropriate for imperial ceremonies. But most
screens were used to decorate and divide rooms,
and their subject matter was landscapes,
flowers-and-birds (kacho), martial themes and,
later, classic narratives such as the Tale of Genji.
The Jikkai screens, however, are certainly religious in subject matter, and the realms of reincarnation include visions of hell, cruelty, and
suffering customarily confined to hand- or
hanging scrolls. Most surprisingly, the screens
end with a copy of the most precious and
famous of all mandalas (J: mandara, schematic
representations of cosmic beings or forces, used
in religious meditation or ritual), the Talma
Mandala, belonging also to the temple that
commissioned the screens, Taima-dera in Nara
Prefecture.
Compositionally the screens combined the
vertical orientation of the hanging scroll (cat.
212) with the horizontal linkage provided by
cloud-bands (a common feature in narrative
handscrolls; see cat. 216). From right to left on
the screens the realms of reincarnation unfold
in order of amelioration: realms of Hell,
Hungry Ghosts, Demons, Beasts, Humans, and
five stages of Heaven as prescribed by the
monk Genshin (942-1017) in his Ojo Yoshu
(Essentials of Salvation). The scenes of horror
on the right screen are incongruously set in a
316

CIRCA 1492

green landscape of rolling hills with a few rocky

cliffs, but only on the second screen, as we
approach human courtly life and the divine
realms, do we find flowering trees. Both screens
are in the yamato-e style inherited by the Tosa
school: a harmonious palette of bright mineral
colors, softly undulating terrain and trees,
loving attention to details, an interest in secular
life obvious even in the depiction of religious
themes. Framing the panorama is a golden sun
at the far right and a silver moon on the far left.
Scattered along the upper register of both
screens are pages of text, purposefully and decoratively superimposed on the landscape. These
were written both in Chinese script (kanji) and
in the abbreviated and flowing Japanese cursive
(kana). In the final two panels of the left-hand
screen an imaginative and literal rendition of a
Buddhist paradise (hensd, apparitional vision)
has been set into the landscape. Perhaps the
monk-artist(?) was prompted by Amida raigo
paintings (cat. 211) to reproduce the sacred
Taima Mandala a detailed depiction of Amida
Buddha's Western Paradise as a vision set in a
landscape. But the superimposition of texts over
the hensd and, even stranger, the omission of
the upper left corner of the hensd so that one
sees the landscape topped by the moon beyond,
suggest either confusion in execution or an
arbitrary decision to include the moon for symmetry with the sun at the beginning of the
right-hand screen. In any case, the result is
daring and effective, an apotheosis of Taimadera's most precious possession, the Chinese
Tang dynasty (618-907) tapestry showing the
Western Paradise of Amida bordered by illustrations of Buddhist legend and of prescribed contemplative exercises.
Provincial cults motivated other variations on
traditional themes. We have seen syncretic
Buddhist-Shinto iconography associated with
ancient shrines and sites. Mt. Fuji, dominating
the Pacific side of central Honshu, has always
been a sacred mountain, usually associated with
the Shinto goddess Konohana no Sakuya Hime.
It was one of the centers for the Shugendo sect,
a uniquely Japanese synthesis of Esoteric Buddhism and Shinto, partial to ascetic practices in
remote mountain locales. Fuji was also considered a manifestation of Dainichi Nyorai (the
Supreme Buddha, the Center). By the second
half of the sixteenth century making the ascent
of Fuji had become a popular way of achieving
grace by the practice of austerity, and it is this
aspect of the mountain that is presented in a
Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala. Only the three tiny
Buddhist deities on Fuji's tripartite crest witness
the Buddhist element in this now dominantly
Shinto icon. The Sengen shrine, still the owner
of this "pilgrimage mandala" which it commis-

sioned, dominates the lower part of the picture.

Cloud bands supply a major part of the visual
impact of the image and serve also to divide this
depiction of the ascent into clear stages. Pilgrims clad in purifying white, though tiny in
scale, are clearly seen. At the very bottom of
the picture is the Pine Beach at Miho (Miho no
Matsubara), about fifteen kilometers southwest
of Fuji along Suruga Bay, one of Japan's "scenic
wonders" (and one of the few native sites
painted by at least one of the ink painters in the
"new manner").
Portraiture in the traditional idiom continued, especially of subjects associated with the
imperial court or the shogunate. The portrait of
Ashikaga Yoshimasa, shogun and aesthete (cat.
214), is a smaller-scale, more retiring version of
the large, assertive yamato-e portraits done at
the beginning of the Kamakura period (11851333). Only the setting of monochrome inkpainted sliding panels suggests changes in taste.
The portrait of his successor, attributed to Kano
Motonobu, is from a different tradition, but
equally formal. Its antecedents are yamato-e
representations of mounted warriors as often
seen in the narrative handscrolls of military
subjects. The horse, sharply and stiffly delineated, is a formal counterpart to two votive
tablets painted by Motonobu as offerings to
Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. The stabled horse,
whether a battle charger or one of many "divine
steeds" quartered at Shinto shrines, was already
particularly favored by the warrior class as a
subject for six-fold screens.
Beach of Pine Trees (Hamamatsu) is one of
the most striking demonstrations of a traditional style rising to a new occasion. The subject occurs in various narrative handscrolls of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as landscape accompaniment to human activity. The
yamato-e manner emphasized the decorative,
rhythmical repetition of the boughs and trunks
and the rolling, sinuous curves of the beach,
and made the waves conform to a kind of patterning used not only in painting but on decorated lacquer writing boxes. Beginning in the
later fifteenth century the demand for pairs of
six-fold screens and for sliding screens led
painters to experiment with enlarging the traditional subject in the traditional manneran
experiment crowned with total success.
Other enlargements of traditional subjects,
such as Sesshu's Flowers and Birds screens (cat.
233), were also tried by the Tosa masters in
their refined yamato-e style (cat. 215). This
Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons, probably
by a Tosa master circa 1500, combines the
native vocabulary of decorative water patterns,
rolling green hummocks, writhing pine trees
and rich, opaque color with a Chinese style of

flower-and-bird painting exemplified by works

of the Piling school of Zhejiang Province and of
Chinese court masters such as Yin Hong (cat.
292). The native and imported styles are
employed for separate subjects on these screens,
except in the description of the rocks, where a
not altogether successful attempt was made to
blend the two: sharp, calligraphic brush strokes
in the Kano manner, repeated rhythmically
inward from the edges of the rock in a more
yamato-e fashion. This pair of screens appears
to derive from a time when the confluence of
the Tosa and Kano schools was socially affirmed
by Kano Motonobu's marriage to a daughter of
Tosa Mitsunobu.
The name of this latter painter is closely associated with the narrative handscroll (emaki)
Seiko-ji Engi (History of Seiko Temple), almost
certainly painted by Mitsunobu for the courtier
Sanjonishi Sanetaka in 1487 (cat. 216). Miracles
worked by the bodhisattva Jizo on behalf of his
devotees are the subject of the scroll, which
celebrates the founding and subsequent history
of Seiko-ji. Mitsunobu was an accomplished
artist, adept in various idioms of his day: the
court style of the Tosa school, the realism found
in earlier narrative handscrolls of battle and
genre subjects, and the "new manner" of ink
painting practiced by his new son-in-law Motonobu, founder of the Kano school. The Seiko-ji
Engi displays this threefold mastery, with
emphasis on the first two idioms. Courtiers and
palace scenes are done in the decorative, formal,
and unrealistic way associated with "woman's
painting" (onna-e): roofs are absent, to allow
interior scenes to be seen from above; isometric
perspective renditions of architectural elements,
tatami, and screens serve to mark and measure

the movement of the scroll from right to left;

textile patterns are carefully depicted, and the
starched, decorative quality of court garments is
carefully shown. The old narrative realism
reserved for depictions of warriors and commoners in untidy environments is exploited to
good effect. A single detail presents a muddy
well, a bamboo fence decorated with morning
glories, and nearby a scratching dog. The "new
manner" is found only on the folding and sliding screens we see furnishing the interiors.
There monochrome ink depictions of the new
subjects cranes landing on a reedy shore, a
bamboo grove, gibbons, rocks and grasses
indicate that the household is a fashionable one.
In this handscroll Tosa, Kano, and narrativerealist modes coexist in eclectic harmony.
The subject of the scroll the miracles of
Jizo directs us to major changes occurring in
the style of Muromachi emaki executed outside
the courtly perimeters of the Tosa school. Jizo
was above all a compassionate divinity, accessible to the poor, to the underclass, even to sinners in hell (see cat. 212). Jizo's increasing
popularity from the Kamakura period on signaled also a recognition on the part of the
priesthood of growing social mobility not only
in the warrior and merchant classes but also
among farmers and artisans, including professional artists and performers. The "three Ami"
(Noami, Geiami, Soami), cultural advisers to
the shogun Yoshimasa (1436-1490) and his successors (cat. 224, 234), had risen from lowly
origins; the great No dramatist Zeami and his
father Kan'ami, who enjoyed the patronage of
the shogun Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), had begun
as strolling players.
The change can be seen in certain scrolls

satirizing poetry competitions. The passion for

poetry and poetry competitions or performances may have been learned by the Japanese
early on from China, but the pupils surpassed
their mentors in enthusiasm and ingenuity.
One of the principal subjects of early courtly
painting was the serial depiction in handscroll
format of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets (Sanjurokkasen) aristocrats all accompanied by
stylishly written transcriptions of their poetry.
By late Kamakura a scroll had been painted
recording a poetry competition, held in 1217,
whose participants were not courtiers or aristocratic prelates but artisans (shokunin). The
laughter among courtly viewers of the scroll
must have been matched by the satisfaction of
the shokunin; the painter, quite obviously, was
amused by both.
Such leavening of the high art tradition from
below can be seen in the Artisans' Poetry Competition. The term "artisans" is rather widely
construed to mean "nonaristocrat"; here we are
shown a blind biwa player (a public entertainer)
walking and a seated priestly bow maker. The
rendering of this scene anticipates the brusque
no-nonsense depiction of village and rural life
that became the staple achievement of later
Japanese genre painting in the Momoyama
(1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868) periods.
By the late fifteenth century even the clergy
were using commoners' vernacular in their pastoral letters. Rennyo (1414-1499), monk of the
Amidist (Pure Land, or Jodo) school founded by
Honen (1133-1212), pushed the populist tendencies of that school to the extremes necessary
for successful proselytization in a changing
social world. He wrote of his pastoral letters,
"You should regard [a pastoral letter] as the

fig. 2. Artisans' Poetry Competition. 14th century. Japanese. Fragment of a handscroll; ink and color on paper. Suntory Museum, Tokyo
T O W A R D CATHAY

317

utterance of the Buddha when you see [it],

you are looking at Honen; when you hear its
words, you are listening to the discourse of
Amida" (Hall and Toyoda 1977, 347).
Still another and more direct example of this
folk leavening of traditional bread are the pictorial scrolls used by etoki hoshi (male or female
"picture explainers") to illustrate their oral
(spoken or sung) recitations. These might be
presented in temples, elucidating doctrine or
temple history. Legends of Kiyomizu Temple
(cat. 217) may well have been painted for that
purpose. It is datable to 1517, and attributed to
Tosa Mitsunobu. It stands, however, stylistically
between his authentic work (cat. 216) and the
folk style emaki we shall consider next. Its wild
composition and frenetic movement are amazing and totally removed from the fully
professional control of Mitsunobu. "Picture
explainers" plied their trade also at fairs or markets, reciting true history, fantastic legends (cat.
219), or vulgar tales that lampooned wellknown local figures. The etoki hoshi were
almost certainly responsible for the practice of
writing texts some of them spoken by the
painted characters in the scrolls directly onto
the pictures, in contrast to the usual practice
whereby sections of text preceded, followed, or
alternated with the pictorial sections. These
devices, strikingly similar to our comic-strip
"balloons," made both text and pictures more
accessible to popular audiences.
Thus the artist of Legends of the Founding of
Dojo-ji (cat. 219) sprinkles the text of his wildly
imaginative and lurid tale among the sharply
simplified and "primitive" settings and characterizations of the pictorial matter. The resulting
"folkish" style, certainly persuasive on a fundamental and popular level, is a polar opposite to
the old courtly style and shows less skill than
the narrative scrolls of the Kamakura period
emaki artists.
The fashionable revival of folk art in Japan
before World War n recognized and used an
aesthetic code deeply rooted in medieval Japan.
The fullest expression of this folk substratum in
the time around 1492 occurred in the modifications of more traditional art icons, yamato-e,
and narrative painting. Perhaps the hold of the
"new manner" on the court and the military
made it easier for the now more mobile underclassmerchants, artisans, farmers to exert
their preferences on some forms of art. But certainly the rich variety of Momoyama and Edo
art had its beginnings in Muromachi period.

318

CIRCA 1492

CHANGING THE SUBJECT:

ZEN ICONOGRAPHY
To those Westerners who became interested in
East Asian art from the end of the nineteenth
century, traditional Buddhist painting in both
China and Japan offered few serious barriers to
appreciation. The collectors and curators of
Buddhist painting Ernest Fenollosa and
Denman Ross in Boston, Charles Freer in
Detroit, S. C. Bosch-Reitz at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York, Bernhard Berenson in
Florence, Laurence Binyon in London, to name a
fewmoved to an appreciation of Buddhist
icons from a familiarity with Christian icons,
especially those of the late Middle Ages. Some
of the enthusiasts readily transferred their
growing enthusiasm for gold-ground Italian
paintings of the trecento to richly colored and
often gold-embellished Buddhist icons of the
ninth to the fourteenth centuries.
These icons were duplicated and reduplicated
by successive generations copies of copies of
copies for good reason: to be effective, salvation magic, like any other magic, must adhere
precisely to formula. Sedulous imitation,
however, enfeebled their aesthetic effectiveness,
which was revitalized only with infusions from
popular culture. The old icons could be realized
in new manners, but no new energy informed
latter-day productions of the traditional icons,
mandalas, or founders' portraits. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the old careful
and expensive use of cut gold-leaf (kirikane)
patterns on deities' garments had largely given
way to painted gold-dust ornament. Literally
and figuratively, the traditional icons were
impoverished.
With the importation of Zen Buddhism in the
thirteenth century, and its development and
dominance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, came a new vocabulary and grammar.
Perhaps the most iconic of images in the new
iconography were those least expected to be
so the portraits of the founders and transmitters of Zen tradition (cat. 218), a genre
developed out of the Chinese Chan portraits
brought to Japan in the Kamakura period (11851333). Despite their contemporary subjects,
realistically rendered as to physical appearance,
settings, furniture, and disposition, overall
these portraits (chinso) show a uniformity previously found in the icons of Esoteric Buddhism. The abbot's chair and robes, the threequarters position, the sober coloration, and the
fine-line delineation of the subject are omnipresent. And this is understandable, for one of
the key elements in Zen Buddhism was the
transmission of teachings through adept to
pupil, establishing long and complex lineages.

The master's portrait was given to a pupil as

indispensable evidence that the transmission
had occurred, and the evidence then became, for
Zen adepts, an icon.
The traditional Zen transmission chinso seem
even more icon-like when compared with occasional experiments by innovative artists dealing
with unusual subjects. Bunsei's Yuima (S:
Vimalakirti; cat. 220) is based on a traditional
Chinese representation of that legendary savant
and pattern of virtue who, though a layman and
sick at the time, could expound Buddha's teachings even to Monju (S: Manjusri), Bodhisattva
of Wisdom. Their meeting and Yuima's exposition were the subject of an early sutra, called in
Japanese Yuima Kyo (S: Vimalakirti Nirdesa
Sutra). In Chinese painting of the Song dynasty
(960-1279) Yuima was customarily represented
as bearded, benign, and elderly, reclining on an
arm rest and usually attended by a heavenly
acolyte. Bunsei's depiction owes much to the
circumstances of the commission: the painting
was requested by a Zen monk named Zensai as
a memorial image of his warrior-father, Suruga
no Kami Arakawa Akiuji. The close-up view of
head and torso alone, combined with the piercing, even combative expression of the face,
transmutes the benign sage into an ideal
warrior.
Only four years earlier an even more formidable figure, the brilliant and eccentric Ikkyu
Sojun, poet, calligrapher, Zen monk, and debauchee, later to become abbot of Daitoku-ji, was
directly portrayed, probably by Bokusai. The
arresting, aggrieved countenance looks directly
at the beholder, a most unusual, even unique,
depiction in Japanese painting (as noted by
Donald Keene). A lifetime spent equally in
bodily dissipation and in defense of Zen morality and integrity can be read correctly into
the unkempt head. Paradoxically, such a portrait
violated accepted canons, both contemporaneous
and historical, of Zen portraiture, and at the
same time was only possible within the Zen
culture and aesthetic. The Zen emphasis on
direct experience, intuitive recognition of truth,
and transmission "from mind to mind" called
for such portraiture, but, to judge from extant
works, only Bunsei, Ikkyu, and Bokusai heard
the call.
Along with Zen teachings came new artistic
subjects, radically informal compared with the
icons of the older sects but quickly and vastly
popular. One of the appropriate new subjects
was Daruma (S: Bodhidharma), the legendary
Indian prince who founded Zen (S: Dhyana; C:
Chan) Buddhism. Whether a close-up image
depicting only the head and upper torso (cat.
221), or a full-length figure in a landscape
(often crossing the Yangzi River standing on a

single reed), or in a narrative context, the

Daruma type was distinctive. His robe was usually draped so as to cover the head, revealing
only the rotund, masklike face. The eyes, large
and intent in early images from China, became
huge and glaring in Japanese versions. In the
bushy-bearded face, the mouth was usually
stern, even grimacing, and the hairy chest was
usually exposed. This is no exquisite heavenly
being; one's initial impression is of piercing
intensity coupled with great size and almost
animal power. The insistent earthiness of the
image is a pure Zen conception, but something
of Daruma's exotic appearance is due to his legendary Indian origin.
Daruma left India for a politically divided
China, arriving first at present-day Nanjing,
capital of the Liang kingdom, whose ruler a
conventional "good" Buddhist failed utterly
to understand his curt and cryptic guest. Thereupon Daruma journeyed north to the Wei kingdom, his miraculous crossing of the Yangzi
balanced on a single reed furnishing Zen painting with one of its most popular subjects. In
Wei he performed the nine-years meditation
before the cave wall, during which he was
sought out by his successor, the Chinese Hui-Ke
(J: Eka), who cut off his own arm to prove to
Daruma his steadfast resolve to seek Enlightenment. These two awesome acts of singleminded determination Daruma's nine-year
meditation and Hui-Ke's self-amputation are
shown together in Sesshu's great painting. The
subject is certainly Chinese in origin, and probably Sesshu found his starting point in an anonymous Southern Song (1127-1279) work.
Daruma's burly form and fierce expression may
remind some of the extroverted "terrible
aspect" deities and divine guardians of earlier
Esoteric Buddhism, but the resemblance is
largely coincidental. The expansive, even vulgar
humanity of Daruma is a new creation of Chan
and Zen Buddhism.
An equal favorite with Zen painters, related
to Daruma in appearance and sometimes displayed with him as part of a triptych, is Hotei
(C: Budai). He was more often shown alone on
a single hanging scroll, short, obese, and jolly,
always with a big sack containing his belongings, a satirical and vulgar figure. By the more
serious-minded he was considered a manifestation of the bodhisattva Maitreya, but his popular appeal is summed up in his Chinese name:
Budai is a homonym for "Round Belly" or
"Cloth Bag." The audience for kyogen satirical
performances and otogi-zoshi (cat. 219) narrative scrolls must have understood Hotei very
well. Numerous other eccentrics, mostly of
Chinese origin, were included in the Zen painters'
repertory, though they hardly qualify as icons.

Besides these "deities," Zen imagery included

disciples of the Buddha, whether his contemporaries or later devotees. These rakan (S:
arhat; C: luohari) were especially popular in
China, where they were seen as Chan Buddhist
counterparts to the venerable and traditional
Daoist and Confucian sages. The Chinese practice of representing luohan as gnarled ancients,
closely related to the old trees (cat. 312) and
convoluted rocks beloved of the literati, dates at
least from the tenth century, as attested by the
sixteen luohan panels now in the Imperial collection in Tokyo. These fascinating grotesques
were balanced by somewhat more average
monkish types thin, fat, young, old, light, or
dark. But all luohan paintings, whether they
depicted a single disciple (rarely), the classic
complement of sixteen (often), or a monasteryfull of five hundred (sometimes), required considerable imagination and technical skill and a
nice balance of realism and caricature to keep
the luohan theme and its variations from
being boring.
Professional paintings of the Ten Courts of
Hell scenes (cat. 212) demonstrated a full repertory of distortions and creative ugliness. Their
prototypes were the Chinese versions produced
by the workshops of Ningbo and directly
exported in large numbers to supply the rising
Japanese demand from Zen monasteries in
Kyoto and Kamakura. Many sets of Chinese
origin are listed as still extant in Japanese
temple collections. These in turn were copied by
Japanese professional Buddhist painters (ebusshi), and occasionally by the Tosa masters
patronized by the court. But as monochrome
ink painting became increasingly the medium of
Zen art, the rakan became far less popular subjects than Daruma, Hotei, the Zen patriarchs,
Kanzan and Jittoku (C: Hanshan and Shide,
archetypes of Enlightened laymen) and other,
more specifically Zen, figures.
Exemplary Zen tales or historically significant Zen events were also staple subjects of the
new monochrome ink painting (zenki zu, literally, "pictures of Zen activities," in fact referring to Zen didactic paintings). The great
Daruma painting by Sesshu mentioned above,
though dominated by the First Patriarch, is
technically a zenki zu, the story of the perseverance of Eka. Still other narrative subjects
became increasingly popular in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries: The Three Laughers of
Tiger Valley, Sakyamuni Descending the
Mountain After Austerities', The Ten Ox-Herding Songs, a Zen parable of the quest for
Enlightenment in ten scenes of an ox-herd
searching for and finding his strayed ox; and
incidents from biographies of the Zen patriarchs
as compiled in Record of the Transmission of

fig. 3. Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506). Daruma and Eka.

Dated to 1496. Japanese. Hanging scroll; ink and
color on paper. Sainen-ji, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

the Lamp (J: Keitoku Dentoroku, a Chinese

Chan text of 1004). The Three Laughers also
appeared in two other guises, as The Men of
Three Creeds Tasting Vinegar, and as Patriarchs
of the Three Creeds-, their common theme is the
essential unity or complementarity of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Philosophically, this "Unity of the Three Creeds" could be
more thoroughly expounded in literary texts,
but the pictorial versions, especially of Tiger
Valley, allowed artists to explore the permutations of figures in a landscape.
Two works (cat. 222-223) from six sliding
screens painted by Kano Motonobu for the
abbot's residence (hojo) at the Daisen-in of
Daitoku-ji are among the earliest zenki zu illustrating episodes from The Record of the Transmission of the Lamp. The flight of the Sixth
Patriarch (cat. 222), a bold, split composition,
concentrates one's attention on the narrative
rather than the landscape. Below, E'no (C: HuiNeng, 638-713) is shown in the prow of the
boat propelled by a standing boatman; above,
disciples of the Fifth Patriarch, Gunin (C:
Hong-Ren, 601-674), search for E'no on learning that he has just received the patriarch's robe,
i.e., has been made Sixth Patriarch. The second
painting (cat. 223) is even more concentrated,
offering a single action in a near landscape view
T O W A R D CATHAY

319

framed by curling clouds. The disciple Kyogen

Chikan (C: Xiangyan Zhixian) sweeps the
ground outside his hut and dislodges a pebble
which strikes a bamboo with a resonant sound.
At the sound he laughed, and in that instant
attained Enlightenment.
Of all Zen figure subjects, certainly the most
popular was the White-Robed Kannon (J:
Byaku-e Kannon) and its numerous variations:
Willow Branch Kannon (J: Yoryu Kannon),
Kannon of the Sacred Jewel and Wheel of the
Law (Nyoirin Kannon), and Kannon Contemplating a Waterfall (Takimi Kannon), among
others. The Chinese Record of Famous Paintings of Successive Ages (Li Dai Ming Hua Ji,
compiled 847 by Zhang Yanyuan, in Acker 1954,
p. 293) notes a Tang dynasty painting of
Kannon seated in a landscape, but this was a
work in color by the famous eighth-century
painter of court ladies, Zhou Fang. Almost all
Japanese painters of the subject were indebted,
directly or indirectly, to the great image at Daitoku-ji by the Chinese Chan painter-abbot of
Hangzhou, Mu Qi (Fa-Chang, early 13 th century-after 1279). The basic type as it developed
over more than a century in Japan is represented by Noami's Byaku-e Kannon of 1468
(cat. 224). The totally uniconic nature of the
representation, informal in pose, costume, and
landscape setting, complemented the Zen ideal
of sudden, intuitive Enlightenment independent
of ratiocination or rituals. The usual utter simplicity of the subject also made it accessible to
the amateur monk-painter, and we owe many of
the early surviving representations of Byaku-e
Kannon to such amateurs.
But even these informal images could be
made more informal within Zen iconography
and monochrome ink practice. Among the
thirty-two Kannon paintings attributed to
Kenko Shokei (act. c. 1478-1506) at Kencho-ji
in Kamakura, the most informal shows the deity
washing his bare feet in a waterfall. Gakuo's
version of the White-Robed Kannon, a variation
called Water-and-Moon Kannon (Suigetsu
Kannon; cat. 225), depicts a standing, swaying
figure contemplating the moon's reflection in
the water.
Muromachi ink painting includes few nonZen figural subjects. Some subjects, such as
Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), an imperial
minister who died in exile and was later
absorbed into Shinto as patron deity of scholarship and literature, were represented as single
figures, mostly for Zen patrons. Michizane's
position as god of poetry, his (extant) poem
written on the eve of exile to the plum tree in
his garden, and the legend current by the end of
the fourteenth century that he had sought and
received instruction in Zen from a famous
320

CIRCA 1492

Chinese master, made him an appealing subject

for the Chinese-oriented Zen monks with their
penchant for poetry and nature.
By far the largest number of monochrome
Japanese ink paintings of this period are landscapes. Though the ink monochrome style was
not limited to Zen painters in Muromachi Japan
virtually all landscape paintings were either
painted by Zen monk-painters, commissioned
by Zen patrons from professional painters
working in a Zen environment, or "adopted"
and inscribed with numerous texts or poems
composed or written by Zen monks. Landscape
evoked nostalgia for the mountains near the
great founding Chan temples of China and
inspired recognition of the truth to be found in
nature. Such emotions were also clearly and
directly expressed through the garden art
embraced by all Zen monasteries and subtemples, gardens quite different from those cultivated by the Chinese literary-official class.
Some landscapes of Chinese subjects were
derived from the Chinese paintings in temple,
shogunal, or daimyo collections. Thus the Eight
Views of Xiao and Xiang by Mu Qi and by YuJian were influential both as subject and as
examples of hatsuboku technique (see cat. 231).
Sometimes a specific Chinese scene is designated, as in Landscape in Sichuan, a work of the
Shubun school in the Seikado Foundation,
Tokyo. Sesshu's Four Seasons of circa 1469 (cat.
230) and his masterpiece, The Long Landscape
Scroll in the Mori Museum, are clearly Chinese
in subject, even to the architecture of temples
and the representation of a Chinese city wall.
Sesshu, however, was painting from life, or at
least from memory, having traveled extensively
in China. Shugetsu (see cat. 227), Sesshu's disciple, who may have gone to China in 1493,
painted a view of Hangzhou's West Lake with
the bridge of the famous Tang dynasty poet Li
Bo, and Gakuo executed a pair of scrolls showing The Peach Blossom Field of Wu Ling and Li
Bo Viewing a Waterfall.
Contrariwise, in Muromachi ink painting
Japanese landscape subjects are conspicuous by
their rarity. The most famous of these landscapes is Ama no Hashidate, by Sesshu (cat.
232), who also painted a Chinda Waterfall,
destroyed in the great earthquake of 1923. Mt.
Fuji would seem to have been an obvious subject, but only a handful of Fuji scrolls exist, notably ones by Kenko Shokei and Chuan Shinko,
a Kencho-ji monk-painter active in the midfifteenth century, said to have been Kenko Shokei's teacher. The Pine Beach at Miho,
originally painted as a set of sliding screens by
an anonymous fifteenth-century artist, is
extant, now mounted in scroll form. But by and
large most of the landscapes from the Muro-

machi period are generalized mountain landscapes. Small wonder that earlier writers
referred to the "Ashikaga Idealist school."
In a typical monochrome ink landscape of the
period (cat. 229) vertically dominates both the
composition and the mountains it contains.
Compared with the usual Southern Song
Chinese landscape, composition is notably
centralized, a trait certainly due to the Japanese
inheritance from Korea, which in turn learned
much from an earlier North Chinese tradition.
The verticality of format may serve two practical functions: to provide space above the picture for inscriptions, and to permit hanging
within the relatively high and narrow tokonoma, or niche for picture and object display.
But the vertical mountains are a far cry from
the typical Japanese mountains of a Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala or of Sesshu's Ama no
Hashidate (cat. 232), the gentler, rolling hills of
the "lovely" land of Yamato. Further, an
exhibition devoted to Muromachi ink painting
would reveal that the collective "staffage" of
these landscape scrolls wine shops, huts, temples, palaces, boats, fishermen, travelers, resting
scholars or reflective monks is not that of a
specific place or time but is "typical," "generic,"
or "idealized." The figures and architecture are
elements combined with nature in an ink meditation on nature, man, and Enlightenment. In a
very real sense they are as abstracted as twentieth-century Western work. The tones of ink,
the rhythm of the brush strokes, the relationship of stroke to wash, are all part of this meditative-aesthetic process. And, especially in
comparison with other East Asian paintings,
these landscapes seem more indebted to intuition than to rationality.
The last of the subject categories in Muromachi ink painting is subsumed under the
Japanese term kacho-ga (flower-and-bird painting), which is not entirely appropriate since it
also includes actual animals, legendary animals,
and vegetables and fruits. Even the old Chinese
term, "fur and feathers" (cat. 305), is not
wholly inclusive. Within this category Zen
painters worked with a broad range of subjects.
Spectacular birds (cat. 226, 227, 233, 236), often
in landscape settings depicting the four seasons,
were particularly favored, followed by the
humble sparrow, mynah, wagtail, swallow,
goose, duck, quail, eagle, and hawk. The laboring bullock and the free monkey, more rarely
the powerful tiger, make up most of the animals
used. Bamboo and orchid, previously much used
by the Chinese and also elegantly symbolic,
were particularly popular, especially for the
early amateur monk-painters such as Gyokuen
Bompo (c. 1347-c. 1420) and Tesshu Tokusai (d.
1366). Vegetables and fruits in the repertory

were particularly those used often in Zen vegetarian meals large radish (daikon), eggplant,
melons, grapes, and chestnuts. Fish or crustaceans rarely appear, and then only as adjuncts to
a Zen parable such as Josetsu's famous Catfish
and Gourd, or as staffage in close-up waterscapes. Rarely, hanging-scroll triptychs whose
central image was a figure employed kachoga
for the flanking scrolls; examples are the very
early Sakyamuni and Plum Blossoms with
inscription by the Zen abbot Hakuun Egyo in
the Rikkyoku-an of Tofuku-ji in Kyoto, and the
Byaku-e Kannon, Bamboo, and Plum in the
Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

THE "NEW MANNER" IN PAINTING

Few monochrome ink landscapes are known
before the fifteenth century. Ink alone had been
used with increasing frequency from the late
twelfth century for "sketched" iconographic
models, including whole manuals of such
sketches in handscroll format. As the tidal wave
of Chan (J: Zen) Buddhist influence began to
reach Japan from China in the thirteenth century, some ink copies or variations of the principal Zen subjects were produced, notably at
K6zan-ji in northern Kyoto. By the fourteenth
century such ink monochrome subjects were
more common, and for the first time Chinese
landscape subjects, such as the Eight Views of
the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a subject that had
been taken up by Chan painters, were being
painted in Japan by Japanese artists. The earliest
extant Japanese rendition of the Xiao and Xiang
theme was painted by Shitan (d. 1317). Landscapes by Gukei Yue (act. c. 1360-1375) and
Ka'6 (act. before 1345) followed; nevertheless
1413 (approximately) was a watershed year,
quantitatively and qualitatively, in the production of Japanese ink monochrome landscape.
Zen monk-painters
The key monument at the base of the grand
structure of Muromachi period (1333-1573) ink
painting (suiboku-ga) is the famous Catfish and
Gourd (c. 1413) by Josetsu, an illustration, in a
landscape setting, of a Zen koan, or parable:
Poised! With the gourd
He tries to pin that slippery fish.
Some oil on the gourd
Would add zest to the chase.
(Shusu [d. 1423], trans. Matsushita 1974)
The picture, now a hanging scroll with texts of
thirty-one poems and comments above, was
originally a small dais screen with the picture

fig. 4. Josetsu (act. c. 1400). Catching a Catfish with a Gourd. Japanese. Hanging scroll; ink and slight
color on paper. Taizo-in, Myoshin-ji, Kyoto

on the front and poems on the back. It was

commissioned, according to attached texts, by
the shogun, almost certainly Yoshimochi (r.
1394-1423), from the monk-painter Josetsu of
Shokoku-ji, one of the five major Zen temples
of Kyoto (the Gozan, or Five Mountains) and a
favorite establishment of Yoshimochi. The pic-

ture is most unusual. It is much wider than

high, basically a horizontal expanse with the
principal, darkest, and sharpest motifs in the
foreground a near-caricature of a man holding
a gourd, a realistic catfish in the stream, a
clump of bamboo, and around the bend in the
stream at the left, some small but heavily inked
T O W A R D CATHAY

321

rocks around which the water eddies into the

calm foreground stream. There is no middle
ground, but a moderate to faint wash suggests
mountains dotted with vegetation in the far
distance. To delineate the figure Josetsu used
sharp, angular, crackling brush strokes, clearly
influenced by the art of the Chinese master
Liang Kai (act. early 12th c.), whose works were
already to be found in the shogunal collection
begun by Yoshimitsu (r. 1368-1394). The asymmetric "one-corner" composition recalls the late
Southern Song landscapes of Ma Yuan (act.
before H9O-C. 1230) and Xia Gui (c. n8o-c.
1220), also represented among the shogun's
holdings. The bamboo quite resembles Ma
Yuan's painting of bamboo, notably in two seasonal landscapes, Spring and Summer, respectively in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the
Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.
Shusu's first poem is preceded by his preface:
"... the Taisoko [shogun] had the monk Josetsu
paint this theme in the new style [ital. added]
on the small single-leaf screen which stands
beside him and has asked various monks to add
some spontaneous comments.... "
The key phrase "the new style" has been
variously interpreted: most specifically by
Matsushita as "the Liang Kai manner"; by Fontein and Hickman as "a landscape setting [incorporated] into a zenkiga [painting of Zen
activities]"; more obviously, and for once more
plausibly, as the monochrome ink style freshly
known to the Japanese from China and Korea.
Almost certainly Josetsu knew Liang Kai's two
paintings in Yoshimitsu's Kitayama collection
representing Chan monks attaining Enlightenment, one chopping bamboo, the other tearing
up a holy text (sutra). But he also knew other
works in that collection and many more
imported from China and Korea and available at
temples and sub-imperial collections.
Travel and commerce between these two
mainland countries and the island empire had
increased steadily after a hiatus from the tenth
to the twelfth century and by 1400 had reached
a critical level for the transmission of Zen
Buddhism, the importation of works of art
(especially painting and ceramics), and the
travel of Japanese monk-artists. Yoshimitsu in
particular had expanded contacts with the
Chinese Ming court; as for Korea, the cooperation of the new Choson (Yi) dynasty (13921910) with the Japanese So clan, lords of Tsushima, in suppressing the activities of pirates
(wako) and fostering legitimate trade had
greatly increased monastic travel in both directions as well as the exchange of religious texts
and appurtenances, thereby also increasing
artistic interaction.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century
322

CIRCA 1492

fig. 5. Xia Gui (c. n8o-c. 1220). Clear and Distant Views of Streams and Hills. Chinese. Handscroll;
ink on silk. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei

Josetsu of Shokoku-ji, who enjoyed shogunal

patronage, dominated Japanese painting.
Although his following has been called an
"academy," it was far less formally organized,
but the prestige of the temple and of the shogun
assured the dominance of the Shokoku-ji lineage
in the fifteenth century over the more traditional professionals following the artist-monk
Mincho (1352-1431) of the older temple
Tofuku-ji. These latter masters worked in both
the figural iconic modes inherited from the
Chinese professional religious painters of
Ningbo in Zhejiang Province and in the "new
manner," including some ink monochrome
landscapes.
Tensho Shubun (act. first half of 15 th century) succeeded Josetsu as painter to the
shogun. He was also the business manager of
Shokoku-ji, and is recorded to have done paintings on sliding screens (fusuma-e) and to have
collaborated in the making of some religious
sculptures. No landscape or, indeed, painting
of any kind is firmly assigned to Shubun by
either signature or unassailable seal; but some
two to six scrolls and screens are considered
likely to be his. One of the two most likely is
Suishoku Ranko (Color of Stream and Hue of
Mountain), painted circa 1445 by the evidence
of an inscription one of three written by other
monks on the scroll. This beautiful image, the

personification of what earlier scholars

described as "Ashikaga Idealism," is a creative
synthesis of Southern Song (1127-1279) landscape style and a North Chinese continuation of
earlier landscape style transmitted through an
active school of ink monochrome artists in
Korea.
Shubun visited Korea in 1423-1424 as a
member of a diplomatic mission whose roster
included merchants and Zen monks. A Korean
painter named Yi Sumun (J: Ri Shubun, act. in
Japan after 1424) arrived in Japan at the same
time, perhaps sailing with Shubun on his
return. His work in the pair of landscape
screens in the Cleveland Museum of Art (cat.
267) reveals elements of the Korean adaptation
of Chinese styles. The rather bare, dry landscape grounds are characteristic of works
painted in North China under the Jin dynasty
(1115-1234), as is the nervous, searching, "pictorial" brushwork used to represent foliage and
shrubbery. The reaching, preternaturally
extended trees and the use of plateaus or "platforms" to suggest recession from fore- to
middle ground are common devices of the MaXia school of Southern Song China. The nervous "sketching" brushwork was particularly
used by the Koreans in landscapes of the early
Choson dynasty, from the fourteenth well into
the sixteenth century, and this is the brush-

work adopted by the Japanese Tensho Shubun in

Suishoku Rankd and in the other late work,
Reading in a Thatched Hut, now in the Tokyo
National Museum. The Korean contribution to
the early Japanese ink landscape tradition has
been underestimated and will repay further
study. But Tensho Shubun was the master who
transmuted these elements into a Japanese style,
in which his most famous pupil, Sesshu, was
undoubtedly trained (though he later abandoned
it), and in which other artists following Shubun,
such as Gakuo Zokyu (cat. 229), produced major
pictorial accomplishments.
Sesshu
Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506), pupil of Shubun and
monk of Shokoku-ji, would seem the logical
successor to the position of painter to the
shogun, but this remarkable individualist left
the temple in 1464 (just one year after Sotan of
Daitoku-ji assumed Shubun's stipend), perhaps
out of pique but more likely to pursue his own
way, avoiding the Onin War and the artistic
postulates of the Shokoku-ji "academy" at one
stroke. The Ouchi daimyo clan provided him
with a studio and patronage in western Honshu,
relatively far from the tensions (leading to the
outbreak of open warfare in 1467) of the capital,
and also with access to their diplomatic-cumtrading missions to China. Sesshu's trip to
China in 1468-1469, as a member of one such
mission, was a crucial event in his artistic
career. It was by no means unusual for Zen
monks, acting as highly placed servants of the
shogunate and the daimyo clans as well as the
major temples, to accompany these missions,
but Sesshu was apparently received in China as
a major figure, both as priest and painter. He
certainly encountered the paintings, and probably some of the painters, of the imperial
courthe mentioned Li Zai, and he painted a
decoration for a pavilion in the Imperial Palace
in Beijing. But in the judgment of this author,
China's most important contribution to Sesshu's
art was the native artist-scholar-professional
emphasis on the supreme importance of brushwork in the production of paintings. Scholars
have been justifiably puzzled by the lack of any
works by Sesshu antedating 1467, the year of
his departure for China. Toyo, the name he
used before adopting the name Sesshu (Snow
Boat) about 1463, has led to several hypothetical attributions, not widely credited. What
is certain is that the paintings he produced
immediately after his return from China (cat.
230) do not look like any Japanese or Korean
landscapes of the period. Further, the only two
paintings dated in the seventies the "short"
landscape handscroll of 1474 and the (destroyed

in 1923) Chinda Waterfall of 1476 already

showed the master's characteristic mature style.
In the 1474 work we find the styles of Dai Jin
(cat. 288) and Shen Chou (cat. 313-315)
refracted through the artistic personality of
Sesshu. The 1476 work is pure Sesshu. Still
later works (cat. 232, 233) clearly demonstrate
the artist's unique position within Muromachi
ink painting. In contrast to the "pictorial" and
nervous brush of the Shubun school and the
formal decorative qualities of the Kano school
(cat. 236) in the sixteenth century, Sesshu, and
to a limited extent his companion and follower
Shugetsu (cat. 227), emphasized the single
brush stroke, following the Chinese concepts of
brush handling. Theirs was not a Chinese
stroke, however; it was more uniform in width,
more firmly defined in silhouette, and more
geometric, angular in application and grouping.
Japanese painting had been, was, and is continually denigrated by Chinese critics; but
Sesshu's painting for the Board of Rites in Beijing had elicited his hosts' praise. Perhaps it was
because he had already modified an unknown
early manner in the direction of "bone structure," the prime desideratum of Chinese painting, even if Sesshu's "bones" were differently
shaped than those created by Chinese painters.
In any case, as has been indicated in our comparison of Sesshu with Shen Zhou, the Japanese
artist was a singular individual within the mainstream of fifteenth-century ink painting, able
to do what other painters could or would not
produce major landscapes of Chinese and
Japanese subjects and figure paintings as well.
Daruma and Eka is undoubtedly the greatest
icon of Zen ink painting; Ama no Hashidate
(cat. 232) is the great Japanese ink landscape of
the Muromachi period; and the Hatsuboku
Landscape of 1495 is the finest of all Japanese
essays in that extreme mode.
The painters remaining at Kyoto after the
Onin War (1467-1477) were either hereditary
Tosa masters working for the court aristocracy
(see "Traditional Painting") or "new manner"
artists patronized by the shoguns who followed
Yoshimitsu and Yoshimochi, especially Yoshimasa (1436-1490, r. 1443-1474). The years of
Yoshimasa's retirement, fruitfully devoted to
patronage and connoisseurship, were spent
almost entirely at his villa in the eastern part of
Kyoto known as Higashiyama, the name that
has come to designate Yoshimasa's cultural
achievement. For his inability to control political events or even to mitigate the catastrophic
effects of civil war, Yoshimasa compensated by
building and perfecting his personal environmentresidence, collection, literature,
drama and, not least, the doboshu (companions), whose aesthetic discernment and knowl-

fig. 6. Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506). Splashed-Ink

(Hatsuboku) Landscape. Dated to 1495. Japanese.
Hanging scroll; ink on paper. Tokyo National Museum
TOWARD CATHAY

323

edge of traditions merged all these into

"Higashiyama culture/'
The "Three Ami"
Doboshu were cultured companions to the
retired shogun, but of lowly antecedents. The
most famous were the "three Ami": Noami
(1397-1471), Geiami (1431-1485), and Soami
(d. 1525). Originally named (respectively)
Shinno, Shingei, and Shinso, the three adopted
the ami ending to denote that they were Amidist lay priests of the Ji (Timely) subsect, dedicated to the worship of Amida (Buddha of the
Western Paradise), to belief in the saving efficacy of the nembutsu ("Homage to Amida
Buddha"), and to the teachings of the Lotus
Sutra. Due principally to their able services to
the warrior class, the doboshu came to be indispensable to their masters, experts in the nonmilitary arts. Their backgrounds made them
familiar with "lowly" arts, notably popular narrative and poetry and satirical drama. In a broad
sense they began as entertainers and ended as
arbiters of taste in various aspects of culture.
Noami, poet, designer, painter, and painting
mounter, was commissioned by Yoshimasa to
compile a catalogue, the Gyomotsu One
Mokuroku, listing the Chinese works in the
collection inherited from Yoshimitsu. Naturally
this listing included paintings important in
establishing the direction of the "new manner."
Soami wrote the Kundaikan Sochdki, a catalogue-commentary on things Chinese, including the environment for and manner of
displaying treasures from the mainland. The
influence of these and other doboshu on architecture and garden design, on the emerging No
and Kyogen drama, and on the still unstructured Tea Ceremony (cha no yu), was enormous. Yoshimasa's personal gifts and
temperament permitted, in his time of retirement (1474-1490), the flourishing of a highly
sophisticated and subtle culture, whose most
characteristic manifestations were the Tea Ceremony, No drama, and shoin architecture. The
latter was residential architecture in a new,
"Japanized" Chinese manner, characterized by
informality and simplicity, with the tokonoma
(alcove for the display of paintings and objects)
as the principal innovation. The Silver Pavilion
(Ginkaku), the T6gu-do residence hall, and the
garden of Yoshimasa's compound at Higashiyama, all within the precincts of what is now
Jisho-ji in eastern Kyoto, still remain as the
finest expression of the early creative accomplishments in the "new manner" in architecture, landscape design, and related arts.
Modest in scale, the buildings reflect the ideals
in process of creation as corollary to the
324

CIRCA 1492

developing "Way of Tea": beauty, wabi (refined

austerity), and sabi (cultivated poverty or the
beauty of worn and rustic things). The "Way of
Tea" was to become a cult by the early seventeenth century.
Although the "three Ami" are usually
grouped together in any analysis of Muromachi
ink painting, their extant works are not neatly
similar in style. Noami's signed and dated
White-Robed Kannon of 1468 (cat. 224) offers a
quiet and subtle version of Sesshu's sharp, linear brushwork in the representation of a standard and oft-repeated Zen icon. Although the
handling of the setting is recognizably Japanese,
the soft face and expression owe much to the
Mu Qi image in the triptych at Daitoku-ji, the
font for all White-Robed Kannon images from
the Kamakura period on. The screens attributed
to Noami (cat. 226) are freely washed, suggestive rather than explicit, and owe much to the
late Song Chinese "boneless" manner of "fur
and feathers" painting. Still more different is
The Pine Beach at Miho in the Egawa Museum,
Hyogo Prefecture. This simple six-fold screen,
sometimes rather shakily attributed to
Noami, combines landscape in the "boneless"
style of the Chinese Song dynasty painter Mi
Fu (1051-1107) with pine trees and low, rolling
hills done in monochrome ink in the native
yamato-e manner.
Geiami's masterpiece is Viewing a Waterfall
(cat. 234), executed in 1480 in the sharp angular
style of Noami's Kannon, but far bolder and
more dramatic recalling the manner of Sesshu
equally with that of the Southern Song painter
Ma Yuan, who was well represented in the shogun's collection. Geiami's work seems thoroughly professional, reflecting nothing of the
Chinese amateur's "boneless" manner that
Noami sometimes adopted if indeed The Pine
Beach at Miho even dimly reflects any of his
artistic habits. The art of the Amis seems eclectic, reflecting something of the stylistic variety
in the shogunal collection of the Chinese painting curated and catalogued by them.
The Ami corpus even includes a touch of the
"amateur" qualities so highly valued by the
Chinese literati (wen ren) in painting, though it
was not derived from the contemporaneous wen
ren of Ming China. Rather it was apprehended
of certain aspects of Song dynasty painting
known to the Japanese from the poetic and literary texts associated with the circle of Mi Fu in
eleventh-century China. Soami's paintings in
particular, with their abundant use of "boneless" broad washes and simple, dabbing brushwork of the "Mi" style, display an effective,
even poetic, combination of pictorial devices,
including measured and subtle atmospheric
effects and bold, simple designs. He could also

improvise on the sharper and more angular

brush effects of Ma Yuan, as transmitted by
Geiami from Noami. The difficulties of discovering the Ami style (or styles) are compounded since they had no real following, hence
no later lineage whose works might reveal their
forerunners. Among the professional monkpainters who dominated Japanese art in the fifteenth century the Ami seem to have exerted
little influence; perhaps their occasional
use of a Chinese amateur manner was found
antipathetic.
Shokoku-ji, which dominated the art scene in
Kyoto for the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century, declined with the decline of
shogunal power. By the end of the century a
newer Zen temple, Daitoku-ji, and its subtemples
had become a dominant force. Under Ikkyu's
(cat. 238) abbacy Daitoku-ji flourished, a
scourge to the slack morals and discipline of the
old Gozan temples, increasingly supported by
the tea masters and especially by the prospering
merchants of Sakai, the chief port (near presentday Osaka), whose pragmatic ambience was well
known and understood by Ikkyu. Beginning
with the shadowy painter Sotan (1413-1481),
followed by the still unclear figure of Soga
Jasoku (or Dasoku, act. c. 1491), a tradition
developed that became the Soga school. Bokusai
Shoto (d. 1492), friend of Ikkyu and presumably the painter of his remarkable portraitstudy, was nominally of that line. Its later
accomplishments, in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth century, are outside the limits of
this exhibition.
Zen Painting in Kamakura
Still another significant constellation of Zen
temples, in Kamakura, just southwest of
present-day Tokyo, was also important within
the Muromachi ink painting tradition. As early
as the fourteenth century, when the Hojo regents exercised the remains of shogunal authority at Kamakura, Zen art, including "monkamateur" ink painting, flourished. The most
important of the "Five Mountains" (Gozan)
temples in Kamakura, in particular Enkaku-ji,
possessed numerous Chinese paintings: thirtynine portraits of Chinese monks and thirty-six
paintings of landscape, flower-and-bird, and
figural subjects. A 1320 inventory of the Hojo
art collection, the Butsunichi-an Komotsu
Mokuroku, records these works. Most of them
came from south China, especially the region
around Ningbo, a center of professional painting workshops producing Buddhist icons and
sets of luohan paintings with landscape backgrounds. Significantly, the great Chan temple
Jingde Si, where the visiting monk-painter

Sesshu had been signally honored, was near

Ningbo (then called Siming). When the Ashikaga clan established its shogunate in 1336,
Kyoto became shogunal as well as imperial
capital, and what power remained with the five
official Zen temples at Kamakura was dissipated, with a corresponding rise to great power
of the Gozan temples of Kyoto, especially Shokoku-ji. As the Kyoto Gozan declined with the
decline of the Ashikaga shogunate, ink painting
in Kamakura experienced a modest revival.
Kenko Shokei (act. c. 1478-1506), better
known as Kei Shoki (Secretary Kei, of Kencho-ji
in Kamakura) was the most gifted and significant painter of this region at this time. His
early training drew upon the Chinese painting
collections in Kamakura. In 1478 he went to
Kyoto, where he studied under Geiami; he
returned to Kamakura in 1480, made a second
trip to Kyoto in 1493, and is known to have
been again in Kamakura in 1499. Geiami's masterpiece of 1480, Viewing a Waterfall (cat. 234),
was the master's parting gift to Kei Shoki.
Three highly prestigious Zen monks inscribed
the painting, Osen Keisan noting the pupil's
technical progress, one of the others mentioning that Geiami had helped his pupil gain
entrance to the shogunal collections. It should
not surprise, then, that Kei Shoki's Eight Views
of Xiao and Xiang (cat. 235), is heavily indebted
to Geiami, though with three distinctive differences. Kei Shoki's ink tonality is lighter. The
profiles of rocks, cliffs and cavelike formations
were deliberately and somewhat geometrically
contorted and outlined with dark ink in the
manner of Sesshu. Finally and most individually, the dots representing lichen or moss were
made sharper and darker and more widely separated than usual. The resulting almost musical
pizzicato creates a lively and distinctive mood.
Only one later master, perhaps following the
Kei Shoki manner in part, achieved high fame:
Sesson Shukei (c. 1504-1589), from northern
Honshu, is reputed to have lived in both Kamakura and Odawara (cultural centers of the Kanto
area in his time), and to have served the
increasingly independent local daimyo of northeastern Honshu. His style was personal, even
willful, but he was active as a painter largely
after 1550.
The Kano Lineage
The dominant tradition after 1500 was Kyotobased, embodied in one of the longest-lived
"family practices" in the history of art, the
Kano school, which maintained its leading position until Japan entered modern times with the
Meiji Restoration (1868). The family lineage
began to be recorded only in the seventeenth

century but claimed ultimate descent from one

Muneshige from the Izu Peninsula, identified
as a retainer to no less a personage than Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147-1199), founder of the
Kamakura shogunate. The father of the
"founder" of the Kano school is listed as Kagenobu, a retainer to the Imagawa daimyo family
of Izu and reputedly a painter. The first contemporary or near contemporary references
contain no mention of these forebears, but
begin with Kano Masanobu (1434-1530), crediting him with at least six portraits and three sets
of Buddhist icons, but only one possible ink
painting, an Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang.
The only surviving example with a reasonably
firm attribution is a representation of Hotei, in
ink and color on paper, with an inscription by
Keijo Shurin, the Zen monk who inscribed
Sesshu's hatsuboku landscape of 1495. Hotei
is a sound, professional work, but the minimal
cliff and rock elements reveal no great ink technique. The famous Zhou Maoshu Admiring
Lotus is a delicate and atmospheric landscape,
but the seal is uncertain and the work is closer
in style to Geiami and Kei Shoki. In short, we
have little way of knowing what Masanobu's
style was, and certainly insufficient evidence to
establish him as the innovative founder of the
Kano style.
That title belongs to Kano Motonobu (14761559), whose managerial and diplomatic skills
and eclectic painting talent combined to establish a Kano school on a remarkably broad foundation. Like his father, Masanobu, he was a
professional and was also appointed painter to
the shogun. Marriage to a daughter of the Tosa
family, hereditary masters of the traditional
yamato-e style favored by the imperial court,
made Motonobu heir to that lineage. Temples,
shrines, daimyo, the shogun, and the court
commissioned numerous works to be supplied
by his flourishing workshop. His Tosa manner
can be seen in two signed painted wood panels
(ema, votive offering) of horses and grooms,
probably dating from about 1525, as well as in
narrative handscrolls of temple histories.
Motonobu's renditions of standard Zen
figural subjects, such as The Flight of the Sixth
Patriarch and Xiangyan Attaining Enlightenment (cat. 222, 223), painted about 1513 for the
hojo (abbot's quarters) of the Daisen-in of Daitoku-ji, were dominated by the decorative
requirements of wall painting. Clouds, heretofore painted as part of the background, were
brought into the foreground to provide blank
space as a contrast with the complexities of the
Chinese style rocks and small-scale figures. The
latter were rendered in sharp, angular strokes,
reflecting the heavy influence of the Southern
Song master Liang Kai, who was well repre-

sented in the collections available to the artist.

Motonobu's important innovations can best
be seen in the fusuma panels now mounted as
hanging scrolls, also painted for Daisen-in of
Daitoku-ji, circa 1510, and representing birds
and flowers in a landscape (cat. 236). Although
they may be descended from Sesshu's folding
screens of the same subject (cat. 233), the
screens show the systematic use of all means
available to produce a highly decorative and dramatic result. Many writers have emphasized the
Chinese sources of Motonobu's art, but he was
equally adept at opaque color in the Tosa style,
and artful in the placement of fragments of
landscape all the while emphasizing a firm,
even "center-line" brush stroke in dark ink to
clearly define the profiles of trees, rocks, and
mountains. Even the pine needles are organized
coolly, in a regular decorative pattern. This consistency of practice was most suitable for workshop production, and it is no wonder that the
Kano school swept the field of decorative painting and provided a well-developed starting point
for the flowering of decorative painting in the
reunified Japan of the Momoyama and Edo
periods.

CERAMICS
Rough rather than smooth. Asymmetrical
rather than symmetrical. Monochromatic and
earthy rather than polychrome and finished.
The contrast between standard Japanese and
Chinese ceramics of the late fifteenth century
could not be greater. Some of the difference can
be attributed to the desperately depressed
character of the Japanese economy and society
during and following the Onin War (14671477), centered at first in and around the
capital, Kyoto, and then spreading into the
provinces as former vassals overthrew their
appointed lords and fought each other. Notwithstanding the munificent expenditures of Yoshimasa (1436-1490, shogun 1443-1473) on his
unrivaled collection of Chinese art and his disarmingly simple but elegant Silver Pavilion
(Ginkaku-ji, begun 1483) in the Higashiyama
suburb of Kyoto, the real state of the country is
more realistically depicted in the "samurai
Westerns" of modern cinema, directed with
knowing accuracy by Kurosawa and Mizoguchi.
The taste for Chinese ceramics, especially celadons and temmoku (C: jian ware) tea bowls, as
well as for elegant bronze and brass containers,
was common among the newly powerful military chiefs and the always powerful high BudT O W A R D CATHAY

325

dhist clergy. This left patronage of native

ceramics to the townsfolk and, even more, to
the farmers.
Japan's ceramic tradition was perhaps even
older than that of China. The earliest vessels,
earthenware jars of the Jomon culture, are now
convincingly dated as early as 10,500 B.C. By
about 2500 B.C. we find the complex and fantastically modeled vessels of Middle Jomon
among the greatest of all Neolithic ceramics.
This low-fired earthenware tradition continued
through various permutations until the seventh
and eighth centuries A.D. With the rapid wholesale importation and adoption of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese culture in the Asuka,
Hakuho, and Nara periods (mid-6th-late 8th
centuries), the first glazed ceramics, some relatively high fired, make their appearance. In this
transformation of Japanese religion, culture, and
art Korea was a major intermediary. Korean
influence was most important in the development of sueki, the first Japanese ceramic to be
made on the potter's wheel. This was a gray
ware, often glazed (sometimes as a result of kiln
accident), and fired in elementary tunnel, or
"dragon/' kilns. Called anagama, these kilns
were tunnels, dug along the slope of a hill and
then roofed over, and they were capable of temperatures well over 1000 C.
Beginning in the ninth century the decline of
imperial power both in China and Japan had a
dampening effect on overseas cultural and trade
relations, except for continuous contacts among
Buddhist clergy and institutions. The development of native traditions in secular painting
(yamato-e, Japanese painting), in lacquer decoration (maki-e, powdered-metal picture), and in
stonewares was a major achievement of the
Heian period (794-1185). Kilns expanded and
proliferated mainly in the Sanage mountain
area, just east of Nagoya, a region that was to be
the major ceramic production center in Japan to
the present day.
The Kamakura period (1185-1333) marked
the renewal of substantial contacts with China
through the religious and commercial activities
of the newly powerful Zen (C: Chan) monasteries in Kamakura and (somewhat later),
Kyoto. Chinese celadons and qingbai wares as
well as jian ware (J: temmoku) tea bowls were
imported in large numbers. Especially celadonsthe beach at Kamakura is still littered at
low tide with shards of Song celadons from the
cargo ships that unloaded there in the thirteenth century. At Seto, just north of Sanage,
new kilns were built, and green- to brownglazed stonewares in Chinese shapes with Chinese and some Japanese decorative schemes were
made in quantity. That this early Seto production proved uncongenial to Japanese taste is evi326

CIRCA 1492

dent from its inability to survive the competition

of the various provincial kilns loosely called
the Six Old Kilns Shigaraki (Shiga Prefecture) and nearby Iga (Mie Prefecture); Tokoname, just south of Nagoya on Chita Peninsula;
Tamba, just north of Osaka (Hyogo Prefecture);
Bizen, east of Okayama, and Echizen, on
the Japan Sea coast (Fukui Prefecture).
By the fifteenth century there were other,
smaller, ceramic centers, but the Six Old Kilns,
along with Seto (no longer making Chinese
style vessels), were the dominant ones. All
made rather similar simple wares for similar
purposes: burial jars; storage jars for grain, tea,
pickled vegetables, and liquids; graters; platters;
bottle-vases. The manufacture entailed local
clays, often with impurities; the use of ashinduced or ash glazes; tunnel, or climbing,
kilns; and firing over many days in an oxidizing
atmosphere at about 1100 C. The key word in
any description of the products of all these kilns
is local. Their wares especially Setowere
exported to other parts of Japan, but their profiles, colors, and textures were determined by
local potters, often from farm families; local
materials; local techniques; and peculiarities of
local usage. The differences among these agricultural communities were minor, and often it
is difficult to tell their ceramics apart. Tamba
clays seem more refined, and the shapes more
regular. Echizen jars differ from Tokoname in
the shape of shoulders and neck. Bizen often
dispenses with the green to brown ash glaze in
favor of a matte biscuit surface streaked with
red fire burns. But all these wares reflect the
rough-hewn provincial circumstances of their
manufacture and use: the autonomy of local
warrior-chiefs, a need for food storage and preparation vessels, and a "fine disregard" for
refinement and perfection. These rugged, monumental vessels show clearly both the methods
and the accidents of their makingwhether
they were coiled or thrown, whether the kiln
supports or adjacent pots stuck to their skins,
whether their walls blistered or fissured or
partly collapsed during firing. All were put into
use, at first because their makers could not
afford to discard them and later, as the sixteenth
century progressed, because the growing
number of priestly and samurai devotees of the
Tea Ceremony (Cha no yu) bestowed aesthetic
cachet on what the local potters had produced of
necessity.
The Tea words wabi and sabi subtly denote
qualities of naturalness, of noble and antique yet
unassuming poverty, of a certain nostalgic sadness. Shibui means roughness, "astringency."
These qualities, which are as one with the products of the Six Old Kilns, emerged as ideals in
the world of the Onin War and the century that

followed, aptly known as "The Age of the

Country at War." Seto ware imitations of
Chinese and Korean mei-ping vases, temmoku
tea bowls brought from China's Fujian Province
or copied after these, transcriptions of Chinese
guan jars and four-handled tea storage jars from
south China, these were the formal school in
which the Japanese developed an early, Sinicized
taste in tea and its utensils. But the ultimate
appearance, not only of Tea Ceremony wares
but of the tea house and its garden as well, corresponded subconsciously and intuitively to the
rough, unassuming, provincial wares of Japan.
Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion and its garden
embody the same aesthetic character and mode
as wares from the Six Old Kilns. By the midsixteenth century tea masters (chajiri) were
designing and commissioning wares specifically
for their very special purposes. Murata Shuko
(1423-1502), the master of "informal" tea and
the revered "father" of Cha no yu is reported to
have said, "I think that Japanese utensils like
those of Ise Province (Mie Prefecture) and Bizen
Province (Okayama Prefecture), if they are
attractive and skillfully made, are superior to
Chinese ones" (Hayashiya, Nakamura, and
Hayashiya, 1974, 27-28).
The early tea masters, then, were the inheritors of a Chinese custom, informally organized
at first to accompany social gatherings and later
to be compatible with Chan Buddhist ritual,
especially meditation. The Tea Ceremony as
practiced by Shuko and his patron Yoshimasa
tended toward informality and the use of
Chinese implements ceramic tea bowls and
metal and ceramic flower holders. The shogun's
famous collection of Chinese objects and paintings, of which Noami (considered by some to
have been Shuko's tutor in Tea) was curator,
followed the Chinese taste in tea utensils. In
declaring that Japanese ceramics also were
appropriate for Tea, Shuko determined the
direction of their future change and development. This was manifested earliest at Seto:
there, beginning in the early fifteenth century,
to the repertory of vessels in the style of
Chinese qingbai, longquan celadon, and cizhou
wares were added tea bowls imitating Chinese
jian ware. These were clearly inexpensive substitutes for the highly prized Chinese temmoku,
the most efficient drinking bowl ever designed,
of which the shogun's collection included a few
very special examples. By the early sixteenth
century the Mino kilns near Seto were producing a few light-colored bowls in temmoku shape
(cat. 259) that appear to anticipate the kind of
glaze later characteristic of Shino wares made at
Mino specifically for the Tea Ceremony. Some
of these were designed by tea masters, thus
anticipating the "artist-potter" production of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Ceramic production from 1450 to 1550 was
basically conservative and subject to the serious
economic, social, and agricultural disturbances
of the time. But the fortunate link between
emerging Tea taste and the continued rural
character of native ceramics reinforced the
peculiar rough informality of Japanese ceramics
and laid the foundation for the extraordinary
developments of the Momoyama period (15731615), when the country was reunified and
prospering under the powerful dictator-shogun
Hideyoshi. While the ensuing gradual codification and complex refinement of the Tea Ceremony produced results far from the original
intentions and practices of Shuko and his disciples, the strength and persistence of the Tea
Ceremony, with its ancillary art of flower
arrangement, provided the Japanese with an
instrument for aesthetic education unmatched
by any comparable social device in world
history.

B I B L I O G R A P H I C NOTE
Harada 1937; Okudaira 1962; lenaga 1973; Hall and
Toyoda 1977; Okazaki 1977; Cleveland 1983; New York
1983.
Acker 1954; Boston 1970; Tanaka 1972; Matsushita
1974;
s/ ^' Princeton 1976;
si ' Rosenfield, in Hall and Toyoda
1977;
7; Kanazawa 1979.
Covell 1941; Boston 1970; Tanaka 1972; Covell and
Yamada 1974; Matsushita 1974; Princeton 1976; Hall
and Toyoda 1977, esp. chaps. 2,12-17; New York 1981;
Los Angeles 1985; Speiser, n.d.
Sadler 1962; Lee 1963; Castile 1971; Jenyns 1971; Hayashiya, Nakamura, and Hayashiya 1974; Cort 1979,
1981; Mikami 1983; Tokyo 1985.

TOWARD CATHAY

327

fig. i. The Kangnido Map, c. 1470. Ink on silk. Ryukoku University Library, Kyoto

328

CIRCA

1492

THE KANGNIDO: A KOREAN WORLD MAP, 1402

Gari Ledyard

'nless
U
Columbus understood a few obscure references in Marco Polo that the Venetian traveler himself had probably misunderstood,
he knew nothing of Korea when he set out on
his first voyage. He knew about China and
Japan. But if he had wanted to find the most
complete map of the world that any East Asian
country had to offer, he would have had to go to
Korea, then known as the Kingdom of Choson,
to see it. For in Choson's royal palace was a map
that not only included all of China and Japan,
but showed India, the countries of the Islamic
world, the African continent, and most astonishing of all Europe itself. Spain was easy
to recognize on this map, and Columbus might
even have found Genoa along the strangely
bending shores of its Mediterranean. Admittedly, the image of Europe needed some improvement, and Korea itself, we have to
acknowledge, was much bigger than it ought to
have been. But what map made in Europe had
as good an image of Asia as this map had of its
own world?
This essay is an attempt to understand how
such a rare cartographic gem was put together.
Like most gems, this one needs a setting, and
that is where we will begin.
The founder of the Choson dynasty
(1392-1910) was Yi S6ng-gye-i335-i4o8;
r. 1392-1398, a military man and native of the
northeast frontier, who had risen to fame for his
resistance to the Japanese marauders who had
plagued Korea throughout the fourteenth century. These were veritable armies, sometimes
two or three thousand strong, whose coastal
raids often penetrated far into the interior; no
town anywhere in the southern provinces was
safe from them. Yi's successive victories over
this menace throughout the 13805 had brought
him a national following. He came to power in
1389 in a spectacular military coup. In 1388, the
Ming dynasty, which had just ousted the Mongols
from the Liaodong area, demanded that Korea
turn over the lands northeast of the "Iron Pass"
(Chollyong) that had been administered directly
by the vanquished Yuan dynasty. Koryo refused, and ordered Yi Song-gye to attack Ming
forces in Liaodong, but Yi, thinking this policy
ill-advised, took over the government instead.
Ming, given the change, did not push its de-

mands, and the northeast territories stayed

with Koryo. Three years later, Yi took the
throne himself, bringing the Koryo dynasty to
an end after almost five centuries of rule.
This was no mere dynastic change. Into
power with Yi Song-gye came a movement of
Neo-Confucian reform that within a generation
remade Korea into a completely different kind
of kingdom. With the dispossession of the old
Koryo aristocracy, and the disestablishment of
Buddhism as a state-protected religion, the
reformers launched a political program that
proclaimed Confucian priorities in social policy,
educational reconstruction, and cultural development. Thousands of monks were laicized and
a multitude of slaves manumitted, all to reinvigorate the revenue-producing peasantry, on
lands often confiscated from monasteries. A
small but dynamic corps of Confucian ideologists rewrote the legal codes, redesigned governmental institutions and the civil service, and in
countless other ways turned the Neo-Confucian
intellectual revolution of the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) into state orthodoxy.
These men, who saw their regime as having the
classical "Mandate of Heaven," had a keen
awareness that they were effecting millennial
change, and their vision became concrete in a
5i8-year rule, which apart from China's chronologically problematical Zhou dynasty, and
Japan's very different monarchical institution,
is the longest dynastic duration in East Asian
history.
It is no accident that among the early cultural
projects of this new regime we should find a
map of the world and a map of the skies heaven
and earth themselves redefined and proclaimed
within the cadre of Korea's cultural revolution
to demonstrate the new dynasty's cosmic legitimacy. Nor is it mere coincidence that the official guiding both of these projects, Kwon Kun,
was one of the key Confucian scholars among
the reformers. 1 The star map, which purports
to be a revision of an ancient Koguryo map, was
engraved on stone in 1395. It has been the
object of several studies. 2 Here we limit ourselves to consideration of the world map.
The Honil kangni yoktae kukto chi to ("Map
of integrated regions and terrains and of historical countries and capitals"), hereafter referred

to as the Kangnido),3 was completed in 1402. It

easily predates any world map known from
either China or Japan and is therefore the oldest
such work surviving in the East Asian cartographical tradition, and the only one prior to
the Ricci world maps of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries. Although it is no
longer preserved in Korea itself, there are three
versions in Japan; of these the copy in the
Ryukoku University Library (Kyoto), which is
displayed in this exhibition, is acknowledged to
be the earliest, and in the best condition. The
principal distinguishing characteristics of the
Ryukoku copy are its generally excellent condition and its preservation of the original Kwon
Kun preface. Painted on silk and still preserving
its colors well, it is a very large map, nearly
square at 171X164 cm (67/4 X 64'A in). It
was first brought to scholarly notice by the
Japanese historical geographer Ogawa Takuji, in
1928.4
The place to begin discussion of this very
unusual map is with its preface, the crucial part
of which is translated here from the text on the
Ryukoku copy, with reference to the closely
similar version in Kwon Kun's collected works,
the Yangch'on chip.5
The world is very wide. We do not know how
many tens of millions of li there are from
China in the center to the four seas at the
outer limits, but in compressing and mapping
it on a folio sheet several feet in size, it is
indeed difficult to achieve precision; that is
why [the results of] the mapmakers have
generally been either too diffuse or too abbreviated. But the Shengjiao guangbei tu
(Map of the Vast Reach of [Civilization's]
Resounding Teaching), of Li Zemin of Wumen,
is both detailed and comprehensive; while for
the succession of emperors and kings and of
countries and capitals across time, the Hunyi
jiangli tu (Map of Integrated Regions and
Terrains), by the Tiantai monk Qingjun, is
thorough and complete. In the 4th year of
the Jianwen era (1402), Left Minister Kim
[Sahyong] of Sangju, and Right Minister Yi
[Mu] of Tanyang, during moments of rest
from their governing duties, made a comparative study of these maps and ordered Yi
Hoe, an orderly, to collate them carefully and
T O W A R D CATHAY

329

then combine them into a single map. Insofar

as the area east of the Liao River and our own
country's territory were concerned, Zemin's
map had many gaps and omissions, so Yi Hoe
supplemented and expanded the map of our
country, and added a map of Japan, making it
a new map entirely, nicely organized and well
worth admiration. One can indeed know the
world without going out of his door! By
looking at maps one can know terrestial
distances and get help in the work of government. The care and concern expended on this
map by our two gentlemen can be grasped
just by the size of its scale and dimension....
Both Kim Sahyong (1341-1407) and Yi Mu
(d. 1409) held high offices during the formative
years of the Choson dynasty, although Yi Mu
fell afoul of King Taejong and was later executed for his alleged role in a political plot. Both
went to China on diplomatic business during
their careers, and it is believed that Kim's trip,
completed in the summer of 1399, was the
occasion for obtaining the Chinese maps mentioned by Kwon Kun. 6 Both Kim and Yi probably had administrative experience with maps, as
they had reported to King Taejong on the
progress of the land surveys of the northern
frontier area in the spring of 1402, just a few
months before the world map was made.7 But
as high ministers they probably had little time
for actual cartographical work. Kwon's own role
was probably important, even though he insists
that he only stood in the background and "enjoyably watched the making of the map/' But
he was being modest and tactful, since he was
younger in age and junior in rank to the two
ministers. But the real cartographer, even though
Kwon minimizes his role, was Yi Hoe, whose
entire career was in rather low-ranking but
often special positions. His map of Korea, which
was separately known, was almost certainly the
basis for the Korean part of the world map.
Judging by Kwon's description of the monk
Qingjun's Hunyi jiangli tu, it was probably an
ordinary historical map of China, compiled in
the late fourteenth century. Qingjun (1328-1392)
was a close advisor to the Hongwu emperor
(r. 1368-1398), who was the founder of the
Ming dynasty and himself an erstwhile monk. 8
Apart from its use as a source for the Kangnido,
nothing is known of Qingjun's map. Its chief
contribution to the latter is believed to have
been the Chinese historical dimension the
indication of the areas and capitals of the earlier
dynasties, which was accomplished by a combination of textual notes and cartographic devices. Other than that, the main feature that
stuck on the Korean map was probably its
name: it reads Honil kangnido in Sino-Korean.
The international dimension of the Kangnido
330

CIRCA 1492

unquestionably came from Li Zemin's

Shengjiao guangbei tu. Li is mentioned by the
Ming cartographer Luo Hongxian (1504-64) as
a contemporary and possibly as an associate of
Zhu Siben.9 Aoyama's careful study of the
Chinese place-names on the Kangnido shows
them in general accord with those on Zhu's map,
as preserved in Luo's Guang yu tu, but with
variants that would indicate place-name changes
made in 1328-1329; this suggests that the
Kangnido's source map was made around 1330.
Since Zhu explicitly excluded most non-Chinese
areas from his map,10 Aoyama and others have
reasoned that Li Zemin must have found his
cartographic sources for these areas elsewhere,
the only plausible source being Islamic maps,
which made their appearance in China under
Mongol rule.11 Luo Hongxian's probable use of
the Guangbei tu is deduced from his maps of
the southeast and southwest maritime regions;
and it could well be from the Guangbei tu that
the Da Ming hunyi tu (Integrated map of Great
Ming), in the Palace Museum in Beijing, derives. But for the missing or incomplete detail
in the eastern areas of Manchuria, Korea, and
Japan, that map bears a very close resemblance
to the Kangnido. 12
Takahashi Tadashi has shown that the
Kangnido's Chinese transcriptions of place names
in southwest Asia, Africa, and Europe come
from Persianized Arabic originals. While some
of Takahashi's matches do not command credence in early-modern Chinese phonological
terms, he generally makes a convincing case.
One of the more interesting correspondences is
the name pl,aced by the mountains near the
Ptolemaic twin lakes that are the source of the
Nile. Though not on the Ryukoku copy of the
Kangnido, the Tenri University copy shows the
Chinese transcription Zhebulu hama, which
Takahashi identifies with Persianized Arabic
Djebel al-qamar, "Mountains of the Moon."13
All in all there are about thirty-five names
indicated on or near the African continent, most
of them in the Mediterranean area.
The European part of the map, which is said
to contain some 100 names, has not yet been
the object of an individual study, and no details
of this section of the Kangnido seem to have
been published. The Mediterranean is clearly
recognizable, as are the Iberian and Italian
peninsulas and the Adriatic, but until the placenames can be read and interpreted it will be
impossible to come to any firm understanding
of it.14
Kwon Kiin observed in his preface that the
Guangbei tu had only sketchy treatment of the
area east of the Liao River and of Korea. His
language suggests that some image of Korea,
however deficient, was on the original Guangbei

tu, and that this was supplemented or replaced

by Yi Hoe. Yi is known to have produced a map
of Korea, called the P'altodo, or "Map of the
Eight Provinces,"15 and it was probably a version of this that appears today on the Kangnido.
It is only through the Kangnido that that map is
known today.
The last major element of the map to be
supplied, as far as the Koreans were concerned,
was Japan. At this particular moment in time,
Korea's relations with the Japanese were very
difficult owing to the continuing problem of
Japanese marauders, who were beyond the ability of the Ashikaga shogunate to control. Diplomatic initiatives were in progress, and coastal
defenses and strategies were undergoing constant development. All this was backed by a
general Korean effort to improve the government's knowledge of Japan, and this involved
maps in particular. Pak Tonji, a military man
and diplomatic specialist in Japanese affairs,
made at least two trips to Japan, one in 1398-99,
the other in 1401, and the second visit resulted
in a map. A later report quoted his statement
that in 1402 he had been given a map by the
"Bishu no kami, Minamoto Mitsusuke." He
says: "It was very detailed and complete. The
entire land area was on it, all but the islands of
Iki and Tsushima, so I added them and doubled
the scale." In 1420, this report states, he formally presented this map to the Board of Rites,
which was the branch of the Choson government that handled foreign affairs. 16
It is generally assumed by Korean cartographical specialists that this map, brought back in
1401, was the basis for the representation of
Japan on the Kangnido. As maps of Japan go in
this period, the outline on this one is unusually
good: the positioning of Kyushu with respect to
Honshu is quite accurate, and the bend north of
the Kanto area is indicated better than on many
of the Gyoki-style maps then current. But for
the joining of Shikoku to Honshu, the three
main islands (adding Kyushu; Hokkaido, of
course, not included at that time) make a very
decent appearance. But this splendid effort seems
to be vitiated by orienting the Japanese portion
so that west is at the top. Worse, the whole
ensemble is positioned far to the south, so that
the first impression of a modern observer is that
the Philippines, not Japan, is under view. A
possible explanation for this is that the cartographers had run out of space on the right (east)
edge of the Kangnido, and so had to place Japan
in the open sea to the south. But since Japan
had always appeared east of southern China on
Chinese maps, there was some earlier cartographic basis for its placement there. As for the
west-at-the-top orientation, it is possible that
this was the original orientation of the map Pak

Tonji received from Minamoto Mitsusuke; indeed the earliest known map of Japan (805) has
this orientation.17 Interestingly, the Korean
makers of the Tenri and Honmyo-ji copies corrected the orientation to the north, even while
substituting more conventional Gyoki-style
outlines.
The overall disposition and bulk of the different components of the Kangnido at first make
an odd appearance. On the one hand, there is
nothing formulaic or mandated about its structure, such as the traditional European T-in-O
scheme, or the wheel arrangement of the quasicosmographic ch'onhado of later Korean popularity. The attempt here was to study the best
maps available in China, Korea, and Japan, and
put together a comprehensive, indeed "integrated" (honil), map that included every known
part of the world, truly a breathtaking objective
by the cartographic standards of any nation at
that time.
The result is inevitably strange to our eyes.
China and India, like a monstrous cell that had
not yet divided, make up a dominating mass
that overfills the entire center of the map. India
has its west coast, but is not drawn as a peninsula and so has no east coast. To the west, the
Arabian peninsula, with a clearly delineated
Persian Gulf, and the African continent, with
its tip correctly pointing south (and not east, as
on many early European maps), hang thinly
but with assurance, as if they belonged exactly
where they are. At the top of Africa the Mediterranean supports a less securely grasped Europe, and the entire north fades into mountains
and clouds. On the eastern side of the map, a
relatively massive Korea, easily occupying as
much space as the whole African continent
(which, to be sure, is unduly small) identifies
itself as a very important place, while Japan, as
if randomly flipped off the fingers into the
ocean, floats uncertainly in the South China
Sea. The relative size and disposition of the
three major East Asian countries reflects a
plausible Korean view of the world in the early
fifteenth century: Korea projecting itself as a
major East Asian state, refurbishing its traditional view of China as the major center of
civilization, and playing its eternal game of
keeping Japan as far away as possible. On the
other hand, Koreans were telling themselves
that theirs was not just an East Asian country,
but part of the larger world. Their ambition and
ability to map that world would validate their
position in it.
To say this is to begin to answer the question,
what was this map for? A map whose composition was guided by the nation's top educator
and Confucian ideologist, and presided over by
two ministers of state, was surely destined for

display in a prominent, central place in the

capital. It was probably on a screen or a wall in
some important palace building frequented by
the king and senior officials. But a good understanding of its function is hampered by the fact
that we know nothing of its history after its
completion. The Ryukoku Kangnido, judging
by Korean place-name indications, is a copy
reflecting place-name changes made around
1460.18 If its source map was the original
Kangnido, then this is the last that is heard of it.
We know little about how the Kangnido came
to Japan, but it probably arrived there independently on three separate occasions. Both the
Ryukoku and Honmyo-ji copies were evidently
part of the loot from Hideyoshi's invasion of
Korea (1592-1598). The Ryukoku map was reportedly given by Hideyoshi to the Hongan-ji,
an important Buddhist temple in Kyoto. This
institution ultimately was divided into two
branches, east and west, of which the latter
(Nishi Hongan-ji) is today associated with
Ryukoku University, which explains the map's
present location.19 The Honmyo-ji copy (paper
scroll), which is entitled Dai Minkoku chizu
(Map of Great Ming), was given to that institution by Kato Kiyomasa, its major patron and
one of the senior Japanese commanders on the
Korean expedition.20 Nothing is reported concerning the provenance of the Tenri University
copy (silk scroll, no title), but according to a
study by Unno Kazutaka, it is a "sister map" to
the Honmyo-ji scroll; his persuasive analysis of
the place names indicates that both maps were
copied in Korea about 1568, from a version
already cartographically distant from the
Ryukoku copy.21
This information permits the conclusion that
the Kangnido was probably often copied in
Korea during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is an arguable possibility that its
fortunes intersected with those of the ch'onhado
("map of all under heaven"), which came to
have a special place in Korean affections and
invariably was the first map in the map albums
which were especially popular in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. It also seems conceivable that it is reflected in an interesting map
entitled Ydji chondo (Complete terrestrial map),
dated about 1775. This map, while clearly
influenced by some Sino-Jesuit world map, also
shows a strong structural similarity to the
Kangnido, as its owner, Yi Ch'an, has pointed
out. 22 Thus Japan is righted and put in its
proper place, the respective masses of Korea,
China, and Africa are brought into more accurate relation, and England and Scandinavia
emerge from Europe. But the map as a whole,
and particularly its treatment of India and
Africa, strongly evokes the Kangnido. This is

good evidence that the Kangnido tradition was

not broken by the Hideyoshi wars, but stayed
alive in Korea for two more centuries. Somewhere in Korea a copy may be hiding still.
The Kangnido was only the first of many
distinguished scientific and cultural projects
carried out in Korea during the fifteenth century. King Sejong (r. 1419-1450) and his son
King Sejo (r. 1455-1468) extended Korean cartographical foundations by standardizing linear
measurement and assembling detailed distance
data between Seoul and the approximately 335
districts of the country. As a result of these
efforts, an excellent national map was produced
in 1463, and a complete geographical survey of
the nation, the Tongguk yoji sungam, was
compiled in 1481. During the 14305, Sejong
built an astronomical observatory and a variety
of astronomical instruments and clocks. This
provided a foundation for continued research
and observation in the reigns of his successors.
Many projects were also carried out in meteorology and agronomy which not only led to new
scientific understanding in Korea but which
provided for rationalized administration and
taxation. Movable type printing with cast metal
movable type, which Korea had pioneered among
the East Asian nations in 1242, underwent
considerable development and refinement under
the fifteenth-century kings; by the time Gutenberg perfected his press in 1454, hundreds of
editions of books in Chinese and several in
Korean had been printed in Korea with movable
type. Finally, King Sejong in 1443 invented the
Korean alphabet, an amazingly original and
scientific system which still serves as the writing system of Korea and which is the only
indigenous alphabetic system in use among the
East Asian countries.
The spirit that animated all of these projects,
and that marks the fifteenth century as perhaps
Korea's greatest, was both national and international in character, and showed a high degree of
independent thinking. Koreans did not merely
copy the Chinese culture they imported, but
recast and it into forms and institutions which
were distinctively different from China's. The
Kangnido is a perfect example of this process:
China, either as originator or transmitter, provided Korea with most of the materials for the
map, but the transformation and processing of
those materials into a genuine world map was
conceived and executed in Korea.
NOTES
i. Even though the two projects were seven years
apart, the prefaces for both appear next to each
other in Kwon's collected works, Yangch'on chip
(Collected writings of Kwon Kun) (xylograph,
Chinju, 1674; reprint, Chosen shiryo sokan, No. 13,
Keijo, Chosen sotokufu, 1937), 22/ia-zb.
TOWARD CATHAY

331

2. See W. Carl Rufus, "The celestial planisphere of

King Yi Tai-jo [T'aejo]," Transactions of the Korea
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 4 (1913),
23-72, and "Astronomy in Korea/' ibid., 26 (1936),
1-52; also Rufus and Celia Chao, "A Korean Star
Map/' Isis, 35 (1944), 316-326, and, more recently,
Joseph Needham, Lu Gwei-djen, John H. Combridge,
and John S. Major, The Hall of Heavenly Records,
Korean astronomical instruments and clocks, 13801780 (Cambridge, 1986), 154-59.
3. This is the title on the Ryukoku University copy of
the map and the one standard in the literature. The
title indicated in Kwon Kun's preface, Yangch'on
chip, 22/2a, is: Yoktae chewang honil kangnido,
"Map of historical emperors and kings and of
integrated borders and terrains."
4. Ogawa Takuji, Shina rekishi chiri kenkyu (Studies
in Chinese historical geography) (Tokyo, Kobundo
shobo, 1928), 59-62.
5. The translation is from the text transcribed from
the map by Ogawa Takuji, Shina rekishi chiri
kenkyu, 60; see also Aoyama Sadao, "Gendai no
chizu ni tsuite" (On maps of the Yuan dynasty),
Toho gakuho (Tokyo), 7 (1937): 110-11. These texts
differ very little from that in the Yangch'on chip,
22/2a-b.
6. Chongjong sillok, 1/173. Yi Mu's trip took place in
1407, after the map was finished. The Choson
dynasty's royal annals, generally called the sillok of
a given king, are cited from the edition Choson
wangjo sillok, 48 vols., plus index volume (Seoul:
National History Compilation Committee, 19551963).
7. Taejong sillok, 4/iob-na.
8. Aoyama Sadao, "Gendai no chizu . . . ," Toho gakuho
8 (1938), 122-123.
9. Luo Hongxian's preface to the ]iubian tu, partly
quoted in Aoyama, "Gendai no chizu. . .," Toho
gakuho 8 (1938), 123.
10. Zhu's preface to his lost Yu(di) tu, preserved in Luo
Hongxian's Guang yu tu, quoted in Aoyama Sadao,
"Gendai no chizu. . ., Toho gakuho 8 (1938), 105.

332

CIRCA 1492

11.
12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

The exclusion, in Zhu's own words, was: "the areas

southeast of the overflowing seas and northwest of
the sandy wastes, and all the bordering tribes and
strange territories."
See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in
China, 3 (Cambridge, 1959), 551-556.
On this map see the description of Walter Fuchs,
"Pekin no Mindai sekaizu ni tsuite" (On the Mingperiod world map in Peking," Chirigakushi kenkyu
2 (1979), 3-4, with 2 plates.
Takahashi Tadashi, "Tozen seru chusei isuramu
seikaizu," Ryukoku daigaku ronshu 374 (1963),
86-94. Takahashi cites a number of features that are
on the Tenri but not the Ryukoku map, mainly in
the African part.
Takahashi, 1963, 89, note 9, cites four Chinese
transcriptions from the European part of the map,
and matches them with names from al-Idrisi's map
of 1154. Without however knowing where on the
map these names are, it is hard to evaluate them.
The 100 names from the European part still await a
thorough study by the appropriate specialists.
This may have been the same map as the "map of
this country" presented by the State Council to
King T'aejong on 6 June 1402 (Taejong sillok,
3/273). This date coincides with the period in
which Yi Hoe would have been working on the
Kangnido, which must have been completed by the
8th lunar month of 1402 solar 19 August to 16
September the date of Kwon's preface. Yi Hoe's
death date is unknown; the latest mention of him I
have seen is during May-June 1409 (T'aejong sillok,
17/353), when he was appointed to a supernumerary post in the censorate. It is only many years
later, in 1482, that his authorship of the P'altodo
finds documentary confirmation, in 3 list of maps
which the official Yang Songji wss seeking to have
restricted to official use (Songjong sillok, 138/iob).
These events of 1401 and 1420 are reported retrospectively, in 1438; see Sejong sillok, 8o/2ia-b. For
his 1398-1399 mission to Japan, which lasted more
than 17 months, see Chongjong sillok, i/133-b. The

17.

18.
19.

20.
21.

22.

Bishu no Kami ("Governor of Bishu") Minamoto

Mitsusuke is not otherwise identified. Tsushima
3nd Iki were well-known pirate bases, of special
interest to the Koreans.
The original of this map is lost; only a midseventeenth century copy survives. This circumstance proves the possibility of such a map being
3V3ilable for Pak Tonji in the early fifteenth century.
See the illustration in Akioka Takejiro, Nihon
chizushi (Cartographic history of Japan) (Tokyo,
Kawade shobo, 1955), plate i.
Aoyama, "Gendai no chizu ni tsuite," 143-145.
See Aoyama, "Gendai no chizu ni tsuite," no; and
Takahashi, 1963, 85 and 89, n. i. Takahashi examined an unpublished catalogue of the Hongan-ji's
books and manuscripts compiled during the 18405
and 18505 and found an item entitled Rekidai teikyo
narabi sengizu (The capitals of historical emperors,
together with a usurpatious map). The rekidai
(Korean yoktae) evokes the Korean title of the map.
The "usurpatious" probably reflects Japanese umbrage either at Japan being part of a world map
which listed only foreign "emperors and kings," or
at Japan's incorrect orientation and position on the
map, both of which could have been seen as detracting from the dignity of the Japanese imperial
institution. Such nationalist attitudes were very
strong in some Japanese scholarly circles in the
mid-i9th century, when the Hongan-ji's catalogue
was being compiled.
See Akioka Takejiro, Nihon chizushi (Cartographic
history of Japan) (Tokyo, Kawade shobo, 1955),
80-81 (illustration).
Unno Kazutaka, "Tenri toshokan shozo Dai Min
kokuzu ni tsuite" (On the 'Map of Ming' held by
the Tenri University Library), Osaka gakugei daigaku
kiyo 6 (1958), 60-67, with 2 plates.
Yi Chan, Han-guk ko chido, 41. There is another
copy of this map in the Sungjon University
Museum (Taejon).
This essay has been abridged from the author's
discussion of Korean geography in J.B. Harley and
David Woodward, eds., The History of Cartography, 2, Cartography in the Traditional Asian Societies
(Chicago and London, forthcoming).

KOREAN PAINTING OF THE EARLY CHOSON PERIOD

Sherman E. Lee

K kK.orean art, especially that between 1450

and 1550, is important in its own right as a

transformation of Chinese styles and subjects
and as an influence upon the art of Japan. But
our knowledge of Korean art, especially painting, is so limited and fragmentary that our
approach to the subject should be cautious and
our conclusions most tentative. The invasions of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) in 1592 and
1597, the sack of Korea by Manchu armies in
1627 and 1636, and the annexation of the hardpressed country by Japan from 1910 to 1945,
caused both destruction and displacement of
works of art on a large scale. Even identifying
Korean works became problematic; because all
styles of Korean painting reflect in some degree
its influence from Chinese and Japanese art, and
because Korean art, with its Chinese components, was so strong an influence on Japanese
art, numerous Korean paintings, once removed
to foreign locations, came to be considered
Chinese or Japanese. Only since the Korean War
(1950-1953), and the subsequent recovery of
the Korean political, economic, and social order,
has the study of Korean painting begun slowly
to develop, producing evidence and permitting
distinctions that are clearing away the errors
and prejudices of the past. The first formal
effort in this direction was the 1973 exhibition
at the Yamato Bunkakan (Nara, Japan), Korean
Painting of Koryo and Yi Dynasties, with one
hundred works from Japanese temples and secular collections. Since then research and publication has proceeded with "all deliberate speed/'
but only a beginning has been made, and this
brief essay must be circumspect in its assumptions and provisional in its conclusions.
The massive cultural and aesthetic presence
of China, Korea's nearest neighbor, naturally
influenced the development of later Korean
painting. Chinese paintings and painters could
reach Korea easily from north China by land
through Shenyang (formerly Mukden, capital of
Manchuria), from south China by the Yellow
Sea (Huang Hai) from such ports as Ningbo on
the Bay of Hangzhou. From the north, under
both the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127)
and its conqueror, the proto-Manchu Jin empire
(1115-1234) came the early monumental landscape style. From the south came the more intimate and "romantic" landscape mode of the
Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) and the

highly colored style of Buddhist icon painting,

dating from the Tang dynasty (618-907). The
wen ren style, fully launched in China by 1350,
did not affect Korean painting until the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, except for the
distinctive massed-dot manner begun by Mi Fu
(1051-1107) and continued by the Yuan master
Gao Kegong (1248-1310). Gao's influence
resulted from the close connections between
the Korean King Ch'ungnyol (r. 1274-1308) and
the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which Gao served as
a high official in its capital at Dadu (present-day
Beijing). In Dadu Ch'ungnyol built a wellknown library called Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes (Mangwan Dang; Kim 1991,186-187),
and it is recorded that numerous celebrated
Chinese scholar-official painters such as Zhao
Mengfu visited the king and his library in
Dadu.
Korean artists who had no direct access to
Chinese painters might draw inspiration from
Chinese paintings. Scroll paintings, being eminently portable, lend themselves to collecting,
and a remarkable group of Chinese scrolls was
amassed by Prince Anp'yong (1418-1453), third
son of King Sejong (r. 1418-1450). Though the
collection is long dispersed, a list of its contents
survives, but one cannot judge the worth of the
paintings by the names of the artists. Gu Kaizhi
(c. 345~c. 406) and Wu Daozi (active c. 710760), for example, were almost certainly not
represented by genuine works, or even by works
in their styles. But the presence of fifteen
scrolls credited to Guo Xi (c. looi-c. 1090) and
two attributed to Ma Yuan (act. before ii9O-c.
1230) is significant even if the works were not
genuine, for their manners were so distinctive
as to be readily paraphrased. Guo's grand and
astringent style, expressed through the barren
plateaus and mountains of north China, and
Ma's romantic "one-cornered" compositions of
fragments of nature are both very much represented among the works produced by Korean
painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Japanese artists at least occasionally visited
Korea. The visit by Tensho Shubun in 14231424 is well documented, and others are mentioned. From these contacts, influences proceeded in both directions. Chinese Ma-Xia
school works in the shogunal collections colored
Japanese painters' attitudes to composition and
subject matter. Since both Korean and Japanese

painting were directly influenced by the

Chinese monochromatic ink painting tradition,
and since the two were also mutually influential, it is not surprising that we cannot tell
which of numerous fifteenth-century paintings
are Korean and which were executed by
Japanese artists. The discovery of paintings
bearing convincing inscriptions or seals that
offer evidence of authorship or provenance
helps to resolve this confusion. Thus the discovery, about 1968, of the ten-leaved album of
bamboo paintings by Yi Sumun (cat. 266) with
its signature, seal, and inscription effectively
separated the Korean Yi Sumun (J: Ri Shubun)
from the Japanese Tensho Shubun (cat. 228). It
also established that the album was painted in
Japan in 1424. Since Tensho Shubun returned to

fig. i. Sakyamuni and Two Attendants. Late Koryo

period. Korean. Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold
on silk. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L.
Severance Fund
TOWARD CATHAY

333

fig. 2. An Kyon (i4i8-after 1464). Dream Journey to the Peach-Blossom Land. Dated to 1447. Korean. Handscroll; ink and light color on silk. Central Library,
Tenri University, Nara

Japan from his mission to Korea in 1424, it is at

least possible that the two artists were in contact with each other just before, during, or after
the voyage.
The album itself is not clearly related to any
Chinese or Japanese representations of bamboo.
Certain leaves are related to the handling of the
bamboo in Josetsu's Catfish and Gourd, painted
as a screen for the shogun about 1413. Other
leaves recall Chinese Song and Yuan bamboo
renditions, but not by mainstream wen ren
bamboo specialists such as Li Kan or even traditionalists like Pu-Ming (Xue Chuang). Rather,
Yi Sumun's album recalls the paintings usually
assigned by the Japanese to "Tan Zhirui," pictorial treatments that emphasize bamboo in
wind, rain, moonlight, or a minimal landscape
setting. Yi's markedly personal variations on
this type of bamboo painting include an almost
geometric and planar patterning of leaves and
even rain, for which this writer knows no
precedents. Massed rocks and hills are angled to
the viewer's right, a habit also discernible in the
screens to be considered next.
Clearly Korean and Japanese monochrome ink
styles are closely related, and future studies
must take their relationships into account. Literary ties also exist, notably embodied in the
famous, if anonymous, Banana Trees in Night
Rain in the Hinohara collection (Matsushita
1974, 51-53). This work, which we still take to
be stylistically typical of early Muromachi ink
painting, was painted to accompany the composition of Chinese poetry by like-minded souls
gathered at Nanzen-ji in Kyoto to celebrate the
investiture of Yoshimochi as the fourth Ashikaga shogun. The gathering included part of a
334

CIRCA 1492

visiting Korean delegation, one of whom added

an inscription to the painting.
The Cleveland Museum's screens bearing
seals of Yi Sumun (cat. 267) only exacerbate the
problem of identifying Korean works and
Korean influences. The screens appear to have
been painted in Japan, for their particular sixfold format conforms to the developing Japanese
norm. Also, the cedar and hemlock trees owe
something to the Japanese Shubun and resemble
works usually clustered under the shadowy
name of Soga Jasoku (act. c. 1491). Later
sources identify Jasoku as a painter, perhaps
even the son of Yi Sumun, working in Echizen
Province (present day Fukui Prefecture), where
Yi came to rest after his arrival in Japan. The
Cleveland screens are unusual in their warm ink
tones, their pictorial shading of rock and hill
forms, the horizontal emphasis of the overall
compositions, the rock projections to the right,
and the major use of foreground repoussoirs,
flat in the left screen and rising in the right
one. The rough brushwork and the forced contrasts of ink tones are also unlike Japanese ink
habits of the fifteenth century but similar to
most Korean works of this time. All of this,
with the evidence of old seals, strongly suggests
this pair of screens to be significant works by or
closely associated with Yi Sumun and major
evidence for the mutual dependence of Korean
and Japanese monochrome ink painting in the
first half or three quarters of the fifteenth
century.
The dominant Choson landscape style is represented by the works of An Kyon (1418- after
1464) or those of his school. His masterpiece,
Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land,

dated to 1447, is an original and creative pictorial commentary on the north Chinese tradition
of landscape begun by Li Cheng and Guo Xi,
maintained in the north by the conquering Jin
dynasty, and transmitted to Korea at least in
part through the collection of paintings formed
by Prince Anp'yong. Although the inscriptions
on the handscroll describe the work as a depiction of Anp'yong's dream, the representation is
derived from the famous tale by Tao Yuanming
(365-427), The Haven of the Peach-Blossom
Spring, obviously well known to both the
dreamer and the artist. A classic expression of
the Confucian ideal of an earlier Golden Age,
Peach-Blossom Spring tells of a Shangri-la discovered by a poor fisherman who follows a
stream lined with magically blossoming peach
trees into a mysterious cave. The cave
debouches onto a fertile plain where lies a
pretty and prosperous village, whose inhabitants live in perfect harmony and contentment
according to Confucian precepts. They shower
the stranger with hospitality but implore him to
keep their existence a secret from the outside
world a request the fisherman promptly
betrays on returning home. Fortunately, neither
he nor anyone else finds it possible to retrace
his steps, and so the fabled land is safe forever
(Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature [New York, 1965; reprint 1967], pp. 167168).
An Kyon painted the bare, steep mountains
common in the Guo Xi style, using nervous,
interlaced linear strokes to bound the rocks and
mountains. Flat valleys with dry, barren shores
penetrate the mountains, creating depth. The
rational emphasis in this Chinese tradition was

transformed by An Kyon's imagination into a

fantastic and irrational organization ordinary
nature to the left, the fantasy world of the Peach
Blossom Land to the right, hemmed in all
around by craggy peaks and rocks. Notwithstanding Tao Yuanming's emphasis on happy
and hospitable farmers, in the painting no figures are visible. An Kyon depicted the magic
land utterly desolate of people; only in the
middle of the peach grove, beside a reach of
water, can one see a small boat with an abandoned oar, signifying the fisherman.
This knotty and expressive style was imitated
by various still unknown masters (cat. 264) for
at least a century or more, and created a manner
for the later depiction of Korea's dramatic Diamond Mountains. But it had almost no impact
in Japan after the fifteenth century.
The third style reflected in Korean ink painting was that associated with the professional
painters of Ming China, including the landscape
masters of the Zhe school (cat. 288, 290, 291).
Kang Hui-an (1419-1464) and his younger
brother Kang Hui-maeng (1424-1483) are the
best-known practitioners of this conservative
Chinese style. The older painter had acted as an
envoy to the Ming court in 1455 and, just as his
colleagues knew artists in Kyoto, Kang surely
became aware of the style practiced by the professionals at the Chinese court. His Sage in
Contemplation (cat. 265), despite its small size,
has much in common with the work of Zhang
Lu, for example (cat. 305). The younger brother's Sage Fishing (Tokyo National Museum)
practices the same simplifications of tone and
composition, adding an unusual and personal
way of modeling in light and shade in the tree
trunk, which lends a touch of Western solidity
to the image.

Although a very few Korean Buddhist paintings from the period 1450-1550 are known, the
social climate of the Choson state at this time
was hardly conducive to a flourishing art or
craft of icon painting. Beginning with the suppression of Buddhism in 1406, the faith was
dealt a series of severe blows, culminating in the
abandonment of a state-supported examination
system for the Buddhist clergy in 1501. From
this time until the de facto reign of Queen
Munjong (r. 1546-1565) Buddhist worship and
Buddhist art were hardly a factor in Korean culture. From 1549 onward the situation changed;
numerous Buddhist icons of varying degrees of
artistic interest were thenceforth produced and
are extant in Korean, Japanese, and Western
collections (Kim, New York 1991, 22-23).
Two of the paintings included here are without any contemporary parallels, indicating
either that others like them have been lost or
that Choson Confucianism encouraged heterodox individualism. The Dog and Puppies by Yi
Am (cat. 268) is a rather rough work, evidently
by an amateur princely painter. The huge discrepancies in scale among tree, puppies, and the
dog's head and tail are both naive and effective.
Its "folkish" character reflects a recurring strain
in Korean art.
Seeking Plum Flowers, attributed to Sin
Cham (cat. 269), is quite another matter, suggesting a ninth- or tenth-century Chinese
master reborn. The slow, grave rhythms of the
landscape and the lonely separations of figures
and trees all recall such Chinese masters as
Zhao Gan in his famous First Snow on the River
in Taibei. The dignity and decorum of the mood
is most appropriate for the subject. Meng
Haoran (689-740) was a noted poet of the Tang
dynasty (618-907), and like many Confucian

heroes moved from engagement at court to solitude in nature. His love for the flowering plum
tree was legendary, and the scroll, which begins
and ends with a flowering plum tree, shows him
seeking out the first blossoms of the new year.
Here one can be reasonably sure that the painting style is informed by a conscious archaism
that the artist, a Korean court official who experienced the great factional struggles which
began in the later fifteenth century, was alluding to the similar tensions and uncertainties
besetting government service in eighth-century
China. Meng Haoran put it well:
Slow and reluctant, I have waited
Day after day, till now I must go.
How sweet the roadside flowers might be
If they did not mean good-bye, old friend.
The Lords of the Realm are harsh to us
And men of affairs are not our kind.
I will turn back home, I will say no more,
I will close the gate of my old garden.
(Witter Bynner, The Chinese Translations
[New York, 1978], p. 153)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
McCune 1962; Rhodes 1970; Seoul 1972; Nara 1973;
Kim and Lee 1974; San Francisco 1979; London 1984;
Kim 1990-1991; New York 1991, esp. pp. 22-23.

TOWARD CATHAY

335

CHINA IN THE AGE OF COLUMBUS

E W. Mote
A . . . more important failure occurred in
chapter 10, which treats world affairs
between A.D. 1000 and 1500. In this case,
new scholarship since 1963 has pointed the
way to a firmer and better understanding of
what was going on in the Eurasian world, and

So writes the eminent historian William H.

McNeill in a recent essay reflecting on his
powerful work of world history, The Rise of the
West, first published in 1963; twenty-five years
later he finds it in serious need of revision in
only one or two respects. In particular he notes
that he had underestimated China's social organization, political sophistication, high development of craft industry and commerce, and
application of technology in many aspects of
life. He now presents convincing evidence that
China was the most advanced civilization in the
world throughout the half-millennium that
ended in A.D. 1500. "The rise of the west to
world hegemony/' the dominant process in
world history from that time onward into the
twentieth century, got quickly underway only
after 15OO.1
William McNeill has been one of the most
influential historians of our time. In his view
now widely held among historians the voyages of the European navigators and empire
builders in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries marked the beginnings of Europe's
rise to dominance in world history. Thereafter,
by many measures of their relative strengths,
China was overtaken by the West. Yet it would
be incorrect to speak of an absolute decline in
the quality of China's civilization, and even its
"decline" relative to a newly invigorated Europe
was within the technical means of China to have
contested, had it chosen to do so. Why it did not
contest with the European powers for control, at
least of East Asia, in the centuries following
1492 is a question that proceeds from European
assumptions about what civilizations should do;
to understand China's relationship to the rest of
the world in the time of Columbus we must set
those assumptions aside and look at the civilizations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
from the ground of their own histories.
It is not well known that Ming dynasty China
(1368-1644) had been the world's greatest maritime power in the first half of the fifteenth century. That the Chinese state did not pursue the

it is therefore obvious why I missed the

centrality of China and Chinese civilization
in these centuries.... In retrospect it is fascinating to see how some of the material for a
proper appreciation of Chinese primacy
between A.D. 1000 and 1500 was available to

possibilities in maritime expansion, but instead

turned away from that kind of engagement with
the rest of the world, has come in recent times
to intrigue many historians in China and elsewhere. McNeill observes:
Scholarly investigation of what happened in
China and why the Ming dynasty chose to
abandon overseas ventures after the 14305
remain very slender by comparison with the
abundant literature on European exploration
of the new worlds their navigation opened to
them. Comparative study of the dynamics of
Chinese and European expansion before and
after the tip point that came about 1450 to
1500 offers an especially intriguing topic for
historical inquiry today, poised as we are on
the horizon of the twenty-first century,
when, for all we know, the displacement of
the far east by the far west, that took place in
the sixteenth century, may be reversed.
It is, nonetheless, worth noting that just as
China's rise after A.D. 1000 had depended on
prior borrowings from the Middle East, so
Europe's world success after 1500 also
depended on prior borrowings from China.
. . . any geographical displacement of world
leadership must be prefaced by successful
borrowing from previously established centers of the highest prevailing skills.2
McNeill's reassessment of China's place in world
history helps us to focus on several issues: (i)
the development and diffusion of those kinds of
science and technology that supported the fifteenth century's great maritime adventures, and
China's contributions to the ebb and flow of
such international cultural borrowings; (2)
China's record as a maritime power and the role
of the state both in supporting and, by the midfifteenth century, in curtailing that; (3) some
special characteristics of China's ruling institutionsemperor, court, and scholar-officialdom;
(4) the qualities of Chinese life that might have
impressed Columbus had he succeeded in reaching "Cathay"; (5) art and Chinese civilization.

me before 1963
My excuse is that the
historiography available a generation ago still
reflected the traditional valuations of China's
past
my ignorance (and residual
Eurocentrism) hid this from me in 1963.
This indeed is the central failure of the book.

Science and Technology

Throughout the histories of all civilizations,
advances to positions of preeminence have
always been built upon the command of knowledge. The capacities to generate new knowledge
(often stimulated in some measure by
borrowing), to preserve essential knowledge so
that it accumulates and is not dissipated, and to
transmit knowledge effectively to succeeding
generations in circumstances that reward its
application and refinement these capacities
have always been crucial to the advance of civilization. Special features of Chinese life early
established the necessary conditions for the
effective command of important fields of
knowledge.3 More than three thousand years
ago China independently produced one of the
world's two or three fully developed writing
systems. Westerners in recent centuries, having
found Chinese writing difficult to learn, have
invented groundless deprecations of the
Chinese writing system that the complicatedlooking characters functioned to deny literacy,
and thereby knowledge, to the common people,
or that the nature of the writing system limited
the ability of the Chinese to think in general or
in abstract terms. But young Chinese lucky
enough to receive education learn their logographic script as easily and quickly as young
students elsewhere learn their alphabetic ones;
having learned it, they have acquired a powerful
tool better suited to China's linguistic conditions than a strictly phonetic script. The complex but culturally rich Chinese writing system
has in fact been an effective instrument of unity
and of continuity, both in transmitting knowledge and in serving the needs of governing.
China's rate of literacy in the fifteenth century,
and for many centuries before and after, appears
to have been higher than that of any other society of the premodern world. Finally, any language can adapt to any needs, can express
whatever its speakers wish to express; the
quaint notion that either the Chinese language
TOWARD CATHAY

337

Pe

or its script imposes limitations on its users'

mental activity is passe.
The philosophy of government and the outlook of the governing class were also conducive
to the systematic development of knowledge. In
addition to their long and unbroken tradition of
literacy and learning, the Chinese very early on
developed a tradition of employing learned men
in leading positions in society. Early on they
created many schools of philosophy, out of
which came the dominant Confucian school.
Confucianism, like all early schools of Chinese
thought, avoided the idea of revealed truth,
teaching in its place that men must study the
past, observe the world about them especially
the human world and apply the lessons
derived from human experience to solving
present problems. The Confucians' competitors
urged that the patterns of nature offered a
better guide to human conduct, but since no one
school claimed divine or suprarational authority,
all schools coexisted and competed for
adherents. All early Chinese trends of thought
posited similar sources of authority in human
338

CIRCA 1492

affairs: these were derived from accumulated

knowledge accessible to all through observation,
learning, and study. That environment was very
conducive to the systematic development of
knowledge.4
A further element encouraging scholarly pursuits is found in the social patterns of China,
beginning well before the Western Common
Era. China began to depart from its feudal
system of closed social classes and a perpetuating aristocratic elite by the third century B.C.,5
gradually substituting a more or less open elite
recruited on the basis of demonstrated ability
founded on education. The ideal image of the
poor but bright boy, enabled by some good fortune to acquire education, advancing up the
ladder of success to become a chief minister of
the throne, was very actively present in
Chinese minds. Such success brought material
reward to the man's family and descendants and
glory to his ancestors. However few the poor
boys who actually achieved this scenario in any
generation, the strong belief that education and
individual excellence brought success motivated

families and communities to provide education

and young men to study. The Village School
Scene (dated to 1649), a leaf from an album of
Figures in Settings by Zhang Hong, is a humorous rendering of a stock subject known since the
eleventh century. For all the deficiencies of this
very poor village school, it was a setting in
which the "poor but bright boy" (even if surrounded by mischievous or dull children and
taught by a barely competent teacher) could
begin the life of learning through which he
might rise in society. This^represents the Confucian social dynamic in its most humble and
most broadly dispersed aspect. Since official
position gained through the state civil service
examinations was not hereditary (though the
social standing conferred by office tended to
endure for a time), the motive to achieve individual success through education remained
operative from generation to generation. It was
a strongly achievement-oriented, open society.
The painting Literary Gathering in the Apricot Garden, by Xie Huan, depicts an actual
social gathering of the highest officials of the
realm in the suburbs of Beijing in 1437. ^ n tne
first of two details shown here, we see the host,
Yang Rong (1371-1440), who had been a Hanlin
Academician since 1402 and Grand Secretary
since 1419, in the red gown, at the left of the
group of three central figures. The central figure, in the blue gown, is Grand Secretary Yang
Shiqi (1365-1444), who had come into the
Hanlin Academy with Yang Rong in 1402, and
had been named Grand Secretary in 1421. His
central position and dignified posture indicate
that he is honored as the oldest person present.
In detail number two the central figure in the
red gown, shown admiring a painting held up
by a servant, is Yang Pu (1372-1446); although
long in high office, he had been named Grand
Secretary only in the previous year. Although
the "Three Yangs" shared a surname, they were
not related.
They and like-minded colleagues, however,
dominated the government under the reigns of
three emperors, beginning in the Yongle reign
(1402-1424). Zheng He's vast maritime expeditions (discussed below) had the personal support of those three emperors, but when the
Xuande emperor, Yongle's grandson, died in
1435, it was these great court officials who
guided the decision to abandon all further statesponsored voyages, as well as other expansive
and expensive involvements beyond China's
borders, just as they had influenced the decision
to withdraw from the occupation of Vietnam
after the death of the Yongle emperor in 1424.
In this group portrait we see realistically
depicted the highest level of fulfillment of the
life of Confucian learning, at the opposite end of

fig. i. Zhang Hong (i577-after 1660). Village

School Scene. Leaf i from the album Figures in Settings; ink and color on silk. Chinese. George G.
Schlenker collection: on extended loan to the University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley. Used by permission of the University Art
Museum and Professor James Cahill.

the spectrum from the rustic village schoolroom. The Three Yangs, the most powerful officials of the realm, are shown along with other
high officials engaging in cultivated conversation, writing poetry, admiring paintings and
calligraphy, enjoying the elegant leisure of a
garden gathering in April when the apricots
were in bloom. The other six officials (and in
the other known version of the painting, the
painter Xie Huan himself) include ministers of
state, the Chancellor of the National Academy,
and Hanlin academicians, some of whom had

risen to this pinnacle of prestige and power

from quite humble beginnings.
China's social characteristics, graphically
illustrated by these two paintings, emphasized
learning of broadly humanistic character, but
that included several specialized fields of scholarly endeavor that had contributed to sciences of
high practical utility.
Because the true nature of the world about
them was not revealed to the early Chinese by a
creating god, they had to observe and explain it
as best they could on their own. Prodigies of
nature seemed to demand special explanations,
and wise men systematically recorded prodigies
in order to explain them by connection with
human behavior. For that reason the systematic,
continuous observation and recording of
eclipses in China goes back to the second millennium B.C., and records of meteors and
meteorites, and even of sun spots, go back at
least to the first century B.C. This systematic
and thorough accumulation of astronomical
knowledge was elsewhere unparalleled until the
Renaissance in Europe. Instruments such as the
gnomon and the armillary sphere have been in
use in China for two to three millennia. The
methods of defining star positions in degrees
also evolved quite early, implying a knowledge
of the celestial sphere and of the orbital movements of heavenly bodies. We may suspect
some sharing of these kinds of astronomical
knowledge with ancient Babylonia and Greece,
but there is no clear evidence for the exchange
of such ideas between eastern and western Asia
until many centuries later. In general, the conceptual and the technical differences between
the astronomies of East and West are more
striking than their similarities. To take one
example, for considerably more than two thousand years the Chinese have mapped the star
patterns, or constellations, in the night sky and
have related their positions to lines drawn from

the true celestial pole to the equator; this

served the practical need of determining one's
position on the surface of the earth, thereby
aiding navigation. It also served theoretical
needs: to understand the rotations of celestial
bodies in order to explain the abnormalities as
well as the regularities of the observable universe. In mapping the heavens the Chinese
grouped the stars in constellations often quite
different from ours, and gave them names
reflecting quite different cultural allusions. This
reinforces the view that early Chinese astronomy was in its origins independent of the West.6
We see here a star-map, one of a set of five
printed in 1094, worked out by the high statesman and scientist Su Song. Joseph Needham
(Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3 [Cambridge, 1959], p. 277) has remarked that "these
are the oldest printed star-charts which we possess/' although we also have several other examples almost as early. We know from literary
sources that star-charts were plentiful in the
eleventh century and thereafter. The astronomical knowledge they recorded and transmitted was applied in navigation and other
sciences and in technology, as well as in legend
and folklore. Su Song's five star-maps of 1094
show, respectively, the northern and southern
polar projections, the north polar region, and
(divided equally between two maps, one of
which we see here) the twenty-eight xiu (lunar
mansions), including within them many of the
familiar constellations as the Chinese identified
those. The caption reads: "Map of asterisms on
either side of the equator in the southwest sky;
615 stars in 117 constellations." The horizontal
line running through the middle is the equator.
During the period of Mongol conquest and
rule over China, proclaimed as the Yuan
dynasty (1272-1368), the Mongol rulers of
Persia frequently exchanged delegations of
astronomers, mathematicians, calendrical spe-

fig. 2. Xie Huan (act. 1426-1436, d. after 1452). Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden. Chinese. Two details from the handscroll; ink and color on
silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1989.
TOWARD CATHAY

339

such as nautics; in the interrelated fields of

botany, pharmacology, and medicine; in mathematical fields such as algebra, decimal metrics,
and calendrics; in mechanics; in physics; in
alchemy and early chemistry; and even in seismology. Although Western advances in these
fields were rapid after about 1500, before that
date China was more often than not in the vanguard, as Needham has pointed out: "One has
to remember of course the earlier situation, pertaining in the [European] Middle Ages, when
nearly every science and every technique, from
cartography to chemical explosives, was much
more developed in China than in the West."9

The Voyages of Admiral Zheng He

between 1405 and 1433

fig. 3. Su Song (1020-1101). Star Map Showing Fourteen of the Lunar Mansions. Printed in 1094.
One of five star maps from Su's Xin Yi-xiang Fa-yao (New Description of an Armillary Clock);
facsimile reprint from Congshu Jicheng, vol. 1302 (Shanghai, 1937).

cialists, and other scientists with their cousins'

court at Dadu (present-day Beijing). When
Marco Polo was in China, during the reign of
Khubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294), the court astronomer was Guo Shoujing (1231-1316), one of the
outstanding scientists in all Chinese history. He
participated in the intellectual exchanges. Guo
took a new and quite advanced Persian armillary
sphere, a version that had undergone technical
refinements in Muslim Spain in the twelfth
century and was brought to China by a Persian
delegation about 1276, and adapted it to his
needs at the Astronomy Bureau. His adaptation,
the equatorial armillary sphere, was a vast con-

fig. 4. Guo Shoujing's Armillary Sphere (jian-yi,

"simplified instrument") of 1276, in an exact copy
made for the Ming Astronomical Bureau in 1437.
Cast in bronze, it measures roughly 12' x 18'; the
largest of the rings is 6' in diameter. Photograph
courtesy Thatcher Dean, Seattle.

340

CIRCA 1492

ceptual and technical break-through, what

Joseph Needham has called "the cardinal invention which marked the transition from medieval
to modern instruments/' anticipating by several
centuries the parallel conceptual advances in
instrument design later achieved in postNewtonian Europe.7 What Needham calls "an
exact fifteenth-century recasting" of Guo
Shoujing's instrument, made about 1437 for use
in the Ming astronomical bureau, still exists,8 as
do also some of the original thirteenth-century
instruments.
In short, China's practical needs for reliable
astronomy, going back to earliest historical
times, led the court to emphasize astronomical
study and to realize that new knowledge might
be gained through borrowing as well as through
independent investigation. During the half millennium from 1000 to 1500, science in China
was at a high point of creativity and inventive
applications that extended from basic sciences
such as mathematics to supporting technologies
such as precision bronze casting for making
instruments, and to such practical applications
as the refinement of the calendar, the production of maps and charts, navigation techniques
utilizing astronomy, design and use of the compass based on the science of magnetism, and
many other related branches of knowledge.
Astronomy offers but one example of that overall flowering of China's scientific knowledge.
One could easily cite parallel examples in fields

The voyages of the early Ming fleet under

Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) are so spectacular that they tend to deflect attention from the
larger contours of earlier Chinese maritime
activity. We are not sure why Zheng's government-sponsored expeditions were undertaken in
the first place, and their abrupt termination
despite brilliant successes is even more puzzling, especially when viewed from a European
perspective. These enigmas, added to the scale
of Zheng He's seven voyages, have in recent
years attracted considerable attention, but they
cannot begin to be solved without knowledge of
their Chinese historical context.
Chinese seafaring did not emerge full-blown
with Admiral Zheng He in the early fifteenth
century. It had a long prior history. A few
Chinese traders traveling in Chinese ships had
gone as far as the Straits of Malacca by the
fourth century, and others reached India and
beyond by the fifth. Chinese goods, however,
were mostly transshipped from the ports of
Southeast Asia and India, and that traffic was
for many centuries largely in the hands of Arab
seamen. It was Arabs who linked the Middle
Eastern and Mediterranean worlds with the
Chinese source of luxury craft products. Silks
and porcelains in particular drew their merchants to China. From the eighth century Arab
and Persian merchant communities in the ports
of southeast China grew large and wealthy. But
some Chinese merchants, at the same time,
gradually extended their regular voyages westward to the Persian Gulf and the coast of Africa.
Important elements of ship construction, navigational techniques, and detailed information
about ports and trade items were shared within
both the Arab/Persian and the Chinese seafaring populations. Maritime technology made its
greatest strides from about the year 1000
onward, contributing significantly to Chinese
seafarers' competitive edge in the world of the

private trader. Official China did not know or

care much about that world of commercial
activity. Despite heavy reliance on income from
tariffs during the Song dynasty (960-1279),
foreign trade, especially by sea, though encouraged at the ports where customs tariffs were
collected, was neither sponsored nor protected
by China's government, as it was in Europe. Nor
did the Chinese scholar-officials investigate it or
write much about it. Nonetheless scholars have
in recent decades reconstructed much of the
history of Chinese participation in private maritime commerce, the flourishing arena in which
Chinese shipbuilders and navigators made
important contributions to the fund of nautical
technology shared by the Asian world.10
The constant interchange among seafaring
people in Asia did not, however, lead to entirely
uniform technologies and operating modes.
Some things the Chinese did differently at sea,
mostly innovative practices that others did not
quickly copy. From the point of view of a
developing worldwide nautical science, their
contributions to marine navigation, to naval
architecture, and to sailing ship propulsion
interest us most directly.
NAVIGATION. The discovery in China of
magnetism goes back to the first millennium
B.C. , and long before Columbus the Chinese had
used a magnetic compass, which they called a
"south-pointing needle" because Chinese geomancy ascribed salubriousness to the southern
direction. This took the form of a magnetized
piece of iron mounted on a strip of wood, floated in a small basin so that it could freely
revolve, or of a magnetized needle suspended by
a thread. Simple forms of the magnetic compass
are two thousand years old, but its early uses

were mostly for magic and geomancy. Not until

some time between the ninth and eleventh centuries A.D., though still a century or two before
the Arabs or Europeans, did the Chinese take
their magnetic compass aboard ships and use it
for navigating. Refinements soon followed. A
text of 1088 notes that there is a measurable and
constant declination of a few degrees to the
east.11 The earth's magnetic variation was not
yet known in the West; by some accounts Columbus may have discovered it, as noted in his
log for September 13, during his voyage of
1492.12 The compass enabled the sea captain to
steer his ship when fog and clouds interfered
with visual navigation. But when skies were
clear, the Chinese also had recourse to star
charts, to sea charts identifying coasts and
islands, and to methods for measuring the speed
of sea currents. Printed manuals with charts and
compass bearings began to become available by
the thirteenth century.
It should be noted that printing, using woodblock technology, arose in China in the seventh
and eighth centuries, and movable-type technology was developed in the mid-eleventh century.
Because of the cumbersome nature of the
Chinese script, printing with movable type, or
typography, did not compete strongly with
woodblock printing for centuries and did not
supersede it until the late nineteenth or early
twentieth century. Nonetheless books were
plentiful and inexpensive in China from the
tenth and eleventh centuries, and contributed
greatly to China's relative advantage in the
accumulation and spread of knowledge.
It is difficult to separate the Chinese from the
Arab and Persian contributions to some of these
aspects of nautical technology. Through constant extension and refinement marine navigation in Asia was transformed from an art to

something more like a science. Up to the time of

Columbus Chinese navigational techniques significantly surpassed those of their Asian
competitors and of the Europeans (who had not
yet begun to enter Asian waters).
NAVAL ARCHITECTURE. Various aspects of
Chinese ship construction were markedly distinct from European practice. Most remarkable,
probably, was the Chinese method, used since
the second century, of building hulls divided
into water-tight compartments, a technique not
adopted in the West until the eighteenth century. Such a ship was much less apt to sink if its
hull was damaged; if the damage could be confined to one or two of the separate compartments, cargo could be salvaged from the
affected parts of the hull and emergency repairs
made while still at sea. Less dramatically, to
meet the demands of a Chinese consumer
market which valued freshness of foods, one
compartment of a fishing boat could be filled
with sea water in which the catch could be kept
alive until the ship reached port.
A feature of ship design crucial for navigation
is the sternpost rudder, likewise a Chinese
invention.This steering device, mounted at the
outside rear of the hull, could be lowered or
raised according to water depth, and on large
ships could be turned by pulleys and ropes from
the deck. The sternpost rudder greatly assisted
steering through narrow channels, crowded harbors, and river rapids. Chinese graves dating to
the first century A.D., about the time the magnetic compass was invented, have yielded clay
ship models showing the sternpost rudder; it
also appears in many paintings and was named
in literary sources of the following centuries.
Neither invention was known in Europe until a

fig. 5. Zhang Zeduan (act. beginning of izth century). Qing-ming Shang He Tu (Spring Festival on the River). From a reproduction in the author's collection.
TOWARD CATHAY

34!

thousand years later. In the West the invention

of the sternpost rudder is usually credited to the
Dutch in about 1200. It could have been an
independent invention at that time, but diffusion from China via the Arabs is much more
plausible.
Zhang Zeduan's famous Qing-Ming Shang
He Tu (Spring Festival on the River) was painted
about 1127. This detail from the long narrative
scroll depicts the Bian Canal leading from the
Yellow River into the Northern Song capital,
modern Kaifeng, just before its fall to the
Jurchen invaders in 1126. The artist was an
acute observer and superb draftsman, painting
at a time when realistic representation was
valued, and clearly he must have made his
detailed sketches from direct observation. For
those reasons his painting is an important document of twelfth-century Chinese material life.
In the detail shown here, the river transport
boats and barges are precisely drawn, their
design and structure accurately portrayed. The
sternpost rudder is clearly visible at the stern of
each boat.
PROPULSION. The Chinese had never used
ranks of human rowers to propel their large
ships. In the Mediterranean the Greco-Roman
tradition of the oared galley, especially for naval
warfare, persisted alongside that of sailing craft;
the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 was fought largely
by oared galleys, those on the Christian side
supplied mostly by Philip n of Spain; though by
1588, when Philip launched his Invincible
Armada, Spain's shift to rigged sailing craft for
the high seas was complete. The Chinese, by
contrast, had very early on developed several
important features of sailing-ship design that
obviated the need for rowers. From at least the
seventh or eighth century they used paddlewheel-propelled ships with human-powered
treadmills, especially on inland waterways. Of
greater practical significance, however, were the
advances in rigging and sail design. Their threeand four-masted sailing ships of wind-efficient
design appeared a thousand years before the
adoption of like features in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries in Europe, apparently in
imitation of Chinese models that had become
well known through Marco Polo and other
European visitors to China. For instance, in the
early centuries of the present era the Chinese
invented forms of the lug sail to aid in sailing
against or across the prevailing wind, and from
about the eighth century they adopted the outstanding Arab improvement in that technology,
the lateen sail; it spread not only to China but
thereafter also to the Mediterranean, where it
became an important element in the design of
342

CIRCA 1492

the Portuguese caravel, the preeminent "explorer's ship" of the fifteenth century.13
Ships approaching 200 feet in length and
capable of carrying 600 to 700 men had already
existed in China in the eighth century. During
the Song dynasty (960-1279), when ship-building was concentrated in the great southeastern
port cities, especially Quanzhou (Arab Zayton,
near modern Amoy on the Fujian coast), seagoing ships up to 200 feet in length and carrying up to 500 tons cargo were not uncommon.14
Since Song China was encircled by powerful
enemies on its northern and western inland
frontiers, its international commerce was concentrated in the southeastern coastal provinces,
spurring great advances in nautical technology
and maritime ventures of increasing scope. Arab
and Persian traders of this time considered the
stout and stable Chinese vessels the ships of
choice in their travels from the Persian Gulf
ports around India to China. They noted with
pleasure that the Chinese merchantmen provided convenient private cabins for travelers,
fresh water for bathing and other hygienic
amenities, and fresh foods en route luxuries
unknown in other vessels.
Curiously, it was during the Yuan dynasty,
when conquering Mongols from Inner Asia
ruled China, that the Chinese made great further progress in maritime activity.15 The
Mongol conquerors were themselves totally
unacquainted with ships and seafaring. But
Khubilai Khan's conquest of the Southern Song
dynasty between 1260 and 1280 was accomplished largely with the use of navies, on
China's inland waterways in the earlier phases,
and ultimately by coastal armadas borrowed in
significant part from Arab and Persian merchant-princes based in south China. Captured
Chinese, Korean, and other non-Mongol ship
builders and sailors created and manned the
Mongols' marine forces. Khubilai Khan planned
vastly to enlarge the Mongol realm by invading
Japan, then Indonesia, making the continued
buildup of naval forces a high priority. At the
same time the Mongol rulers had none of the
Chinese elite's disdain for commerce; they
actively promoted merchant associations, granting government funds and protection to extend
the spheres of their profit-seeking activities.16 It
is not surprising, then, that upon the founding
of the Ming dynasty in 1368 China had shipyards of considerable scale, concentrations of
skilled shipyard workers, an increasingly welldeveloped tradition of foreign trade, and a command of nautical technology significantly
enhanced by the international contacts that the
Mongols' world empire had afforded. In particular, Khubilai Khan maintained cordial relations
with those cousins whose Mongol/Persian 11-

Khan dynasty controlled the Persian Gulf and

had wide contacts in western Asia, even to the
edges of the Mediterranean.
Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming
dynasty (r. 1368-1398), also recognized the
importance of naval power and continued to
support its growth. At Nanjing, his new capital,
he founded two large shipyards where principal
elements of Zheng He's fleets were built. One
of those, directly on the banks of the Yangzi,
had six great slipways measuring 100 to 160 feet
in width and almost 1000 feet long.17 The
largest ships could easily be accommodated
there.
Comparing the various aspects of ship-building and nautical technology in the fifteenth
century, East and West, makes clear how far
China and much of Asia had surpassed Europe
by the century that saw Christopher Columbus
and Vasco da Gama carry the flags of Spain and
Portugal to the New World and to Asia. Columbus' Santa Maria was but 125 feet long and
probably of about 280 tons capacity; no ship of
da Gama's exceeded 300 tons. Zheng He, by
contrast, commanded great fleets whose largest
class of ships, the famed Treasure Ships, were at
least 300 feet in length (perhaps considerably
more),18 and appear to have averaged about 2500
tons cargo capacity, or 3100 tons displacement.
In his first expedition, 1405-1407, Zheng commanded a fleet of 317 vessels, of which 62 were
Treasure Ships. The Invincible Armada sent by
Philip ii of Spain more than a century later to
invade England comprised less than half as
many ships, of which only seven equaled 1000
tons burden.

Admiral Zheng He
Zheng He is one of the great personalities in
maritime history. He was a Chinese Muslim,
born in 1371 in Yunnan Province, in China's
southwest frontier region. Yunnan had become
significantly Islamicized under the Mongols,
and apparently Zheng was partly non-Han
Chinese; he knew some Arabic, and his father
and grandfather, who may have served the
Mongol period princes of Yunnan, had made the
pilgrimage to Mecca and bore Arabic-sounding
names. When about ten years old Zheng He was
selected for the court's eunuch service by
Chinese military forces then completing the
conquest of Yunnan for the new Ming dynasty;
that is, he was castrated and sent to the court at
Nanjing to be trained. He was perhaps fortunate
in being assigned to the staff of the Ming
founding emperor's fourth son, Zhu Di (13601424), who became emperor by usurpation in
1402 and reigned as the Yongle emperor for
twenty-two years thereafter. Educated at first in

civil learning, Zheng grew to heroic stature and

found his vocation in military service, showing
great ability under Zhu Di's command in campaigns against the Mongols along the northern
borders of China in the 13905. He was trusted,
and assigned to ever more important posts.
Having assisted Zhu Di in the civil war of 13991402, he was in line for leading assignments
when his master ascended the throne. He was
noted for his imposing appearance, courage, and
sagacity.
The Yongle emperor sat uneasily on the
throne he had usurped; his predecessor, a
nephew, was officially said to have died in the
fighting for the palaces in Nanjing, but many
believed he had in fact fled. Could he have gone
overseas with sympathetic Chinese seafaring
merchants, from which refuge he might return
to reclaim his throne? It has been said that
Zheng He's sea voyages were organized in part
to hunt for him. Whatever truth there may be
in that tale, the new emperor must also have
wished to validate his reign and elevate the
prestige of his dynasty by displaying China's
power among neighboring states. He was also
interested in the rare products, treasures, and

exotic flora and fauna that heads of tropical

states could submit in tribute or supply by
trade. Probably for a combination of such reasons the Yongle emperor decided in 1404 to
launch an expedition that would call on the
rulers of the innumerable small states between
the Indochinese peninsula and the coasts of
India; the stated purpose of this expedition was
to establish relations that would bring those
rulers to his court as bearers of tribute, therein
acknowledging a vague and politically insignificant but ritually valued form of suzerainty.
Unlike Columbus and da Gama, Zheng He was
not sent to make war, to claim territory, or to
impose imperial rule on any people, but his
awesome armada undoubtedly persuaded those
who might otherwise have been inclined to
reject the Chinese approach to international
relations. At the same time, employing his
noted diplomatic skills, he ceremoniously
bestowed rich gifts in the name of the Son of
Heaven, bringing the aura of China's magnificence into the daily life and the political considerationsof dozens of petty statelets. Only
thrice during his seven great expeditions did
this skillful diplomat resort to military action,

and then only to restore a displaced legitimate

ruler, to protect his landing party from attack,
or to put down banditry. Many of the rulers
whose courts he visited volunteered to return
with him to China; they were received at court,
lavished with gifts, and allowed to return to
their countries, often carried back on Zheng
He's next voyage. Much of East and South Asia
as well as the Middle East and the eastern
shores of Africa were made aware of China in a
new and more immediate way.
The first expeditionary force (1405-1407)
comprised 317 ships and carried 27,870 men. It
stopped in Java and along the Straits of Malacca,
then visited Indian ports before reaching its
principal destination, the court of the King of
Calicut on the Malabar Coast. On the return
voyage Zheng He was forced to put down a
pirate uprising in Sri Vijaya (present-day
Palembang, in Sumatra); he captured the pirate
chief, an overseas Chinese, and took him back to
Nanjing, where he was tried and beheaded.19
The second voyage (1407-1409) was a relatively unimportant ceremonial visit to the court
of Calicut, to attend the installation of a new
king. This was the one voyage Zheng He orgaTOWARD CATHAY

343

fig. 6. Courtyard facing the Gate of Great Harmony (Taihe Men) within the Imperial Palace, Beijing. Courtesy of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People's
Republic of China, Beijing.

nized and oversaw but did not lead in person.

He led the third voyage (1409-1411), whose
fleet numbered 48 large ships and carried
30,000 troops. This expedition visited many of
the same places as the first one but also went to
Sri Lanka, where Zheng set up a stone monument inscribed in Tamil, Persian, and Chinese,
to commemorate the gifts sent by the emperor
to the great Buddhist temple at Kandy. When
violent fighting broke out between Zheng's
forces and the king of a small Sinhalese kingdom in northern Sri Lanka, Zheng put down the
fighting, captured the king and his family, and
brought them to China. There the Yongle
emperor pardoned them and sent them home,
duly impressed.
344

CIRCA 1492

The fourth voyage (1413-1415) comprised 63

ships and 28,560 men. In addition to visiting
many places along the way to Calicut and Sri
Lanka, this expedition continued to Hormuz on
the Persian Gulf. On his way back Zheng He,
under instructions from the Chinese court,
arrested a usurper and restored the rightful
sultan of Semudera in northern Sumatra. On
their return to Nanjing the usurper was
executed.
The fifth expedition (1417-1419) was
designed primarily to escort seventeen rulers of
South Asian states home after their tributebearing missions to the Chinese throne, then to
present them with imperial gifts and to ensure
the future of good relations. On this voyage

Zheng He made his first calls along the coast of

Africa, at Mogadishu and other points; despite
the euphemistic descriptions in the official
accounts, he appears to have required shows of
considerable force to gain entry at some places.
Many ambassadors from the countries visited
accompanied the return voyage to Nanjing.
The sixth expedition (1421-1422), of 41
ships, again visited many of the same South and
Southeast Asian courts, including Calicut and
Sri Lanka, as well as Hormuz, Aden, and Africa.
It appears that Zheng He returned after less
than a year, leaving most of his fleet, divided
into separate squadrons under other leadership,
to complete the itinerary on their own.
The seventh expedition (1431-1433) was

despatched by the Yongle emperor's grandson,

who ascended the throne in 1425 and reigned as
the Xuande emperor. This expedition too, with
more than a hundred large ships, visited all the
important ports in the Indian Ocean as well as
Aden and Hormuz.20
Zheng He died, probably at Nanjing, late in
1433. Many leading scholar-bureaucrats of the
court had long opposed the expeditions as
wasteful and improper undertakings for a Confucian, agrarian-oriented society. No attempts
were made to repeat them during the remainder
of the imperial era, but Chinese private shipping and trade continued to flourish, even
through the century and more when overseas
travel and trade were formally proscribed by the
Ming government. Merchants built smaller and
more economical vessels but continued to
appear everywhere that Zheng He's armada had
stopped, and profited from the aura of Chinese
magnificence that remained.
What had Zheng He accomplished? He went
to no place that Chinese had not previously
visited, so one might conclude that he was not a
discoverer. Yet he did assemble much new and
detailed knowledge that interested Chinese elite
society and served the needs of government and
of the private merchant community. His voyages represented a new kind of undertaking in
that they were vast and well-organized expeditions carried out by fleets of the Chinese imperial government, accomplishing essentially
diplomatic objectives. It would be centuries
before any other country in the world could
emulate this achievement. Perhaps Commodore
Perry's opening of Japan in 1853 bears comparison, but Zheng He was sent to accomplish far
less specific national policy objectives, and his
means were both less threatening and more
grandiose. Perhaps the search for historical
comparisons yields little; the grand voyages of
Zheng He truly have no counterparts in other
nations' histories.
What tantalizes the reader of this account is
no doubt Zheng He's demonstration that China
could deploy larger and better-organized naval
forces than those with which Spain and Portugal
and the other European powers, in the centuries
after 1500, built their far-flung world empires.
If Zheng He had carried Vasco da Gama's or
Affonso de Albuquerque's mandate, or that of
other early European empire builders, might the
Chinese not have preempted them all in building the first great world empire of modern
times? But history is about what happened, not
about what might have been. To understand
why this outcome was not even distantly possible within the context of Chinese history, we
must look at the Chinese emperors, their court,
and their government.

China's Ruling Institutions

in the Age of Columbus
Zheng He served a ruler worthy of his own
unusual abilities. The Yongle emperor was a
man of vast energies and ambitions. The
Xuande emperor, Yongle's grandson, who
despatched Zheng He on his last expedition,
also attempted a vigorous and martial rule. But
after his death in 1435 the Ming dynasty continued for two hundred more years without producing another emperor in the heroic mold.
Some of the later Ming rulers were tyrannical,
others willful or perverse. A few were conscientious about governing, but none was notably
effective or strong. Does a two-hundred-year
succession of second-rate emperors not imply a
weak and declining state? Not necessarily, in the
case of China, where the government in the
later dynasties of imperial rule was a bureaucratic machine of large scale and virtually unshakable stability. The rulers' personal
characteristics of course had some impact on
government, but they did not threaten the continuity of Ming statecraft. The tone of government was set more by the bureaucrats the
scholar-officials than by the rulers. Among
the scholar-officials who staffed the bureaucracy
a conservative devotion to tradition and
precedent guaranteed the continuity of procedures and policies and maintained the daily
operations of governing.
In the 14208 the Yongle emperor had moved
the Ming capital from Nanjing (which remained
the "secondary capital") to Beijing. There he
built the imperial palace city, the so-called Forbidden City, more or less as it is today. The
inner, walled, palace city, lying within the great
outer walls of Beijing, represented the other
terminus of Zheng He's diplomatic ventures. It
was built to overawe not only the Ming dynasty's native subjects, but also the rulers and
envoys of other states. At dawn on New Year's
Day the court officials and the assembled
envoys made a long formal progress along the
central axis of the Imperial City. After passing
through the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'an
Men) and proceeding northward through the
Meridian Gate (Wu Men), they arrived at the
vast courtyard shown here. Beyond this looms
the Gate of Great Harmony (Taihe Men),
entrance to the "center of the very center of the
world." About 600 feet on each side, this vast
courtyard and its buildings appear today as
rebuilt after a fire in 1627, when the five
bridges in the foreground were added. Nevertheless, despite that rebuilding, and changes in
all the names after the end of the Ming dynasty
in 1644, this scene appears more or less as the
envoys of foreign states would have seen the

Ming palaces at a New Year's reception in the

14905. After crossing this courtyard and passing
through the Gate of Great Harmonyhardly a
gate in our sense, but a massive building with
portals they would have entered a second
courtyard of similar size, where they would
have formed ranks facing the throne hall centered at the far side. This is an immense building of perfect proportions, with gleaming
yellow-glazed roof tiles and deep red walls, set
high upon a three-tiered white marble terrace
with carved white marble steps and balustrades.
To reach that courtyard facing the throne hall
was the climax of their diplomatic journeys.
Here they waited, to prostrate themselves on
the signal that the emperor was entering the
throne hall. But they would not enter that hall,
and probably would not even catch a glimpse of
his august person, unless the envoys were later
entertained at a formal banquet served there
and on the surrounding terraces. Even then,
they probably would never speak to the
emperor, who was always seated high above
them, surrounded by eunuchs and palace
guards. Behind the immense throne hall, where
outsiders never were allowed, lay a vast complex of palaces, courts, and gardens, making up
the private residence quarters of the imperial
family.
All relations with envoys, even those who
were heads of state, were mediated by the Ministry of Rites, not by an agency functioning like
a modern department of foreign relations.
Ritual defined relations among states. Ritual
projected, in a highly formalized manner, the
Chinese view of their place in the world: China
occupied the center of the world and possessed
its only true culture; civilization radiated outward from that center; China's nearer neighbors
shared more fully in that civilization, as
evidenced by their use of the Chinese script and
their acceptance of the authority of China's classics, which taught how humankind should live;
the farther the distance from China to a foreign
state, the more benighted it was expected to be.
But this sublime arrogance did not imply an
immutable we/they distinction. On the contrary, as non-Chinese peoples progressed in
their assimilation to civilized i.e., Chinese
patterns, they were to be considered increasingly "Chinese," that is, "civilized." It was
assumed that in time all people would wish to
make that progress. Yet even those who had
advanced little or not at all toward that goal
were still regarded as human beings, with the
potential for becoming worthy persons. The
emperor was, in principle, obligated to extend
benevolence to all who appeared at his court,
and his agents were expected to do the same to
all fellow humans, unless they were so untamed
T O W A R D CATHAY

345

afto be dangerous; then defensive measures

were appropriate. Such savages apart, it was
assumed that all borderland peoples, and even
some of those at more remote distance, would
want to come to Beijing and show their reepect
for the Chinese throne.
That is the underlying meaning of what is
called the "tribute system" of Chinese foreign
relations. Notwithstanding that idealized picture of the world, the Ming Chinese could be
far more pragmatic when circumstances
demanded. Central Kingdom or no, they knew
that China could be coerced by steppe nomads
with superior military power, and they could
devise realistic settlements under the camouflage of ritualized patterns. And the high officials of the court (as no doubt also the private
merchants) were not unaware that tribute-bearing envoys and heads of state were motivated
more by the opportunities for trade that tribute
status brought than by any belief in Chinese
cosmological pretensions. Yet the antique, ideal
world view, revived by the Ming, was upheld to
the fullest extent possible. Zheng He's management of the situations he encountered in his
voyagings can be explained only by invoking
the grandiose model of the tribute system.
China's search for advantage in its relations with
other peoples had to be measured in those ideal,
nonmaterial terms. To abandon the notion that
China was the center of the civilized world
would have been too destabilizing. Chinese did
not have to think seriously about such a possibility until the nineteenth century.
There was also a more practical, domestic,
side to the equation. The statesmen who supervised China's government knew what made
their society function. China was a highly
developed agrarian society, and a generally
prosperous one. The ordinary Chinese of Ming
times probably were the best-clothed and
housed and best-nourished people in the
world.21 Their family-based village society
worked rather well, held together, as they all
knew, by Confucian ethical norms. The state
flourished when village society was stable and
the agricultural population prospered. China
had no hereditary aristocracy. Its elite stratum
was dominated by the scholar-officials, recruited
by civil-service examinations, and these hailed
predominantly from the villages, whether or
not from farming households. The scholarofficials thus understood the needs of the farming people; they came from the same social
base. China, moreover, had a self-sufficient
economy. With very few exceptions (cavalry
horses, copper, etc.) it had no need to import
any essentials, and exports of China's famed
luxury goods and craft products were considered a boon to the outside world rather than
346

CIRCA 1492

an economic necessity to China. From a twentieth-century point of view we can argue that an
expanded foreign trade could have greatly
enriched the producers of its goods and the
ports through which they passed, and might
also have stimulated significant growth
throughout the entire economy. Yet it is not
difficult to see why China's scholar-bureaucrats
could overlook the potential benefits of trade;
they were concerned with social needs for
which appropriate solutions lay elsewhere.
Guarding the northern land frontiers along
which the steppe peoples could invade, limiting
the burdens of government that fell on the
hard-working farmer-taxpayers, and upholding
the time-honored conservative social ideals
these tasks had prior claim on their political
energies. Overseas adventurism was to be
avoided. When the two early emperors who for
personal reasons had sponsored the expeditions
of Zheng He had passed from the scene, it is not
surprising that the high officials of the court
would urge discontinuing the voyages on the
grounds of waste and frivolity. After 1434
China totally abandoned all state interest in
such expeditions. A powerful sense of competition among the European powers drove their
empire-building efforts. China was not in competition with any other state; the very idea was
inconceivable.

Europe's Awareness of the East

in the Age of Columbus
In the "Prologue" to his Diary of the First
Voyage in 1492-1493, Christopher Columbus
addressed the king and queen of Spain:
Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and
Princes, and enemies o f . . . . all idolatries and
heresies, you thought of sending me, Cristobal Colon, to the said regions of India to see
the said princes and the peoples and the
lands.... And you commanded that I should
not go to the East by land, by which way it is
customary to go, but by the route to the
West, by which route we do not know for
certain that anyone previously has passed.22
Columbus describes "the said regions of India"
in terms drawn from Marco Polo's description
of China and Inner Asia, as Polo observed them
in the late thirteenth century. That was a time
when Europeans traveled to the East via the
Central Asian caravan routes in unusually large
numbers. Yet Columbus' comments in the
"Prologue" suggest that India and China had
merged in his consciousness, for clearly he was
referring to China. Columbus suggested to Ferdinand and Isabella that their sending him to
the East was the next logical step in pursuing

Christendom's triumph over "idolatries and

heresies." He wrote:
Later in that same month [following the
January surrender of Granada], because of the
report that I had given to Your Highnesses
about the lands of India and about a prince
who is called "Grand Khan," which means in
our Spanish language "King of Kings"; how,
many times, he and his predecessors had sent
to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy
Faith in order that they might instruct him in
it and how the Holy Father had never provided them
That clearly refers to the exchanges between the
popes and the Mongol emperors Chinggis (Genghis) Khan and his successors.23 Chinggis
Khan's grandson Khubilai Khan ruled China at
the time of Marco Polo's sojourn there, 12751292, and figured prominently in Polo's
account. It seems certain that Columbus had
long known about the Venetian's great travel
book, but his careful study of it and the marginal notes he made on his copy of the book
may date from a time following his return from
the First Voyage in 1493.24
Polo's account mentioned earlier contacts
between Christendom and the Mongol world
empire, but his references to Christian groups
encountered in China concerned Inner Asian
Nestorian Christians, not missionaries and
travelers from Catholic Europe. It was not until
two or three years after he left China for Venice
in 1292 that the first Franciscan fathers sent
from Rome arrived in Khanbaliq (as the Mongols called their capital, present-day Beijing).
They began a new chapter in relations between
Europe and China, but one which appears to
have slipped from European memory by the late
fifteenth century. The Franciscan friar John of
Montecorvino (c. 1246-1328) left Europe for
China by the overland route in 1289, probably
arriving in 1293 or 1294- On the basis of his
hopeful letters the Pope elevated him in 1307 to
Archbishop of Khanbaliq and sent him seven
suffragan bishops, followed by three more in
1310. Some of his letters sent back to Rome
have survived. We also have letters from the
Franciscan Andrew of Perugia, Bishop of Zayton
(present-day Quanzhou, the great port city in
Fujian), whose last known letter to Rome is
dated 1326.25 A number of letters to Europe
from these missionaries and envoys in China
are preserved in European collections, as are
documents referring to the dispatch of Europeans to the empire of the Great Khans. These
and other travelers from Rome to China created
an interesting though not enduring chapter in
Christian mission history, but one that was

quite forgotten until modern researches

brought it again to light.
Western Asians, particularly Persians and
Arabs, continued to travel to China by the caravan routes and by sea, right up to the time of
Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama. The
extensive knowledge about the East that they
had garnered also was unknown to the Europeans of Columbus' time, who might have
learned much from it. Columbus, for example,
would have learned that the Mongol conquerors
had been driven out of China and supplanted by
the native Ming dynasty in 1368, and that the
Chinese emperor was no longer to be addressed
as "Grand Khan," as in Marco Polo's day.
Had Christopher Columbus sailed around the
Americas (as Magellan did about thirty years
later) and reached China, what might have happened? He is unlikely to have dealt with China
as an equal of Spain, and the Chinese court
surely would have regarded as preposterous his
claim to represent a superior (or even an equal)
power. He might have gained admission to the
New Year's reception for foreign envoys in
1493 if he had remained obsequiously respectful, and if his captains and crews had not committed too flagrant atrocities on shore, and if he
had, with Chinese assistance, worked out ritually appropriate forms of petitioning the court
for the privilege of offering abject obeisance in
the name of his uncultured, hence pitiable,
sovereigns. But to judge from the experience of
the first Portuguese envoy, Tome Pires, twentyfive years later, little would have followed from
that. In 1517 a few Portuguese ships from fleets
based at Goa, where in the years 1507-1515 de
Albuquerque had created the colonial base of
Portugal's Asian commercial empire, sailed
from a newly won Portuguese base at Malacca,
up the China coast to the Pearl River estuary
below Canton, very near modern Hong Kong.
Attempting to intimidate the natives before
pressing for commercial advantages, the Portuguese opened fire from their ships, then went
ashore and behaved outrageously in the standard manner of Iberian empire builders. Pires, a
reasonable man, was put ashore, and after three
years' delay at Canton was finally allowed to
proceed to Beijing, in 1520, to present his
credentials from King Manuel i. There he
waited, a guest of the state in a locked and
guarded compound, until May 1521. Then,
because the reigning emperor had died on April
20, he was told that no court reception would be
feasible and was sent back to Canton. In Canton
he and his entourage were imprisoned by local
authorities still smarting over the destructive
bellicosity of the fleet that had brought Pires to
Canton four years earlier. Eventually he and
most of his party died in prison, but one of the

Portuguese, Cristavao Vieira, had letters

smuggled from jail which eventually reached
the Portuguese court, giving lengthy and perceptive information about conditions that might
affect future trade and diplomacy with China.
As the historian Donald Lach has noted, despite
his many frustrations and sufferings " . . . Vieira
is fair enough to point out that the [Zhengde,
r. 1506-1521] emperor responded with characteristic, condescending grace to the complaints
of his officials against the Portuguese by
reminding them: 'These people do not know
our customs; gradually they will get to known
[sic] them.' Such sentiments were in harmony
with the compassion traditionally expected in
China from the emperor in his dealings with
'barbarians'. "26 Compassion, to be sure, was
forthcoming, but not trade on Western terms.

Columbus in China
Had Columbus actually met the emperor of
China at the end of the fifteenth century, he
would have encountered a singularly mildappearing, mediocre little man. The Hongzhi
emperor, whose personal name was Zhu Youtang, was born in 1470 and ascended the throne
in 1487. On his death in 1505 he left China to
his erratic and impulsive son the Zhengde
emperor (r. 1506-1521), who died just after
Tome Pires arrived in Beijing. One eminent
biographer called Zhu Youtang "the most
humane" of the Ming rulers and observed that
this emperor apparently was the only monogamous ruler in all of China's long imperial
history.27 Within traditional Chinese historiography the Hongzhi emperor was adjudged
the best Ming emperor, not for any remarkable
accomplishments of his reign, but because in his
relations with his scholar-officials he was so
different from the other rulers of the dynasty.
He was temperate and self-restrained, sincerely
committed to being a good ruler according to
Confucian prescriptions. He was particularly
respectful toward his advisors and officials, usually accepting their advice and striving to meet
the high standards of performance they
demanded of him. They and their kind wrote
the histories that judged him; posthumously
they praised him lavishly, trying to make of him
a model they could use to curb the rash behavior of later rulers. But although he was generally compliant and hard-working, careful
reading of the historical record reveals that he
was in fact no paragon: he was subject to petty
jealousies, somewhat avaricious, subservient to
his constantly complaining wife and protective
of her relatives, who in time-honored fashion
abused their relationship to the throne for their
own advantage.

Columbus would have seen none of that. He

might have observed the emperor from afar at a
few audiences, for this emperor attended all
such ceremonies, exerting all his feeble strength
to observe the weighty proprieties of his office.
But in any relations with the king of Spain or in
the treatment of his envoy Zhu Youtang would
have unquestioningly accepted the traditionally
reasoned counsel of his ministers. Though he
enjoyed the position of an oriental despot, the
Hongzhi emperor was a mouse who never
roared.
Columbus' arrival in the West Indies had an
immediate and almost cataclysmic effect on the
native population. In China his presence would
have made scarcely a ripple. Tact and patience
might have produced opportunities to discuss
Sino-Spanish relations with a few officials of
middling rank. Most Chinese scholars and officials of the time would have treated him courteously, and some would no doubt have been
curious to learn about far-off Europe, and might
have recorded their conversations with him. But
it would have been very difficult for him to
break through attitudes formed in the days of
Zheng He's voyages, when dozens of heads of
state and hundreds of envoys were brought to
the Chinese court. Columbus would not have
been seen as important in any way to the interests of China, only as another petty barbarian
who was to be overwhelmingly impressed and
sent on his way.
Knowing that he was an impressionable
observer, we can speculate on the kinds of
descriptions he might have left had he traveled
down the Grand Canal from Beijing, stopping in
the great cities, wandering through the markets
seeking luxuries to take back to Ferdinand and
Isabella, watching skilled craftsmen make their
fine products, or observing the industrious
farmers at work in their terraced rice fields,
orchards, and fish ponds. The wealth of China
would have struck him keenly, as it had Marco
Polo two hundred years earlier. Doubtless he
would not have understood most of the refinements of elite life, the gardens and libraries, the
elegant restraint in furnishings, or the intricate
conventions of social behavior. Innumerable
aspects of Chinese decorative arts, those gaudier
things that later Europeans avidly imitated in
the pursuit of what they called "chinoiserie,"
might well have taken his fancy, but the higher
arts, especially Chinese poetry and painting,
may well have remained quite beyond his ken.
It is also unlikely that the scholarly traditions of
China, and their manifestations in all aspects of
public and private life, would have been in any
degree intelligible to him. A century later the
Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), employing superb qualities of intellect and spirit
TOWARD CATHAY

347

through almost thirty years of profound study

in China (1583-1610), was able to penetrate
these dimensions of Ming life; no foreign envoy
passing through could have done so.
If Columbus had brought along missionaries,
they are not likely to have possessed the qualities of Ricci and his colleagues a century later.
And even the remarkable Jesuits, imbued with
powerful new currents of learning that marked
the age of Galileo in Europe, and for their time
radical in accommodating to the cultures of Asia
in order to convey their Christian doctrines, had
scant success as evangelists in the two or more
centuries following Ricci's arrival in China in
1583. But the streets full of well-dressed people
of all classes, the shops full of foods and craft
products in a variety unknown to Europe, and
the bustling, stable life of the entire society
surely would have impressed Columbus deeply.
He might have thought China poorly defended,
open to invasion and conquest, and he might,
however incorrectly, have seen the Chinese
people as pacific, unprepared to defend their
coastal regions and incapable of soldiery. Within
the century that followed, several Iberian
observers would urge their rulers to invade and
conquer these affluent heathens who did not
accept the superiority of European faith and
morals. But Columbus would more likely have
seen opportunities for profitable trade and
would have urged a Spanish foothold near
China from which to exploit this font of riches.
Precisely such an end was accomplished by the
Manila Galleon, connecting Spanish Mexico
with the Spanish colony in the Philippines from
the 1570$, and by the base at Macao which
China granted to the Portuguese in the 1550$.
Columbus might well have anticipated such
developments.
Art and Chinese Civilization
We can assume that Columbus himself, along
with the entire late fifteenth-century European
world from which he came, would have been
quite unable to understand the high arts of
China. Five hundred years later, however, we
can confidently say the West has achieved considerable appreciation and understanding of
non-Western art on its own terms. There are, to
be sure, difficulties in penetrating the cultural
mode that united calligraphy, poetry, and painting in mutually reinforcing forms of expression. To see the calligraphy in the context of its
artistic traditions, to comprehend the richness
and subtlety of the poems' allusions, to view the
paintings with a cultivated connoisseur's eye
especially in those examples where the three are
united in one creative act places very high
demands on the viewer. Even modern Chinese
348

CIRCA 1492

reach full understanding of these supreme elements of Chinese art only with long study and
cultivation. Even without such expertise,
however, we can grasp the elements the evocative power of the poem or the inscription, the
line and movement of the calligraphy, the way
in which the inscription and its calligraphy
complete the painting. The inspired union of
those "three perfections" (san jue) represents
the highest level of Chinese aestheticism.
One of the most interesting differences
between the place of the arts in European and
Chinese societies is embodied in their respective definitions of the high arts, as differentiated from the artistic crafts. Another is revealed
in the composition of the two artistic communities, East and West, and the relationship of
those to their societies at large.
The Chinese held calligraphy, poetry, and
painting to be the most important of the high
arts. Other forms of belles lettres, especially the
prose essay and prose-poem, also had venerable
ranking among the high arts. Literary drama
was a late-comer (eleventh or twelfth century at
the earliest) and held marginal status. A few
"minor arts," like the design and cutting of
seals, rather peculiar to East Asian civilizations,
also were respected adjuncts of the high arts. A
remarkably short list compared with its Western
counterpart. Most notably lacking is sculpture.
The Chinese did not idealize the human form as
such, nor did they focus on it in painting or in
sculpture. There was virtually no secular sculpture of the human form. Whether in sculpture
or in painting, the Chinese rarely depicted the
nude or seminude human body. The occasional
exceptions were Buddhist figures, and later
other religious figures, often depicted for votive
purposes; they might for iconographic reasons
display a bare upper torso. Beggars' emaciated
bodies might be depicted barely concealed by
rags (cat. 296), but such works are few and
hardly exalt the perfection of the human body.
Chinese religious art, to be sure, drew on and
perpetuated something of Buddhism's Indian
backgrounds, and Indian Buddhist art was
strongly influenced by classic Grecian models.
In China something of that influence informs
early wall paintings and the earlier Buddhist
sculpture. But although we now regard much of
that output, along with later Buddhist sculpture
and painting, as superb art, the Chinese in the
main regarded it as religious paraphernalia and
temple decoration. The sculptor-craftsmen were
almost all anonymous. Many more Buddhist
sculptures are found in museums outside of
China than in China, where they have been
granted the status of art objects only in the
present century.
Human portraiture in both painting and

sculpture was a minor tradition; again, the portraitists were mostly unknown figures who
practiced a craft, not held to be artists of significance. The contrast with Renaissance Europe
could scarcely be greater. To be sure, we have
portraits of the Ming rulers and their consorts
(cat. 283), but only because those were needed
for the rituals of the imperial ancestral shrines.
They were not painted to be viewed and
admired by any sector of society. Stylized portraits of other members of the Ming elite exist
for analogous reasons. A few real and remarkable portraits of Ming personages (cat. 310),
some by eminent painters, show that the skills
of portraiture were present. Yet such portraits
are rare. Human figures in Ming paintings are
mostly adjuncts of landscape scenes. Paintings
in which human figures are the central subjectscity street scenes, genre paintings, depictions of Buddhas and demons, hermits and
heroes were mostly the work of professional
artists rather than cultivated literati amateurs.
And paintings done for a living rather than for
self-expression came, not long after Columbus'
time, to be viewed with disdain by the Chinese
elite. In any event, the depiction of human figures in Chinese painting was far less important
than in Western painting of that time.28
The artistic crafts, on the other hand,
included a great many kinds of things that
Chinese connoisseurs valued most highly.
Antiquity itself conferred worth. Antique
bronze vessels and mirrors and antique carved
jades were held in reverence, less as art objects
than as links to the historic origins of the civilization. Also prized were rubbings of famous
early calligraphies that had been incised in
stone; rare printed works too were esteemed,
especially the finest of Song dynasty printings.
Song dynasty ceramics, which generally combined beauty with antiquity, were collected with
passion. Ming scholar-officials were avid collectors, and were served by dealer-experts of high
erudition (cat. 293).
At the same time contemporary crafts
metalwares, porcelains, lacquers, and carvings in
stone, ivory, horn, bamboo, and wood were
also treasured by Ming collectors. The accouterments of the scholar's study enjoyed particular
cachet: brush pots, brush washers, and brush
rests, inkstones and inkstone boxes, water droppers (for making ink), wrist rests, seals, boxes of
all sizes and shapes, vases and small decorative
screens for the writing table. In the informal
writings of the age we find many stories of
superb objects, of their craftsmen-makers
(emerging from millennia of anonymity), and
of the competition among collectors to acquire
their creations.
On another level, the commoner crafts added

much to the color and richness of ordinary

Chinese daily life; the markets were filled with
carvings and embroideries, basketry and lacquerwares, the coarser ceramics, woodblock
prints for use as icons and as holiday decorations, metalwares and leather goods, an
unending list. The skills to produce most of
these, alas, have nearly vanished within the
present century, and we now elevate surviving
examples to the level of art.
A second point has to do with the composition of the artistic community in China as compared with the West. The artist community in
traditional China (if we exclude that portion
which produced what the Chinese held to be
crafts) was virtually identical with the entire
elite stratum, the literati (wen ren), men who,
whether in or out of office, had been educated
in the classical tradition for government service.
This phenomenon, for which there are peculiarly Chinese reasons, seems .to have few parallels in other societies. Let us look at the social
dimensions of the three most valued of the arts:
poetry, calligraphy, and painting.
All males sufficiently learned to sit for the
civil service examinations through which one
entered the official elite (perhaps, in 1500, close
to one million, including qualified men who
never in fact sat for the examinations) were
expected to be able to compose technically correct poetry. Poets of true genius may not have
been more numerous in China than elsewhere,
but people who wrote competent poetry were.
Moreover the best poets were within the mainstream of elite society: scholar-officials, or qualified to be so. Their poetry addressed the entire
elite sector of their society as fellow poets; both
the creation of poetry and its critical appraisal
were acts in which all participated. Of course,
the great poets were recognized as such, but
their achievement differed only in degree from
the rest.
This description of the composition of the
artist community applies as well to calligraphers
and painters. Because ink, paper, and brush
were the basic tools of literacy as well as high
art, everyone who could write commanded the
same techniques as the great calligraphers and
understood from their own practice what made
calligraphy the greatest of the arts. In the West
calligraphy was an applied craft of limited scope
for artistic expression; although there too every
literate person shared the calligrapher's material
means, that did not give either of them access to
a supreme form of high art. 29
As for painting, in the West it was a technologically specialized skill employing brushes,
pigments, oils, and canvas or other painting
grounds tools with which the average person
never dealt. In the West, too, great painters

might be recognized as persons of rare genius,

might even be granted elite rank and titles, but
they still were considered to be highly specialized craftsmen. In China painting and calligraphy were less exotic, precisely because the tools
employed were ubiquitous. To be sure, the great
artists felt themselves to be extraordinary, apart
from others, and may have scorned the aesthetic
capacities of more ordinary persons; nonetheless the fact that their technical means were
employed by millions of persons in the uses of
everyday life, kept the spheres of high art
within the psychic access of all who put brush to
paper.
Out of those circumstances emerged an artistic community of strikingly different composition from its counterpart in the West. The
broad elite social base of its arts set China apart;
Chinese artists were expected to be persons of
cultivation and of social responsibility, who
shared the roles and aspirations of all the elite.
If they were not actually in government service,
they were eligible for it or qualified by their
education to seek such eligibility. Their art was
an expected accompaniment of their public roles
as social leaders and government officials; when
despite their qualifications they pointedly chose
to forgo those roles, the Chinese considered
them to be "recluses/ which did not signify
anchorites withdrawn from society but simply
persons of learning who did not strive for office.
Shen Zhou (1427-1509), the most noted
painter of the period, is an example (see cat.
310-315); he came of a landed family near
Suzhou that for four generations had produced
noted artists and poets. None of those forebears
had held office, and Shen himself steadfastly
refused to do so, although he was in intimate
contact with many high officials of his region.
Shen collected books, art objects, antiquities,
and craft products, and he dabbled in a number
of minor arts and curious pursuits. One may
almost conclude that the high arts, as defined in
China, were those that the entire elite stratum
could be expected to practice at some level of
competence. The artistic crafts, on the other
hand, were so specialized in technique, or so
removed from the concerns of the literati, that
those "persons of literary cultivation" (wen ren}
seldom tried their hands at them, though they
might admire and avidly collect the best of the
craft objects to enhance their living environments. Thus their cultivated taste affected
trends in both the arts and the artistic crafts.
Finally, a note on a different social dimension
of Chinese painting is in order. From the Song
dynasty onward a development occurred that in
some measure bifurcated the history of Chinese
painting. Song emperors of whom several
were gifted painters and/or calligraphers, and a

larger number were discerning connoisseurs

established and maintained a court academy, an
assemblage of painters and calligraphers of outstanding technical skills, who received official
titles and salaries. Most of them possessed the
same general educational backgrounds as the
scholar-officials but did not have to follow the
official career patterns of examination and
administrative appointment. They were the
"kept artists" of the court, and their surviving
works are in the main descriptive and decorative, reflecting the tastes of their imperial
patrons. Chinese literati, however, considered
themselves, not their rulers, to be the true
guardians of China's cultural values, and the
literati of Song (and even more so of Yuan)
increasingly adopted the philosophical position
that the true function of painting was neither to
describe nor to decorate but to express the emotional responses and the enduring character of
the painter. The corollary of this position was
that only a truly estimable man could be a true
painter. Some outstanding poet-painters and
calligraphers among the Song literati began to
make a point of painting and writing in a deliberately artless, markedly non-professional (but
often no less skillful) style to display the artistic
independence and integrity comprised in this
expressive ideal. This philosophical division
introduced competition and intellectual stimulus, and led to some of the highest achievements
in Song and Yuan dynasty arts.
By Ming times this wen ren stance had
become a somewhat precious affectation, but
one nonetheless widely and firmly held. In
their roles as historians or critics of art the literati could not ignore the Ming period professional painters (often associated loosely with
something approaching a court academy), and
they genuinely admired some of them. Yet they
unfailingly upheld the "amateur" wen ren
painters as the bearers of a nobler tradition. The
distinction between the amateur wen ren (and
often semi-recluse) painters and the professional painters was exaggerated by traditionminded that is by almost all Chinese art
historians. Until recent years Western students
of Chinese art have tended to follow their lead.
It is now clear that the distinction is somewhat
artificial and that a few important painters of
the mid-Ming period moved in both milieus.
Even so, most art historians from that time to
this have clung to the distinction and exalted
wen ren art over that of the professionals.
The present exhibition boldly departs from
that tradition in giving equal weight to painters
of both categories. Here we can see masterpieces of both, note their obviously distinctive
qualities, and perhaps discover our own preferences. Probably the often bolder, more colorful,
T O W A R D CATHAY

349

and technically more skillful court and professional paintings will be more readily appreciated
by modern audiences. Wen ren paintings are apt
to be more reticent and allusive, to stress the
subtlety of brushwork and the unity of poetry,
calligraphy, and painting in a word, they are
apt to be "more Chinese/' The historian must
see the importance of each in the context of
Chinese civilization. The exhibition-goer may
respond directly and freely to the paintings,
without regard to the accumulation of Chinese
traditional attitudes. In this as in so many other
ways, the present exhibition provides rare
opportunities for discovery.

NOTES
1. William H. McNeill, "THE RISE OF THE WEST
After Twenty-five Years/' Journal of World History
i (No. i, Spring 1990): 1-21. The passages quoted
are found on pp. 5, 6, 18. McNeill's article is quoted
with the kind permission of the copyright holders. I
am grateful to my colleague Professor Frank A.
Kierman, Jr., for calling my attention to McNeill's
article when it was first published, and for invaluable advice on other aspects of the present essay.
2. McNeill, 1990,18-19.
3. There were, nonetheless, limitations in preNewtonian science and proto-science, East and West,
that had to be overcome before any civilization could
move onward into the transforming process of modernization that characterizes the modern world.
That Europe did overcome those limitations, not that
China did not, prior to its fuller interactions with
the West from the nineteenth century onward, is
the remarkable feature of the world's modern history. For an analytical discussion of this with special
reference to China, see Marion J. Levy, Jr., Modernization and the Structure of Societies, 2 vols.
(Princeton, N.J., 1966), 2:716-722, especially 720721. I am indebted to Levy for much of the conceptual framework which informs my study of China.
4. See the discussion of the world of early Chinese
thought in F. W. Mote, Intellectual Foundations of
China, zd ed. (New York, 1989).
5. In the present century it has become commonplace
to refer to the Chinese past up to 1949 as "feudal" or
"semi-feudal," but that is a misnomer dictated by
Marxian historical fancies. Here we shall use
"feudal" as the name of a particular type of political
organization (the model for that being post-Roman
Empire European feudalism). It should not be used
as a catchall pejorative for a precapitalist or presocialist stage of any national history.
6. Except where otherwise stated, the information
about early Chinese science in this and following
discussions is drawn largely from the writings of
Joseph Needham and his associates; see in particular
Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1959), and vol. 4:3 (1971); Clerks and
Craftsmen in China and the West (Cambridge,
1970); and The Grand Titration (London, 1969).

350

CIRCA

1492

7. Needham 1970, 9.
8. See illustration in Needham 1970 facing p. 440, and
a fuller discussion of Yuan and Ming astronomical
instruments in Needham 1959, 3:367.
9. Needham 1970, 405. The quoted passage comes
from an important essay entitled "The Evolution of
Oecumenical Science" (1966), offering a full range
of comparisons in all branches of science and technology, and showing how " . . . from the time of Galileo ( + 1600) onwards, the 'new, or experimental
philosophy' of the West ineluctably overtook the
levels reached by the natural philosophy of
C h i n a . . . " (p. 397).
10. For a brief review of the interaction of Chinese with
other Asian seafarers, see "China, Europe, and the
Seas Between" (1966), in Needham 1970, 4070.
11. See Needham 1971, 4:249-251, 293. The Chinese
text on which Needham bases much of his argument
is Shen Gua (1029-1093), Meng Xi Bi-Tan, written
1086-1091. For a recent study (in Chinese) of the
natural science content of this famed miscellany, see
Anhui Provincial University of Science and Technology, Meng Xi Bi-Tan Yizhu (Translation and annotation of the Meng Xi Bi-Tan, Natural Science
Portions) (Hefei, Anhui, 1979), especially pp. 140143, on the compass and magnetic declination.
12. The Journal of Christopher Columbus (Diario),
trans. Cecil Jane, ed. L. A. Vigneras, reprint (New
York, 1989), 9, 11, entries for 13 September and 17
September; also 204, n. 10. A number of scholars
have doubted that this comment on the diurnal rotation of the polestar, first noted on these dates, indicate that Columbus or his contemporaries had an
understanding either of polarity or of magnetic
declination. See Needham 1971, 308. Recent scholarship appears to confirm the view that magnetic
declination was discovered only much later in
the West.
13. Needham 1971, 4:3, provides a useful summary at
the end of the section on "Nautics" (pp. 695-699) of
the distinctive features of Chinese marine technology and their possible influence on the rest of the
world.
14. Needham 1971, 4:3, 588-617, (summary) 696-697.
15. Mongol period contributions to the growth of
Chinese maritime strength are stressed in a recent
survey by Chen Dezhi, "Yuan-dai hai-wai jiao-tong
yu Ming-chu Zheng He Xia Xi-yang," (Yuan Period
Overseas Traffic in Relation to the Early Ming Voyages of Zheng He to the Western Oceans), in Zheng
He Xia Xi-yang Lun-wen Ji (Collection of Essays
Relating to Zheng He's Voyages), ed. Committee for
the Observance of the 58oth Anniversary of Zheng
He's Voyages, Nanjing University, vol. 2 (Nanjing,
1985), pp. 190-202. For the Mongol rulers' attitudes
toward commerce in Yuan China, see Elizabeth
Endicott-West, "Merchant Associations in Yuan
China: The Ortoy" Asia Major 3:2 (1989), 127-154.
16. Chen Xinxiong, "Song Yuan de Yuan-yang mao-yi
chuan" (The Long-range Merchant Vessels of the
Song and Yuan Dynasties), in Zhongguo Haiyang
fa-zhan shi lun-wen ji (Collected Essays on Chinese
Maritime Development), ed. Academia Sinica, Committee for the Study of Chinese Maritime Development, vol. 2 (Taibei, 1986). This very important
article, utilizing recent archaeological and documen-

tary research, is able to correct and supplement at

many points the section on "Nautics" in Needham
1959' 4:317. Hong Changzhuo, "Bao chuan chang yi-zhi ji baochuan chi-du wen-ti" (The Site of the Treasure Ship
Shipyard and the Question of the Size of the Treasure Ships), in Nanjing 1985, especially the archaeological drawing on p. 41.
18. Needham (and many others) has said that wooden
ships could not get much longer than 300 feet, and
thus he discounts the reports in Ming period sources
describing the Treasure Ships as over 400 feet long.
Recent Chinese scholarship tends to credit the possibility of the larger figure; see, for example, Hong
Changzhuo in Nanjing 1985, 37-50.
19. From literary evidence we know that Chinese settlement at Palembang goes back to the eleventh century; see the brief historical background note in
Wolfgang Franke, Chinese Epigraphical Materials in
Indonesia, Volume One, Sumatra (Singapore, 1988),
445. No epigraphical evidence earlier than the fifteenth century has yet been found, however, for
Chinese settlement in Sumatra.
20. Much of the foregoing is based on the splendid
study by J. V. G. Mills accompanying his translation
of a descriptive account, the book by Ma Huan,
Ying-yai sheng-lan: The Overall Survey of the
Ocean's Shores [1433] (Cambridge, 1970).
21. See F. W. Mote, "Yuan and Ming," in Food in
Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical
Perspectives, ed. K. C. Chang (New Haven and
London 1977), 193-258.
22. The quotations from Columbus' Diario here are
drawn from Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr.,
The DIARIO of Christopher Columbus's First
Voyage to America, 1492-93 (Norman, Okla., 1989),

*7/ 1923. See Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great

Khans (London, 1971).
24. Juan Gil, ed., El Libro de Marco Polo anotado por
Cristobal Colon (Madrid, 1987).
25. See A.C. Moule, Christians in China before 1550
(London and New York, 1930), especially chapter 7,
"The Mission of the Franciscan Brothers," 166-215.
26. Cited from Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of
Europe, vol. i, The Century of Discovery, book 2
(Chicago, 1965), 735.
27. Chaoying Fang, "Chu Yu-t'ang [Zhu Youtang]" in
Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644, ed. L.
Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang (New York,
1976), 1:375-380. A more extensive account of this
emperor's reign is found in Cambridge History of
China, ed. F. W. Mote and Denis C. Twitchett, vol.
7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part One (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 343-402.
28. The best treatment of the subject is in Thomas
Lawton, Chinese Figure Painting [exh. cat., Freer
Gallery of Art] (Washington, 1973).
29. For a discussion of the differences between calligraphy in the West and in China (including East Asia
where the Chinese script is used), see F. W. Mote,
Preface to Calligraphy and the East Asian Book,
special catalogue issue of The Gest Library Journal,
vol. 2, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 3-17. This volume also
has been published as a book by Shambhala Press,
Boston, 1989.

ART IN CHINA 1450-1550

Sherman E. Lee
CALLIGRAPHY
Ode to the Pomegranate and Melon (cat. 284),
with calligraphy by Wang Ao and painting by
Shen Zhou, poses the basic problem in Western
understanding of Chinese painting. The calligraphy of the poem occupies most of the space
and is signed by the famous scholar-official.
Notwithstanding the justified fame of the
painter, Shen Zhou, his painting is not signed
but only sealed, and it occupies less than a third
of the paper surface. Clearly the calligraphy and
the poem it expresses are more "important"
than the painting. How did this come about in
China?
Intentions and circumstance combined to
make this the case. Just as thoughts moral,
historical, practical, and aesthetic were
expressed through letters and words in the
West, in China they were expressed through
characters ultimately derived from pictograms.
These characters, throughout their many permutations over time and mediums, retained a
certain pictorial nature, whether in the form of
oracle-bone inscriptions (jia gu wen, first
engraved c. 1500 B.C. on bovine or cervid scapulae or on tortoise plastrons), or cast bronze vessels with inscriptions in seal script (zhuan shu,
so called from its much later use in carved seals,
but first appearing on bronzes of c. 1300 B.C.),
or in the form of characters fluently brushed in
ink, which we know to have been common from
the second century B.C. Over time they may
have lost their directly pictographic appearance,
but they acquired an abstract pictorial character.
Every Chinese character is a composition
within itself, made up of as many as twentyfour brush strokes. It is also a single unit, to be
arranged with other comparable units in meaningful sequence, usually in vertical order, top to
bottom, then right to left. The form of the earliest extant brushed characters, in use by early
Eastern Han (A.D. 25-220), is called li shu,
"clerical script," the direct ancestor of later
forms, to which it is clearly comparable. Commerce, and the civil administration and military
defense of a large empire, led in Eastern Han to
the development of an abbreviated script,
quickly written and easily read, called cao shu
(cursive script); and a compromise between the
angularity and horizontal emphasis of // shu and
the elongated, curving cao shu produced kai
shuf regular (or standard) script, which has

remained the basic form of Chinese writing

until the present day. In later centuries cao shu
became an art form, subject to infinite variations even to the point of illegibility (kuang cao
shu, crazy cursive), and the province not of prosaic administrators and merchants but of
inspired and/or drunken literati or ecstatic Chan
priests. Semicursive (xing shu), a looser and less
formal version of regular script, with some linking of strokes within a character, came into general use during Northern Song (960-1127), and
the Northern Song style of xing shu saw a considerable revival during the Ming.
Merely memorizing thousands of characters
and their meanings required years of study;
skillfully writing them required lifelong dedication and practice with tutors or esteemed
models whether originals, copies, or rubbings
of stone engravings after brushed originals. To
read easily was obviously a prerequisite for education and for advancement as scholar and official. To write well was equally, though less
obviously, a prerequisite to one's standing as a
gentleman-scholar (wen ren). According to
Confucian teachings writing was the moral act
of a man fulfilling his responsibility to society
at large as embodied in the emperor and to his
particular family and clan, past, present, and
future. Writing revealed one's character and
individuality.
The materials of writing, no less than its
philosophical and moral significance, were of
serious importance to the influential minority
that studied writing. The standard ground for
calligraphy was paper of many kinds and textures, made from mulberry bark, bamboo fiber,
or hemp, plus some rarer, more exotic mixes.
Paper, like silk, could be sized or unsized, hard
and smooth or soft and absorbent, and became
the preferred ground for the calligrapher. From
the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) the gentlemenscholars also preferred paper as the ground for
their new style of "written" painting, whose
true subject was brushwork and whose true
theme was the nature of the artist. Silk, which
had earlier been the preferred medium, continued to be used mostly by the court and "professional" painters.
Ink, too, was a subtle and complex matter, a
substance capable of embellishing the messages
of the writer. The characteristics of the basic

cake or stick of soot were affected by its binding

adhesive and by the addition of substances that
modified its "color" from cool to warm, from
blue to red-brown tones of black and gray.
The brush was the most amazing of the tools
for writing, variously flexible, huge to tiny in
size, able to hold a a considerable reservoir of
ink, able to discharge it in the finest hairline.
The hair, fur, and bristle used for brush tips
came from rabbits, deer, horses, goats, and pigs.
The skillful selection and use of ground, ink,
and brush made possible a flexible, subtle, and
powerful technique capable of producing the
widest possible range of calligraphy, expressively suited to the mood of a text or the feelings of the writer. Significantly, these tools of
the calligrapher's trade were the same tools used
by the painter, with the addition, often, of color.
And the discipline of writing characters complex in themselves and visually related to the
other characters in the text was comparable to,
and often identical with, the discipline of providing the structure of pictures.
It is not surprising, then that the critical literature on calligraphy, beginning as early as the
second century A.D., should anticipate the
slightly later criticism of painting. Striking
poetic and metaphoric descriptions of the
appearances and qualities of writing provide the
two most important of the Six Canons of Painting of Xie He (c. A.D. 500):
-L. Sympathetic responsiveness of the
vital spirit
2. Structural [bone] method in the use of
the brush
(Translation by Alexander C. Soper)
Both of these canons derived from concepts
about calligraphy and music involving resonance
and vibration and the induction of these from
the movement of creation into the object of
creation and from object to beholder. All commentators on calligraphy recognized the moral
and instinctive nature of creativity but also the
need for models from history and for rational
organization. The earliest of these commentaries on calligraphy sets the tone for subsequent criticism:
In writing first release your thoughts and
give yourself up to feeling; let your nature do
TOWARD CATHAY

351

whatever it pleases. Then start to write. If

pressed in any way, even if one had [a brush
of] hair from hares of [Zhongshan], one
would not do well.
In writing first sit silently, quiet your mind
and let yourself be free. Do not speak, do not
breathe fully; rest reverently, feeling as if
you were before a most respected person.
Then all will be well.
In its forms writing should have images like
sitting, walking, flying, moving, going,
coming; lying down, rising; sorrowful,
joyous; like worms eating leaves, like sharp
swords and spears, strong bow and hard
arrow; like water and fire, mist and cloud,
sun and moon, all freely shown this can be
called calligraphy.
(Cai Yong (A.D. 133-192), quoted by Chen Si
(13th c.) in Shu Yuan Ying Hua, translated in
Driscoll and Toda, 1935, 1964.)
The dynamism of Chinese calligraphy is implicit
in the numerous critical writings on the subject. From the initial intention and conception,
through the physical activity of fingers, hand,
arm, and body in making the conception visible
through brush, ink, and paper, to the "sympathetic responsiveness" of the beholder to the
implications of the appearance of the result, the
relationships are complex and shifting, hardly
amenable to "laws" of doing and appreciating.
Yet from Cai Yong on a continual sequence of
writers about calligraphy have attempted to lend
objectivity and precision to standards expressed
largely in metaphor.
These efforts increased markedly during the
Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), accompanying the pragmatic Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi
(1130-1200). The rise of wen ren pictorial art in
the fourteenth century imposed on brushwork
an explicitly historical approach and more
stringent standards. While this may have inhibited the majority of practitioners after 1400, it
also provided a firm base line and frame of
reference for the determined individualism of
the outstanding masters of Ming (1368-1644)
and Qing (1644-1911).

COURT, PROFESSIONAL, AND

"HETERODOX" PAINTING
The death of Shen Zhou in 1509 marks almost
exactly the midpoint of the Ming dynasty, both
chronologically and artistically. By the end of
the sixteenth century critical opinion had been
preempted by the literati (wen ren), at whose
hands conservative painters and painting
received a widespread and lasting bad press. A
352

CIRCA 1492

retroactive reordering of the history of Chinese

painting was accomplished, making the socalled Southern school the sole transmitter of a
tradition that the literati designated true and
orthodox. The "others" were piled into a socalled Northern school, henceforth decried as
false and unorthodox. We have seen such dramatic revisionism in other times and other
places in French neoclassicism of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, or
within the numerous "isms" of the twentieth
century. The Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) wen
ren masters were instrumental in this rewriting
of history, but the murderous hostility of the
first Ming emperor toward their immediate successors virtually wiped out the wen ren tradition in the first half of Ming. Indeed, from the
removal of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing
in 1421 until the early sixteenth century Ming
art was dominated by traditional painters building creatively on the past by the artists called
to court and by professional painters elsewhere,
especially in the regions of Suzhou and Nanjing. If a narrow trail of literati connects the late
Yuan and early Ming painters of that persuasion
with Shen Zhou (only four artists make up this
trail Wang Fu [1362-1416], Liu Jue [14101472], Du Qiong [1396-1474], and Yao Shou
[1423-1495] and of these only Wang Fu can
claim major importance), a broad road runs from
earlier dynasties to the professional masters.

Court Painters and the

Embroidered Uniform Guard
One of the major concerns of all Ming
emperors, beginning with the Xuande emperor
(r. 1425-1435), was the maintenance of a kind
of legitimacy based on a connection with earlier, more glorious reigns. The Xuande emperor
had good reason to support painters, for he was
a good, if not great, painter in his own right. In
this he was a minor echo of Emperor Hui Zong
(r. 1101-1126), a marvelous artist and discerning patron under whom the Northern Song
court painting academy (Hua Yuan) achieved
heights of artistic accomplishment. Since a true
academy like Hui Zong's, complete with designated academicians, competitions, hierarchies of
masters and students, was not considered appropriate for a Ming court, the Xuande emperor
made the imperial bodyguard, the Embroidered
Uniform Guard (Jin Yi Wei), function as a substitute. Founded in 1382, soon after the beginning of the dynasty, the guard was a military
organization, personally responsible to the
emperor and with often-abused powers of
imprisonment and torture. Its reputation varied
from fearsome to disreputable, and it was often
a hotbed of intrigue and competition among

individuals and factions. Obviously the Jin Yi

Wei was not an apt instrument for the support
of artists, but supported they were through
appointments to and ranks in the guard. Perhaps
the Xuande and succeeding emperors used the
guard not only as a means of paying painters
and assuring their presence for service at court
but also, and more importantly, as a means of
restraining any subversive intent or inclinations
to what could be considered license. One can
readily understand the painters' lack of enthusiasm for such service, and the reasons why
many of the very best professionals preferred to
breathe the freer air of southern Jiangsu Province, especially in the prosperous SuzhouNanjing area. North China, including the
capital, became additionally unattractive in
1449, after the disastrous defeat of the imperial
army and the capture of the emperor by the
Mongols. It was many years before the military
threat abated, even in the capital.
The perilous vagaries of service in the
Embroidered Uniform Guard may also explain
the curious history of Dai Jin (1388-1462), by
general opinion the painter of the greatest ability and breadth of the mid-fifteenth century.
Called to court to paint for the Xuande emperor,
he was forced to flee for his very life by the
intrigues of his painter-rival Xie Huan (act.
1426-1436), who had the emperor's ear. Dai
fled first to Hangzhou; finding that not far
enough for safety, he moved on to Yunnan
Province in the far southwest, where he was
fortunate to be befriended by the local prince,
Mu Sheng (1368-1439), a collector and connoisseur. Later Dai returned to Beijing and pursued
his painting career there, though not under
court patronage. The Xuande emperor, however,
was safely dead by the time of Dai's return.
Notwithstanding the capricious and constraining nature of Ming imperial patronage, in
the second half of the fifteenth century the
court attracted many fine painters, particularly
in the reigns of the Chenghua emperor (r. 14641487), the Hongzhi emperor (r. 1487-1505), and
the Zhengde emperor (r. 1505-1521). It is no
coincidence that these reigns also produced
splendid ceramics and lacquers (see cat. 321329, 334-336). The professional-conservative
painters were quite evenly divided between
northerners and southerners, and the conservative painters represented in this exhibition
reflect this balance between the capital in the
north and the Suzhou-Nanjing area.

Subjects and Materials

The production of the court painters was even
more varied than that of the southerners, and
the imperial patronage may account for this.

Large-scale historical works (cat. 287, 302), as

well as almost as large "fur and feathers" scrolls
(cat. 303, 305), were needed to decorate the
enormous palace buildings. Such grandiose
works were not much required by the predominantly private patrons of the south. Landscapes
were the dominant subject of the professional
artists in Suzhou, usually on a smaller, domestic
scale (cat. 298). "Fur and feathers" was not a
major category for any of the southern painters,
perhaps because no court-academic tradition
required them to use the subject. Among the
three major professionals of SuzhouZhou
Chen, Tang Yin, Qiu Ying Tang Yin's Mynah
Bird (cat. 299) is exceptional for its subject
matter. Shen Zhou's relatively numerous bird
and plant paintings (cat. 314) place him closer to
the court tradition, albeit in subject matter only.
In brief, a variety of subject matter was shared
by most of the court-professional painters from
the Xuande reign until the early sixteenth century.
All the painters of the period, professional or
literati, used the same materials save for the
ground. The vast majority of the literati paintings are on paper; the majority of the court
artists and the professionals most often used
silk. Aside from tradition, a major factor, it is
hard to know why this was so. Perhaps tradition
was the main reason. But since paper was
customarily used for calligraphy practice, it
must have seemed the appropriate ground for
the literati's new "written paintings."

Range of Styles
The nature of painting in the time we are considering is quite clear. All of the schools of the
past were honored by imitation as well as in
critical or art-historical writings. The court and
professional artists, reasonably designated as
conservative in the best sense of that often misused word, tended to the common Chinese
practice of choosing from the past the stylistic
model that best suited a given subject. As early
as the decade of the 10705 Guo Ruoxu (nth
century) had written in his Experiences in
Painting (Tu Hua Jian Wen Zhi, trans. Alexander C. Soper, American Council of Learned
Societies, 1951), that religious and secular
painting of the past (especially the Tang
dynasty) was superior to and a model for his
present, but for landscape and other subjects
drawn from nature "then the ancient does not
come up to the modern," i.e., the Northern
Song dynasty, (960-1127). The creative eclecticism engendered by this attitude was found
particularly sympathetic by the painters of
1420-1520. Thus Tang Yin's landscapes (cat.
298) were often indebted to Northern Song

prototypes, while his figure painting (cat. 297)

derived though not slavishly, particularly in
physical proportions from late Tang paintings
of court ladies, such as those by Zhou Fang. Qiu
Ying's command of whatever past style suited
his purpose was always remarked upon with
wonder, though the works easily recognizable as
his are so recognized by virtue of the variations
he worked on the style he appropriated. The
forgeries he painted for various distinguished
patrons, including one of the great collectordealers in Chinese history, Xiang Yuanbian
(1525-1590), present a different and most difficult problem.
The view of middle Ming Chinese painting
outlined here is confirmed by the literary
criticism of the same period. As Wai-kam Ho
has demonstrated, the art criticism owes much
to the propositions of literary criticism, embodied in writings more numerous and more sympathetic to the Chinese scholar of the period
than the writings on art. Until late in the sixteenth century conservative and eclectic standards of judgment represented the majority
opinion in literature and in art. Song dynasty
traditions, including those of Southern Song
(1127-1279), were admired and followed. So
were the Yuan masters, but those fourteenthcentury masters were not elevated above the
Song painters, nor were the Southern Song
masters denigrated a reversal that would
shortly come to pass at the hands of the overwhelmingly authoritative painter-theorist Dong
Qichang (1555-1636). The formulations of the
major critic Wang Shizhen (1526-1590), for
example, recognized the "changes" (read "innovations") effected by all the major schools of
Chinese painting, from earliest times to middle
Ming. In his reasonable, pragmatic, NeoConfucian interpretation the history of Chinese
painting was seen as continuous and creative.
This approach was reversed by Dong, whose
newly formulated principles, retroactively
applied, simply bypassed Southern Song and
relegated the Ming dynasty Zhe school and
most court and professional painters to the
"dustbin of history." These biases, lasting to
the present day, distorted subsequent readings
of the history and achievements of Chinese
painting.

of the "heterodox" school of painters applies as

well to the court-professional group.
1. The size of paintings was limited only by
the size of the ground. The few existing very
large works on paper (cat. 301) are large only in
the vertical dimension. Vertical and horizontal
extension seems to have been possible only on
silk, or in dry fresco on temple walls, which was
the province of professional muralists specializing in Buddhist and Daoist painting.
2. Subject matter ranged widely. A majority
of the paintings may have been landscapes, but
not an overwhelming majority, as was the case
in literati painting. Figure paintings, or large
figures in natural or architectural settings, were
substantially represented, and knowledge of
the great prototypes and the ability to produce
believable and expressive representations were
the province of the professional and court
painters.
3. Techniques used to represent nature and
humanity were also widely varied. The continuous, fine "iron-wire" line of even width was
necessary for delineating figures or architecture
in the archaic styles of Six Dynasties and Tang
(cat. 294) and for representing figures in an
elite domestic setting (cat. 293). But representations of fishermen, unfortunates (cat.
296), or Daoist sages permitted rapidly executed, varied brushwork, expressive sometimes
to the point of wildness. In the works of the

Distinguishing Traits
What were the shared characteristics that distinguished the works of the court and professional painters? Not all of the traits discussed
below will be found in any one work or even in
the oeuvre of one master, but most can be found
in a majority of the works of these schools.
Much of Richard Barnhart's excellent discussion

fig. i. Ma Yuan (act. before 1190-0. 1230). Winter:

Egrets in Snow. Chinese. Collection of the National
Palace Museum, Taipei.
T O W A R D CATHAY

353

"Wild and Heterodox" school this expressiveness could become a total personal license to
crazy or drunken expressionism (cat. 304).
4. Compositions tended to be dramatic, with
tensions produced by asymmetry (cat. 291, 292)
or by powerful contrasts of ink tone (cat. 290,
304), producing a "push and pull" of the parts
of the composition. The asymmetry can be
attributed to the influence of the Ma-Xia school
of late Southern Song, the emphatic contrast of
monochrome ink tones with bare silk was a
creation of these middle Ming masters.
5. Compositions were unitary, usually
requiring to be read as a whole. Like a gestalt
ink blot, the typical court-professional scroll
reads better from a distance. Close viewing can
reveal exciting brush movement and material,
but the extrinsic aesthetic meaning of the picture is to be grasped from afar again in contrast to the majority of wen ren works, which
were intended to be read up close, as if they
were books, literary works of visual art.
6. There was considerable experimentation
with ink techniques to create unusual pictorial
effects (cat. 303). The daring use of the "boneless" ink wash method to render flora and fauna
without outline went hand in hand with experiments in reserve painting, in which the raw silk
ground became a silhouette against a background of ink wash. Both of these techniques
were used sparingly by Southern Song masters
such as Li Di and Luo-Chuang, but in the two
Ming works cited above the scale of the technique is daunting.
7. All, or at least most, of these traits tended
to produce paintings that can be described, not
pejoratively, as decorative. They make immediate and lasting impressions on the beholder.
Their virtues, including subtlety, are not to be
found in fine nuances. By contrast, even the
earliest works of Wen Zhengming (1470-1559;
cat. 316, 317), leading literatus of his time,
reveal just such nuance and miniaturization,
wen ren tendencies which were fully displayed
by his mid-sixteenth-century followers.
8. Finally, only among the professionals and
even there only rarely does one find explicit
and believable representation of social subjects
or classes. As represented by the wen ren, fishermen, peasants, or gardeners (cat. 315) are
staffage, a few schematic brush strokes signifying but not representing persons. On the other
hand, Zhang Lu painted a real fisherman laboring with the weight of his net, Huang Ji's figure
(cat. 289) is a believable "tough," and above all
Zhou Chen's Unfortunates (cat. 296) are a
moving record of actual hunger and misery.

354

CIRCA 1492

Zhou Chen, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying

The dichotomy between wen ren and professionals lies basically in attitudes assumed after
the mid-sixteenth century. Close connections
between the two groups were common in the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed,
it is most likely that the few literati painters
active in that time were largely unaware of the
gulf between them and their colleagues proposed by later critics and scholars. The most
famous painters of the day, professional and
literati, formed a reasonably close artistic family in Suzhou in the early sixteenth century.
Later acclaimed as the Four Great Masters of
Wu, they were the wen ren Shen Zhou and his
disciple Wen Zhengming, and the professionals
Tang Yin and Qiu Ying, whose varied brush
disciplines were available for the patrons of all
four masters.
Zhou Chen (cat. 295, 296) must have been
pleased, if a little envious, at the success and
recognition achieved by his two pupils Tang Yin
and Qiu Ying. He had been the ideal teacher for
the two disciples, his complete command of late
Northern Song and early Southern Song landscape techniques giving him a solid and rational
foundation to transmit. He had used it well,
with some innovations in scale and in subtlety
of middle ink tones; he had also achieved a figure style brilliantly suited to depict lower-class
types, for whom numerous models existed in
the Hell scenes painted by the Southern Song
professionals at Ningbo. Zhou's paucity of social
connections, compared to those available to his
young pupils, may have diminished his chance
for lasting fame, but his achievements were
solid and are now increasingly respected.
Tang Yin (1470-1523) was forced into professionalism by misfortune. He was still in his
early twenties when most of his immediate
family, including his wife, died in the space of a
year. His subsequent hard-earned recognition as
a brilliant scholar was aborted by accusations,
probably false, of cheating before the highestlevel examination at Beijing. Disgraced and
unemployed, he avoided penury by his pictorial
talents, becoming an acknowledged master of
landscape and figural painting, especially of
"court lady" subjects. At the same time he
became known as a master of stews and wine
shops. Perhaps this unwelcome notoriety was
exaggerated by later writers who could not
resist moralizing on the fall from grace of a
potential scholar-official.
Qiu Ying (d. 1552) was simply a child prodigy of lowly origins, acquiring an admiring
audience of buyers and patrons by his early
teens. Judging by reputation and by the incontrovertible evidence of his remaining paintings,

there was nothing within the highest reaches of

past or present Chinese painting that he could
not equal or surpass. Because of his huge success and the variety of his patronage, the range
of his subject matter was immense. Imitators
debased his excellence by overusing and
coarsening his blue-green-gold landscape style.
But some of his paintings, if not the most
characteristic ones, rival in clarity, subtlety, and
elegant brush manner those of the literati followers of Wen Zhengming.

Lamaist Painting
We still know little about the relationship of
professional Buddhist icon painters to the production of the numerous Lamaist thangkas,
paintings representing deities and disciples of
that form of Esoteric Buddhism. Many of these
scrolls look quintessentially Chinese (cat. 308),
despite their being painted on cotton, as is done
in Tibet, instead of on silk as is done in China.
We do know that Chinese professional painters
were employed on wall paintings in Tibetan
monasteries. Gilt bronze images in Tibetan
style with Lamaist iconography, bearing Yongle
(1403-1425) and Xuande (1426-1435) reignmarks, are particularly well known, and it seems
reasonable to assume that the Chinese icon
painters were as skillful as their sculptor colleagues in the production of works under
Lamaist patronage, whether in Tibet or in
China. There were numerous Lamaist temples
in the Beijing area, and these required the full
panoply of altar furniture, banners and paintings for celebratory occasions.
For Chinese participation in Lamaist painting
during the Ming dynasty, the clearest and most
convincing evidence is the almost universal
adoption, even by Tibetan icon painters, of the
traditional blue-green-gold landscape manner
for the background in paintings of arhats and of
bodhisattvas depicted in a natural setting. This
ancient manner was hallowed by its origins in
the great Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907)
dynasties and, being itself redolent of antiquity,
made a suitable backdrop for venerable figures,
much as gnarled old trees (cat. 308, 309) provided such figures with both shade and an allusion to age and wisdom. Pratapaditya Pal has
written, aptly, that the blue-green-gold manner
developed, in the Lamaist context, into a visionary landscape (cat. 309), quite different from
the more expansive and rhythmical use of the
manner in archaic and archaizing works by recognized Chinese practitioners. In this representation of Cudapanthaka the tightly packed
mixture of rocks, hills, and trees in blue-greengold seems almost a personal and idiosyncratic
vision, very effective in conveying the intensity

of the meditating arhat. By contrast, Qiu Ying's

landscapes in the same manner reveal their
basically Chinese origins.

The "Wild and Heterodox''

Richard Barnhart's analysis of the "Wild and
Heterodox" school cannot be improved upon.
These painters' deliberate rejection of social
amenities and wholehearted adoption of wild
ways and crazy soubriquets may have seemed
both anti-literati and antitraditional, but there
were precedents for both their manners and
their artistic styles. The art of Wu Daozi (act.
c. 710-0. 760), greatest of all Tang masters, was
described as unrestrained, free, and imbued
with "untrammeled feelings," a term beloved in
wen ren criticism. The earliest Chan painters of
the tenth century, such as Shih-Ke, used stalks,
rags, or other exotic tools to manipulate ink in
extraordinary and unpredictable ways. The late
Song dynasty Chan or Daoist painters did the
same terms such as "splashed ink" or "flung
ink" are often used in describing the more
extreme works by Yu-Jian or attributed to Mu
Qi. The stylistic precedents for "Wild and Heterodox" were all in place. So also were behavioral precedents. "[Wu Daozi] loved wine
to flourish his brush, he had to become intoxicated"; Wang Mo (d. c. 800) " . . . excelled in
splattering ink to paint landscapes
there was
a good deal of wildness in him... he would first
drink, then after he was drunk, he would splatter ink. Laughing or singing, he would kick at
it with his feet or rub it with his hands, sweep
[with his brush] or scrub
" (trans. Alexander Soper, Artibus Asiae 31 [1958]: 204-230).
Liang Kai, the southern Song academician,
turned to Daoist and Chan subject matter executed in a wild and abbreviated manner and
took the soubriquet Crazy Liang. More examples could be cited. Though unusual, it was nevertheless sanctioned practice to opt out of a
deteriorating or immoral society or situation by
embracing eremitism, as many scholar-painters
did; it was likewise acceptable to "become mad,"
to adopt extreme social behavior as a form of
protest or escape. So Shi Zhong (cat. 304)
adopted the name "Crazy Old Man," Sun Long
(cat. 303) chose "Stupid in Everything," and
Zhang Lu (cat. 305), who came from a good
family and began a propitious career, was
reputed to have turned away from his success
and acted like a leopard hiding in the wilderness, wearing straw sandals and coarse cotton.
Many of these nicknames bear Daoist connotations. The traditional intuitive, magical, and
animistic aspects of Daoism were particularly
congenial to those choosing a way outside social
conventions. Untrammeled nature was an old

ideal still very much alive to many artists of

later periods.
The connections of these "Wild and Heterodox" painters were clearly with the professional
and conservative painters of middle Ming,
however extreme their position within this
group. But the virulence of the attacks on them
by the wen ren critics of late Ming surpasses the
artists' own extremism. He Liangjun wrote (c.
1550), "As for the likes of [Jiang Song]... and
[Zhang Lu; cat. 305] of the North, I would be
ashamed to wipe my table with their paintings"
(Barnhart 1983, 44).
If the "Wild and Heterodox" were anathema
to the late Ming literati, their descendants,
however tainted and removed, were the individualists of the early Qing dynasty, the most progressive and aesthetically curious of all the
artists of the seventeenth century. And, with
poetic justice, their conservative opposites were
the orthodox followers of the radical wen ren
formulations of Dong Qichang in the early part
of that century.

SHEN ZHOU AND THE LITERATI

(WEN RENj STYLE IN CHINA;
SESSHU AND HIS CHINESE STYLE IN
JAPAN
... the trees that formed a grove looked fresh
in spirit and were flourishing in their mutual
sustenance. Those which could not form a
group crouched by themselves as if to keep
their own creeds within themselves. Some
trees exposed their winding roots out of the
ground; others lay directly across a wide
stream; others were suspended over the cliffs
and still others crouched in the middle of the
ravine. Some grew tearing mosses and cracking rocks. I marveled at this curious sight and
walked around admiring the scenery.
From the next day onwards I brought my
brush to this place and sketched the trees.
After sketching some ten thousand trees my
drawings came to look like the real trees.
(Kiyohiko Munakata, Ching Hao's Pi-fa-chi:
A Note on the Art of the Brush [Ascona,
1974], p. 11.)
[Zhang Yizhong ?] always likes my bamboo
paintings. I do bamboo simply to express the
untrammeled spirit [yi ji] in my breast. Then
how can I judge whether it is like something
or not; whether its leaves are luxuriant or
sparse, its branches slanting or straight?
Often when I have daubed and rubbed awhile,
others seeing this take it to be hemp or

rushes. Since I cannot bring myself to argue

that it is truly bamboo, then what of the
onlookers ? I simply do not know what sort of
thing [Yizhong] is seeing.
Ni Zan (1301-1374), in colophon dated to
1368
(Bush and Shih, 1985, 280.)
These two quotations and their visual counterparts clearly and neatly confirm the sharp contrast that generally obtains between Chinese
paintings done before and after 1350. Although
later Ming art critics and theorists purported to
find numerous literati precursors among artists
as early as late Tang (ninth century), visual
evidence overwhelmingly attests that Jing Hao's
rational realism was the norm of pre-Yuan
dynasty painting, whereas the literati (wen ren}
style and aesthetic (expressed by Ni Zan) has
been the dominant mode from Yuan even to the
present day.
Perhaps the major components of earlier
Chinese painting, its complex and patient techniques, its painterly observation and recording,
its rationality in organization and appearance,
corresponds to the rise of "science and technology" in China, so thoroughly documented by
Joseph Needham in his monumental survey of
the subject. It is probably equally significant
that the triumph of wen ren painting in the
middle Ming dynasty accompanied a reversal of
interest in technology and exploration (see
Frederick Mote's essay in this catalogue), a
turning inward of national interest, and a growing stasis in government and bureaucracy in the
period from 1450 to the end of the Empire.
Wen ren ideals utterly changed the appearance of Chinese art. Paper, not silk, became the
preferred ground as it had been from the
beginning for calligraphy. Ink, usually without
color other than some pale washes, was de
rigueur. To express the artist's own spirit, rather
than the subject's outward form or inward
nature, was the aim and theme of painting. The
demands of realism were set aside in favor of
self-expression through brushwork; for wen
ren, painting no less than writing "revealed the
character of the man." Careful technique, builtup washes, massed strokes were replaced by
"single stroke" calligraphic expression whose
ideal qualities were informality and "blandness"
(ping dan), a quality of understatement, or
seeming artlessness, carried to the point of
seeming awkwardness. Pictures as windows on
the world and also as grand decoration for large
halls and offices gave way to "written pictures"
intended for close examination in the study or
at in-group gatherings. Earlier painters looked
often to China's political and social history for
incidents and exemplars of high moral seriousTOWARD CATHAY

355

ness to serve as their subjects. Wen ren painters

looked to the history of art; their subject was to
a great extent their own aesthetic lineage and
traditions. In other words, the new style was a
kind of "art historical" painting, informed by
references to the great ancestors of wen ren
art the Tang poet-painter Wang Wei, the
tenth-century master from the south Dong
Yuan, the Northern Song eccentric critic and
painter Mi Fu, and above all the true inventors
of the new tradition, Zhao Mengfu, Qian Xuan,
Gao Kegong, Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen,
Wang Meng, and Ni Zan of the Yuan dynasty.
This lineage, largely formalized and made
dogma about 1600, was the source for most of
the styles so faithfully and so inventively
exploited by the self-designated inheritors of
the wen ren tradition. To be a wen ren artist,
one must have studied the precursors' paintings,
and know the nuances of their brush techniques,
compositions, and flavors. It was commonplace,
beginning with Shen Zhou in the second half of
the fifteenth century, to paint works in homage
to an earlier master and in his style. Later,
whole albums were made, with eight or twelve
pictures in sequence, each alluding to the
manner of a different earlier master. Even
handscrolls were often painted in such stylistic
segments; at the hands of a skillful artist one
section blended into the next with hardly a
whisper of tension or incongruity. This is not to
say that later artists did not have their own
styles; they did, and highly individual at that,
but even their most idiosyncratic passages
might include an inscription or poem that
evoked the spirit of one of the great ancients of
the true tradition.
Just as Ming wen ren painters selected a lineage of approved precursors, so they also
selected an approved subject for representation:
landscape. To the representation of this chosen
subject the wen ren brought concepts derived
from Confucian, Daoist, and Chan Buddhist
thought: // (the essential reality of things), tian
ji (artistic instinct or inspiration), and shen hui
(insight into the subject to the point of fusion
between artist and subject). Such an approach
was particularly productive of those visual qualities most prized by the wen ren: spontaneity
(zi ran), "blandness" (ping dan), expressiveness
(untrammeled feeling, yi), and the spirit of
antiquity (gu yi).
With landscape, as any aspiring or practicing
painter knows, the successful representation is
both easily accessible and terribly remote. The
semblance of reality, however much it may be
declared unwanted, is easily attained; essential
reality, transcending formal resemblance, is
remote to all but a few. Nevertheless landscape
became the only subject, aside from calligraphic
356

CIRCA 1492

exercises (later codified in woodblock-printed

handbooks on bamboo, orchids and the elements
of landscape). Wen ren painters shunned nonlandscapefigure compositions (notoriously
difficult); "fur and feathers"; the whole genre
of "still life" so popular with the professional
and academic painters of the past; and the largescale decorative works favored by the court, past
and present.
The location of the court was crucially important to the development of wen ren painting,
both in particular and in general. Particularly,
the immediate successors of the Four Great
Masters of Yuan, asserting the independence of
patronage and authority that they considered
appropriate to gentlemen-amateurs, received
short shrift at the court of the first Ming
emperor. This pockmarked peasant-soldier, Zhu
Yuanzhang (often known by his reign-name
Hongwu) restored the prominence of the south
by locating the capital at Nanjing, and reinstituted many of the imperial institutions and
practices of the last native dynasty, the Song.
But the tenor of his reign was determined by
his suspicious, brutal, and violently anti-intellectual character, nowhere clearer than in his
treatment of the second wave of wen ren masters : of six major artists who lived from late
Yuan into early Ming, only Wang Fu survived
the reign of the Hongwu emperor; two of the
others died in prison and three were executed
for treason. When the Yongle emperor moved
the capital north to Beijing in 1421, he also ratified a division in the artistic community. At the
new capital on the dry northern plains a revived
imperial patronage benefitted and stimulated
painters of professional-academic orientation;
far to the south, in the fertile and affluent "eye
area" of Suzhou, Nanjing, Yangzhou, and environs, the gentry pursued their own wen ren
ideas, without benefit of the patronage they
would in any case have scorned and at a relatively safe distance from the lethal intrigues of
the Ming court. From the 1420$ through the
end of the century, the attraction of imperial
patronage assured the dominance of the "conservatives" over the wen ren of the south.

Shen Zhou
This dominance delayed the development of
wen ren painting. The new wen ren movement,
centered around Suzhou, was called the Wu
school, as Suzhou itself was called Wu after an
ancient kingdom lying largely in southern
Jiangsu Province. But the Wu school sputtered
almost to a halt in the first half of the fifteenth
century. Several painters are known, but two of
them, Liu Jue (1410-1472) and Du Qiong
(1396-1474), only because they played a part in

the early development of Shen Zhou (14271509), the most famous wen ren of early and
middle Ming. Founder of the Wu school and
epitome of wen ren ideals and practice, Shen
stands alone as an ideal model of his age.
He was alone as well in artistic style until
Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), also of Suzhou,
became his pupil and follower (cat. 316, 317).
This is not to say there were no other contemporary painters of merit in the area, nor that
Shen Zhou was without friends among painters,
scholars, and officials. It does mean that there
was no circle of like-minded painters influencing each other's work; only the landscape
masters of the past, especially the Four Great
Masters of the Yuan dynasty (Huang Gongwang, Ni Zan, Wang Meng, Wu Zhen) contributed to the style Shen Zhou created almost
in isolation.
Born into a wealthy land-owning family
living at Xiangcheng, ten miles north of
Suzhou, Shen could easily afford the expensive
and creative self-indulgence of collecting fine
paintings and bronzes. One painting alone in
his collection provided lessons enough for a
lifetime the most famous of all works of the
fourteenth century, Huang Gongwang's (12691354) Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, a
handscroll painted between 1347 and 1350 that
was the most significant fountainhead of wen
ren style and aesthetic. But Shen also collected
works by near-contemporary professional painters such as Dai Jin (cat. 288) and Dai's rival Xie
Huan, a professional and conservative master
attached to the court.
As Shen Zhou's painting tutor, his father
Shen Heng (c. 1376-after 1470) selected Chen
Kuan, grandson of the late Yuan-early Ming
painter Chen Ruyan. This choice may well have
contributed to Shen Zhou's famous reluctance
in later life to travel beyond Wu, especially to
the capital, Beijing. Shen's great-great-grandfather Shen Liangchen had been a collector and
friend of Wang Meng (1309-1385), one of the
Four Great Masters of Yuan, and Wang had died
in prison, a victim of the purges set in motion
by the anti-intellectual paranoia of the first
Ming emperor. Shen Zhou's great-grandfather
Shen Cheng had set a family precedent by
declining a government appointment; and the
tutor Chen Kuan's painter-ancestor Chen Ruyan
had been executed by the Hongwu emperor
before 1371. It is no wonder that the Ming History (Ming Shi Lu) lists Shen Zhou in the "recluse-scholar" category, meaning simply that he
refused to enter the government bureaucracy.
By no means a recluse in Western terms,
Shen was a close friend of Wu Kuan (see cat.
312, 315) and Wang Ao (cat. 284), Du Mu, and
Wen Lin (father of Wen Zhengming) all in

fig. 2. Huang Gongwang (1269-1354). Dwelling in

the Fuchun Mountains. Dated to 1347-1350.
Chinese. Section of the handscroll; ink on paper.
Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

government service and he took the trouble to

build a studio on the edge of Suzhou, referred
to as a hsing wo (travel nest?), probably to provide a pied-a-terre from which to sell paintings.
In later life, after 1480, he sold many of the
important works in his collection, including the
famous Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains and
a tenth-century landscape by the great early
master Guo Zhongshu. This suggests that he
likely sold his own works as well; after all,
during Shen's lifetime "professionalism" was
not the term of opprobrium that it became for
later generations of literati. Zhou Chen, the
fine professional master and teacher of Tang Yin
and Qiu Ying, was almost surely one of Shen's
Suzhou circle. Furthermore, by refusing government office his whole life long (citing as an
unimpeachable Confucian excuse his longwidowed mother's need of him), Shen also
relinquished the income that came with government service. And money was needed, if only
to pay the taxes on his and his mother's estates.
Shen's mature style influenced several minor
masters of the next generation: Xie Shichen
(1487-^ 1561), Qian Gu (1508-1578), Wang
Chong (1494-1533), Chen Shun (1483-1544),
and Sun Ai, who in 1490 painted Shen's portrait. But his only direct pupil of consequence
was the well-to-do son of his friend Wen Lin
(1445-1499), Wen Zhengming. Wen's beginnings as an epigone of Shen Zhou can be seen in
Wen's early (pre-i5O4) addition to Shen's album
(now mounted as a handscroll; cat. 316), and in
the upper part of his own Spring Trees After
Rain of 1507 (cat. 317). In his maturity he
became recognized as the second great master of
the Wu school, enormously influencing the
development of wen ren ideals; his own mature
style, expressive if constricted, set the pattern
along which his family continued the Wu
tradition.
The achievement of Shen Zhou was to form,
or rather to transform, the idioms of his favorite
Yuan masters, first Huang Gongwang and later

Wu Zhen, into a new and original style. His

earliest works were either modest essays in local
landscape (Living in Retirement, 1464, Osaka
Municipal Museum), or complex and difficult
"homages" to Yuan masters, such as Lofty
Mount Lu of 1467 (cat. 311). The latter painting, which Shen dedicated to his tutor Chen
Kuan, was a major work, a "variation on a
theme" of Wang Meng, friend of Shen's greatgreat-grandfather and one of the Four Great
Masters of Yuan. The mountain was famous,
revered, associated with celebrated figures from
the past, and a fitting metaphor for the lofty
character of the artist's tutor. Evidently, then,
the painting was seriously undertaken, a major
effort, perhaps even a "master-piece," a demonstration of his maturity in relation to the artistic
tradition. The writhing forms and hairy textures are Wang's, but the bold drama of the
dancing pines in the foreground, the arbitrary
lightening of the central rising plateau, almost
ghostly in effect, and the metamorphic distant
peaks above are all new, and express the* powerful individuality of Shen Zhou.
In addition to Shen's study of Huang Gongwang, and his mastery apparent in this paintingof the style of Wang Meng, in other works
of this same period he at least dealt with the
spare and austere elegance of Ni Zan (13011374). Clearly, Shen looked to the Yuan masters
for his antecedents, and among the Yuan masters the most significant influence in the formation of Shen's mature and consistent way proved
to be Wu Zhen (1280-1354). The sixteenthcentury painter-critic Li Rihua (1565-1635)
wrote of Shen Zhou: "In his middle age he
chose Huang Gongwang as his master, but in
later years he was completely carried away by
Mei Daoren (Wu Zhen). He became quite intoxicated by Wu Zhen's art and blended so closely
with it that some of his works could not be distinguished from Wu Zhen's if they were mixed
up" (Wei Shui Xuan Ri }i, c. 1619). Although
the last phrase is simply a cliche, the first

phrase of the last sentence is partially correct.

Wu's characteristic style was a combination of
vertical and horizontal "single strokes" with
pale washes of ink, producing a deceptively
simple and plain (bland, ping dan) landscape
that was highly approved among the wen ren.
Shen took the single-stroke idea and the broad
use of wash and joined it to his forceful, even
dramatic energy. In this (the author believes)
Shen Zhou was recalling something of the
drama to be found in Zhe school and "Heterodox" pictures, something really different from
such wen ren ideals as "blandness" or the cloaking of skill. The album-scroll of Five Landscapes (cat. 315) and the handscroll of The Three
Junipers (cat. 312) are hardly to be explained in
traditional wen ren terms. The Three Junipers
has other claims to fame, for it is a major innovation in the treatment of a traditional Chinese
"landscape" theme, one especially associated
with the great monumental landscape artists of
the tenth and eleventh centuries and treated
sporadically during the Yuan dynasty, once (to
fine effect) by Wu Zhen. For the cutoff, near
view that Shen Zhou gives us of segments of
the grand old trees, Cahill's description and
comment cannot be improved:
Metamorphic and metaphorical effects are
present in Shen Chou's painting, but they
depend on real aspects of the trees and are
not mere products of the artist's imagination.
The grandeur of Shen [Zhou's] presentation
admits nothing of the fanciful; with brush
drawing of a rugged integrity that is worthy
of its subject, he describes movingly the
outcome of a millennium of slow growth,
of survival through a thousand winters.
(Cahill, 1978, 95.)
Wen Zhengming also painted old trees, especially in his later years, and they owe much to
Shen's innovation, but the balance between
innovation and tradition, personal expression
and respect for nature, brushwork and delineaTOWARD CATHAY

357

tion, reached its splendid zenith in the man of

the fifteenth century, before the triumph of
the wen ren painters of Suzhou.
Shen Zhou and Sesshu
Shen Zhou's life span (1427-1509) almost
exactly matches that of the Japanese master
Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506). Each in his own
country was the acknowledged great master of
the century. Both possessed innate strength of
character, expressed in their pictures; but their
lives and works are quite different and reveal
much about the possibilities open to the
painters of East Asia in the fifteenth century.
In vast China Shen Zhou confined his travels
to the "eye area" around Suzhou and Lake Tai,
famous for its scenery and its remarkable
weathered rocks beloved by the Chinese literati.
His albums and scrolls depicted only this area,
with a few early exceptions such as Lofty Mt.
Lu. In the album format Shen was most innovative, producing for the first time in Chinese
painting sequential album leaves showing the
styles of different masters, or markedly different views of a single site such as the Twelve
Views of Tiger Hill (Cleveland Museum of Art).
His 1494 album Drawings from Life (cat. 314)
was the first instance of what became a standard
use of the format the depiction of numerous
animals, birds, vegetables, flowers, etc. The
album is an innovative use of "boneless" (mo
gu) wash technique on an innovative subject
sequence, despite the modest caveat in Shen's
inscription:
I did this album capriciously, following the
shapes of things, laying them out on paper
only to suit my mood of leisurely, well-fed
living. If you search for me through my
paintings, you will find that I am somewhere
outside them.
(Translation from Cahill, 1978, 95.)
"Leisurely, well-fed living," circumscribed
travel, filial piety toward his mother Shen was
indeed a "recluse-scholar," revealing the inner
strength of his character through the uncompromising boldness of his later landscapes.
Sesshu was a "priest-painter." A Zen monk of
middling provincial warrior-class origins, in his
twenties he entered Shokoku-ji, one of the
major Zen temples of Kyoto. His monastic
duties were to screen and receive visitors to the
abbot, but another of the Shokoku-ji monks at
this time was the great Shubun (cat. 228), the
most important ink painter of the first half of
the fifteenth century. It is entirely likely that
Sesshu studied painting with Shubun, whom he
named, later, as his artistic mentor. By leaving
the temple to enter the service of the Ouchi
358

CIRCA 1492

clan, rulers of the Yamaguchi area in Western

Japan, he shifted his emphasis from religious to
artistic activities, identifying himself as a
painter-monk. Having already traveled farther
than Shen Zhou ever had, he left Japan for
China in 1468, as part of an Ouchi trade mission. For nearly two years he traveled eastern
China from south to north, meeting leading
painters and government officials as well as
Chan priests, and being honored by all. During
his stay at Jingde Si, a Chan temple near
Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, he was given the
seat of honor in the meditation hall; that he
inscribed this on paintings done after his
return to Japan reveals a proud nature that delighted in (and perhaps needed) public ratification, in sharp contrast to Shen Zhou's practiced
diffidence. From 1476 until his death he
traveled almost incessantly, between northeastern Kyushu (where he had settled on his return
from (China), the Ouchi domain in western
Honshu, where he again opened a studio, and
central Honshu. His travels not only spread his
fame but also revealed to him the extraordinary
variety of the Japanese landscape. Yet, save for
the remarkable exception of Ama no Hashidate
(cat. 232), and a lost picture of a Japanese waterfall, his landscapes were basically of Chinese
subjects and were tightly linked stylistically to
the monochrome ink techniques and manners
imported from China and Korea just before and
after 1400. Unlike Shen, he had several pupils
and many followers who emulated him closely,
if not slavishly, and his influence on later
Japanese ink painting was extensive and
profound.
Whereas Shen's departures from landscape
subject matter were few and usually not of
major importance, Sesshu was master of landscape, figure painting, and, on screens especially, of bird, flower, and decorative painting.
Further, he was master of a late thirteenthearly fourteenth-century Chinese achievement,
later largely abandoned in its country of region,
the "splashed ink" (C: po mo; J: hatsuboku)
landscape. The Japanese master's varied repertory would have somewhat discomfited the wen
ren constituency, and his decorative screens
they would certainly have considered artisan's
work, unworthy of attention. It should be
remembered that Sesshu was reported to have
painted a wall painting (screen?) for a government building in Beijing; this, if true, suggests
that in China his contacts with Chinese painters
and his study of Chinese painting extended
mostly to the court painters and to their highly
professional and decorative techniques. It is
doubtful that he saw much, if any, wen ren
painting, especially since Shen was the only
major practitioner at that time and he confined

his activities to Suzhou. The Japanese who

turned their eyes and thoughts to China in the
fifteenth century took up and celebrated the
artistic achievements of Southern Song. Not
until the eighteenth century did they begin to
investigate wen ren style.
And yet when we compare mature works by
each master say, Shen Zhou's Five Landscapes
(cat. 315) and Sesshu's Ama no Hashidate (cat.
232) despite differences owing to individual
nature and national origin, they share a breadth
of vision and character, a strength in brush and
organization, and above all a freshness of outlook, a very real expression of a personal style
achieved through long practice and grown
accustomed as breathing. Shen Zhou painted no
such figural masterwork as Sesshu's Daruma
and Eka, 1496, but figure painting was not a
Ming gentleman-scholar's genre. One is left to
imagine what Shen Zhou might have painted, if
Shen Zhou had painted figures, through the
powerful image of Zhong Kui by the traditionalist painter Dai Jin (cat. 288).
Two portraits, one of Shen (cat. 310), the
other of Sesshu, both either pedestrian works
by professional figure painters or good copies of
such works, are of some interest here. Neither
rises much above the conventional image
required by the culture in which the artist lived.
Shen is in the costume of a scholar, Sesshu in
priest's robes; both wear hats of stiffened gauze,
the prerogative of the learned classes. The two
works are enough alike in costume to point up
the differences between the faces. Shen, with
his white beard, crow's-feet (he was then
eighty), and benign expression is an epitome of
his social role the recluse-scholar. The individualism and strength visible in his works are
not apparent in the portrait. Sesshu, on the
other hand, is stubble-bearded, his face seems
creased rather than merely wrinkled, and the
slightly lumpy conformation of the cheekbones,
jaws, and neck suggests a manual laborer, even
a peasant. The implication of rough strength
matches the brusque, staccato effects of his
work.
Both portraits are "conventional," but the
monk's image derives from a Zen tradition
whereby a master gave his portrait to a student
in token of the transmission of spiritual enlightenment and priestly authority. To the "reflection of reality" required in such portraits (juzo),
Japanese Zen monk-painters added a sometimes
brutal realism, bordering on caricature. Sesshu's portrait, following in this tradition, may
suggest the physical presence of a singular man.
Shen's does not: the artist remains as unrevealed here as he claims to be in the inscription
on Drawings from Life (cat. 314). Contemplating the blandness of Shen's portrait, we must

not forget that "blandness" (ping dan) was an

ideal quality in wen ren art, as a special kind of
decorum was in wen ren life; Shen Zhou has
ratified this portrait by inscribing it. One
should not let him deceive; one should go
behind both inscriptions to the work of his last
twenty-five years.

APPLIED ARTS
To most Westerners "art" now means painting,
sculpture, perhaps architecture. All other
endeavors, however skilled the maker, however
beautiful the result, are only qualifiedly art, and
the qualification implies a derogation thus
"minor arts," "decorative arts," "crafts." Perhaps
"applied art" is the least objectionable term,
connoting objects applied to a purpose that
includes contemplation as well as use. Thus a
carved chair (cat. 346) is meant to be sat on but
also to evoke aesthetic appreciation. To mend a
hole in the roof with an oil painting, however,
seems clearly perverse, at least for certain oil
paintings.
Applied art is particularly subject to technology and to the development of effective means
to achieve practical ends to pour tea, hold
wine, protect sweets. And technology affords a
credibly objective criterion by which to evaluate
the accomplishments of the artist: the effectiveness with which a seemingly unpromising and
certainly recalcitrant material clay, quartz,
metal, enamel, jade, the sap of the lac tree, the
filament of the silkworm is put to the artist's
purpose. Most of these substances were conquered by the Chinese with patient skill and
imaginative science and technology long before
they succumbed to late-developing science in
the West. Western consumers could only
wonder at the seemingly magical knowledge
and technique that permitted the Chinese to
produce such exportable superfluities of porcelain, silk, and lacquer.
Jade
The Chinese priority in the working of jade, the
firing of porcelain, the cultivation of silk, and
the making of lacquer has been well documented. Excavations of the last two decades,
from Manchuria in the north to Shanghai in the
south, have not only moved the known beginnings of Neolithic jade working back to the
fourth millennium but have totally changed our
estimates of the technical accomplishments possible within a Neolithic culture. The complexity
of design and minuteness of detail achieved
within the constraints of the most obdurate of

stones (nephrite, or yu, the original and quintessential Chinese jade, is 6.5 on the Mohs
scale) impervious to the aggressions of normal
steel cutting tools have amazed even the most
skeptical of critics. We are confronted, by the
third millennium, with an accomplished technology of hardstone working within a limited
vocabulary of difficult and convoluted designs,
forming a tradition that continues for thousands
of years with improved but not different means.
The material itselfyu comprised not one
but a number of different hardstones that are
similar only in being appealing to sight and
touch, capable of taking a high polish, and valuable because rare; of these stones nephrite was
the most highly regarded. Yu commanded
veneration in Chinese society, its visual and
tactile qualities having been associated by none
other than Confucius with the preeminent virtues of kindness, righteousness, courage, compassion, eloquence, and restraint. Yu also
became the supreme metaphor for beauty and
for a mystical purity that could hold at bay even
the forces of decomposition hence its immemorial association with longevity and its long
and abundant use in aristocratic burials. This
paragon of stones, from earliest times into and
beyond the world of 1492, was reserved for
objects of ritual and ceremony and for secular
luxuries, including personal adornment.
By 1492 the Chinese appetite for jade was
such that nephrite was being imported from
Central Asian riverbeds and mountain mines;
the more brightly colored Burmese "jewel jade"
(also called yu but a different mineral, jadeite)
was still in the future. The materials available to
carvers of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) were
the same white, pale green, brown, and black
jades known from earliest times. None of the
"boulders" or pebbles and few of the mined
blocks were of such size as to permit huge pieces
like the mountains, stupas, landscapes with figures, or Buddhist figures so common among
Qing dynasty (1644-1911) jade carvings. Early
and middle Ming dynasty works were most
often relatively small, especially those executed
in the rare and small stones of white "camphor"
jade, the favorite material for the best works of
Song through Ming.
Though the terms are often used, jade (nephrite) cannot be "carved" or "incised." From the
earliest Neolithic to the present, jade can only
be worked by abrasion; new abrasives and
improved means of applying them have been
developed, but the method has not changed.
The Ming repertory of techniques for abrasion
still required quartz in the form of sand as abrasive, water as medium, various drills and wheels
as implements, and infinite care and stubborn
patience as ultimate ingredients.

Ceramics
Though recent by comparison with the fivethousand-year-old jade tradition, porcelaneous
ceramics had by 1492 been made for more than
two thousand five hundred years, and white,
"pure," porcelain for some seven hundred. Until
excavations at Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in
the last twenty-five years, porcelaneous celadon
wares (protoporcelains) were believed to have
originated only in the fourth century B.C. Now
we know that protoporcelain was made at
Zhengzhou ( a Shang city that may well have
been the next-to-last Shang capital, Ao) about
1600 B.C. The necessary technology seems to
have been developed as a by-product of bronze
casting, for which the Chinese used piece-molds
made of clay rather than the lost wax process
common to Near East and Mediterranean production. Kiln temperatures of about 1200 c
were necessary to produce these early Shang
glazed wares, whose discovery increases our
admiration for early Chinese technology and
artistry.
The celadon tradition struck deep roots in
China, and over two and one half millennia
potters at many kilns throughout the country
continued to refine this gray-bodied, greenishglazed, relatively impermeable ware, much (if
not all) of which came by the Tang dynasty
(618-907) to be called Yue ware. The tradition
climaxed in the splendid and exquisite celadons
of Northern (960-1127) and Southern (11271279) Song. In beauty and utility (nonporosity)
Yue ware and other porcelaneous celadons far
surpassed the best that local potters outside
China had achieved. They were everywhere
prized: excavations show that from the Tang
dynasty they were exported eastward to Indonesia and the Philippines and westward to India,
Iraq (Samarra, 836-883), Iran (Nishapur and
Siraf), and Egypt (Fostat, before 1169).
Ultimately even the porcelaneous celadons
were displaced in esteem by white porcelain,
which had its beginnings during Tang but did
not become the standard of excellence until the
Yuan (1279-1368) and early Ming dynasties. By
this time the hillside tunnel, or "dragon,"
kiln a series of connected chambers dug along
the slope of a hill had been developed and
refined so that the draft induced by the sharp
slope could bring the wood fire to very high
temperatures. The clear-glazed white porcelain
fired in these kilns at 1300 c or higher provided a remarkable ground for decoration in two
different techniques: the design might be
painted in copper oxide red or cobalt oxide blue
directly on the unglazed vessel, which would
then be clear-glazed and fired to porcelain hardness; or the undecorated vessel might be clearglazed and fired to porcelain hardness, then
T O W A R D CATHAY

359

decorated with low-firing, lead-fluxed glazes

(usually called "enamels") in yellow, red, green,
turquoise, purple, or black, and refired at about
850 c to fuse these glazes. The former are
referred to as "underglaze-decorated," the latter
as "overglaze enamels." In Chinese critical literature and in most Western literature pure white
ware is considered to have reached its apogee in
the Yongle reign (1403-1424), underglaze blueand-white in the Xuande reign (1425-1435);
potters of the Chenghua reign (1464-1487) produced masterful blue-and-white (cat. 321, 322)
as well as enameled wares, especially the exquisite dou cai ("fighting yet fitted colors") wares,
whose decoration combined underglaze blue
with overglaze enamels in soft tones (cat. 323325). The Hongzhi reign (1487-1505) witnessed
a decline in variety and quality (cat. 327); and
the following Zhengde reign (1505-1521) is
remarkable for its so-called Muhammadan
wares (cat. 328) blue-and-white porcelains
rather stiffly and symmetrically decorated and
often bearing inscriptions in Arabic or Persian,
presumably made for the predominantly
Muslim officials and attendants surrounding the
Zhengde emperor.
In the Jingdezhen area of Jiangxi Province,
which supplied the vast demands of the Imperial
Household, non-Imperial wares were also produced, as they were at various old kiln sites in
north and south China. For ordinary use slipdecorated stonewares were dominant in the
north, celadons in the south. Some complex
porcelains made in imitation of cloisonneenameled brass vessels often massive pieces
dominated by large areas of aubergine, yellow,
and turquoise overglaze enamels display
astonishing technical mastery (cat. 330).
In their time, white and decorated porcelains
were as eagerly coveted by the outside world as
porcelaneous celadons had been. The Topkapi
Saray in Istanbul lists increasing quantities of
white porcelain in inventories of 1495, I51/
1505, and after, and white wares have been
found at Samarra, Iraq, and at Nishapur and the
Ardebil Shrine in Iran. Blue-and-white decorated wares reached India, the Middle East, and
Egypt beginning in the fourteenth century and
resumed in even greater quantity at the end of
the fifteenth century, following the interruption in commerce caused by the Timurid invasions. Not till the early sixteenth century (when
the Portuguese sent a royal embassy to Beijing)
did Chinese porcelain begin to reach Europe;
the silver or gilded mounts with which it was
often fitted there are a measure of its value in
European eyes.
The organization of the kilns, especially the
imperial ones, at Jingdezhen was necessarily
complex and bureaucratic in order to deal with
360

CIRCA 1492

the sheer quantity of material ordered by the

court each year. Production was under the control of the Gong Bu, the Board of Public Works,
and wares were made for the Imperial Palace
and for the Grand Secretariat of the government. Though figures for the first two reigns
of active production, Yongle and Xuande, are
unavailable, the figures for 1554, in the reign
of Jiajing, show 26,350 bowls with dragons in
underglaze blue, 50,500 plates with dragons,
6,900 cups with floral designs, 680 large fish
bowls, 9,000 white tea bowls, 10,200 bowls with
designs inside and out of fish, dragons, phoenix,
and water plants, 19,800 tea bowls with the
same decoration, 600 libation cups with design
of dragons and waves in underglaze blue, and
600 white wine ewers. That earlier Ming courts
also required such staggering production is confirmed by a general order of 1433 (Xuande
reign-era) for 443,500 pieces based on designs
submitted by the Board of Public Works.
Shapes were standardized within the necessarily flexible specifications for vessels handthrown and/or molded and then wood-fired.
According to Brankston, eleven shapes were
most common during the Yongle period: (a)
lotus-form bowl (lian zi) in two sizes, (b) "press
hand cup" (ya shou bei) in two sizes, (c) plain
bowl, (d) teapot, (e) three types of stem cup (ba
bei), (f) monk's-cap jug (seng mao hu), (g) vase
(mei-ping), (h) small wine pot, (i) gourd bottle
(hu lu ping), (j) medium dish, (k) small saucer.
In the Xuande reign (a), (b), (c), (e), (g), (h), and
(i) were continued with variations, and the following were added: steep-sided bowl with ribs
on the lower part of the exterior, clear-water
bowl (jing shui wan), beaker, jar with foliate
cover, large ewer, leys jar (zha dou), bottle vase,
flask with cusped handles. Chenghua afforded
less variety: zha dou, truncated jar (cat. 323),
bowl, deep dish, three types of small wine cup
(cat. 324, 325), varied stem cups. The Hongzhi
reign continued the zha dou, bowl, deep dish,
and a few larger stem cups. Repeating shapes
was economical and helped maintain quality
control. But modest variations in shape and in
treatment of the foot rim are recognized means
of distinguishing the wares of different reigns,
perhaps even of different kiln supervisors, and
help in constructing development sequences.
These records and the substantial number of
remaining examples of Ming porcelain (no
census has been taken, but the catalogues of
museums, Eastern and Western, exhibit considerable quantities) indicate that the methods
of porcelain production approximated what the
West, much later, came to call "division of
labor." The process required close coordination
and supervision of a variety of tasks transporting kaolin; crushing, levigating, and refin-

ing granitic rock (petuntse); potting; molding;

making saggars; glazing; providing designs;
producing decoration; stacking; firing; and examining. Their whole end product had to please
a clientele even more demanding than a modern
market. Ming porcelains not only succeeded in
pleasing native patrons, they also achieved aesthetic and technological standards far beyond
those of any ceramics in the world to date.
It should be noted that the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, encompassing the
Chenghua, Hongzhi, and Zhengde reigns, represent a revival, a renaissance of the qualities
embodied in the Yongle and Xuande wares of
the early part of the century. The thirty years
between the two is designated a "ceramic interregnum," a time to which many dubious, uncertain, heterodox, or just plain troubling
porcelains are attributed. Questions of date are
further complicated by the fact that the Jingdezhen industry, even the imperial potters,
designers, and decorators, also produced porcelain for non-Imperial clients. Such works must
have differed from the wares produced for the
court and its epigones, and would consequently
not fit easily into the neat categories set up by
later scholars and connoisseurs. Still, there was
a lull, followed by a half-century's glorious
revival, whose products equaled and sometimes
surpassed their predecessors.

Lacquer
Lacquer fragments have been found in late
Shang tombs at Anyang, and large-scale and
technically advanced production is known from
late Zhou (4th~3rd centuries B.C.) on. Quality
and quantity first peaked in the Han dynasty.
Even for this early date historical texts and
inscriptions on lacquer objects permit reasonably certain conclusions about the nature of the
lacquer industry, conclusions that can be applied
to even later production. Although the lacquer
industry resembled the ceramic industry in its
well-calculated division of labor, the last stages
of the manufacturing processes were dissimilar,
with lacquer requiring a highly specialized
artist-craftsman. From Han times on we find
many lacquers signed by their makers; even
more significant, there are texts criticizing the
"luxuriousness" of lacquer wares and the vast
wealth expended on production.
The basic process begins with the extraction
of sap from the lac tree (Rhus vernicifera; qi
shu), largely grown throughout China south of
the Yangzi River. The juice is mildly toxic, and
the work would today be called hazardous.
Wood, cloth, metal, and ceramic could be used
as grounds for the application of lacquer, which
is not remarkable for its tensile strength but

extraordinary in its lightness and its ability to

resist damage or deterioration from liquids.
The stages of manufacture can be summarized
through the titles of the various expert craftsmen involved in the process: the primer; the
lacquerer who applied the initial (many) layers
of lacquer over the priming; the lacquerer who
applied the final coat that was to receive the
decoration; the decorator. This last individual
might be a painter (for painted lacquer), or a
carver (carved pieces were called ti hong if executed entirely in cinnabar red, ti cai if the carving revealed layers of different colors), or an
engraver, who rendered a design in incised lines
which were then filled with gold or silver dust
over wet lacquer as the adhesive. Engraved-andinlaid lacquers were called qiangjin if gold dust
was used, qiangyin if silver. After being decorated, the piece was turned over to the polisher,
then finally to the "responsible person/or
supervisor. To this list should be added the
designer, for many of the later lacquers, especially those of the Ming dynasty, received
elaborate pictorial decoration requiring knowledge of history and the use of long inscriptions
(cat. 335).
From the late seventeenth to the mideighteenth century, Chinese and Japanese
lacquerwork was fashionable in the West, particularly screens of lacquer on wood, which
were sometimes used intact but more often cut
up and made into cabinets and paneling by
French, German, English, and Dutch ebenistes.
The material itself was accurately described by
Engelbert Kaempfer in the late seventeenth
century, and in 1738 by J.B. du Halde, who
tried, not altogether successfully, to banish the
misconception that lacquer was a man-made
substance.
This varnish which gives so fine a lustre to
their works, and makes them so esteem'd in
Europe, is neither a composition, nor so great
a secret as some have imagin'd; to undeceive
whom, it will be sufficient to give an account
of where the Chinese get it, and afterwards
how they use it.
The varnish, called Tsi, is a reddish gum,
distilled from certain trees, by means of incisions made in the bark... these trees are
found in the Provinces of Kyang-si and
Si-chwen.
(Feddersen 1961,184)
The "Mysterious East" of Western imaginings
was too strong, and the fiction of a man-made
coating persisted into the nineteenth century.
Even today the remarkable applied arts of China
continue to arouse popular awe at Chinese
"workmanship."

Cloisonne
With cloisonne enamel we are on different
ground. Columbus would have recognized its
European character at once, as did his Chinese
near contemporaries. The earliest Chinese textual reference to cloisonne occurred in 1387, in
the Ge Gu Yao Lun (Essential Criteria for Judging Antiques) of Cao Zhao. In the third volume
(quari), section fifteen, "On Ancient Porcelain,"
we find this reference to Muslim ware (Da shi]:
The base of this ware is copper, and the
designs on it are in five colors, made with
chemicals and fired. It is similar to the Folang-k'an ([Prankish] enamel ware). I have
seen pieces such as incense burners, flower
vases, boxes and cups, which are appropriate
for use [only] in a woman's apartment, and
would be quite out of place in a scholar's
studio.
It is also known as Ware from the Devil's
country. [Gui Guo Yao].
(David 1971,143.)
Aside from the Chinese scholar's disdain for
women, Westerners, and all things gaudy or
brightly colored, this passage reveals the
Chinese awareness of cloisonne and its Western
origins as early as the late fourteenth century.
The technique of enameling was known in both
China and Japan even earlier, at least by the
eighth century, but it was little used, perhaps
because it was too colorful not to seem "vulgar."
But the Mongol Yuan dynasty brought Mongol
taste to imperial patronage and numerous Tibetan artists to the imperial workshops, leaving a
strong influence on succeeding Ming tastes in
porcelain and its related art, enameling on
metal.
Cloisonne technique and style apparently
originated in the preclassical and classical
Mediterranean world, and was well known in
Europe from the fifth or sixth century through
the whole of the Middle Ages. Byzantium had a
strong enameling tradition in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, which passed into the Islamic world. Seljuk Muslim rulers of northern
Mesopotamia and Persia enjoyed fine
enamelwares, both champleve and cloisonne, as
early as the first half of the twelfth century.
The Mongols conquered Yunnan, in far southwest China, in 1253, appointing a Muslim governor there from 1274, and Yunnan supplied
enamel craftsmen to the Mongol court in Beijing. Unlike so many of the applied arts, the
technique of enameling moved from West
to East.
Tibetan (Lamaist) Buddhism and its distinctive art styles continued, after the expulsion of
the Mongols, to receive strong imperial support

from the native Ming and conquering Qing

dynasties. Cloisonne-enameled brass altar vessels were much used in Lamaist temples
throughout China, and smaller versions must
have equipped household shrines.
A painting by Du Jin (act. c. 1465-0. 1500),
Enjoying Antiquities (cat. 293), displays a low
stool with a cloisonne top, and we must assume
from extant cloisonnes believably dated to the
fifteenth-early sixteenth century that they
were used by both the scholar-official and
merchant classes, though the former certainly
said little about enameled vessels in their writings. In their fluidity of design, brightness of
color, and baroque energy of shape and design
cloisonne vessels were at odds with the literati
aesthetics of "blandness," simplicity, and
restraint. It is hard to imagine the opulence of
cloisonne in juxtaposition with Shen Zhou's
Night Vigil (cat. 313). It is certainly no coincidence that many, perhaps even a majority of
extant Chinese cloisonnes of Ming date had
European or Tibetan owners. Only during the
Qing dynasty, with its "foreign" Manchu
dynasty and ruling class, were many enameled
brass and bronze vessels made for use within
China. Any visitor to Beijing will remember the
many large and elaborate enamels, answering to
the Manchu's Mongol and Tibetan tastes, in the
Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the
various halls and temples.

Furniture
Chinese furniture ranges from rustically simple
pieces in bamboo and softwoods, made for farmers and townspeople, to the sophisticatedly
simple works in exotic hardwoods made for
scholars, officials, and other gentry, as well as
the often rich and complex ceremonial furniture
characteristic of the Imperial court and the
numerous governmental agencies.
Before the Sui and Tang dynasties the
Chinese, as the Japanese have continued to do,
lived on the floor or on low raised platforms
(kang) with some heating built in. Early pictorial reliefs and paintings of the Han (206 B.C.A.D. 220) and Six Dynasties (221-589) periods
show mats, sometimes elaborate ones; low
tables for writing, eating, or toilet articles;
framed screens; and, rarely, a stool. Although
the chair (hu chuang, "barbarian couch,"
according to Berthold Laufer) may have been
introduced as early as the second century A.D.,
it was not at all common until the tenth century, when Gu Hongzhong painted his famous
handscroll, The Night Revels of Han Xizai,
known to us today through an excellent version
executed in the Song dynasty and now in the
Palace Museum, Beijing. The scroll shows a full
TOWARD CATHAY

361

panoply of beds, screens, tables, chairs, and

stools, apparently executed in dark woods, in
designs of great simplicity and elegance that
emphasize straight verticals and horizontals
with rounded corners. The forms and types
basically characterize Chinese furniture from
the tenth century until modern times.
As in the West, indoor furniture differed
from outdoor. Many Ming paintings show
gentlemen-scholars gathered in a garden to
examine paintings and antiques; they sit on
mats, stone benches, or platforms, with a few
low stools. As these gatherings move closer to
the house onto a terrace, for example (cat.
293) one may find table, chairs, and a screen,
moved out from indoors to accommodate the
scholar-official. The "outdoor" parties were
consciously modeled on such historic early
gatherings as those of the Seven Sages of the
Bamboo Grove of the late third century or
Wang Xizhi's "Lan Ting poetry party" of 353,
and archaistic intent or nostalgic feeling led the
participants willingly to accept an archaistic,
even if less than comfortable, setting.
Genre interiors, with all furniture in place,
were less often painted in early or middle Ming.
Fortunately three works survive: the first
showing furniture moved from a hall to a
nearby garden (Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden, by Xie Huan, in the Palace
Museum, Beijing); the second, showing both
garden and pavilion or hall (The Nine Elders of
the Mountain of Fragrance, attributed to Xie
Huan, Mrs. A. Dean Perry collection, Cleveland, Ohio); and the third, revealing a scholar's
study (Scholar Picking His Ear, anonymous,
Freer Gallery, Washington, D. C). All these
fifteenth-century scrolls depict furniture differing little from that shown in the tenth century,

362

CIRCA

1492

apart from a few more curvilinear elements

among the verticals and horizontals. The Scholar Picking His Ear shows one trait endearingly
at variance with the characteristically elegant
and simple furniture: an all-too-human disorder
of books, lute, scrolls, sweetmeats, tripods, and
peaches on the table tops. The table at which the
scholar sits, presumably interrupted while writing on the sheet of paper before him, is unusual
in its top surface of black and white da li marble,
a scholarly favorite because its veining suggests
landscapes and because it is easily cleaned and
therefore an ideal work surface for painting and
calligraphy.
All this suggests how difficult and problematical it is to accurately date the numerous
surviving pieces of this elegant furniture. Currently the quality of the wood, the nicety of the
complicated nailless and screwless joints, and
the clarity and elegance of the design are the
only real criteria available for approximate
dating. The reasonable assumption has been
that the best furniture corresponds with the
most prosperous and aesthetically creative
reigns, which means, in effect, that it dates from
the periods of finest porcelain production
1400-1440,1465-1620, and the Qing dynasty
to the end of the eighteenth century.
The woods selected and their treatment form
a large part of the connoisseurship of Chinese
furniture. Like Chinese connoisseurship of old
rocks and twisted trees such as juniper (cat.
312), the natural grain of the finest south
Chinese and Southeast Asian hardwoods was
studied, judged, and appreciated. A high polish
on a meticulously finished surface child's play
for a people working jade for six thousand
years was necessary to bring out color and
grain. The fine woods considered most desirable

were, in order of preference: zitan, purple

wood, perhaps of the Pterocarpus (rosewood)
family;ji chi mu, chicken-wing wood, a kind of
striated satinwood; huali or huanghuali,
another rosewood, ranging from pale tan to
light brown; and hongmu, blackwood, the least
desirable and still common today.
Ornate court furniture and its debased nineteenth-century descendants were much appreciated in the West until the rise of the modern
movement. The aesthetic of the Bauhaus,
though deliberately sympathetic to the machine
world, awakened many to a reappraisal of traditional Chinese furniture and, together with the
growing interest in wen ren painting after
World War II, sealed its adoption as a classic
achievement in the world history of furniture.

B I B L I O G R A P H I C NOTE:
Driscoll and Toda 1935, 1964; Willetts 1958; Chiang
1954; Ch'en 1966; Philadelphia 1971; DeWoskin, in
Bush and Murck 1983; Lin, in Bush and Murck 1983
Yonezawa 1956; Vanderstappen 1957; Soper 1958; Siren
1963; Taipei 1974; Taipei 1975; Murck 1976, esp. pp.
113-129; Cahill 1978; Cleveland 1980, esp. pp. xxxvxlv, 157-209; Loehr 1980; Barnhart, in Bush and Murck
1983; Little 1985; Hong Kong 1988; Rogers 1988; Beijing and Hong Kong 1990..
Edwards 1962; Cahill 1978; Bush and Shih 1985;
Edwards, in Goodrich and Fang 1986, vol. 2, pp. 11731177; Rogers 1988.
Brankston 1938, 1970; Kates 1948, 1962; Sayer 1951;
Jenyns 1953; Willetts 1958; Feddersen 1961; Garner
1962; Medley 1963; Medley 1966, sect. 5; David 1971;
Ellsworth 1971; Medley, 1976, 1982; Garner 1979;
Jenyns and Watson 1980; New York 1980; Chicago
1985; New York 1989.

ENCOUNTERS WITH INDIA: LAND OF GOLD,

SPICES, AND MATTERS SPIRITUAL
Stuart Gary Welch

ndia is rich and vulnerable. In the western

world, from ancient times into the eighteenth
century, this has been the seductive and inviting
legend, one more concerned with taste buds,
fine raiment, and full purses than with mind or
spirit. It grew over many centuries from a
hotchpotch of soldiers' and sailors' yarns and
travelers' and merchants' dreams, most of which
must be sifted for hard facts. Herodotus, writing between 450 and 430 B.C., is our earliest
source. The first of his piquant anecdotes tells
of Indian hounds, of which the Great King of
Babylon (Assyria) owned so many that their
maintenance drained all of the taxes from four
large villages. Another of his claims is as fresh
as today's news: in the sixth century B.C. there
were more Indians "than any other people
known to us." Furthering the legend of wealth
he wrote that Persia's north Indian provinces
paid the empire's highest tribute, three hundred and sixty talents of gold dust. His information slithers between the humdrum and the
fantastic, touching on Indians and their ways
before revealing the surprising source of all
that gold:
There are many Indian nations; and they do
not all speak one language, some are nomads;
. . . some live in the marshes beside the river
and eat raw fish . . . other Indians . . . to the
east. . . are nomads and eat raw flesh. It
is ... a custom . . . that if one of their folk is
sick, he is killed by his nearest kinsmen, who
say that as he is wasted with sickness his flesh
is ... spoiled . . . ; but [the others] not agreeing, kill and eat him. . . . On the other hand,
there are Indians who will kill no living
thing, who sow no seed nor are accustomed
to have houses, and they are grass eaters . . .
The gold, we are told, is found in the desert
near the city of Caspatyrus, where giant ants,
"somewhat smaller than dogs but bigger than
foxes," in burrowing into the ground bring up
sand mixed with gold:
It is in search of this sand that the Indians
make journeys into the desert. Each man has
a team of three camels . . . [with which he
goes] to fetch the gold . . . at the hottest time,
for then . . . the ants disappear into the ground
. . . When the Indians reach the place where

the sand is, they fill sacks with it and ride

away homeward with all speed. For the ants
no sooner become aware of them . . . by smell
. . . than they give chase.
During the fourth century B.C., Alexander
the Great, inspired by legends of India's wealth
and curious about its anomalous culture, led his
armies across the known world as far as the
Beas River. But the heat and distance were so
great that his armies refused to go farther. He
withdrew, leaving behind governors who established long-lasting, eventually independent provinces, well known to today's museum visitors
from their sculptures in which classical naturalism blends with indigenous inner vision. Although Alexander's "conquest," which fostered
international trade, was celebrated by western
historians, Indian sources scarcely mention it.
In 115 B.C., King Ptolemy m Euergetes sent
Eudoxus of Cyzicus to India. Guided by an
Indian whose life he had saved during a shipwreck, he sailed as far as the Malabar coast,
where he acquired a wealth of precious stones
and spices before returning home. Word spread;
trade burgeoned; and greed fanned investigations of the east and how to go there. Alexandrian geographers such as Eratosthenes in the
third century B.C. separated truth from fiction
and drew charts that included India. Although
mere fragments of these are known, they seem
to have been more accurate than those prepared
a century later by Claudius Ptolemy, whose
maps, preserved in Byzantium, reached western
Europe in the fifteenth century and profoundly
influenced cartography there (see cats. 126,

127).

Indian trade flourished under the Romans,

who established stations along the west coast
for buying spices and textiles. Western goods,
however, were of little interest to Indians, who
demanded gold and silver coin. A worryingly
uneven balance of trade brought complaints
from Pliny in the Senate. Increasing commerce
led to first-hand knowledge of India, such as
that compiled by the anonymous Greek or
Greek-speaking Egyptian trader or ship-master
who, between 95 and 130 A.D., wrote The
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an invaluable
source of information on sea routes and trade
goods.

Christianity came to India when the Apostle

Saint Thomas journeyed overland to the Persian
Gulf, sailing the rest of the way to Malabar in
south India on a Moorish ship. He established
churches there and in Sind, always maintaining
contact with the Syrian Church in Aleppo.
Even King Alfred of England (843-899) supported Indian missions, to fulfill a vow made
before one of his battles. After winning, true to
his word he sent Bishop Sigelm of Shireburn to
south India, whence according to William of
Malmesbury (d. 1143) he brought back "many
brilliant and exotic gems, and aromatic juices,
in which the country abounds." Many Franciscans were sent to India during the first half of
the fourteenth century. John of Monte Corvino
served in southern India before becoming archbishop of Peking. Odoric of Pordenone traveled
by land from Ormuz to Tana in Salsette, after
which he sailed to Polumbum (Quilon), Ceylon, and to the Coromandel coast. A French
monk, Jordanus, urged the establishment of
missions at Poroco (Broach) and Supra (Surat),
although he was stationed as Bishop at Polumbum (Quilon), the largest trading center near
the tip of the peninsula.
Compilers of the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (cat.
i) gathered and summarized information from
ecclesiastical travelers as well as from Marco
Polo and others. It is the earliest extant map to
show India as a peninsula. Most of Asia, however, was still lumped together as "the Indies,"
subdivided into India within and India beyond
the Ganges, India Extrema or Superior, Greater
India, Middle India, and Lesser India. According to Marco Polo, Abyssinia was in Middle
India, while Greater India reached from Malabar
to Kech-Makran (on the coast of Iran), and the
eight major kingdoms of Lesser India extended
from Chamba (in South Vietnam) to Motupalli.
Knowledge of India proliferated, especially
after Byzantine Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During this era of travel,
Hindu yogis were also on the road, following
quite different quests. A painting from Turcoman
Tabriz, now in Istanbul, depicts them accurately,
apparently from life, in the company of Muslim
holy men at a startlingly ecumenical shrine the
walls of which are adorned with Christian imagery. A few decades after this miniature was
TOWARD CATHAY

363

painted in western Iran, men of learning in the

west were busy digesting the newly available
information from Constantinople, important
work by Arab travelers and geographers and
Ptolemy's long hidden maps.
The Ottoman victory of 1453 also disrupted
trade. This was a serious matter at a time when
refrigeration was either primitive or non-existent,
and not only royalty but wealthy nobles and
rich merchants craved spices to improve the
flavor of food and to help preserve it. Merces
subtiles (cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, vanilla,
cloves, ginger, et al.}, as well as indigo for dyeing
and gold, previously had reached Europe from
the Black Sea and Constantinople via Genoese
and Venetian middlemen. Virtually overnight,
the Ottoman triumph cut off supplies of these
luxuries that had become necessities, valued as
highly as gold or precious stones. And when
fresh inventories were again available, delivered
via circuitous routes by greedy Italians who had
to pay fierce tolls, prices were exorbitant. In
Europe, only the Genoese and Venetian traders
with their small but seaworthy xebecs and
carracks profited, repacking and transporting
cargoes brought from India by Arab dhows to
Syrian ports. Finding a new route to the East
became a matter of some concern for the rest of
Europe.
Following Christopher Columbus' "Enterprise
of the Indies/' an auspicious failure on behalf of
Spain, Portugal's program of voyages down the
African coast reached its successful climax. On
9 July 1497, Vasco da Gama set forth with three
vessels destined for India via the Cape of Good
Hope by a direct sea route. More than eight
months later, on 20 May 1498, he reached
Capucad, a small village eight miles north of
Calicut. Landing there was a stroke of good
fortune. His pilot was an Arab unaware of the
long-term results of this minor task, for he had
spared the Portuguese from landing in the
territories of the Muslim sultan of Gujarat,
who probably would have disrupted if not
ended Vasco da Gama's ambitions. By chance,
Da Gama had been brought to the lands of the
friendly Hindu Zamorin of Calicut, who welcomed him and offered every facility of this
major center of the spice trade.
This initial encounter between Portugal and
India brought with it some tense moments. The
meager trade goods of the Portuguese were
scoffed at by the Indians, whom the Portuguese
amazingly took to be Christians, reasoning that
they could not be Muslims because the Hindu
temples contained images of gods in human
form. After his welcome, the Zamorin, advised
by knowledgeable Moorish traders that these
new visitors were not trustworthy, pursued a
rather ambiguous policy toward the Portuguese,
364

CIRCA 1492

at one point taking some of them prisoner and,

when Da Gama sailed, fighting a brief naval
battle with his ships.
This initial success invited further Portuguese
royal ventures. On 9 March 1500, thirteen
vessels led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral set sail.
Carried by winds and current to Brazil, which
he called Vera Cruz (Land of the True Cross), he
profited from his mistake by claiming it in
Portugal's name. But India was his goal, and
after losing four ships off the Cape of Good
Hope, he finally dropped anchor off Calicut on
13 September. Cabral was well received by the
benevolent Zamorin, who overlooked further
protests by Arab merchants and permitted the
establishment of a trading station. Friction between the Portuguese and the Muslim traders,
who saw the new arrivals as trespassers on their
own trading grounds, led to a riot against the
Portuguese and the destruction of their outpost,
and to Cabral's rash decision to bombard the
city in revenge.
Cabral then sailed to Cochin, a lesser Hindu
kingdom to which he promised aid against his
former ally the Zamorin. Cabral's alliance with
spice-rich Cochin was followed by one with
Cannanore. This so pleased the king of Portugal
that in 1502 he commissioned Vasco da Gama
to return to south India with twenty vessels,
not only to augment trade but to establish a
Christian mission. Despite these pious as well
as mercenary intentions, while en route da
Gama intercepted a rich Muslim pilgrimage
vessel homeward bound from Arabia laden with
men, women, and children. The ship was attacked, plundered and scuttled.
Worse followed. Vasco da Gama arrived in
Calicut where he demanded "as a preliminary
condition of peace" that the Zamorin expel
every Muslim from the land. When this was
refused, he blasted the town with cannon, killing many people, and sailed away, still smarting.
He also butchered or burned alive several hundred fishermen who had sailed out that day
unaware that hostilities were about to resume,
evincing a brutality that was lamentably typical
of these early campaigns. Cabral's and Da Gama's
expeditions were the spearhead of an expansionist Portuguese policy that soon led to the
establishment of a string of bases and fortresses
in western India and to Afonso de Albuquerque's capture of Goa in 1510.
When European sailor-adventurers first landed
on the shores of south India and met their
inhabitants, what must these so dissimilar beings
have thought of one another? Although neither
the Indians nor the Portuguese have left us
specific reports of this encounter, it is not
difficult to picture the scene. Documents from
the age of these European manners bring them

so fully to life that we can envision, hear, and

indeed smell them. Except perhaps for a few
astutely professional senior officers and the
ships' doctor, they must have been like most
mariners of their period a raucously tatterdemalion lot, at best hardy and brave men who
quite literally "knew the ropes."
However much one empathizes with the afflictions withstood by these rugged officers and
crews on what must have seemed like endless
voyages from Europe, one also sympathizes
with the Indians whose culture they misunderstood, often affronted, and weakened. Is it
poetic justice that this first contingent of Portuguese, bent so exclusively on trade, saw and
experienced so little of India? On the hot,
sunny day on which Vasco da Gama arrived at
Calicut on the Malabar coast, he and his men
had landed near the lower extremity of the
Indian subcontinent, a triangular peninsula 2,000
miles long suspended beneath the vast land
mass of Central Asia. Closed off at the top by
1,600 miles of almost impenetrable mountain
ranges the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, and
Himalaya it was bordered by the Bay of
Bengal to the east and by the Indian Ocean to
the west. It could be seen as an enclosed garden,
in which varied but interconnected cultures,
isolated as though in a test tube, ever gained in
intensity and savor. The land is naturally divided by mountain ranges (ghats) into high
plateaus and plains, some of them desert, others
watered and provided with rich loam by rivers
fed by melting mountain snow. Northern and
southern India are noticeably distinct. Sealed
off by geography, the south has been harder to
reach than the north; and before the arrival of
sizeable vessels its people were less open to
foreign influences.
Three and a half millennia ago, the "original
Indians" probably Australoids were driven
away to less desirable lands by Aryan tribes who
had worked their way from Central Asia through
the always vulnerable mountain passes of the
northwest. These so-called Dravidians (descended
from the land's prehistoric inhabitants) can be
found in remote tracts of the subcontinent
among India's tribal people. Of similar ancient
lineage are the Dravidians of south India, people encountered by the Portuguese. The ancient
Aryans were probably the last of many waves of
invaders and immigrants of the early period
whose ways were not gradually absorbed or
Indianized entirely beyond recognition. They
not only contributed to Indian culture the earlier Vedas (knowledge), written in Sanskrit
probably between 1500 and 1000 B.C., but they
should be credited with codifying (if not initiating) the caste system, a specifically Indian concept which was still rigorously followed in 1498.

Although the word caste was derived from the

Portuguese word for color, this system must
have baffled and occasionally embarrassed Vasco
da Gama and his men. They could not have
understood its subtle distinctions according to
which Aryan society was led by priests whose
complex rituals had become accepted as indispensable to tribal prosperity. They divided humankind into four still familiar social classes,
each further divided into many castes and subcastes. The scholars and priests who devised
and perpetuated the system constituted themselves as the highest class, the Brahmins. The
Kshatriyas, warriors and rulers intended to
protect and maintain the Brahmins, came second. The third class, the Vaishyas, was composed of farmers and merchants, and the laborers
and serfs who worked the land were the fourth
class, the Shudras. The darker, "uncivilized"
aboriginals whom the fair-skinned Aryans had
defeated were relegated to a fifth group, the
Panchama, who, along with the Portuguese and
other foreigners, were outside the caste system.
However oblivious Vasco da Gama and his
followers were to the land and people before
them, they were fortunate in having been guided
to Malabar's most powerful kingdom and its
chief center of trade. The Zamorin was mightier
than the Raja of Cochin, who traditionally paid
him annual offerings of elephants and who was
neither permitted by him to strike coins nor
even to roof his palace with tiles. Astute in
trade as well as royal, this cosmopolitan ruler
received merchants from places distant as China,
Sumatra (Jawa), Ceylon (Saylan), the Maldive
Islands, Yemen, and Pars (Persia). We must
realize, however, that except for these foreign
ships and men, everything that the Portuguese
saw stretched out before them each picturesque date or coconut palm, low-slung whitewashed mud-brick building, all the lean boats
with graceful prows reminiscent of gondolas,
every elephant, temple, and all the people
represented but a tiny sampling of India's overwhelming variety.
The Portuguese must have been struck by
Malabar's crisp freshness. Roadways, animals,
buildings, and people alike would have been
immaculately clean. Very dark skinned, the
Zamorin and his people were finely featured.
They dressed lightly, the women naked above
the waist and wrapped below in unstitched
white cotton, relieved by occasional stripes and
block-printed floral patterns. Like the men, who
also wore white cotton, they were small-boned
and most of them were thin, with lustrously
oiled hair. They moved gracefully, with elegance and dignity. To the comparatively roughhewn Portuguese, Indian women must have
been greatly attractive and voluptuous, but

except for the lowliest prostitutes they were

completely unapproachable. Men probably
seemed refined to the point of effeminacy. Both
must have smelled oddly to these sweaty visitors, for they would have worn or been massaged with oil-based scents concocted from
musk, sweetly smelling earths, and unfamiliar
flowers.
Meeting and communicating with these incomprehensibly exotic people would have been
difficult. Immediately troublesome was the language barrier; for surely no Portuguese at that
time spoke Malayalam, the language of Calicut,
one of India's 845 languages and dialects. But
India's sights and sounds must have attracted,
even delighted the strangers, especially if they
came upon a religious procession, glorious with
glitteringly caparisoned elephants, huge wooden
chariots teeming with carved and polychromed
Hindu deities. It would have been accompanied
by musicians sounding horns and shrill pipes,
twanging stringed instruments, tinkling bells,
and pounding several kinds of drums which
must have astonished Portuguese ears. The
intense sometimes extreme religious faith
of many Hindus would have been apparent in
such processions, during which people normally
decorous suddenly lost themselves in divine
adoration, perhaps reminding the Portuguese of
similar ecstacies at home.
Although the Zamorin and most of his people
were Hindus, whose religion had developed
over millennia and encompassed every level of
thought and religious feeling, from animism to
Brahminism and to highly evolved philosophical systems, Muslims were powerful at court
and in trade, as Vasco da Gama learned. Unlike
the Hindus they had come to India in 712 A.D.,
less than one hundred years after the death of
the Prophet, when Arab traders reached Sind in
what is now Pakistan. Over the next three
centuries, the teachings of Muhammad spread
throughout Central Asia, and the armies of
Islam gathered strength. In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, far greater forces led by rugged Turks and Afghans raided India through
the same northwestern mountain passes entered by the Aryans. These invaders not only
destroyed many Hindu temples but also dealt
the final blow to Buddhist culture in north
India. As the conquerors adjusted to their new
surroundings, Islam's cultural heritage enriched
and blended with India's, and by 1300 truly
Indo-Muslim idioms were emerging in the art
and architecture of the sultanates of northern
India and the Deccan. Many of the Muslims
encountered by Vasco da Gama would have
been affiliated with the Deccani sultanate of
Bijapur, which yielded Goa, its major port, to
Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510.

Vasco da Gama and his men in all likelihood

encountered more Hindus than Muslims. Especially eye and ear-engaging would have been
Hindu dancers. With luck, they might have
seen early forms of Kathakali, the Hindu dance
epics of a kind associated with Kerala, in which
heroes, heroines, and monsters dressed in bellshaped skirts wear god-size "masks" built up to
deeply sculptural forms in layers of polychromed
rice-flour paste. Although it is claimed that this
tradition was codified during the nineteenth
century, early sixteenth-century Calicut must
have taken pleasure in comparable religious dancing. At once instructive to the public, with its
characterizations drawn from the Hindu pantheon and religious epics, it also provided ecstatic release by stimulating trance states in its
dancers. Unless its dynamically "heathen" characters, including droll demons, offended Portuguese religious sensibilities, it should have
thrilled them.
Observing non-Christian religious activities,
alas, might not have gratified the Portuguese,
to whom revering images of Christ or the
Virgin Mary was admirable but doing so to
images of Hindu Gods shaped like elephants or
monkeys was not. Once the Portuguese were
established in India, instead of acquiring such
items, they commissioned Indian craftsmen to
carve ivories of Christian subjects and to manufacture richly carved and inlaid chests, tables,
cupboards, and other furniture based upon European forms. We are unaware of any significant
Hindu or Muslim object or painting brought
back from India by the scrupulously Christian
Portuguese during their colonial period.
Had Vasco da Gama and his followers been
observant, interested, and open-minded they
could have learned remarkable things about
Indian life and customs. As Christians, they
might have noted that in Hinduism there are
many priests but no religious hierarchy, no
equivalent to their bishops, cardinals, or pope.
Holy men, however, abounded; and many would
have seemed wildly picturesque, with long hair,
sometimes wrapped as turbans, and curling,
untrimmed fingernails. Some of them spent
their days staring into the sun; others proudly
suffered fiercer discomforts, such as holding
their arms above their heads for years on end or
stretching out on beds of sharply pointed nails.
Perhaps the Portuguese sensed similarities between these self-imposed austerities and those
of Christian Penitentes.
After shipboard fare the Portuguese must
have enjoyed south Indian food, with its succulent fruits, rice, crunchy rice-flour breads, and
vegetables cooked in clarified butter. Inasmuch
as the chili peppers for which Indian cuisine is
now famous were brought there from America
TOWARD CATHAY

365

by the Portuguese themselves along with

maize, potato, and tomatoes Vasco da Gama
and his men could not have complained that the
food was too hot. Food was eaten simply but
appealingly from nature's own dinner plates,
brilliantly green, neatly trimmed plantain leaves.
Cups were folded from dried leaves held together with twigs. Hindus ate only with their
right hands, reserving the left for "hygienic
purposes/7 Although most south Indians were
vegetarians, Hindus of the princely caste, those
outside the caste system, and Muslims ate fish
and even meat, cooked in sauces or grilled as
kebabs.
Most Indian people live in villages; and most
works of art belong to the folk level. We assume
that the earliest Portuguese in India saw such
works: small images of bronze, wood, or ceramic, made for family or village shrines; embroidered, block-printed, painted, or woven
textiles; silver or bronze jewelry, sometimes set
with stones; arms and armor, in shapes that
would have seemed eccentric to Europeans,
often adorned with reliefs of divinities, animals,
and birds; gilt-bronze or silver-gilt horse and
elephant trappings; and religious images painted
on paper or on walls. Inasmuch as art of this
sort was made for immediate use and much of it
was ephemeral, it has not survived. Probably
because broken images are believed to have lost
their power, there is little respect in India for
anything that is soiled or damaged, and such
things are discarded, unless their materials are
valuable, in which case they are refashioned.
Although the styles of court art changed swiftly,
folk traditions were more conservative. Its artifacts are "timeless" in design, hence very
hard to date. For all of these reasons, this
important category of art is represented in this
exhibition only by its influence upon "higher"
forms, as in the Orissan relief of Lord Shiva and
his family, to which it lent earthy and spiritual
power (cat. 350).
Vasco da Gama and his officers might also on
occasion have seen grander works of art made
for the court. If so, they must have admired the
Zamorin's rich but starkly shaped gold jewelry
and splendid sword hilts, as well as boats with
carved and polychromed prows, and palanquins
enriched with panels of ivory, engraved and
polychromed with garlands, birds, animals, and
deities.
Inasmuch as the Portuguese at this time

366

CIRCA 1492

scarcely roamed beyond the coastal trading

centers, they cannot have discovered the varieties and qualities of India's arts. Nor, alas, can
we provide in this exhibition more than a small
sampling. It is difficult to represent the period
around 1492 in works of art that may be exhibited. Once-magnificent textiles have survived in
tattered bits; few ivories or wood carvings are
available to us; and the dazzling jewels, richly
set in gold, that have escaped the melting pot
are inaccessible. Greatly impressive architectural complexes that still delight travelers
are not easy to envision from transportable
fragments.
We are nevertheless fortunate in being able
to show India's brilliant artistic heritage through
a small number of superb bronze and stone
sculptures, manuscripts, and pictures. Whether
Hindu, Muslim, or Jain, whether from north,
south, east, or west, each proclaims the range,
depth, and skill of India's artists and craftsmen.
During the later fifteenth century, India's always fertile cultural traditions were in flux. If
by this time much of India was in Muslim
hands, these were no longer "foreign" hands.
Works of art whether made from Muslim,
Hindu, or other patrons were instilled with
indigenous character. The stately, lively script
of the Muslim dedicatory inscription from West
Bengal (cat. 354) is as "Indian" as the Deccani
Qur'an (cat. 353). Both, indeed, draw upon the
earthily dynamic rhythms we associate with
Indian art through the millennia. Vital as drum
beats, these can be sensed in the ground-quaking
dance of Ganesh, the auspicious Hindu God of
wisdom, jovially represented by a south Indian
bronze (cat. 349). Comparable energy and verge
appear again in another south Indian bronze, a
particularly lithe and voluptuous image of Parvati
in which earthly beauty and divine wisdom
unite (cat. 347).
Although it might be argued that south India's sculptural traditions reached their peak far
earlier, under the Chalukyas, Pallavas, or Cholas,
the image of Yashoda and Krishna in honeytoned bronze (cat. 348) is as moving as virtually
any south Indian metal image. Its fresh human
intensity, taut amplitude of form, and the engaging interaction between the godly infant and
his lovely foster parent emerge not from humdrum repetition of learned aesthetic formulae
but from the ripening of an emergent new
phase in the cycle of art. Here, as in other

major examples of traditional Indian art, the

creator's spiritual achievement was inspired as
much by observing life as by studying older
works of art. But Indian artist-craftsmen, like
Indian musicians, were encouraged to improvise upon prescribed themes. In western India,
the artist of the Jain mandala (cat. 351), while
adhering painstakingly to tradition, took pleasure in lending a particular wiggle to his wiry
outlines and filling them in with vibrantly
bright color. Similarly, the illustrators of a
Shahnama (Book of Kings) (cat. 352) so contagiously express their enjoyment in painting
tents, heroes, and demons that more than five
centuries later we share not only the joy but the
underlying seriousness.
One of the objects exhibited, an elephant
beguilingly worked in rock crystal (cat. 14), is
known to have been admired in the West, where
it was richly mounted in gold. Smallness belies
artistic stature. For this tactile pachyderm, a
paradoxical handful for a Muslim patron in the
Deccan, is truly monumental. Drilled, ground,
and polished, it expresses India's genius for
stone sculpture. Sensitively observed, impressively abstracted into sensuously rounded curves,
it defines the gentle might and spirit of India's
most picturesque and fascinating animal. One
wishes that Vasco da Gama and his comrades
could have known and understood this enlightening object, a perfect souvenir from a
glorious culture.
Bibliographical Note :
Diffie, Bailey W., and George D. Winius.
foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 14151580 (Europe and the World in the Age of
Expansion, ed. Boyd C. Shafer, i). Minneapolis
and Oxford, 1977.
Heras, H. South India Under the Vijayanagar
Empire, reprint, New Delhi, 1980.
Herodotus. Works, trans. A. D. God ley.
Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1946.
Sastri, K. A. Milakanta. A History of South
India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of
Vijayanagar. Madras, 1958.
Scammell, G. V. The World Encompassed:
The first European maritime empires c. 8001650. London, 1981.
Welch, Stuart Cary. India: Art and Culture
1300-1900 [exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of
Art] New York, 1985.

M U ROM ACH I J A P A N

211

MANIFESTATION OF
AMIDA BUDDHA AT NACHI
i$th century
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk
84-5 ^ 39-5 (33^xi53/s)
Shonen-ji, Kanagawa Prefecture
Although sparse in obvious narrative detail, this
painting apparently depicts a tale well known in
Kumano lore. An elderly woman from the provinces had a single pious wish: to make a pilgrimage to Kumano before dying. Arriving at the
Miyaoji Shrine at Hama in her seventieth year,
the old woman was rewarded by a spectacular
vision of Amida Buddha emerging in an elaborately conceived cloud formation from behind a
mountain range.
The Kumano region, located in the southeastern portion of the Kii Peninsula, is an area of dramatic topography and natural beauty to which
numinous qualities were ascribed from ancient
times. Two Shinto shrines the shingu (Hayatama Shrine), located near the mouth of the
Kumano River as it empties into the sea, and the
hongu (Nimasu Shrine), set farther into the
mountains, nearer the source of the same river,
were established during the Early Heian period
(794-897). They imposed a degree of religious
structure on a vicinity already recognized as
sacred. In the mid-Heian period Nachi, an adjacent mountain with a magnificent waterfall, was
incorporated with the other two sites to form
the three-shrine system called Kumano Sanzan,
or Mi-Kumano.
Kumano was an important and popular pilgrimage destination. Indeed there were centuries of
imperial devotion, with the journeys of successive
royal entourages from Kyoto recorded in paintings and in poetic travel diaries. This imperial
patronage and interest, along with its privileged
assumption into court literature and visual art,
afforded the pilgrimage route to Kumano an
almost prototypical status among the possible
forms of Japanese religious journey. In addition,
Kumano was a prominent training place for
mountain ascetics (yamabushi) of the syncretic
Shinto-Buddhist Shugendo sect. Not only a destination, Kumano was the starting point on a pilgrimage route of thirty-three temples in central
Japan dedicated to Kannon, Bodhisattra of Com368

CIRCA 1492

passion. The area around Nachi was interpreted

to be the site of Mt. Potalaka, the paradise of
Kannon, projected by Buddhist adherents of
various Asian cultures upon various auspicious
locales.
The Amida portrayed in this painting is understood to be the Buddhist deity corresponding
to the indigenous (Shinto) spirit of the Kumano
hongu. The assimilation of nativist religion by
Buddhism was, until the eleventh century, a relatively unstructured process of mutually affecting
influences. From the eleventh century, however,
Buddhist theorists categorized the relationships
between Buddhist and indigenous gods, establishing individual correspondences. Their goal was
to present the local deities as manifestations of an
overarching Buddhist pantheon. This was known
as the honji-suijaku system: honji (Original
Ground) referring to the Buddhist deities, and
suijaku (Manifest Trace) referring to their localized Shinto manifestations. The image seen here
greatly resembles a type of purely Buddhist icon
called yamagoshi raigo, which depicts Amida
Buddha, Kannon, and other heavenly beings
coming over a range of mountains to welcome the
soul of a recently deceased believer into paradise.
This painting, however, in which the Buddhist
deity Amida is shown emanating from a specifically Shinto holy place, and kneeling pilgrims
on the left make folded-paper offerings of a
kind used in Shinto ritual, is a syncretic honjisuijaku icon.
Such combined Buddhist-Shinto icons, commissioned by the Imperial and noble families, were
relatively common from the Heian period (7941185) on. The Japanese, blessed by a singular lack
of religious zealotry, readily amalgamated their
ancient and local Shinto with the newer, imported
doctrine adding to Shinto's cult of purity, simplicity, and reverence for all things in nature the
complex metaphysics and compassion emphasized in Buddhism. Both were in a real sense the
national religions of Japan. They also corresponded to the two strongest strains in Japanese
culture, the Chinese tradition of rationality and
formal symmetry and the native tradition of
intuition, naturalness, and simplicity. The Imperial family, practicing Buddhists since at least
the seventh century, were also descendants of
Amaterasu, Shinto Sun Goddess and chief deity,
and ministers of her Grand Shrine at Ise, which
was Shinto's holy of holies. Neither the emperors
nor the nobles found any contradiction in simultaneous patronage of both doctrines.

An understanding of the geography of the

Kumano shrines and the narrative mentioned
above suggests that the perspective presented in
this painting is a view from the southeast to the
northwest. In other words, from the coastal area
to the mountains. A painting in the collection of
Dan O H6rin-ji in Kyoto offers an earlier (1329)
version of such a composition but with informative variations. The earlier painting depicts a
similar valley or vortex of inward-sloping mountains and the ascending Amida. The astounded
pilgrims, however, appear only on the right of the
painting, together with the architectural elements
of a small Shinto shrine. By comparison, the
Shonen-ji painting seen here has supplicant fig-

ures on both sides and rendered in larger scale,

but no indication of shrine setting. Five devotees
are at the left, and a yamaloushi (not seen in the
earlier painting) is at the right. What appears to
be a name, lettered in gold, is seen near the figure
of the old woman in the group at the left. This is
the only suggestion that the painting may have
had a specific context or intention.
Of the two paintings compared above, the later
one is the more formalized. Radiating light cast
by the ascending deity is rendered as schematic
bands outlining the mountain ridges. This handling is quite distinct from the earlier painting,
where shading and modeling were employed in an
attempt at naturalistic landscape. The Shonen-ji
painting is also the more symmetrical of the two,
with the pilgrims affecting the poses of supplicant
benefactors or donors at the feet of a central icon.
The painting is a distinguished example of boldly
rendered Buddhist iconography of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. Pattern and color have
here overwhelmed the subtlety of an earlier style.
Cut gold leaf (kirikane) embellishes the robe, but
figural representation is less adroit. The Heian
and Kamakura (1185-1333) union of palette with
modulated brushwork to define form or shape has
given way to shape defined primarily by pattern
and color. The brush is far less apparent. This
painting reflected a new, populist Buddhist faith
whose iconographic needs were best expressed
forcefully.
J.u.
S.E.L.

212

Tosa Mitsunobu
active 1469-1521

KINGS SHINKO AND EMMA,

FROM THE SERIES TEN KlNGS OF HELL
dated to 1489
Japanese
hanging scrolls; ink, color, and gold on silk
each 97 x 42.1 (^8l/4 x i65/s)
Jofuku-ji, Kyoto (housed at Kyoto National
Museum)
Images of the courts of Shinko-0 and Emma-O
are two of a series of ten paintings of the Buddhist
Kings of Hell and their courts commissioned by
Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado (r. 1465-1500). The
series was to be produced at the rate of one painting per month, beginning in the eighth month
of the third year of the Chokyo era (1489) and
continuing through the fifth month of the second
year of the Entoku era (1490). These icons were to

function in a gyakushu, or reverse ritual, in which

liturgies appropriate for a deceased person were
performed on behalf of a yet living supplicant
as a means to gain merit and avert suffering in
the afterlife.
Inscriptions on the reverse of the paintings and
a diary entry by courtier Sanjonishi Sanetaka
(1455-1537) describe the probable circumstances
of the commission. Sanetaka, a Mitsunobu intimate and subject of a well-known portrait-sketch
by the artist, notes that Mitsunobu made copies of
a set of Kings of Hell paintings attributed to Tosa
Yukimitsu (i4th century) and held in the collection of the Nison-in, a temple in Kyoto. It is
assumed that the copying was related to the
emperor's commission.
The Yukimitsu scrolls are also extant, and their
approximate date of execution suggests they are
not far removed from a Song Chinese (960-1279)
iconographic type which arrived in Japan in the
late twelfth century. In Buddhist cosmology the
actions of all sentient beings are consequential,

determining which of the Six Realms of Existence

(Rokudo) one will inhabit in the next life. Right
actions impel transmigration to higher realms and
eventually to Enlightenment, which brings release
from the cycle of karma. Hell is the lowest of the
Six Realms. Its depiction in these paintings derives from a fourth-century Daoist concept of a
netherworld ruled by a lord with ten attendants,
and a Song dynasty distillation of that notion into
a tribunal of ten judges (with assistants) modeled
on the Chinese judiciary.
Such paintings served a precise function in
Buddhist funerary practice. Following the death
of a believer, a memorial service was held every
seventh day for forty-nine days, then on the one
hundredth day and on the first and third anniversary. Each of the Ten Kings (or Judges) presided
over one of the ten days in this memorial sequence. Appearing in the paintings of each of the
Ten Judges is a corresponding Buddhist deity, signifying both the protective role and the causal
primacy of the Buddhist pantheon.
T O W A R D CATHAY

369

Shinko-O, lord of the first memorial day,

observes the forlorn figure on horseback, dressed
as a Chinese scholar, crossing a bridge to the
entrance of the netherworld. Awaiting him is
the monstrous hag Datsueba who strips all newcomers, hanging their garments on the sinister
tree to her left. Unfortunates are tossed into the
churning waters to fend against demons. A passage in the Hokke Gengi (C: Fahua Xuanyi, the
commentary on the Lotus Sutra by the monk
Zhi-Yi [538-597]), describes such a scene. Presiding above this dismal passage is the deity Fudo
Myo-6, chief of the fierce Wisdom Kings, whose
attributes of sword and rope respectively slashed
through the toils of ignorance and bound evil
(or, alternatively, pulled the seeker toward
Enlightenment).
Emma-O, lord of the fifth memorial day, presides over a demonstration of evidence. Held by
an implacable demon, the evil-doer sees himself,
in the great bronze mirror, committing the act
of murderous piracy for which he will be condemned. Other sinners await their turn before the
incriminating mirror. Above, in marked contrast
to this scene of terrible revelation and grim justice, is the benign image of Jizo Bosatsu (bodhisattva), suggesting the ever-present possibility of
compassionate intercession.
Mitsunobu imparts energy and vitality to this
series of traditional icons. Possibly the lively
drama in each of the ten scenes appealed to the
artist's narrative interests. By contrast, in many
statically posed icons made about this time, the
earlier sense of regal power had given way to
mere stiffness.
j.u.
370

CIRCA 1492

213

TEN REALMS OF REINCARNATION

( JIKKAI Zu)
i$th century
Japanese
pair of six-fold screens; color, gold and silver foil,
and metallic powder on paper
each 142.2 x 295.0 (56 x iiSVs)
Okuno-in, Taima-dera, Nara
These screens are said to depict the Ten Realms
of Reincarnation of the Buddhist cosmology.
The Ten Realms are equivalent to the Six Realms
of Existence (Rokudo, comprising the realms
of hell, hungry ghosts, animals, bellicose demons,
humans, and divinities), with the highest, or
divine realm, subdivided into five grades, the
highest being the realm of Buddhas. Buddhist
religious speculation and doctrine has developed
from the fundamental understanding of sentient
beings as bound to a cycle of birth and death by
ignorance and desire. By "right understanding"
and the stilling of "attachment" (craving), upward
transmigration was held possible, its ultimate
goal being Enlightenment and liberation from the
karmic cycle, or Nirvana. The various schools, or
sects, of Buddhism offered soteriologies ranging
from complex gnosticism to release attained by
sudden insight or through the repetition of a
simple prayer formula. Their iconography was
correspondingly varied.
The Pure Land (Amidist, or Jodo) sect offered
rebirth in Amida's Western Paradise (the Pure

Land) in return for fervent repetitions of the

nembutsu ("Homage to Amida Buddha," Namu
Amidabutsu). Its doctrinal and structural antecedents were Chinese, but it was in twelfthcentury Japan, impelled and guided by the monk
Honen (1133-1212), that Pure Land Buddhism
entered its period of greatest growth, becoming
foremost among the rapidly proliferating populist
sects. Its iconography was pragmatic and forceful,
contrasting splendid visions of the Western Paradise and the mediational activities of compassionate bodhisattvas with gruesome descriptions of
retributive sufferings.
These screens suggest an amalgamation of
imagery from two particularly expressive periods
of Pure Land iconography. The mandala painting
at the extreme left of the left-hand screen is a
depiction of the Taima Mandara (mandala), perhaps the most famous and influential of the Western Paradise icons. The original eighth-century
work presented a geometrically composed and
splendidly ordered paradise Buddhism translating Tang Chinese social ideals into an iconography
of heaven. In contrast to this beatific and stately
image, the right-hand screen depicts the courts
of hell and the vicissitudes of existence in the
Rokudo (Six Realms). This type of image owes
much to the writings of the reformer-monk Genshin (942-1017). Genshin's singularly influential
treatise Ojo Ydshu (985) contained vivid descriptions of hell and of the sufferings in the various
realms. The iconography, which was inspired by
Genshin's vision, also expressed the social and
political turbulence of the Kamakura (1185-1333)
and early Muromachi (1333-1573) periods. Suf-

fering was widespread; attempts to locate its

meaning within a larger cosmological explanation,
and fascination with its accurate and imaginative
visual rendering led to the production of a wide
range of Rokudo images.
Although hell and heaven begin and end these
horizontally read screens, the fulcrum, the
dominant and linking space of the total screen
composition, is reserved for depiction of the
human realm. Human suffering is acknowledged
in the form of a graphically represented battle
scene in the fourth and fifth panels of the righthand screen, but far more space is given to the
productive, pleasurable, and optimistic activities
of humankind. Vignettes of commerce, planting
and harvest, and a variety of recreational pursuits
present a world rather at ease with itself. The
religious visions of ultimate suffering and paradisiacal reward are rendered in markedly archaistic
fashion, which vitiates their intensity.
Discrete episodes within the overall work are
generally enclosed by hillocks and mountains
or by cloud bands rendered in the "spearhead"
(suyari) style. Gold and silver cut foil and
sprinkled metallic powder elaborately embellish
the painting. Pairs of poetry sheets (shikishi) in
each of the screen panels are also an archaizing
gesture. These bear quotations from Genshin's
Ojo Yoshu and from several of the prominent
imperial poetry anthologies compiled in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. All of these
devices create a decorative effect quite at odds
with the implacable concept of the Ten Realms of
Reincarnation, which is the ostensible theme of
the screens.

The screens are housed within Taima-dera,

the Nara temple that gave its name to the icon
depicted in the left-hand screen. The original
tapestry Taima Mandara was likely a product
of eighth-century China, imported to Japan;
a twelfth-century Japanese text offers 763 as its
date of arrival. By the Kamakura period the image
was in grave disrepair, and remnants of the textile
were appended to a newly painted version. It
was from this period that numerous copies were
commissioned.
In addition to the vision of paradise occupying
the mandala's center, border registers depict the
legend of the Indian queen Vaidehi, who was
instructed by the compassionate Sakyamuni in the
sixteen stages of contemplation leading to rebirth.
The final three stages of contemplation, each
subdivided into three grades, represent the nine
grades of Amida's Paradise, in which (according
to one's virtue) one might be reborn. Prominent
copies of the Taima Mandara include the version
housed at Zenrin-ji, Kyoto, dated to the fifth
year of Kempo (1217), popularly designated the
Kempo-bon, and a much later version, the Bunkibon, named for its presumed creation in the
Bunki reign-era (1501-1504). This latter version
was commissioned by the emperor Go-Kashiwabara and was kept at Taima-dera. Stylistic similarities between the Bunki version and the
rendering of the mandala in these screen paintings lend some support to an early fifteenthcentury dating for the screens.
Several diverse intentions and styles seem to
meet in these screens. The figure painting is
skilled. The celebratory qualities of genre paint-

ing are joined with didactic and talismanic features

of religious iconography in a slightly awkward
but pleasing manner. The religious mode is a
subordinate element in the overall depiction.
j.u.

214

PORTRAIT OF ASHIKAGA YOSHIMASA

(1436-1490)
late i$th century
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold leaf on silk
44.2 x 56 (iy3/s x 22)
reference: Washington 1988-1989, 60, 61
Tokyo National Museum
This modest portrait catches something of the
shogun's predominating aestheticism, and seems
to hint at his attenuated authority, but it is almost
more engrossing for what it does not show.
An intelligent and versatile man, Yoshimasa
as shogun was nevertheless helpless against
accelerating economic, social, and political disintegration. In 1473, while his capital city of Kyoto
was being devastated by the Onin War (14671477), he resigned his office and retired to his
estate below the Eastern Hills (Higashiyama) in
northeastern Kyoto. Thenceforth he exercised
only enough authority to control his estate and to
finance his aesthetic pursuits: forming a distinguished collection of Chinese paintings, lacquers,
T O W A R D CATHAY

371

and ceramics; practicing the Tea Ceremony;

patronizing the No drama and poetry; and building several residences and worship halls in a new
and enduring style.
Here he is shown in court robes and headdress,
barefooted, holding a closed fan in his right hand
while his left rests on his leg. Compared with
portraits of earlier shoguns, this painting is small,
and within it Yoshimasa seems dwarfed by the
sliding screens (fusuma) behind him and the
expanse of green matting (tatami) on which he
sits. Both his posture and his expression seem
apprehensive (cf. the portrait at Jingo-ji, Kyoto, in
which the commanding figure of the shogun Yoritomo occupies almost the whole ground). The
sympathetic rendition of the sensitive but not
forceful visage accords with what we know of

372

CIRCA 1492

Yoshimasa, and the whole composition conduces

to an impression of diminished power.
Two art works share the picture with the
shogun: the painted sliding screen behind him,
with its lacquered black frame dividing the picture
in half, and a silvered bronze mirror in the right
foreground, its reflecting face toward the spectator, supported on a black-and-gold lacquered stand
with a small drawer in the base. The presence of
the mirror and its relationship to Yoshimasa is
enigmatic. Does it witness the hyperaesthetic
nature of the man ? Is it a rather pathetic sunsymbol (as mirrors had always been in East Asian
cosmology), recalling the power of the now
retired shogun ? Certainly it does not attest to his
superb collection of Chinese paintings, lacquers,
and ceramics.

The painted panels can be seen as evidence of

his interest in Chinese style monochrome ink
painting (the "New Style" in Muromachi Japan).
The landscape depicted is sparely dominated by
tall pines, accompanied by some unidentifiable
pavilions, with the human presence supplied on
the right by a scholar and servant on a bridge and
on the left by a lone fisherman in a boat. While
the painting style is generally Southern Song
Chinese, it is also related to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Korean painting, as well as to the
Japanese inheritors of both Chinese and Korean
traditions, the Zen monk-painters of Kyoto
Shubun, Gakuo, and others. Since the slidingscreen format was not used in China or Korea,
this landscape must be a Japanese creation in the
"New Style." So nothing of the shogun's Chinese
collection is visible here. All the accouterments,
from costume to mirror stand to fusuma, are
Japanese.
His major accomplishment was to afford to all
the arts, in a chaotic and bloody time, patronage
that gave them scope, shape, and direction.
Among his achievements, tragic and pathetic in
view of the ruin inflicted on his capital during and
after his shogunate, was the building of the Silver
Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji) and of the adjoining modest
Zen temple and tea house (called T6gu-do) in
1483. These embodied his devotion to both Zen
and Pure Land Buddhism and to the emerging Tea
Ceremony (cha no yu) in a convincing blend of
simplicity, modesty of materials, and naturalnessan arresting contrast to the magnificent
and luxurious edifices of Chinese and European
rulers. Yoshimasa's character, circumstances, tastes,
and interests may not be explicit in the portrait,
but they certainly inform it.
Between this portrait of the de facto ruler of
Japan and that of the Hongzhi emperor of China

(cat. 283) the visual contrast could hardly be more

striking. Though ruling at the same time and in
the same cultural ethos, their portraits reveal
them to be worlds apart. The Chinese professional
portrait celebrates magnificence and power; the
Japanese Tosa school likeness offers a studied
modesty.
S.E.L.

^5

attributed to Tosa Hirochika

15th century

FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF THE

FOUR SEASONS (SHIKI KACHO Zu)
Japanese
pair of six-fold screens; ink and color on paper
each 150 x 361.8 (59 x ^2l/2)

Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

These screens present an idyllic vision of nature,
at once stately and vigorous. Unlike Sesshu's
screens (see cat. 233), they do not offer a structured presentation of "untrammeled" nature, but
rather an intimate study of an aristocrat's carefully cultivated garden.
_ Understanding of this work has been prejudiced
by the painter Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-1691), whose
inscriptions (with seals) on the extreme right and
left panels assert that the screens are the work of
Tosa Hirochika. Mitsuoki 's reasons for this attribution documentation, oral tradition, or stylistic
analysis are unknown. The very few extant
works attributed to Hirochika (a Buddhist icon,
several portraits and handscrolls), however, suggest that these screens issued from a different

hand, perhaps a yamato-e painter experimenting

with Chinese styles, perhaps the reverse. Other
scholars have suggested a relationship to the
Sesshu lineage, or to the Kano painters, who by
the late sixteenth century would emerge as the
masters of such Sino-Japanese eclecticism.
The work itself is a carefully composed selection of flowers and birds, some recognizable,
others fabulous, produced by an artist clearly
adept at integrating polychromy with the modulated brushwork of monochrome ink painting.
Thus the screens constitute an excellent example
of the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
Japanese interest in wedding continental ink
monochrome painting to indigenous traditions.
At the same time they demonstrate considerable
knowledge of approximately contemporaneous
Chinese professional painting, wherein color and
ink were lavishly employed. The "oyster shell"
style of scalloped rock formations, seen throughout, is distinctively Chinese.
Each season is represented by appropriate birds
and flowers; red camelias, emblematic of late
winter and early spring, begin and end and
thereby frame the composition. The effect of
movement, however, is achieved less by the
changing subjects than by meticulous composition, effective use of ink modeling, and compression of the image into the foreground of the
picture, with the middle and far views mostly
obscured by bands of gold mist or cloud. Within
the foreground space, tension, temporary balance,
and movement are skillfully effected by purposeful twists and bends in branches, and by the accents
afforded by particular blossoms, birds, and rocks.
At the same time the roughly elliptical composition within each successive unit of four panels
invites the eye to linger in that unit before
moving on.

Skillful oval-shaped repairs where finger-grasps

(hikite) were once placed clearly indicate that
the panels of these screens were at some point
employed as fusuma-e (painted interior sliding
screens). Their size, relative to examples of
medieval fusuma, suggests that they were originally produced as freestanding screens, later
adapted as sliding panels, and in fairly recent
times restored to their original form.
j.u.

2l6 &*>

attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu

active 1469-^ 1521

LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING OF

SEIKO TEMPLE (SEIKO-JI ENGI)
c. 1500
Japanese
two handscrolls; ink and color on paper
33.1 x 1063.9 (13 x 418%)

Tokyo National Museum

Important Cultural Property
From late in the Heian period (794-1185) the phenomenal rise of the Pure Land (Amidist) school of
Buddhism brought increasing popularity to the
cult of the bodhisattva Jizo the compassionate
and gentle manifestation of deity in the guise
of a young monk who figured in Amida Buddha's
retinue.
This narrative scroll recounts the events leading
to the founding of Seiko-ji in the final quarter of
the thirteenth century, the temple's special relationship to Jizo Bosatsu (Bodhisattva), and various
miraculous occurences in the temple's subsequent
history. A work of this type was usually created
when a temple or its sect became sufficiently

TOWARD CATHAY

3/3

374

CIRCA 1492

TOWARD CATHAY

375

prosperous to commission a commemorative

work in this charmingly revisionist vein, or when
a sect was inaugurating a period of concentrated
proselytizing.
Each scroll contains two miracle tales, each
presented in four units of text and four painted
scenes. In the first tale Taira no Sukechika, a prosperous resident of the Rokkaku Inokuma district
of Kyoto, is visited by a monk who urges him to
reclaim a Jizo Bosatsu sculpture abandoned in the
hills to the east of the city. Sukechika investigates,
and finding the sculpture battered and undistinguished, returns to his residence without it. That
night in his dreams he sees Jizo washing his feet
at the well within his compound. In the morning
Sukechika finds footprints on the stone beside the
well, whereupon he fetches the statue from the
mountain and installs it in his chapel.
The second story in this first scroll concerns
an elderly woman, a fervent devotee of Jizo who
makes her living selling writing brushes. When
a high wind destroys the roof of her home, she
thinks her prayers ill rewarded and is angry with
Jizo. But the next day several young monks appear
unannounced, repair her roof, and depart. That
night in a dream Jizo gently reproves the woman
for her lack of faith. Her remaining days are spent
in unceasing devotion, which Jizo rewards by
attending her passage into paradise.
Further tales of Jizo's miraculous intervention
occupy the second scroll.
The paintings in the scroll have long been
attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu and the calligraphy
to Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537), the famous
courtier, aesthete, patron, and calligrapher. Sanetaka's diary mentions work on such a scroll in
collaboration with Mitsunobu in 1487. These
attributions have recently been contested by
scholars who identify the work as an early copy,
painted within the latter half of the fifteenth
century. Indeed the naive, almost primitive quality of this scroll is oddly at variance with Mitsu376

CIRCA 1492

nobu's exceedingly sophisticated painting of the

Kings of Hell (cat. 212), dated to 1489. Along
with its comparatively garish palette and
brusquely rendered cloud or mist patterns,
however, the Seiko-ji Engi reveals careful composition, well-rendered kachuga (literally, "paintings within paintings") on the sliding screens, and
a vigorous style of figure painting. Mitsunobu
was certainly capable of employing a somewhat
unpolished style if it suited the overall mood of
the work.
j.u.

^7
Tosa Mitsunobu

active 1469-0. 1521

LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING

OF KIYOMIZU TEMPLE
(KlYOMIZU-DERA ENGl)

dated to 1517
Japanese
scroll two of three handscrolls; ink and color
on paper
33.8 x 1786.7 (1^/4 x jof/s)
Tokyo National Museum
Important Cultural Property

The Kiyomizu-dera Engi describes the founding

of this temple in the eastern hills of Kyoto, the
military action against the Ezo people in northern
Japan, and the miraculous manifestations of Thousand-Armed Kannon (Senju Kannon), principal
deity of the temple. The three illustrated scrolls
are divided into thirty-three chapters or units, a
symbolic reference to the thirty-three manifestations of Kannon as described in the Lotus Sutra.
The temple traces its founding in the late
eighth century to the Nara monk Enchin (814891). A sacred messenger appeared in a dream,

directing him to a "stream the color of running

gold" in the hills east of Kyoto. There Enchin
established a hermitage and conducted fervent
devotions to Kannon. Chancing to meet the warrior Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758-811) hunting in the foothills, Enchin converted him and
obtained his sponsorship for the construction of
Kiyomizu Temple at the site of his hermitage. The
precipitous slopes offered no level site for the construction until a herd of sacred deer miraculously
appeared, causing a landslide which provided a
table of land for the structure.
In 794 Sakanoue no Tamuramaro led an expedition against the Ezo, a non-Japanese people living
in northeastern Japan. From the fifth century
through the Early Heian period (794-897) the
court powers of central Japan sponsored military
actions that eventually subdued and assimilated
these people. As a prelude to his campaign,
Tamuramaro petitioned the protection of the bodhisattva Jizo and the Guardian King of the North,
Bishamonten, commissioning sculpted images of
these divinities to serve as attendants to Senju
Kannon, the principal icon of Kiyomizu-dera. He
then went on to wage a successful campaign.
In the illustrated scrolls depicting these events
the military campaign and the divine forces assisting the warriors in battle receive conspicuous
emphasis, with the stories of the temple's founding and the latter-day miracles of Senju Kannon
serving to frame the turbulent battle scenes.
Important courtier diaries of the early sixteenth
century indicate completion of the scroll in 1517.
The hands of Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537),
Nakamikado Nobutane (1442-1525), and Kanroji
Motonaga (1457-1527), three outstanding calligraphers of the period, are seen in the scroll.
A diary entry by Nobutane makes clear that
Tosa Mitsunobu was the artist. It can be inferred
from records that Mitsunobu died in or about
1522, making this narrative scroll one of his
last known works.
j.u.

218

painting attributed to Kenko Shokei

active c. 1478-1506

calligraphy by Gyokuin Eiyo

1431-1524
PORTRAIT OF ZEN MASTER
KIKO ZENSHI
c. 1500
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
84.9x35.5 (333/sx 14)
Kencho-ji, Kamakura
Implicit in this inscribed portrait of the monk
Kiko Zenshi is the central role of Kencho-ji in
the establishment of Japanese Zen and in the continuing Zen tradition of innovative portraiture.
Kencho-ji was founded in 1253 under the patronage of the powerful regent Hojo Tokiyori (12271263), who invited the emigre Chinese monk
Lanqi Daolong (J: Rankei Doryu, posth. title Daikaku Zenji, 1213-1278) to become its first abbot.
Lanqi Daolong with several disciples had come
to Japan in 1246, to escape the invading Mongols
or to spread Chan (J: Zen) teachings (or both),
bringing with him the unmixed and rigorous form
of Chan then current in Song dynasty China. He
quickly attracted strong support from both the
military regency in Kamakura and the imperial
court in Kyoto, and was instrumental in the
flourishing of Japanese Zen.
In 1271 a formal Zen portrait (chinso) was
painted of Lanqi Daolong, posed in the orthodox
fashion for such portraits: seated with legs pendent and feet resting on a footstool, in a highbacked Chinese style chair draped with fabric so
that only the legs of the chair are visible. Such
portraits functioned as a kind of certificate of
spiritual inheritance, and were passed on from

master to disciple to certify authenticity of teaching. In this portrait of Lanqi Daolong Japanese
innovations on the Song Chinese prototypes are
already apparent: delicate rather than vivid color,
pale ink wash, and thin ink lines.
On the upper third of Kiko's portrait is an
inscription signed by the eminent Zen monk
Gyokuin Eiyo, whose dated inscriptions occur also
on two landscape paintings by Kenko Shokei, the
Sosetsusai Zu (1499, in the Seikado Foundation,
Tokyo) and the Shoshusai Zu (1506, in the Ueno
collection, Hyogo Pref.). Other sources record
Eiyo's death at the age of ninety-three in 1524,
making him sixty-nine in 1500. Much of the
available biographical information about Kiko
Zenshi is gleaned from Eiyo's inscription, which
states that Kiko was abbot of Kencho-ji, residing
at Kotoku-an within that complex. He traced
his lineage to the early Yuan dynasty Chinese
monk Zhongfeng Mingben (J: Chupo Minpon),
his most immediate predecessor being Chuwa
Toboku. From somewhat fragmentary documents
Kiko was calculated to be about eighty years old at
the time of this portrait. He and Eiyo were both
originally from Shinano Province (present-day
Nagano Pref.), where Kiko returned toward the
end of his life to live in seclusion.
Although this portrait bears no artist's seal or
signature, it has long been attributed to Kenko
Shokei, based not only on the superior quality of
the dense and skillfully modulated monochrome
ink painting but also on circumstantial evidence.
The tradition of ink monochrome chinso seems to
be distinctive to the Kamakura painters, the more
orthodox polychrome portraits having by the sixteenth century lapsed into a rigid formalism. It is
altogether likely that the portrait of an abbot of
Kencho-ji, inscribed by a distinguished chronicler,
would have been executed by the best of the
Kamakura Zen painters.
This portrait and others like it in ink monochrome seem a logical infusion of particular artisTOWARD CATHAY

377

tic strengths into a somewhat moribund format.

Other portraits perhaps forming a stylistic lineage
with the Kiko portrait are found in Kamakura:
one of the monk Zaichu Koen, dated to 1388, at
H6koku-ji, another of Donho Shuo, dated to 1401,
at the Butsunichi-an retreat of Enkaku-ji.
j.u.

2*9

LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING OF

Dojo TEMPLE (D6jo-ji ENGI)
early i6th century
Japanese
two handscrolls; ink and color on paper
31.52 x 1038.5 (i22/5 x 409)
references: Okudaira 1962, 108, 109, 135,.202, 203;
New York 19^3, 162-164
Dojo-ji, Wakayama Prefecture
Important Cultural Property
Viewed as usual from right to left, the moral tale
associated with Dojo Temple unfolds in a lively,
graphic, and easily understood fashion. A young
priest rejected the advances of a woman at an inn
378

CIRCA

1492

during his pilgrimage to Kumano in 938. When

he left the inn, she continued to pursue him, the
power of her obsession causing her to metamorphose into a dragon. Scroll two opens with a long
inscription recounting this tale, then depicts its
climax in two illustrations. In the first, the fleeing
young monk appealed to the monks of Dqjo-ji for
sanctuary. Skeptical at first, they agreed at last
to help, and hid the fugitive under the massive
bronze bell of the temple. The pursuing dragonlady embraced the bell and engulfed it in flames,
reducing the youth to a carbonized and shrunken
corpse. Then both protagonists, reborn as snakes,
appeared in a dream to the abbot of Dojo-ji, pleading with him to copy the Lotus Sutra (associated
with Amida Buddha, the compassionate Lord of
the Western Paradise) as a pious offering to
deliver them from this terrible rebirth. The abbot
and priests did so over a period of days, then consecrated the text. Forthwith two angels appeared
in the abbot's dream, informing him that the
young monk was now in the Paradise of the
Buddha of the Future (Miroku), and the lady in
the lesser Paradise of Indra (Taishakuten). Finally
we see three monks chanting the Lotus Sutra
in unison.

A colophon at the end of the second scroll

records that the shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki (15371597) viewed the scroll in December 1573 and
consequently made donations to Dojo-ji. Eliciting
donations was indeed the purpose of these scrolls,
visual sermons designed to persuade the viewer
of the virtues of Pure Land Buddhism and of the
specific efficacy of benefaction to Dojo-ji.
In style the illustrations are halfway between
the skilled professionalism of early narrative
handscrolls of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the folk and semifolk paintings of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What it lacks
in polish the Dojo-ji Engi makes up in full in
pungency and clarity both graphic and literary.
For here the prosaic narrative is supplemented by
running comments and quotations akin to those
furnished by comic strip "balloons/ expressed in a
lively vernacular. This derives from the oral tradition of story-telling professionals (etoki) whose
stock of tales, both saintly and ribald, influenced
a whole group of Muromachi period narrative
scrolls called otogi-zoshi. Such plebeian tang and
vigor can well seem a delightful relief from the
formalities and protocol inherent in the scrolls of
the court tradition (cat. 217). The otogi-zoshi

notably concentrate on the human drama, contrasting in this respect too with the elaborate settings, whether landscape or architectural, of the
more sophisticated traditional modes. This concentration of effect is particularly evident in the
Dojo-ji Engi scrolls.
S.E.L

22O

Bunsei

active mid-i5th century

THE LAYMAN YUIMA (YuiMA KOJI)

dated to 1457
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
92. 7 x 34.4 (i6l/2 x 1^/2)
inscription by Sonko Somoku (d. 1467)
references: Yashiro 1960, 2:361; Tanaka 1972, 89,
fig. 78; Matsushita 1974, 93, 94, fig. 96
Yamato Bunkakan, Nara
In this famous and extraordinary work the Buddhist lay philosopher-scholar Yuima (S: Vimalakirti) is represented bearded and intense, and clad

in the traditional Chinese scholar's cap and robe.

He leans forward eagerly, resting his right arm
on a carved wooden arm rest, a fly whisk in his
right hand. The inscription by Sonko Somoku
records that the painting was commissioned by
Priest Zensai in offering for his deceased father's
salvation. The painting therefore may date
slightly earlier than the inscription, but not significantly so.
Yuima, the Japanese name for the Indian sage
Vimalakirti, became a popular subject in Chinese
art as early as 642, the date of a fresco at Dunhuang, in northwest China, in which he appears.
By the time of this early work the image type
was already set according to the account in the
Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra (J: Yuima Kyo),
reputedly of the second century A.D. In this text
Yuima is ill, and the Buddha has sent Manjusri
(J: Monju), Bodhisattva of Wisdom, to inquire
after him. Yuima explains his infirmity as the
sickness common to all mankind, that is, the suffering born of ignorance and appetite. This Buddhist sentiment, added to his character as an aged
scholar, endeared him to the Chinese, and his
image as an elderly literatus reclining on a dais
with an arm rest for support became a common

pictorial expression of piety and wisdom. The

subject was exported to Japan in the early seventh
century, and the Yuima Kyo was reportedly one
of the favorite texts of Shotoku Taishi (574-622),
the prince-regent who ensured the triumph
of Buddhism in Japan during the Asuka period
(552-645).
The ink painting image of Yuima owes much to
Chinese representations of the Northern Song
period, particularly to a type associated with the
great master of monochrome line painting Li
Gonglin (Li Longmian, c. 1049-1106). Bunsei's
origins are not clear, but this work, a landscape in
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and landscapes
in the Takano collection, all bearing Bunsei's seal,
seem to point either to a Korean origin for the
artist or at least to Korea as a major influence on
his art (as it was on the art of his more famous
and equally mysterious colleague, Shubun).
Yuima's face in Bunsei's masterpiece is one of
the most expressive in East Asian ink painting,
reflecting to a remarkable degree pain, age, and
contemplation. The washes suggesting facial hair
are most subtle, as if breathed upon the paper.
The folds and creases of the cloth, in both cap and
gown, are less realistic observations than true
TOWARD CATHAY

379

impressions brilliantly rendered in virtuoso

brushwork from an inherited pattern some three
hundred years old. The combination of gravity
and virtuosity is unusual and recalls, not in
appearance but in method, the art of the great
Southern Song master Liang Kai (act. early
3th century).
S.E.L.

221

Bokkei Saiyo
active 1452-1473

DARUMA
c. 1460
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
no x 58.3 (432/4 x 23)
two seals of the artist
inscription with signature and seal by Ikkyu Sojun
(1394-1481)

reference: Washington 1988, no. 81

Shinju-an, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto

Important Cultural Property
380

CIRCA

1492

Images of the First Patriarch of Zen have been

produced from as early as the eighth century in
China. Bodhidharma (J: Daruma, trad. c. 470c. 543) was an Indian prince, and the twentyeighth patriarch of Indian Buddhism in the lineage
beginning with Sakyamuni Buddha. His journey
to China eventually brought him to the Shaolin
monastery in southern China, where, as legend
recounts, he remained seated in meditation before
a cave wall for nine years. This archetypal image
of meditation was most memorably depicted by
Sesshu (see "Shen Zhou and the Literati Style/'
Zen (C: Chan) traces its origins to Daruma's
teachings, which called upon adherents to singlemindedly seek the Buddha nature within, dispensing with religious rituals and even with study of
the sutras. Transmission of this teaching was from

mind to mind from master to disciple.

Images of Daruma, like this one, usually portray him with Indian features, including full lips
and prominent nose. His princely status is signified by the ear lobe, elongated from the weight of
the ring. The long fingernail of the left thumb
marks him as an ascetic. Sometimes he is shown
full length, standing on a reed, as he did for his
miraculous crossing of the Yangzi River on his
journey to Shaolin Si. Yet other paintings show
him seated in meditation, either within a natural
landscape setting or without any context. All
three of these image types were rendered both in
ink monochrome and in polychrome, the latter
version showing Daruma clothed in a red robe.
At the figure's left elbow are two seals of the
artist, Bokkei Saiyo. The inscription is signed and
sealed by the famous monk-poet and abbot of Daitoku-ji, Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481), and dated to
the sixth year of Kansei (1465). In the inscription
Ikkyu identifies himself as "former abbot" of
Tokuzen-ji, a subtemple of Daitoku-ji to which he
had been appointed abbot in about 1459. While
abbacies were often brief, the short tenure indicated by this inscription may also reflect Ikkyu's
volatile relationship with the Daitoku-ji hierarchy
(see cat. 238).
The inscription reads:

Followers in China and India conjure

your spirit;
Half the figure, a portrait, reveals your
entire body;
What did the grass mat at Shaolin accomplish?
At the Palace of King Xiangzhi, spring of
plums and willows.
(Translation from Washington 1988, no. 81.)
"The Palace of King Xiangzhi" refers to Daruma's
father and to a life of privilege abandoned. Regal
Indian origin and its rejection suggest for Daruma,
and thus for Zen, a lineage much resembling that
of Sakyamuni Buddha. Ikkyu's inscription is a
reflection on latter-day distortions of original
teachings and on the efficacy of austerities.
Two portraits of Ikkyu by Bokkei are known
(dated to 1452 and 1453). Bokkei is recorded as
Ikkyu's disciple as well as portraitist. Apparently,
like Ikkyu, he enjoyed the patronage of the Asakura warrior clan of Echizen, the first of a group
of painters serving the Asakura and using the
family name Soga. Bold and highly individual
brushwork is characteristic of this lineage of
painters through the sixteenth century. The Soga
style is one of several significant artistic developments of the fifteenth century, when political
instability at the capital and sophisticated provincial patronage combined to stimulate innovation
and stylistic variation in the arts.
j.u.

222-223

attributed to Kano Motonobu

1476-1559
FLIGHT OF THE SIXTH PATRIARCH
XIANGYAN ATTAINING ENLIGHTENMENT
c. 1513

originally sliding screens ffusuma-ej, now mounted

as hanging scrolls; ink and color on paper
175.2 x 137.4 (69 x 542/sj each
Tokyo National Museum
Important Cultural Property
These two paintings, along with four others not
shown here, were originally part of a fusuma-e
composition (paintings on interior sliding screens)
commissioned for the Iho no ma, a room in the
guest quarters of Daisen-in at Daitoku-ji. Since
the building program was completed in 1513, that
is the date assigned to the paintings. Although
they are unsigned, both temple tradition and stylistic analysis point convincingly to Kano Motonobu as the painter. These two scenes were on the
eastern wall, Flight of the Sixth Patriarch to the
left and Xiangyan Attaining Enlightenment to the
right. The four remaining scenes were on the
southern wall.

T O W A R D CATHAY

381

Usually these paintings are considered to be

zenki zu (didactic Zen painting), a strong tradition
comprising imagined formal portraits of Zen masters as well as narrative paintings of such revered
adepts at moments of Enlightenment or in other
well-known incidents of their lives. The Flight of
the Sixth Patriarch illustrates the traditional Zen
account whereby Hui-Neng (J: E'no, 638-713),
chosen successor to the Fifth Patriarch, HongRen, fled south to avoid the jealous wrath of
Shen-Xiu, the learned monk who had expected to
"receive the robe/r Hui-Neng's flight marked (or
symbolized) the division of Chan (Zen) into the
so-called Northern and Southern schools the
former, stemming from Shen-Xiu, espousing
gradual Enlightenment, the latter, from the nearly
illiterate but profound Hui-Neng, instantaneous
Enlightenment. The patriarchal succession from
Bodhidharma through Hui-Neng was a retrospective construction, designed to advance the cause
of the Southern school, which in fact emerged
triumphant.
In the adjoining scene the Chan master Xiangyan Zhixian (J: Kyogen Chikan, d. 898) is seen
sweeping in front of his hut. Xiangyan, in contrast to Hui-Neng, was greatly learned, but
having failed to achieve Enlightenment, he abandoned his books and retired to a life of rural seclusion and manual labor. One day the sound of
a pebble, sent flying by his broom and striking
the nearby bamboo, brought on the moment of
Enlightenment.
Even outside their original context these paintings reveal an artist with a commanding ability to
manipulate space and to render detail precisely.
Middle-ground bands of voluminous clouds link
and frame the action in each scene and serve further to divide the narrative foreground from the
hills and trees that evoke deep distance. The effective balance of foreground anecdote and background vista was surely decorative as well as
instructional. Some would suggest that, content
notwithstanding, Motonobu's aesthetic interest in
these paintings was more decorative than Zen.
Within a few years of this commission Motonobu
produced the Seiryo-ji Engi (1515), a set of six
narrative scrolls depicting the miraculous founding and other legends of Seiryo-ji, which demonstrates convincing command of the narrative
format previously dominated by the Tosa painters.
Motonobu moved the Kano atelier firmly in the
aesthetic direction begun by his father, Masanobu
(1434-1530), achieving a substantial and remarkably varied patronage and thereby a considerable
and lasting prosperity. The fusion of Chinese
brush style and Japanese palette was a hallmark
of Kano painting well into the Edo period
(1615-1868).
It should be noted that Soami (d. 1525), third
generation of the distinguished Ami lineage,
also worked on the decorations of the Daisen-in,
contributing landscape painting on fusuma
considered to be his masterpiece.
y.u.
382

CIRCA 1492

detail

224

Noami
1397-1471
WHITE-ROBED KANNON
(BYAKU-E KANNON)
dated to 1468
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink and light colors on silk
77-7 x 39-3 (3o5/8Xi^/2)
Hasebe Yasuko
In Noami's vision the White-Robed Kannon, composed, attentive, and attractive, is seated atop a
fantastical rock beside a tranquil body of water.
Bending bamboo and densely rendered background clouds evoke a tropical atmosphere. The
painting, dedicated to the artist's son on the occasion of his receiving the tonsure at a Zen monastery, depicts one of the iconographic subjects most
popular among Zen adherents.
The White-Robed Kannon is a form of the bodhisattva derived from the fusion of two distinct
scriptural references. The "Fumon" chapter of the
profoundly influential Lotus Sutra (J: Hoke Kyo)
names the thirty-three manifestations of Kannon,
the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who seeks to
relieve the suffering of sentient beings and whose
name means, literally, "one who hears the cries of
the world/' A passage in the Avatarhsaka Sutra
(J: Kegon Kyo) describes Mt. Potalaka, the imagined abode of the bodhisattva Kannon, as a bountiful locale of fruit, flowers, and flowing waters.
As early as the Tang dynasty (618-907) the
Chinese popular religious imagination transformed Mt. Potalaka into an island off the south
China coast. Depiction of Kannon in this intimate
paradisiacal setting is thought to have begun in

China during the eighth century. Unfettered by

precise description in a particular religious text,
the image was an amalgam of several other
Kannon images, notably the Kannon with WishGranting Jewel and Wheel of the Law (Nyoirin
Kannon) and the Willow-Branch Kannon (Yoryu
Kannon). Poses ranged from the serious and contemplative, seen here, to the position of "royal
ease," to playful lounging and foot-splashing in
the pool or stream or waterfall that was a necessary element of the setting.
The White-Robed Kannon in Daitoku-ji, attributed to the Chan (Zen) abbot Mu Qi (13th century), is considered to be the seminal work of its
type for Japanese painters. In the depiction seen
here Noami accepted the general iconography
of the Mu Qi but rendered it in a painting style
incorporating the angular brush strokes and
washes of Ma Yuan, i.e., in what was perceived to
be the academic style of Southern Song China
(1127-1279). Noami's access to and close study of
the Ashikaga shoguns' Chinese painting collection is readily apparent in this painting. This is
one of the few firmly attributed Noami works;
several other Byaku-e Kannon paintings, generally thought to be by his hand, reveal totally
different approaches to this serviceable and
popular image.
Noami was the first of the "three Ami"
(succeeded by Geiami [1431-1485] and Soami
[d. 1525]), each of whom functioned as artist, aesthetic advisor, and cultural impresario (doboshu)
for the Ashikaga shogunate. The "ami" suffix to
their names indicates adherence to the tenets of
Pure Land (Jodo) Buddhism, in particular the
Timely (Ji) subsect established by the charismatic
mendicant Ippen during the second half of the
thirteenth century. Pure Land Buddhism and its
offspring sects offered formulaic prayer repetition
as an uncomplicated way to rebirth in Amida
Buddha's Western Paradise. An iconography of
gentle, compassionate deities, shown inhabiting
worlds of supramundane beauty and bliss or
engaged in acts of intercession within thisworldly genre settings, afforded painters the
opportunity to develop a style appropriately
linking religious sentiment with indigenous
landscape.
As painters, the three Ami worked a sophisticated transformation of the popular polychrome
genre style associated with Pure Land Buddhism
and especially the Ji subsect. At the same time,
though the elite circles they moved in were heavily influenced by Zen, the three Ami tended to
temper the stringency and challenging ambiguity
characteristic of much Zen painting. This very
painting embodies the complexity of fifteenthcentury Japanese high culture: a popular Zen icon
offered by a Pure Land adherent on the occasion
of a son taking Zen tonsure, but stylistically
closer to academic or professional painting than
to the direct, abbreviated, expressive manner
that was thought to embody the Zen intention, j.u.

225

226

attributed to Gakuo Zokyu

Noami

active c. 1470-0. 1514

Shinno, 1397-1471

WHITE-ROBED KANNON
(BYAKU-E KANNON)

FLOWERS AND BIRDS (KACHO Zu)

dated to 1469
Japanese
pair of four-panel screens; ink on paper

c. 1500
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper

132.5

104.5 x 44 (4*3/8 x i73/sj

two inscriptions and two identical seals

references: Boston 1970, 79-81; Matsushita 1974,

69; Kanazawa 1979, 69-72

London Gallery, Ltd., Tokyo

The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund

The White- Robed Kannon, including the types
known as Water-and-Moon Kannon (Suigetsu
Kannon) and Willow-and-Moon Kannon
(Ryugetsu Kannon), is one of the figural subjects
most closely associated with Zen Buddhism. The
earliest dated representation of the subject, now
in the Musee Guimet, Paris, is from the caves of
Dunhuang in western China a painting on
paper of the Kannon of the Willow Branch (Yoryu
Kannon), dated to 953. A Water-and-Moon
Kannon was painted by the illustrious painter
Zhou Fang (c. 740-800) in the Shengguang
Temple of the Tang dynasty capital, Chang'an
(present-day Xi'an) ; the work was recorded in
Zhang Yanyuan's Li Dai Ming Hua ]i (Record of
Painters of Successive Ages) of 847, in chapter 3,
section 4. Water, moon, willow branch, and bamboo are the usual attributes of the deity, who is
most often shown seated.
Kannon (S: Avalokitesvara; C: Guanyin) is the
most popular and efficacious of the bodhisattvas,
deities who have achieved Enlightenment but
renounced their entry into Nirvana in order to aid
all sentient beings along the same path. In India
this compassionate ideal was popularly embodied
in Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Mercy. In China
he became Guanyin, the savior and benefactor of
all but especially of those most needing compassionthe sick, the poor, and women. Among
painters of Buddhist subjects in late Southern
Song Hangzhou, Guanyin achieved a somewhat
androgynous form, soft in flesh and robed in
white from head to toe. Southern Song images of
Guanyin are usually depicted in a nocturnal setting that includes several or all of the following
waterfall, moon, bamboo, miraculous vase, willow
branch, and cave. The supreme image of this
Byaku-e Kannon type is the centerpiece of a triptych painted by Mu Qi (Fa- Chang, early 13 th
century-after 1279) in Hangzhou in the late thirteenth century and soon afterward exported to
Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, where it still remains. Mu
Qi's image is shown seated on rocks before a cave,
bamboo at the left, a vase of willow at the right.
The physical type is vaguely feminine, and the
white cowl is drawn over the bodhisattva's crown.
This image became the source and standard of
Japanese representations of the deity. It also

X 236 (522/8 X 927/gj

became particularly associated with Zen, for Mu

Qi was a Chan abbot and Daitoku-ji was one of
the five preeminent Zen temples (Gozan, "the
Five Mountains") of Kyoto. Although iconic traditions are in general intensely conservative, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Japanese painters
experimented with variations in the presentation
of the Byaku-e Kannon. The deity was shown
washing its feet, reaching for a bamboo sprig, or,
as in the present scroll, standing gracefully near
the water. In this scroll the bamboo grove behind
Kannon is visible through the translucent halo,
and its recession in space is suggested by graded
tones of ink. The moon's reflection, seen in the
water at the lowest, nearest point of the foreground, substitutes for the waterfall that usually
is the object of the bodhisattva's contemplation
(a type called Takimi Kannon, literally, Kannon
Contemplating a Waterfall).
The only clear evidence of Gakuo's style is to be
found in the somewhat triangular wash planes of
the rocks and earth in the foreground.
S.E.L.

These screens, by admission to the Noami corpus,

comprise the oldest known pair of signed, sealed,
and dated Japanese screens. Each bears a seal of
Noami and a signed inscription: the inscription
on the extreme right-hand panel includes the
dedication, with its self-deprecatory reference
to the artist as an "old man in his seventy-third
year" (i.e., one year after his White-Robed
Kannon of 1468 [cat. 136]); the inscription on
the extreme left-hand panel includes the date.
Research into the provenance of the screens indicates that they were held by the Mitsui family
perhaps from the early seventeenth century,
entered an American collection after World War
n, and recently returned to a Japanese collection.
Noami's dedicatory inscription suggests that
the painting was offered in celebration of the
transfer of temple responsibilities in the spring of
1469 at the Kyoto temple Keon-in. Records indicate that the monk Kyogo did succeed Kokyo at
that time. Records trace the screens to the possession of Kyogo's son Renshu at the time of his
death in the second quarter of the sixteenth
century.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, records or
catalogues assembled by Japanese collectors and
connoisseurs referred to paintings done in the
style of, or "after," admired Chinese masters such
as Ma Yuan, Xia Gui, and Mu Qi. This pair of
screens, recently rediscovered, presents the most
impressive substantiation now known of those
tantalizing fifteenth-century records. The screens
present a series of quotations from several of Mu
Qi's known works, attesting Noami's intimacy
with Mu Qi's paintings and his highly original
assimilation of the Chinese master.
Opening the composition at the right is a pine
tree overhanging a stream, which cascades among
cliff and rock formations into a central expanse of
water. A gaggle of Chinese mynah birds occupies
the boulder overhanging the cascade, with a single
wagtail on a smaller rock below them. The composition's central and linking feature is a small
island or spit of land emerging from a point in the
unseen foreground, on which lotuses in full
bloom are clustered at the water's edge and a trio
of egrets stand in varied postures at the center.
Overhead, a single egret, swallows, and grebes
occupy the sky in consecutive panels.
TOWARD CATHAY

383

384

CIRCA 1492

Less dramatic than the opening topography is

that which closes the composition at the far left:
bamboo and a bare tree projecting from a gently
sloping bank. A pair of doves on the bank and a
pair of magpies above them on a branch of the
bare tree offer striking contrast between soft
shading and sharp black-and-white. To the right
of the magpies and below them, partly obscured
in water weeds, is a pair of mandarin ducks. The
stream carries one's eye gently from right to left,
perhaps suggesting a sequence of seasons along its
banks; the birds, in vivid counterpoint, form a
sharp zigzag across the two screens.
The centrality of the lotuses in the composition
made this painting thoroughly appropriate for a
celebration within a Pure Land Buddhist establishment. Viewers accustomed to paintings of the
White-Robed Kannon seated on a rock dais beside
a pool or stream would not fail to discern the
humorous intent in a gaggle of Chinese mynah
birds at the extreme right of the right-hand
screenjust where one would expect a depiction
of the sacred figure.
J.u.

227

Shugetsu Tokan

I44o(?)-i529

HERONS, WILLOWS, AND

PRUNUS IN SNOW
c. 1500
Japanese
pair of hanging scrolls; ink on paper
96.3

X 32.3

(j8 X 123/4J

two signatures and two seals of the artist

The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art

The righthand scroll shows a plumed white heron

preening its feathers on a willow branch; in the
lefthand scroll another white heron rests on one
leg on a snow-covered outcropping beneath a
prunus branch mantled in snow and enlivened by
a few tentative blossoms. Both paintings are
signed and sealed by the artist.
Birds and snow are shown in reserve, as silhouettes of white paper against the surrounding
ink wash, with the birds' legs and bills, and the
branches beneath the snow, in dramatically dark
strokes of ink. Particularly in the lefthand scroll
this technique was used to perfection, resulting
in an image at once clearly depicted and suggestive. This reverse technique was practiced in
thirteenth-century China by painters associated with
the Chan (Zen) Buddhist sect; its use there is
exemplified in a hanging scroll by Luo-Chuang of
a rooster, now in the Tokyo National Museum.
Surprisingly, the method seems to have been
scarcely known in Japan by 1500, the approximate
date of Shugetsu's painting.

Shugetsu was a monk-painter from the Satsuma domain in Kyushu, a subject of the Shimazu
daimyo clan. He became a friend and follower
of Sesshu (1420-1506) at that famous artist's
studio in present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture, the
Unkoku-an. In 1490 Sesshu's gift of a self-portrait
attested Shugetsu's position as his pupil and honored successor. The supposition that he accompanied Sesshu on his famous visit to China in
1468-1469 is probably false; a visit in the early
14905, though also suppositional, is more likely.

Shugetsu's relationship to Sesshu as pupil and

successor is confirmed by most of his few extant
works: the "splashed-ink" (hatsuboku) landscape
in the Cleveland Museum; the Reeds and Wild
Geese formerly in the Otsuka collection, Tokyo;
and a few landscapes in Sesshu's sharply defined
(shin) style.
The present work, however, is only superficially related in style to Sesshu's screens (see cat.
233). Sesshu never used reverse wash technique
in its purest form but always supplemented it
T O W A R D CATHAY

385

with additional outlines or strengthening touches.

Shugetsu recognized that such additions in fact
vitiated rather than enhanced the strength of this
form. The results indicate that there may well be
more to Shugetsu than is currently accepted.
S.E.L.

228

Shubun school
active second quarter of 15th century
PlNE-LlSTENING COTTAGE

(CHOSHOKEN)

Japanese
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
100 x 31.7 (j93/8 x -L2l/2)
5 inscriptions dated between 1433 and c. 1458
references: Yashiro 1960, 360; Tanaka 1972, 67-94;
Matsushita 1974, 61, 64-69; Princeton 1976, 25-30,
118-120

Seikado Foundation, Tokyo

Important Cultural Property
Of the five poetic inscriptions on the theme
of the title, the earliest was written by the Zen
scholar-monk Isho Tokugan (1365-1437), and is
dated to 1433:
A priest reads in the night by candlelight in his
study sheltered by the green umbrella of pine
trees. The wind blowing through the pine
branches is an accompaniment to his voice all
through the night.
The brushwork of the foliage on both pine and
small bushes owes much to the productive studio
of Mincho (1352-1431), artist-monk of Tofuku-ji,
but the rocks and distant mountains are constructed of vertical and horizontal strokes, very
much in the loose Korean brush manner originated among northern Chinese painters of the
Tartar Jin dynasty (1115-1234). This Korean
manner can also be seen in an anonymous landscape in the Jisho-in of Shokoku-ji, also with an
inscription by Tokugan, as well as in the famous
Suishoku Ranko, probably painted about 1445
by Shubun or a very close follower.
Tensho (or Ekkei) Shubun is a key but shadowy
figure of the first half of the fifteenth century,
the crucial period in which Japanese ink painting
reached maturity and turned to landscape for its
primary subject. His birth and death dates are
unknown. Documentary sources are few and not
wholly germane to his career as a painter. A Zen
monk as well as an artist, he was the general
administrator of the great Zen temple Shokoku-ji,
one of the Gozan (Five Mountains, i.e., five chief
Zen temples) in Kyoto. He was both painter and
sculptor, and is recorded as painting sliding
386

CIRCA 1492

screens with prunus in 1438, and assisting (?)

with sculptures for Shokoku-ji and Ungo-ji in
Kyoto and for Daruma-dera in Nara Prefecture, as
well as a statue of Prince Shotoku for Shitenno-ji
in Osaka, to replace one destroyed by fire in 1443.
Most significant for his artistic career is his participation in a diplomatic and trade embassy to
Korea in 1423-1424 the embassy that on its
return to Japan almost certainly brought the
Korean painter Yi Sumun (J: Ri Shubun). No
extant paintings can be surely documented as
the work of Tensho Shubun.
This visit to Korea, which must have been crucial in Shubun's artistic development, most likely
took place well before he reached the age of thirty.
As a mere youth (in terms of East Asian artistic
seniority) he was exposed to the Korean ink
painting of that time (cat. 264). Its heritage was
mixed: Korea shared a common boundary with
north China but also enjoyed sea connections
with south China, especially the port of Ningbo.
Close to Ningbo was Hangzhou, the seat of
Southern Song painting style and its continuation
in the Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Korean ink
painters used both the northern and southern
modes. Thus the famous An Kyon handscroll of
1447 and the paintings of his school (cat.
264) reflect the complex and monumental art of
north China during the Tartar Jin dynasty (11151234) and tne Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).
On the other hand, an album leaf by Kang Hui-an
(cat. 265) shows clearly the Southern Song penchant for asymmetry and abbreviation.
In the artistic environment of his native land,
Shubun could make use of both modes. Japanese
ink painting of the Muromachi period was in
large part a creation of Zen monk-painters, who
adopted the subjects developed by Chinese Chan
monk-painters and their literati colleagues of the
Hangzhou region: first, imaginary portraits of the
Chan patriarchs and other figures central to Zen
teaching, and second, the landscape of China.
Since many Japanese painters never visited China,
their landscapes were aesthetic meditations on
Chinese scenery particularly hermitages in
mountain fastnesses as mediated through
Chinese poetry and paintings. The primary element in this pictorial environment was the manipulation of ink by brush. What Shubun, his even
more famous pupil Sesshu, and their epigones
achieved was no mean feat the creation of poetic
pictures expressing both nostalgia and retreat,
valued qualities in the extreme social and political
unrest of Japan during the second half of the
fifteenth century.
Choshoken is a hanging scroll (kakemono),
tall in proportion to its width to a degree unusual
in China and Korea but common in Muromachi
Japan. Monks' quarters for private gatherings
proto-Tea Ceremony rooms or huts did not
afford large spaces for paintings; furthermore
the paintings themselves had to leave room for
inscriptions, which were as important as the

image below them. The composition here is

simple and centralized. A tripartite mountain
towers vertically above two implausibly tall pines.
The foliage on the mountaintops recalls north
Chinese Jin conventions. But the rocks at the
bases of the pines are denoted by brush strokes
derived from the "ax-cut" brush strokes of the
Ma-Xia school of Hangzhou. The pictorial effect
is lyrical and sprightly. The more linear brush
strokes create an overall spidery effect, which the
author takes to be an identifying characteristic
of the style associated with Shubun and his
immediate circle.
S.E.L.

TOWARD CATHAY

3^7

230 t
Sesshu Toyo
1420-1506
LANDSCAPE OF THE FOUR SEASONS
(SHIKI SANZUI Zu)
c. 1470

Japanese
four hanging scrolls; ink and slight color on silk
149.2 x 75.8 ($83/4 x 29 7 /s)
signed: Nihon Zenjin Toyo (Japanese
Zen-Man Toyo)
references: Covell 1941, 1974; Tanaka 1972, 105129; Matsushita 1974, 70-85
Tokyo National Museum
Important Cultural Property

229

Gakuo Zokyu

active c. 14/o-c. 1514

LANDSCAPE
late i$th century
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
69.1

X 32.7

(2/ 2 /4 X I27/s)

signed at lower right: Zokyu hitsu (painted by

Zokyu); seal: Gakuo
references: Tanaka 1972, fig. 74,
164-165; Matsushita 1974, 68-69
Tokyo National Museum
Important Cultural Property
A contemporaneous record of 1486 Shaken
Nichosoku by Kiko Daishuku calls Gakuo a disciple of Tensho Shubun. Inscriptions by Ryoan
Keigo (1425-1514) on paintings attributed to
Gakuo suggest that the painter was a friend or
388

CIRCA 1492

associate of this eminent Zen monk of Tofuku-ji

in Kyoto. Inscriptions also suggest that Gakuo
was with Ryoan at An'yo-ji, south of Nara in Ise
Province, from about 1469 to 1477. Ryoan later
(1511) served as envoy to China and was a familiar
of Sesshu, but there seems to be no trace of Sesshu's influence in the works attributed to Gakuo.
The Tokyo National Museum Landscape is usually regarded as Gakuo's classic work; it is signed
"painted by Zokyu" and includes his seal: Gakuo.
In composition it is a variation on Shubun's but
rendered with more dramatic contrasts in tone,
heavier ink, broader washes, and with a distinctive
use of triangular planes to produce an often crystalline effect. The modeling of foliage with dark
washes recalls the Chinese Southern Song artist
Xia Gui (c. 1180-1220). Compared with the even
and delicate mists of his master, Shubun, Gakuo's
rendering of mist, as in this scroll, is more palpable, less mysterious and transparent.
S.E.L.

Born into the Oda family, minor samurai of

limited means living in present-day Okayama
Prefecture, Sesshu was entered at the age of
twelve as a novice at a local Zen temple. By his
twenties Toyo, as he was then called, was at
Shokoku-ji in Kyoto, where he evidently served
as a receptionist for visitors to the abbot. Tensho
Shubun (act. first half of 15th century) was a
monk at the same temple, and it is likely that
Sesshu studied painting under Shubun; later, in
a famous inscription, Sesshu named Shubun and
Shubun's predecessor Josetsu as his artistic mentors. Although he was certainly painting at this
time, and had access to the considerable collections of Shokoku-ji and perhaps to the shogun's
collection as well, no extant work antedating the
14605 can be definitely attributed to Sesshu.
About 1464 he was summoned to what is now
Yamaguchi Prefecture by the Ouchi, lords of the
region, to be abbot of the clan temple, Unkoku-ji.
His willingness to accept argues a relatively low
position at Shokoku-ji and a need for greater
independence and breathing room. He was in
his art clearly a strong and unusual personality.
Further, his life shows the readiness to travel
that seems to have characterized the freer spirits
in Japanese history.
At Unkoku-ji he was joined by a faithful
disciple-friend-pupil, Shugetsu Tokan (d. 1529),
and there, sometime in the early 14605, he took
the familiar name (azana) Sesshu. The two
characters making up the azana, setsu (snow) and
shu (boat), also allude in their pronunciation to
both ]osetsu and Shubun. Sesshu's ancient priestmentor Ryuko Shinkei, elaborating on the deep
significance of "snow-boat/ stresses the purity
and coldness of snow and the quiet movement of
boats. Indeed "ice" is mentioned in this inscription and in another by Genryu and "icy" is
a not inappropriate description of one element in
Sesshu's mature painting style.
The Ouchi daimyo controlled far western
Honshu, including the port and strait of Shimonoseki between Honshu and Kyushu, and main-

tained active trade and diplomatic relations with

China. In 1467, under the nominal patronage of
the politically enfeebled shogun Yoshimasa, the
rival Ouchi and Hosokawa clans organized a trade
mission to China, and after delays the ships left
the port of Hakata for Ningbo in early 1468.
Sesshu and Shugetsu accompanied the mission
for the Ouchi, the former being described as
"purchaser-priest." The two-year sojourn in
China, taking Sesshu from Ningbo north to Beijing by way of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing,
was a crucial event in the artist's career, both personally and artistically.
Ningbo was the center of the painting workshops continuing Southern Song landscape, figure, and Buddhist traditions, and there Sesshu
certainly saw plentiful examples of the Ma-Xia
(Ma Yuan and Xia Gui) landscape style. Suzhou
must have afforded some exposure to the emerging wen ren (literati) school of painting, led by
Shen Zhou (1427-1509). And in Beijing the court
painters received the Japanese artist as an equal.
Only eight years after Sesshu's return from Japan
Priest Ryoshin documented Sesshu's commission
from the Ming court for a wall painting (screen?
or mural?). On his 1495 "splashed-ink" landscape
Sesshu himself recorded that he had learned from
Zhang Yousheng (now unknown) and Li Zai (act.
c. 1425-1470); it is not clear whether he knew the
painters personally, or only their works. The
breadth and depth of Sesshu's exposure to
Chinese art in China was almost certainly greater
than that of any other Japanese artist of his time.
By the time he returned to Japan, the monumental tradition of Northern Song landscape as
preserved by Li Zai, the Southern Song Ma-Xia
tradition, the Buddhist painting and flower painting traditions of the Ningbo area, the new court
painting of early Ming, and the new wen ren style
were all familiar to him.
His social position and self-esteem were also
bolstered by his trip. Touches of precedence, such
as being chief guest at the great Chan (Zen)
temple Jingde Si on Mt. Tiantong near Ningbo,
were treasured by Sesshu and flaunted in his signatures on later major paintings: "Occupant of
the First Seat at Tiantong in Siming [Ningbo]."
Especially after his relative obscurity in Japan's
artistic capital, Kyoto, to be acclaimed in China as
a major master was probably most heartening.
For Sesshu's mastery of Chinese styles our
major pictorial evidence is the set of Landscapes
of the Four Seasons, exhibited here. The overall
effect of the four hanging scrolls in tone, composition, and allusions to tradition is almost
totally Chinese. Only in certain brush details and
in a few idiosyncratic descriptions of motifs such
as rocks and bamboo can one clearly distinguish
the mature and classic Sesshu. In the lower half of
"Spring" the abbreviated indications of architecture, crackling prunus branches, and axlike brush
strokes defining rocks are pure Ma Yuan, while
T O W A R D CATHAY

389

the tree foliage and broad ink wash plane of the

slanting plateau are equally pure Xia Gui. The
strongly one-cornered composition is a Ma-Xia
characteristic, as are the forced-edge washes of the
distant mountains. "Summer" is a well-understood essay in the style of the fourteenth-century
Ma-Xia follower Sun Junze except in its composition: the centrally placed mountain mass echoes
earlier traditions of monumental landscape.
The skillful use of "palpable" mist and broad ink
washes paling into exposed silk has much in
common with such conservative Chinese masters
as Zhou Chen (d. c. 1536) and Tang Yin (14701523). The resonant summer calm evoked with
bare silk or light washes of ink provides a startling
counterpoint to the angular and energetic thrusts
of rocks, pine branches, and mountain ridges and
paths. "Autumn" is thoroughly dominated by the
ways of Xia Gui, save again for the dominant
centrality and symmetry of the landscape elements. "Winter" rivals "Summer" in its successful evocation of a snowy landscape by means of
large areas of untreated or only lightly washed
silk defined by sharp, crystalline, "icy" brush
strokes. The curious clovelike representation of
mountain tree and bush foliage ultimately derives
from the tenth-century monumental master Fan
Kuan. But Sesshu assumed the convention to
come from Xia Gui, as he indicates in an inscription on one of his many free copies after Southern Song landscapes on fans. By Southern Song
Fan Kuan's style had been adopted as a norm for
rendering winter landscape.
It is assumed, probably rightly, that the
Four Seasons scrolls were painted during or just
after Sesshu's China trip. The mastery of Chinese painting traditions is patent; the identification "Japanese Zen-Man" in his signature
would hardly seem necessary if he had remained
at home; the name "Toyo" implies an early
date, since in later years he more commonly
used Sesshu.
S.E.L.

231

Sesshu Toyo
1420-1506

SPLASHED-INK (HATSUBOKU)
LANDSCAPE
c. 1490
Japanese
fan painting mounted as a hanging scroll;
ink on paper
30 X }0.6 (l!3/4 X 12)

inscribed (by the artist): Yu-Jian; signed: Sesshu

references: Covell 1941, 1974, 94-96; Tanaka 1972,
125-129
Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art

390

CIRCA 1492

This work is one of some nine fan-shaped pictures

after Southern Song fan paintings by such classic
Chinese masters as Xia Gui, Liang Kai, Li Tang,
and Yu-Jian. Though often called "copies," none
of these paintings can be closely related to any
extant works by those Chinese artists in Japanese
temples and collections. Their manner is that of
Sesshu in his later works, well after his return
from China. It seems more likely that these fanshaped pictures are small essays in the style of the
masters whose names are inscribed outside the
"frame." The real originator is surely Sesshu,
whose name is proudly placed within the frame.
These fans lie within the mainstream of Ming and
Qing aesthetics, in which the theme-and-variation
mode was commonplace: a style or manner
handed down from the past was used as a starting
point to display the knowledge and virtuosity of
the executant.
In this present work the manner, called by the
Japanese "splashed ink" (J: hatsuboku; C: po
mo), was associated with two late Southern Song
painters represented in the shoguns' collections:
Mu Qi (or Fa-Chang) and Yu-Jian (or Ruo-Fen).
Mu was a Chan (Zen) abbot-painter of Hangzhou;
Yu-Jian was perhaps a priest of the Buddhist Tiantai (J: Tendai) sect. The hatsuboku works attributed to Mu Qi are not signed or reliably sealed,
but those by Yu-Jian are. Splashed-ink painting
has been considered the exclusive province of
Chan Buddhists, but there seem to be exceptions,

witness Yu-Jian. But the paintings are closely

associated with late Southern Song Buddhism,
and their appearance, manner of making, and
association by inscription with well-known
priests, principally Chan, make it possible to
describe them generically as congruent with Chan
methods of meditation and elucidation silence
often interrupted by terse, sometimes rude, and
always enigmatic and problematic explanation.
Further, in Japan hatsuboku is almost exclusively
associated with Zen priest-painters like Sesshu, or
with lay priest-warrior painters like Kaiho Yusho
(1533-1615).
This hatsuboku essay by Sesshu is a relatively
quiet and understated "meditation" in ink as
compared with the same artist's dramatic masterpiece of 1495. Here the darkest and sharpest
strokes define a distant two-storied structure,
probably an inn, on a high bluff with trees overhanging its edge. The foregound is half-toned,
and the rock (?) in the center of this spit of land
seems overly large in relation to the hill and
building. At the left, balancing the signature
Sesshu on the right, a fisherman or ferryman
huddles in his boat. The overlapping of the large
rock and the equal-toned wash of the central point
of land is a little heavy and uncertain. But what
counts is the overall gestalt, the total image, soft,
wet, suggesting patchy mist and rain covering
parts of a relatively near view.
S.E.L.

232

Sesshu Toyo
1420-1506
AMA NO HASHIDATE
c. 1503
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink and notes of color on paper
89.5 x 169.5 (352/4 x 663/4)
references: Tanaka 1972,108, 109, 128; Tanaka and
Nakamura 1973, 7: pis. 20, 54; Matsushita 1974, 82

Kyoto National Museum

National Treasure
The lack of signature and seal does not diminish
the firmness of the attribution; it furthermore
attests the character of this work as a large sketch
based on smaller on-the-spot sketches. As a direct
rendering of a Japanese scene, the famous "Bridge
of Heaven" near Miyazu on the Japan Sea side of
northern Kyoto Prefecture, this vigorous work is
unique in early Japanese ink painting. It belies
Sesshu's self-deprecating references to his misty
eyes and exhausted spirit in the inscription on the
Hatsuboku Landscape for Sden of 1495. For Ama
no Hashidate was painted about 1503, when the
artist was at least eighty-two. The small one-story
pagoda (tahoto) of Chion-ji in the temple depicted
at the lower left was not completed until 1501, so
the painting must have been made thereafter.

Although Sesshu maintained two more or less

permanent studios after his return from China,
he was, like many Chinese and Japanese scholars,
painters, and monks, an inveterate traveler. Since
travel was almost unimaginably slow and arduous
by present-day standards, these trips took a very
long time, and were lengthened even further by
the painting demonstrations which it was customary for a famous artist to give, at least at the more
important of the temples and domain castles that
offered him extended hospitality en route.
Ama no Hashidate is the result of one of these
trips. The legendary sand spit, covered with pines
and surrounded by marvelous views, is still one of
the top tourist attractions in Japan. In the painting
we view it from a hill looking northwest across
part of Miyazu Bay. Mount Nariai is on the right,
with the temple complex of Nariai-ji, including a
Shinto shrine, below it. At the lower left, opposite
the end of the Bridge of Heaven, we can see
Chion-ji with its red Image Hall and just beyond
on the left the one-storied pagoda. The numerous
houses of the five small villages on the far side of
the bay are boldly indicated in an abbreviated,
staccato shorthand. These quasi-geometric forms
contrast with the rolling washes and running

brush strokes defining the hills and mountains.

Nothing in ink painting could be further from the
nostalgically imagined Chinese scenery of most
Muromachi painted landscapes. Even Sesshu may
have been surprised by what he had created.
Nor does Ama no Hashidate reveal much in
common with the strong verticality and the
angular and energetic thrusts of Sesshu's earlier,
purportedly Chinese, landscapes (cf. cat. 230).
Although some may attribute the gentler, more
horizontal expanse of this landscape to a resurgence of the native style of painting found in the
narrative handscrolls and the landscape mandalas
of the earlier Fujiwara (897-1185) and Kamakura
(1185-1333) periods, the differences in Ama no
Hashidate would seem to be mainly attributable
to the artist's individuality and strength as well as
to nature herselfthis is the way the scenery of
the Bridge of Heaven looks. The presence of eight
place and temple names in the distinctive calligraphy of the artist attests his keen interest in the
local topography.
As many as twenty-eight sheets of paper were
joined to create the painting surface for Ama no
Hashidate', since old fold marks look like joins, the
S.E.L.
exact number is not determinable.

T O W A R D CATHAY

39!

233
attributed to Sesshu Toyo
1420-1506
FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF THE FOUR
SEASONS (Smxi KACHO Zu)
Japanese
pair of six-fold screens; ink and color on paper
each 151.6 x 366 (59% x 144)
references: Covell 1941, 1974, 111-114; Tanaka
1972, 170-172; Tanaka and Nakamura 1973,
7:20-23; 7:61-62, 7:63
Shinagawa Yoichiro
The paper-ground folding screen appears to be
a Japanese invention, and was the base for one
of their most important contributions to art
a Japanese decorative style as distinctive as the
European rococo. The Imperial gift placed in the
Shoso-in repository of T6dai-ji, the Great Eastern
Temple of Nara, in the year 756, included folding
screens of court ladies and decorative screens with
calligraphies. Narrative handscrolls of the Fujiwara period (897-1185) depict single-panel and
folding screens with flower-and-bird motifs
(kacho) f and the portrait of Retired Emperor GoShirakawa (1127-1192) shows a screen with kacho
in a vaguely Song Chinese style. By the fifteenth
century the pair of six-fold screens (later to
become the canonical format) was relatively
common, painted both by Tosa traditional artists
and by "new wave" masters such as Shubun,
Soami and Sesshu.
The subjects of these screens clouds-waterflowers-birds from the Tosa traditionalists, land392

CIRCA 1492

scape from the innovating ink painterswere

extensions of the traditional vocabulary used for
hanging scrolls, handscrolls, and panels. Sesshu
seems to have popularized a new category
daring compositions with dramatic, large-scale
kacho motifs. These were based not on the
Japanese courtly artistic tradition (Tosa and
yamato-e] but on a Chinese repertory dating
from the Song dynasty (960-1279) as well as
from contemporary fifteenth-century Ming
China. The Song paintings small works by
such artists as Li Anzhong and Ma Lin could be
seen in Japanese temple and daimyo collections;
Sesshu had seen large-scale Ming works by the
likes of Lii Ji, Yin Hong, and Lin Liang on their
native ground, and they were also to be found in
Japan in some of the larger Zen establishments.
An early pair of small paintings on silk of birds
and flowers (now in the Perry collection, Cleveland, Ohio) reveals Sesshu experimenting with
a richer and more strongly outlined approach to
kacho subject matter. (The copy made by Kano
Tanyu in 1666 attests that this work was even
then considered to be by Sesshu.) Expanding this
to the large scale of the folding screen was an easy
and logical development. Some five or six such
pairs of screens attributed to Sesshu are known.
None of them have reliable inscriptions or seals,
and most have no inscriptions at all. But they
share a style congruent with the pair of small
paintings, and their brushwork is very close to
Sesshu's. For example (as indicated by Shimizu in
Washington 1988, cat. 88), The Deified Michizane
as Tenjin of 1501 by Sesshu, now in the Okayama
Prefectural Museum, has pine and plum elements

markedly like the motifs in the flower-and-bird

screens attributed to Sesshu. The attributions to
Sesshu's hand are plausible, and at the very least it
is certain that these screens came out of his
studio-workshop. They are not only great decorative productions in their own right, they completely anticipate the remarkable achievement of
Kano Motonobu in the sixteenth century as well
as much of the work of the great Momoyama
period (1573-1615) decorators Kano Eitoku and
Kano Sanraku.
The screens exhibited here display free and
vigorous brushwork and deliberate roughness in
the rendering of rocks and trees; they seem to
this author more characteristic of Sesshu's later
efforts than the more careful and overtly decorative effects of the other claimants to Sesshu's
hand (the so-called Maeda and Masuda, or
Ohashi, screens). Summer begins at the right of
screen one with full-blown tree peonies, followed
to the left by the reeds and lotus leaves of early
fall. Those dry reeds on the first screen herald the
passage of fall into winter on the second screen,
with the dormant plum tree and the camelia as
harbingers of spring at the far left. Pine, bamboo,
rock, and two cranes dominate screen one, prunus,
geese, and bamboo the second screen; small birds
serve as grace notes throughout. The startling
juxtapositions of near, middle, and far distance
resemble similarly sudden shifts in the master's
most famous work, the Long Scroll of 1486. Our
eyes are led along an abruptly zigzagging path
from the close-up pine trunk and rock to the distant first crane and bamboo, then partway back to
the second crane in middle distance and out again

to the far-off reeds and lotus. In the second screen

the foreground reeds, prunus, and grass hummock
establish the distance of the far-away geese and
the even farther snowy mountains. The design
consequently does not appear flat and solely
decorative, but maintains contact with reality
through suggested space.
Patronage, particularly from the daimyo of
the more powerful and remote provinces, helped
greatly in establishing the popularity of largescale kacho subjects. Such works afforded all the
connotations desired by these rulers: references
to China in the subject and the ink-painting
medium; associations with Zen through the
painter and the vibrant brushwork; manifestations
of power in the large format with its potential for
dramatic imagery. The present screens do begin
to project visual manifestations of power.
S.E.L.

234
Geiami
1431-1485
VIEWING A WATERFALL (KAMBAKU Zu)
dated to 1480
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
106 x 30.3 (4i3/4 x 13 Vs)
inscriptions by Getsud Shukyo (d. 1500), Rampa
Keishi (d. 1501), and Osen Keisan (1429-1493)
Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo
Viewing a Waterfall is the only painting that can
be reliably attributed to Noami's son Geiami, who
was aesthetic adviser (ddboshu) to the shogun and
curator of the shogunal art collections. The work
is valued as much for its documentary importance
as for its aesthetic appeal. Three inscriptions,
respectively by Getsuo Shukyo, Rampa Keishi,
and Osen Keisan, offer description and poetic
observation and identify the figure as Li Bo, the
celebrated Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty (618907). Osen's inscription includes a brief account
of the circumstances of the painting's creation.
It was painted by Geiami and presented to his
pupil Kenko Shokei (see cat. 235) on the occasion
of Shokei's departure for his home temple of
Kencho-ji in Kamakura after completing his
period of tutelage in Kyoto. Osen was a renowned
scholar of Chinese literature and one of the most
prominent figures in the Sinophile literary culture centered around the major Zen monasteries
(a cultural movement referred to as Gozan bungaku). Between 1472 and 1475 he accompanied

official Japanese embassies to Korea and to China.

A "dedicatory" painting by the principal aesthetic
advisor to the shogun, bearing an inscription by
Osen, would have constituted a particularly prestigious "diploma with honors" for Shokei.
Soami succeeded Geiami as the last of the
"three Ami" line of painters. Noami (Shinno,
1397-1471; see cat. 226) had adopted a byname
incorporating the Ami suffix as a sign of devotion
to Amida, Buddha of the Western Paradise. This
was relatively common practice among members
of the Ji (Timely) sect founded by the charismatic
monk Ippen Shonin (1239-1289). Ippen had
stressed the merit to be accrued toward salvation
by simply repeating the name of Amida (the practice of nembutsu). This easy and useful routine
appealed immensely to all classes, especially to
workmen and artisans, among whom were
included painters and sculptors. Noami, his son
Geiami (Shingei), and Soami (also known as
Shinso, d. 1525) were major artistic figures, close
to the shogunate and especially to the shogun
Yoshimasa (1436-1490), whom they served as
advisers in the arts of No drama, music, Chinese
and Japanese poetry, garden design, and the
emerging Tea Ceremony, and as connoisseurs of
Chinese works of art, especially painting. Noami's
catalogue of the shogun's collection, Gyomotsu
One Mokuroku, was a systematic inventory of
more than ninety Chinese paintings of the Song
and Yuan dynasties; while Soami's-Kundaikan
Sochoki added biographies of the artists and a
complex ranking system, with ranks named for
the levels of spiritual attainment in Amida's Western Paradise.
T O W A R D CATHAY

393

As painters, the Ami appear to have adopted a

softer and less calligraphic linear mode of brushwork combined with ink wash, producing works
quite different from their contemporaries
Shubun, Sesshu, and Kei Shoki. One of Noami's
few surviving works is a pair of screens with
flower-and-bird subjects (cat. 226). It not only
displays the softer Ami touch but shows a
virtuosity unexpected in a convert. The effect is
suggestive, evanescent, with an ink method well
termed "boneless" (mo gu) by the Chinese. The
derivation of the style can be easily demonstrated,
especially if one consults the inventory of Soami's
Kundaikan Sochoki. This includes paintings of the
Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang by the great Chan
abbot Mu Qi (Fa-Chang) of Hangzhou. Many of
these are extant, and they are rendered in Mu Qi's
characteristic broadly and swiftly brushed boneless ink washes the ultimate in intuitive, almost
abstract landscapes. Three paintings by Yu-Jian
(act. i3th century), however, embody the most
extreme and specialized forms of this suggestive
boneless style; these are three landscapes from
the Eight Views, Mountain Village, Harvest
Moon, and Returning Sails.
The Kambaku Zu represents a theme of particular appeal to Chinese and Japanese Zen literati.
Representations of a single figure, frequently with
an attendant, approaching or contemplating a
waterfall, were assumed to depict the renowned
Tang poet Li Bo, and thereby to recall the poetry
he composed on viewing the monumental waterfall at Mt. Lu in Jiangxi Province. Li Bo's poetry
(along with that of his equal and contemporary
Du Fu) exerted pervasive influence on the development of Japanese verse. A poetic spirit engaged
by natural splendor and the purifying power of
rushing water was an image of understandable
appeal to Zen literati.
Geiami's waterfall emerges from a mistshrouded upland lake, forms a series of arching
cascades, and then plunges straight down to a
foaming pool at the center of a grotto-like formation. Sheltered by overhanging rock is an empty
viewing pavilion, which the two figures are
approaching. The artist's sophisticated use of
intersecting diagonal and circular constructions
emphasizes the swirling pool at the base of the
waterfall and allows the water in all its protean
manifestations to be the "light-bearing" feature
of the painting. Geiami's stylistic and compositional references are to the Chinese professional
painters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui of Southern Song
(1127-1279), but the characteristic Ma-Xia use of
unarticulated but highly suggestive open space is
here modified by the softly contoured clouds that
were to become a trademark of the Ami painters.
For a work created as an encomium of Shokei's
artistic ability and a "certificate" of aesthetic
transmission as the occasion of its execution
suggests a mannered landscape in Ma-Xia style
would have been the orthodox choice.
j.u.
S.E.L.
394

CIRCA 1492

35

Kenko Shokei
active c. 1478-1506

EIGHT VIEWS OF
XIAO AND XIANG RIVERS
Japanese
album leaves; ink and slight color on paper
36.7 x 23.7 (i42/2 x 93/s)
seal of the artist on each leaf
references: Matsushita 1974, 117-120; Princeton
1976,186-19}
Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe Prefecture
Shokei's period of study with Geiami (cat. 234),
from 1478 to 1480, gave him both a basic style
and a broad knowledge of Chinese paintings in
the shogunal collection curated by his mentor. A
painting of the Eight Views listed in the shogunal
catalogue (Gyomotsu Orie Mokuroku), was
attributed to the Chinese Southern Song artist
Xia Gui (c. n8o-c. 1220). Although that work
may well have been Shokei's direct inspiration,
the brush language of this famous album is
derived as much from Geiami as from Xia Gui,
and reveals Shokei's personal accent sharp and
abbreviated depiction, a strongly staccato pattern
of dark dots representing moss or lichen, and a
clear division between complex foreground and
simple, overlapped mountain background. The
artist's most characteristic trait is his twisting
calligraphic rendering of the rock contours.
As early as the third century B.C. a Chinese
poet had celebrated the beauty of the Xiao and
Xiang rivers where they empty into Lake Dongting in Hunan Province. During the Northern
Song dynasty (960-1127) the scenery of Xiao and
Xiang emerged as a pictorial theme, attributed in
the writings of the famous scholar-official Shen
Gua (1029-1093) to the contemporary painter
Song Di. In the Sinophile culture of Muromachi
Japan the Eight Views became a favored theme,
the Japanese renditions partly imagined, partly
based on imported Chinese prototypes.
The Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang comprise
the following individual scenes: Night Rain on
the Xiao and Xiang, Harvest Moon Over Dongting Lake, Evening Bell from a Temple in the
Mist, Twilight over the Fishing Village, Returning
Sails off a Distant Shore, Wild Geese Alighting
on the Strand, Mountain Village in Clearing
Mist, and Evening Snow on a Distant Mountain
Horizon. (During the Edo period [1615-1868]
various scenic places of Japan, particularly Lake
Biwa in Omi Province, were substituted for the
unknown Lake Dongting, but the subjects of the
Eight Views remained the same: Night Rain,
Harvest Moon, etc.)
Shokei was certainly the most important of
the monochrome ink painters in the Kamakura
region. If his style was formed in his first of two

TOWARD CATHAY

395

sojourns in Kyoto (the second being in 1493), it

certainly was remarkably consistent through the
time of his last dated painting, the Shoshusai
Study of 1506 (Ueno collection, Hyogo Pref.).
Efforts to define a "late" style influenced by the
Shubun school (cat. 228) have not been convincing, and the date of the Hakutsuru album is consequently not clear. It may well have been painted
at the end of his first stay in Kyoto (1478-1480),
but the independence of style clearly emerging in
these eight leaves seems to point to a somewhat
later date, perhaps closer to 1493, when he had
returned to Kyoto better able to assimilate Xia
Gui's Eight Views without falling into mere
emulation.
S.E.L.

236 $*

Kano Motonobu
1476-1559
FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF THE
FOUR SEASONS (SHIKI KACHO Zu)
c. 1510
Japanese
originally four (of a total composition of eight)
sliding screens, now mounted as hanging scrolls;
ink and color on paper
178 x 142 (yoVs x 56)
references: Covell and Yamada 1974, 135-136;
Matsushita 1974, 123-125; Princeton 1976, 212-217

Daisen-in, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto

If Soami appeared as a low-key stylist and a
knowledgeable connoisseur of Chinese painting,
Kano Motonobu burst on the Kyoto artistic scene
as a bold decorator with a dazzling brush technique. Though his father, Kano Masanobu (1434-

396

CIRCA

1492

1530), is traditionally credited with founding the

Kano school, which endured for some four hundred years, it was certainly Motonobu who established this most famous of all Japanese schools
(or traditions) of painting. Motonobu was only
about thirty-three when he was commissioned,
along with his much younger brother Yukinobu,
to paint sliding screens (fusuma) for the abbot's
apartment at the Daisen-in. This established
Motonobu's preeminence and his firm connection
with the sources of patronage: the Imperial
Household, the shogunal government (bakufu)
and samurai aristocracy (daimyo)f and the abbots
of the major Zen temples. His marriage to a
daughter of the painter Tosa Mitsunobu (cat. 212,
216) ensured his access both to the traditional
Japanese yamato-e style and to the supporters of
that style, the Imperial court. He was also a born
executive, and the painting workshop that he
organized provided a model for ambitious and
busy artists of the future.
Motonobu's two sets of decorations for the
Daisen-in comprise both the decorative kacho
(flower-and-bird) genre and Zen figure-in-landscape subjects. The former were suitable for striking effects; the latter drew shrewdly on Chinese
academic and court painting of Southern Song
and Ming (cat. 291) along with the "New Style"
of monochrome ink painting as practiced by
Japanese predecessors of Motonobu.
The four panels shown here represent spring
and summer. Originally on four sliding screens,
now mounted as hanging scrolls, they are early
statements of a compositional schema that became
standard for Motonobu's Kano successors. Reading
from right to left, we find a near and understated
theme of rock, flowering tree, bamboo, and birds,
touching the top, right, and bottom frames. Then
open space and the faint beginnings of distant

hills and trees, with relatively near motifs of

ducks and swallows. In the third panel the artist
begins to build a wealth of foreground detail
rocks, peonies, pheasants, bamboo, and overhead a
sparse pine branch. This latter, we finally see,
comes from the large pine in the fourth panel, a
heavily corrugated trunk running in a twisting
reverse curve from lower right to upper left. On
this major and dominant motif, strongly played
against the vertical geometry of a decorative
waterfall close behind the trunk, a noisy but
minor note of three magpies and a single woodpecker closes the summer's carnival of birds. The
individual elements may recall almost contemporary Chinese decorative specialists such as Yin
Hong (cat. 292), but the heavy asymmetry and
sharp, dark, and domineering brushwork are far
more extreme than anything the Chinese would
have permitted themselves.
Unquestionably these panels show the direct
influence of kacho folding screens (bydbu) by
Sesshu (such as cat. 233). A close relationship
between Sesshu and Motonobu's father, Masanobu, is strongly supported by the persistent tradition that Sesshu was instrumental in having
Masanobu substitute for himself in the decoration
of Shogun Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji). The knowing and exaggerated manipulation of
a decorative style on large-scale panels was to be
the foundation of Japanese painting design in the
following Momoyama period. Motonobu's use
of color is also daring and decorative, relying on
rather solid flat areas of relatively pure azurite,
malachite, and cinnabar. This he had almost certainly appropriated from the native yamato-e
tradition of the Tosa school; the mixture of Tosa
and Kano style is clearly seen in his narrative
handscroll Legends of the founding of Seiryo-ji
(Seiryo-ji Engi).
S.E.L.

237
Emperor Go-Hanazono
1419-1470
SELECTIONS FROM THE TALE OF GENJI
c. 1460
Japanese
handscroll; ink on decorated "cloud" paper
(kumogami)
33.4 x 105.8 (i32/8 x 41%)

Daio-ji, Kyoto (housed at Kyoto National Museum)

Fine calligraphy is the true topic of this fragment

from what must have been a much longer handscroll or set of scrolls. The subject on which the
writer exercised his skill was selected passages
from the classic novel of Heian (794-1185) court
life, the Tale of Genji.
The work is reasonably attributed to Emperor
Go-Hanazono, the astute and learned but powerless sovereign who at the age of ten succeeded the
childless Emperor Shoko and reigned until 1465,
when he abdicated in favor of his son Go-Tsuchimikado (see cat. 212). During his reign, central
government virtually disintegrated, as the uneasy
hegemony of the Ashikaga shoguns declined and
real power devolved on the landed provincial
barons at the head of their private armies. The
Onin War (1467-1477) a ferocious and ultimately pointless conflict between two such
warlords ravaged Kyoto in the last years of
Go-Hanazono's life.
Deprived of all political power, Go-Hanazono,
like many other court aristocrats of the period,
pursued scholarly and artistic interests. These
cultural pursuits might be considered "reactionary" in that they espoused Japanese classical literature and nativist painting and calligraphy styles,
in contradistinction to the Sinophile leanings
of the Ashikaga shogunal circle.
The passages here transcribed from Lady
Murasaki's eleventh-century romance have as a
common thread impossible or unrequited love.
The first concerns Yugiri, Prince Genji's son,
who, rebuffed in his wooing of his best friend's
widow, is brought close to tears by the combination of moonlight, the sound of rushing water,
and the cry of a stag (Murasaki 1976, chap. 39,
p. 681). In the second Prince Niou, Genji's
womanizing grandson, speaks of braving snowy
peaks in pursuit of his heart's desire (Murasaki
1976, chap. 51, p. 993).
The calligraphy is in the Chokuhitsu style, a
rather affected hybrid derived in the fourteenth

century from earlier Japanese aristocratic calligraphy styles. Kumogami (also called uchigumori,
"pounded cloudiness") is a paper in which long
fibers, dyed blue (and sometimes purple), are
mixed into the pulp to create cloudlike patterns.
On this ground a landscape with prominent
willow, marsh plants, and bush clover was painted
before the calligrapher set to work. In deliberately
rustic fashion this paper evokes the elegantly
decorated papers of the Heian and Kamakura
(1185-1333) periods, and is a striking foil for the
self-consciously refined calligraphy.
j.u.

238
Ikkyu Sojun
1394-1481
PRECEPTS OF THE SEVEN BUDDHAS
c. 1460-1465
Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
133.8 X 41.6

($25/8 X l63/SJ

Shinju-an, Daitoku-jif Kyoto

"Do not commit evil deeds; strive to do good."
These two precepts, each composed of four vertically written characters, are the first two of
four similarly constructed verses. The latter two
verses read: "Purify your thoughts this is what
the Buddhas teach." Together, the four verses
constitute precept 183 of the Dhammapdda, an
ancient and enormously popular compendium of
basic Buddhist teachings which was translated
from Pali into Chinese at least four times between
the third and tenth century. Once translated into
Japanese from Chinese, these verses were desigTOWARD CATHAY

397

The calligraphy reads:

"Strive to do good/'

398

CIRCA 1492

nated the "Precepts of the Seven Buddhas"

(J: Shichibutsu tsukaige). They are frequently
employed as an aphoristic distillation of Buddhist
teaching not likely to be contradicted by any
Buddhist sect.
A brusquely confident manner, suitable to
the imperative or preceptive mode, is the essence
of Ikkyu's style, and this work is widely regarded
as his calligraphic masterpiece, although these
aphorisms were cherished by Ikkyu and were
brushed by him in other formats as well.
Widely regarded (though never formally
acknowledged) as a son of the emperor GoKomatsu (1377-1433), Ikkyu from the age of six
was placed in various Zen temples under the tutelage of distinguished teachers. Trained in the
Rinzai Zen tradition, Ikkyu was throughout his
life an acerbic critic of the Zen establishment, as
well as wildly unconventional in his behavior.
One may reasonably infer that his more insightful
colleagues acknowledged the morals pointed by
his eccentricities; the others were doubtless
moved to tolerance by Ikkyu's connection with
the imperial line. His links were always with Daitoku-ji, where he held responsible positions as
abbot of various subtemples, at the same time
remaining the castigating outsider. Only in 1474,
at the request of emperor Go-Tsuchimikado
(r. 1465-1500), did Ikkyu then eighty-one
assume the abbacy of Daitoku-ji, which had been
destroyed during the Onin War (1467-1477). It
was a sublimely ironic appointment: the inveterate critic of the religious establishment's worldly
excesses was now head of a temple reduced to
ashes. His investiture took place at a small retreat
called Ummon-an in the port city of Sakai.
Ikkyu's strong relationships with wealthy merchants in Sakai eventually elicited funding for
the rebuilding of Daitoku-ji, and the work was in
process when Ikkyu died, seated in meditation,
in 1481.
Ikkyu bridled against any attempts to institutionalize Zen. In a climate which encouraged
legitimization of spiritual insight and lineage
through the presentation of certificates (inka) or
portraits (chinso) from master to disciple, Ikkyu
noted in one of his final directives that he had
never given an inka to any disciple. In pure Zen
style he confounded the usual interpretation of
the straightforward dictum shown here in his own
hand: his true followers, Ikkyu said, would roam
the forests, drinking and indulging the flesh,
while false monks would teach pieties for their
own profit.
Ikkyu's own writings are primarily verse,
passionate, blunt, and often ironicthe irony
expressing both deprecation and affection for
human foibles and a quizzical mistrust for all
human pretention. In spirit, tone, and intention
his verses contravene the elegant ambiguities of
court poetry. The very style of Ikkyu's calligraphy
bespeaks his character and purpose.
j.u.

239

Koei

active 15th century

AMIDA
dated to 1472
wood with traces of polychromy
height 53.5 (2iV8)
references: Saunders 1960, 66-74, 5-93;
fukuyama 1976,151, chart opp. p. 153; Los Angeles
1984, 304-305
Robert H. Ellsworth collection, New York
In Japan from the eleventh century the most
popular of the Buddhas was Amida, Buddha of the
Western Paradise, to whom worshipers ascribed a
signal and predominating mercy. Appearing alone
or accompanied by his compassionate attendant
bodhisattvas, Kannon and Seishi, Amida alone of
all the Buddhas is often shown descending to welcome the liberated soul, whom he escorts to his
Western Paradise, or Pure Land (Jodo). When
seated, he was often shown with both hands in
the gesture of meditation (J: jo-in- S: dhyana
mudrd), resting palms up in his lap. Here the
hands are now missing, but from the position of
the arms it seems certain he was making the gestures of consolation or appeasement (J: an-i-in;
the same hand positions, called vitarka mudra in
Sanskrit, signify in Indian Buddhist icons discussion or teaching).
When the image was recently dismantled for
inspection and cleaning, an ink inscription was
found inside the head at the back (a commonplace
location, since the head was made in two pieces,
the mask and the balance, leaving a reasonably
large and flat surface for writing). The inscription
reads as follows:
Carved by Unkei 9th on the 8th day of the 8th
month, 4th year of Bummei [1472] at Daisan-ji
of Yoshu, at Matsuyama, Shikoku. Carved by
Koei, daiyu hogen [the second of three honorary ranks] of the Shichijo Bussho workshop.
(Translation by Itoh Keita.)
This places the sculpture in a notable line of
descent. The Shichijo (literally, "Seventh Avenue," in Kyoto) school originated with Jocho (d.
1057),tne mst significant sculptor of the Late
Heian period (897-1185). Jocho's iconsgraceful,
serene, and mild, as exemplified in the Amida in
the Phoenix Hall of the Byodo-in expressed a
truly Japanese sculptural style. Jocho is credited as
well with perfecting the technique of joined
woodblock construction (yosegi zukuri). In this
method, which economized on wood and
prevented checking, images were carved of many
separate blocks of wood, split, hollowed out, and
then joined. From Jocho and his disciple Kakujo
(d. 1077), reputed to be Jocho's son, the famous
Kei school is said to have descended, by filiation

perhaps personal as well as artistic. Of the Kei

school sculptors, the greatest are considered to be
Kaikei (active c. 1185-1223) and Unkei (active
1163-1223). The sculptor of this Amida claimed
to be the ninth of Unkei's line.
The image was made for a temple no longer in
existence, Daisan-ji, near Matsuyama on Shikoku.
Until the fifteenth century this was an isolated
locale, which would account for the conservative
fashion of the image, whose conformation recalls
the often massive proportions of Unkei's images.
The inlaid crystal eyes are characteristic for
images in this tradition from the early Kamakura
period (1185-1333).
Observing the contrast in effect between this
powerful yet benign image and the horrific
Datsueba (cat. 240) is an effective lesson in the
relation between iconographic purpose and the
appearance of images. Both icons pertain to the
Jodo, or Pure Land, school of Buddhism, but one
presides over the Western Paradise, a world of
salvation and compassion, while the other prowls
the River of the Three Currents (Sanzu no Kawa)
at the gates of hell.
S.E.L.

240

Koen

active 14805-early i6th century

DATSUEBA

dated to 1514
Japanese
wood with traces of polychromy
height 91 (357/sJ

En'o-ji, Kamakura
Datsueba is the demon-hag who acts as greeter to
souls of the damned on the far side of the Sanzu
River at the entrance to hell. This monstrous figure, clad only in loincloth, strips the newcomers,
hanging their garments on a barren tree before
they proceed to alloted punishments. The iconography of the Kings (or Judges) of Hell places
Datsueba in the precinct of Shinko-0, the judge
of the first memorial day (the seventh day after
death). Usually she is depicted as horned, clawtoed, and brandishing a club, her pendulous, sagging breasts providing the only hint of gender
(see cat. 212).
It is all the more startling, therefore, to find
this fiend now robed and seated apparently in the
posture of meditation or prayer. The image succeeds in suggesting the power of Buddhism over
all creatures even demons and in jarring the
viewer from complacent stereotypes. Dated to the
year 1514 (Eisho 11) and signed by the sculptor
Koen, this work displays the mannered and someT O W A R D CATHAY

399

what gothic interests of religious sculpture in the

sixteenth century. There are other examples of
Datsueba sculptures from the same period, showing her seated, as here, in prayer or meditation,
but attired only in a loincloth.
Koen's name is prominent from the 14805,
appearing in connection with a variety of restoration projects taking place in the Kanto region (the
area around present-day Tokyo). He was probably
the preeminent Buddhist sculptor of the period in
eastern Japan.
From the seventh century the primary patronage of Buddhist sculpture had come from western
Japan, particularly from temples in Nara and,
later, Kyoto. These temples also commissioned the
major restorations required after the ravages of
civil war in the second half of the twelfth century.
The force of the new "realism" developed at that
time in western Japan by such influential artists
as Unkei (act. c. 1163-1223) and Kaikei (act.
c. 1185-1223) was also felt in eastern Japan. It
proved well suited to the portrait sculpture
emphasized in the Zen tradition brought in the
thirteenth century by Chinese refugees from the
Mongol invasion. These Chinese immigrants,
moreover, brought with them the trends and
styles of late Song (960-1279) and Yuan dynasty
(1279-1368) painting, and it has been suggested
that painting also played a part in the development of a distinctive Kamakura, or eastern
Japanese, sculptural style. Surely the bizarre subject matter of the Datsueba sculpture emerged
from painted sources, and in style it clearly parodies the Zen portrait-sculpture tradition.
j.u.

241

DEER BEARING SACRED MIRROR

WITH SYMBOLS OF THE
FIVE KASUGA HONJI-BUTSU
i$th century
Japanese
gilt bronze
height 105.3 (4^/2); diameter of mirror 23.5
Hosomi Minoru, Osaka
Important Cultural Property

In 710, when the imperial court moved to Nara,

the Fujiwara family was already firmly established
in power as advisors and ministers to the royal
line. In the preceding century Nakatomi no
400

CIRCA 1492

Kamatari (614-669) had skillfully served a series

of emperors and in 669 was awarded the family
name of Fujiwara.
The Nakatomi clan, originally from Kawachi
Province to the east of present-day Osaka,
reverenced as tutelary deities Ame no Koyane no
Mikoto and his female consort Himegami. When
the court including the Fujiwara settled at
Nara in 710, these divine protectors were moved
to a Nara site; Mt. Mikasa, to the east of the city
and long regarded locally as a sacred place, was
chosen. In addition, two more guardian deities,
Futsunushi no Mikoto of Katori (present-day
Ibaraki Pref.) and Takemikazuchi no Mikoto of
Kashima (present-day Chiba Pref.), were adopted.
These latter two are understood originally to have
been guardian or warrior spirits instrumental in
the pacification of clans in the eastern provinces.

During the Jingo-keiun era (767-770) the Kasuga

Shrine of the Fujiwara family was erected at the
foot of Mt. Mikasa and the four deities were
installed there. Later a fifth deity, known as
Kasuga Wakamiya and depicted as a youth, was
added to the group. The wakamiya figure occurs
among the Shinto deities of many locales, and
may be understood as an offspring of the senior
deities of a particular sacred place. Unlike the
wakamiya of other cults, the Kasuga Wakamiya
is thought to spring from local mountain deities
who antedated the establishment of the shrine.
Deer too are prominent in the wide range of
Kasuga-related iconography, in general because
they were conceived to be auspicious divine messengers, in particular because a white deer bore
Takemikazuchi no Mikoto to Mt. Mikasa from
the eastern provinces.

The gilt bronze figure seen here was likely created for a family shrine. Its iconography is fraught
with symbols of the linked Buddhist and Shinto
cosmologies (honji-suijaku) specific to the cult of
the Kasuga Shrine. On the deer's saddle stands a
sakaki (Cleyera japonica) branch, and centered in
the branch a sacred mirror to which are affixed
five smaller circular plaques, each with an incised
image of a Buddhist deity. The sakaki and mirror
figure centrally in the Japanese creation narrative.
Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, retreated
to a cave in anger over the misbehavior of her
brother Susano-o, thus depriving the world of
light. She was eventually lured out again by the
sight of a mirror, jewel, and sword suspended
from a sakaki branch and dangled at the cave's
entrance. The sakaki is used in ceremonial invocation of indigenous gods, and the deer is here intended to bespeak the presence of Takemikazuchi
no Mikoto. The mirror refers to Amaterasu and to
her infliction of darkness and restoration of light;
additionally, it is also a mishotai, a mirror incised
with Buddhist imagery, in this case images of the
five Buddhist deities (honji-butsu) correspondent
to the five tutelary Shinto deities of Kasuga
Shrine. Use of the sacred mirror in this fashion
became prominent from the eleventh century,
when the syncretic honji-suijaku theory established systematic iconographic relationships
between Buddhist and Shinto deities, with the
latter identified as native Japanese manifestations
(suijaku) of the former (honji). In the Kasuga
cult the bodhisattva Jizo corresponds to Ame no
Koyane no Mikoto, Juichimen Kannon to Himegami, Fukukenjaku Kannon or Shaka Nyorai
(Sakyamuni Buddha) to Takemikazuchi no
Mikoto, Yakushi Nyorai (Buddha of Healing)
to Futsunishi no Mikoto, and the bodhisattva
Monju to Kasuga Wakamiya.
For this unusually large image the mirror,
branch, antlers, and body were all separately cast.
The deer stands on a stylized cloud formation
constructed of wood covered by gesso and paint.
The cloud evokes Buddhist raigo imagery (in
which the compassionate Amida descends on a
cloud to receive the soul of the deceased); its allusion to a deity in transit was most likely borrowed
to refer also to Takemikazuchi no Mikoto's passage from Kashima to Nara. Paintings of mirrorbearing deer are numerous, but this masterfully
crafted sculpture is unique in scale and precision.
j.u.

242

GUARDIAN LION-DOG (KOMA INU)

c. 1500
Japanese
Seto ware
height 19.7 (73/4J

Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, Seto city

Paired male and female lion-dog guardians (also
known as kara-shishif Chinese lions) became
common at the entrances to Shinto shrines from
the thirteenth century. Two stone lions almost
seven feet high, made by Chinese artisans and
installed at Todai-ji, the Great Eastern Temple of
Nara, in 1196, gave impetus to this practice. In
China the use of such guardian animals dates
from the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25220),
and the type can be traced back to Mesopotamia,
whence it was assimilated into Buddhist iconography, appearing on the bases of Buddhist sculptures
from Gandhara.
In Japan, which lacked suitable stone, wood was
the preferred sculptural medium, and the understanding and mastery of wood carving became
second nature to the Japanese sculptor. Since
koma inu, as gate guardians, were placed outdoors, and wood tended to deteriorate rapidly
when exposed to the elements, the sculptures

needed frequent replacement. At smaller wayside

shrines wooden koma inu gave way to glazed
stoneware. In its ceramic form the koma inu
occurs only in Japan, where it has come to be
associated with petition and thanksgiving.
Such ceramic sculptures were an early specialty
of the Seto kilns, near Nagoya, and numerous
examples exist, the earlier ones generally quite
lionlike, the later ones tending to a more doggy
appearance. Often, as with temple guardian figures in human form, one of the pair has its mouth
open, the other closed referring to a and un,
the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet.
The earliest dated sherd of such a figure was made
in 1324, but it is assumed that ceramic koma inu
were produced from the thirteenth century
through the sixteenth.
The present koma inu is a sly, compact rendition of the subject, with an even, straw-colored
glaze often found on Seto ware of the Muromachi
period (1333-1573). Its mouth is firmly closed.
S.E.L.

243 not in exhibition

TOWARD CATHAY

40!

244
No MASK: WAKA ONNA
Muromachi period (13331573)
Japanese
polychromed wood
21.3 xi3.6 (SVzx 53/8)
Suwasuzuki Shrine, Fukui Prefecture
Variously identified as a young woman, a middleaged woman, or a madwoman, this mask reveals
the youthful contours and vitality of typical
young woman masks. Older woman (shakumi)
masks are often lean and wan, with bone structure
prominent and youthful plumpness nowhere
apparent. The hair was parted in the middle, probably with three strands framing the face. Catlike
eyes, partly closed, seem at once dreamy and
intense. In the waka onna masks, the lips are
parted, and their expression is firm. Overall, the
image suggests a confident youth and beauty. The
loss of pigment on this particular mask further
contributes to an impression of ambivalence.
On the inside of the mask is an inscription
reading Inari Miya, an alternate name for the
Suwasuzuki Shrine.

402

CIRCA 1492

45

No MASK: Zo ONNA
Muromachi period (1333-1573)
Japanese
poll/chromed wood
21 x 13 (8V4 x 52/sj

name of Zoami (c. 1400), a master dengaku performer and respected contemporary of the great
No actor-playwright Zeami, but the nature of
the connection between Zoami and the zo onna
type is unclear.
j.u.

Mitsui Bunko, Tokyo

Like the waka onna mask (see cat. 244), the zo
onna represents a woman, but one of "a certain
age." The points of resemblance and contrast
between the two are instructive. Here the corners
of the mouth are horizontal, not upturned as in
young woman masks; the eyes are placed twothirds the distance from the bottom to the top of
the mask, whereas in the masks of younger
women they tend to be slightly lower and might
be described as downcast; the curve of the carved
eyes is gentler than in the masks of young
women. But in place of the shakumi mask's suggestion of melancholy, even distraction, the countenance of this zo onna is reserved, dignified,
elegant, and suffused with a calm, passionless,
eerie beauty, ideally suited to the goddess roles
for which it is most often worn.
It is not, however, exclusive to divinities. The
zo onna character is prominent, for example,
in the No play Teika, an elaborately fictionalized
romance between the renowned courtier-poet
Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241) and Princess Shokushi
(d. 1201), whose superb and passionate poems
of love lent themselves to autobiographical
interpretation.
The term zo onna is said to derive from the

246

No MASK: TENJIN
Muromachi period (1333-1573)
Japanese
poll/chromed wood
23 x 15 (9 x 6)
Mitsui Bunko, Tokyo
Buddhist iconography offers a variety of guardian
figures, stern and frightening in appearance, who
might easily be misconstrued by the uninitiated
as demonic. This mask, too, is one of a class of
fierce-featured supernatural beings sometimes
misleadingly referred to as demons (oni). Contemporaneous documentation notes that the
master carver Shakuzuru of Omi Province
(present-day Shiga Pref.), who specialized in
demon masks, was also commissioned to create
tenjin visages. The rendering of both benevolent
and harmful spirits required similar skills.
The emergence of the tenjin (heavenly being)
role or character within the No drama repertoire
has been associated with the innovations of

Kan'ami (1333-1384), Zeami's father. The tenjin

appears as a benevolent spirit in the play Kinsatsu, and in Tamura as a manifestation of Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758-811), a military hero
associated with the founding of Kiyomizu Temple
in Kyoto (see cat. 217). In yet other plays the
mask represents the justly vengeful spirit of
Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), the slandered
scholar-statesman who died in exile from the
court, a victim of political intrigue.
The highly stylized features and coloration of
this mask, including the gilding of the bulging
eyes, convey an otherworldly aspect, but the
image was surely based on a nobleman of middle
years.
j.u.

247

LION MASK
dated to 1485
Japanese
polychromed wood
approx. 40 x 60 fi53/4 x 2^5/s)
Kuromori Shrine, Iwate Prefecture
In Japan lions were unknown outside Buddhist
iconography, and depictions of them were flights
of fancy based on images from China and Korea,
where lions were likewise unknown. Among
several dozen dated lion masks produced from the
mid-fourteenth through the early seventeenth
century is this one from Kuromori Shrine. The
mask is constructed according to a stylistic formula characteristic of fifteenth-century interpretations of the beast. Articulated from a series
of fleshy, rounded components, the features are
designed to emphasize the wide and fiercely
focused eyes. The prowlike upper mouth and
bulbous snout jut menacingly, the nose slopes into
the face. An overhanging continuous eyebrow
line completes the cavernous frame for the eyes.
The lower jaw is a separate unit attached at either
side near the rear of the head; this lower element
also serves as a rectangular base for the mask. The
teeth somewhat resemble round-cornered stone
tablets. A curling upper lip reveals stylized incisors, of architectonic rather than carnivorous
function.
The lion dance (J: shishi mai} was probably
first introduced to Japan by Koreans in the early
seventh century as one element in the repertory
of Gigaku, a kind of religious mime originated in
China and enacted by masked performers. The
masks generally depicted grotesquely or comically
exaggerated human faces, perhaps caricatures of
Indian or Central Asian facial types. The Gigaku
lion form required two performers, concealed
under a large drape: one wore the mask and

served as the forelegs, the other comprised the

hindquarters and rear legs. The shishi was also
prominent in other imported dance forms.
The Gigaku shishi was quickly adapted to a
variety of masked dance forms performed from
early times at Shinto shrines and grouped under
the general heading Kagura (gods' music), PreBuddhist forms of religious dance were intended
primarily to ensure fertility and exorcise evil.
Shamanistic dancing seems to have included the
exorcistic features as well as rhythmic repetition
to induce trance or ecstasy. The earliest of
recorded Japanese myths refers to dance as a form
of seducing or pleasing the gods (see cat. 241).
The dedication in 752 of the Great Buddha
sculpture (Daibutsu) at Todai-ji in Nara marked
the high point of early Japanese assimilation of
continental culture and of early Japanese admiration for Tang Chinese aesthetics and political
principles. Religious dances and processions
attendant to that watershed celebration displayed
the wide variety of Asian dances imported to
Japan. Virtually all of the imported dances contained the shishi mai, or lion dance. Gigaku masks
from that time preserved in the Shoso-in repository of Todai-ji include lion masks. The Todai-ji
lion mask type, from the eighth century, has some
of the blockish features seen in fifteenth-century
types, but the earlier style and construction
were directed more toward ingenious mechanical
effects, such as a movable tongue and metal
sheaths on the teeth to produce a distinctive
sound when the mouth was snapped shut. Ears
were separate pointed elements attached to the

head. A H6ryu-ji type has been distinguished

from the Todai-ji masks by its greater linearity,
more reminiscent of dog or wolf features. These
two early types emphasize animation achieved
through fierce features and movable parts. The
later lion masks, as typified by this one from
Kuromori Shrine, have fewer moving parts; they
were intended more as awesome sculptures than
as "dramatis personae."
The use of these masks, and the lion dance,
are recorded in various narrative scroll-paintings,
most notably the twelfth-century Shinzei Kokaku Zu (Shinzei's Illustrations of Ancient
Music). Other works depict the shishi mai as part
of larger processions and also, in later times, as an
independent street entertainment.
So popular was the shishi mai that it was incorporated into many forms of dance and theater:
some No performances incorporated it as an interlude. One reason for its wide adoption may be its
exorcistic nature: its rhythmic and incantational
aspects clearly complemented both indigenous
cult practices and certain Buddhist rituals. The
advent of populist strains of Buddhism in the
Kamakura period (1185-1333) familiarized the
Japanese with odori nembutsuf a rhythmic dance
of repetitive foot movements and sung or chanted
prayer formulas. It has been suggested that a
growing popular use of incantational dance in
Buddhism made the rhythms of the shishi mai
all the more appreciated.
Another type of dance, called shishi odori,
involved a dancer costumed with a deer headdress.
It was performed in late summer and autumn as

TOWARD CATHAY

403

a rite of protection against evil spirits, and seems

to have been most strongly rooted in northeastern
Honshu. Many lion maskslike this one from
Kuromori Shrine have been found in this
region, suggesting that this imported continental
form found particularly sympathetic acceptance
where certain native animistic practices were
most prevalent.
j.u.

248

COSMETIC Box (TEBAKO)

i6th century
Japanese
lacquer on wood (?) with engraved and
gilt decoration
length 38.4 (ijVs), width 24.6 (93/4j, height 25.5 (10)
Shirayamahime Shrine, Ishikawa Prefecture

Although made in Japan, this stately rectangular

container with gilt inlay design is faithful to its
Chinese stylistic origins. The decorative technique
of incising hairline designs in lacquer, then filling
the incised lines with gold dust over wet lacquer
as adhesive, was called "inlaid gold" (C: qiangjin;
J: chinkin). It was perfected in China during the
Southern Song period (1127-1279) and known
in Japan from the latter part of the Muromachi
period (1333-1573). In general, the Japanese
adopted the technique quite faithfully but
employed it on distinctively Japanese designs. In
this box, however, rather typical Chinese design
404

CIRCA 1492

elements of phoenix, peony, and chrysanthemumauspicious symbols all are seen.

On each side of the box is an applied panel,
adding a slight dimensionality to each surface.
The top is a gently domed rectangle with a narrow
flat border around all four sides. The side panels
likewise allow for indented borders, which frame
the decoration. This architectonic style contrasts
with the soft and curving shapes so prominent in
Japanese containers dating from the Heian period
(794-1185). The decorative program is not unlike
the roughly contemporaneous kinrande ceramic
style, created in China for the export market and
particularly cherished by the Japanese. Kinrande
wares employed typically Chinese motifs on
rather elaborate shapes such as ewers, and the
decoration was often organized into medallions
or panels.
Although this box is described as a cosmetic
box (tebako), other containers of this general style
have been used to hold sutras.
j.u.

249

LACQUERWARE INKSTONE CASE

(SUZURIBAKO)
i6th century
Japanese
lacquer on wood (?) with design in sprinkled gold
and inlaid metals
22.2 x 20.7 x 4.1 (83/4 x Sl/8 x i5/s)
Kyoto National Museum

The shrine at Sumiyoshi, its precincts now

enclosed in a public park within present-day
Osaka city, was long held to be the abode of the
God of Poetry. Sumiyoshi (also called Suminoe)
was distinguished by its beautiful beach, pine
trees, and a view of Awaji Island offshore in the
Inland Sea. Countless Japanese poems invoke as
muse the Sumiyoshi deity, whose physical manifestation is a particular pine tree within the precinct of the shrine. Poets also went on pilgrimage
to Sumiyoshi, as numerous poems relate.
To decorate an inkstone case (suzuribako),
therefore, Sumiyoshi is an appropriate subject,
calling attention to the high purpose of the implements contained within. The complex landscape
also allows for use of several lacquer decorative
techniques. As with most suzuribako, the lid is
decorated inside and out, and the two surfaces are
closely related in theme. On this suzuribako the
lid exterior and interior depict the same subject as
well: an elaborately conceived and specific landscape. A rocky shore line with pine trees, a portion of a large building, and the moon are the
central features of the lid exterior. The interior of
the lid continues the landscape, providing further
recognizable features of Sumiyoshi environs. In
the foreground are wind-battered pines and, more
prosaically, an oven for extracting salt from brine
(shiogama). In the middle ground is the distinctive barrel-vault bridge connecting the shore with
a small island containing the shrine proper and
the sacred pine. The mountain silhouette of
Awaji, seen in the distant mists, is rendered in a
burnished red-gold color. Like the famous inkstone case "Hana no Shirakawa," this one bears
characters referring to a poem, but here they
are on the inside of the lid and written in kana,
the cursive form of phonetic syllabary that the
Japanese developed from Chinese characters.
Here, in kana, are the words Sumiyoshi, pine
tree, year, and cry, conjuring a poem by the Late
Heian poet Minamoto no Yorimasa (1104-1180).
For the background of the designs, tiny irregularly shaped gold particles were suspended in
translucent lacquer, an effect called nashi-ji after
the speckled skin of the nashi pear. The lacquer
used on this piece is amber toned. Certain design

elements were executed in slight relief, built up

with layers of lacquer, possibly mixed with other
materials, before being sprinkled with metallic
powder. This technique, called takamaki-e (relief
sprinkled picture) makes the design subtly threedimensional.
J.u.

250

LACQUERWARE FOOTED TRAY

(RlNKA BON)

dated to 1455
Japanese
red over black lacquer on wood fnegoro-nurij
height 11 (43/s); diameter 49.5 (1^/2)
Saidai-ji, Nara
This generously proportioned tray (bon) is of
a type popularly named rinka (ring of flowers)
for the petal-like fluting of its rim and foot. An
inscription on the underside, dated to lunar New
Year's Day of 1455, indicates that it was made for
use at Saidai-ji. A very similar tray, differing only
fractionally in size from the Saidai-ji tray and
almost identically inscribed, is now in the collection of the Tokiwayama Bunko (Kanagawa). On
the latter is an additional phrase indicating that
the tray is one of a pair; the Saidai-ji tray lacks
this phrase but bears an erasure that may have
deleted those words from the inscription.
A red lacquer surface worn through in places to
reveal an undercoating of black lacquer is characteristic of negoro ware, although solid black and
solid red pieces, as well as some transparent-lacquered ones, are also known. The name derives
from Negoro-ji (Wakayama Pref.), where this
type of lacquerware is said to have appeared first,
some time in the thirteenth century. The softly
shaded red-to-black surface created by long use
was highly prized, and in later years artificially
rendered. In shape the negoro wares emulated
contemporaneous Chinese lacquers, which were
greatly prized in the late Kamakura (1185-1333)
and Muromachi (1333-1573) periods by the military aristocracy and the Zen establishment.
The function of such a large, sturdy tray is
revealed by genre details in several well-known
narrative scroll-paintings. In the Boki Ekotoba
(mid-i4th century) such a tray is in use in a large
monastery; in the pungently satirical Fukutomizoshi (early 15th century) it is one of the appointments in the home of a nouveau riche commoner.
In both instances the large tray holds the smaller
lacquerware cup stands into which conical ceramic
tea bowls were set. These were usually imported
Chinese jian ware (J: temmoku), black or blackbrown glazed, sometimes with the prized streaked
or spotted effect in the glaze and often bound

with silver at the lip. A bamboo tea whisk is also

seen on the trays. These paintings amply attest
the rage for the "Chinese style'' among Japanese
of the Muromachi period. Chinese ceramics were
treasured, and their import was an important
source of income for some Buddhist monasteries.
Saidai-ji, founded in the mid-eighth century,
has had a long association with tea. Moribund by
the thirteenth century, it was revived by the
noted monk Eizon (or Eison, 1201-1290), who
arrived at the temple in 1238. Among his many
pragmatic reforms Eizon encouraged the cultivation of tea and preached its restorative spiritual
and physical powers. He was not the first to have
proclaimed the virtues of tea: in the preceding
century the Japanese monk Eisai (1141-1215)
returned from China, bringing with him the
teachings of Rinzai Zen and tea seeds of a variety
judged to be superior to the indigenous type. The
ritualized preparation and drinking of tea had
long been a part of Chinese Chan (Zen) monastic
life. Proselytizers such as Eisai and Eizon incorporated the element of tea into a populist Buddhism which extended beyond the monastic
communities.
The Saidai-ji rinka bon is one of the preeminent pieces of medieval Japanese lacquer. Like
many other extant works of that period, it was
created as an implement for the serving of tea.
The underside inscription, the commanding physical presence of the tray, and its state of preservation suggest that it was highly regarded, even
from the time of its manufacture. By the close of
the sixteenth century practitioners of the Tea
Ceremony had formulated an aesthetic that further singled out for admiration the qualities of
unassuming elegance and gentle aging which
characterize this tray.
J.u.

251

LACQUERWARE EWER (Yuio)

c. 1480
Japanese
red over black lacquer on wood
36 x 35 (ri41/s x ij3/4)

Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

This vessel served as a container for hot water
used in the preparation of tea. Modeled after
Chinese prototypes brought to Japan by immigrant Chinese Chan (Zen) monks or by Japanese
Zen monks returning from study in China,
this ewer and others like it show a strong yet
unpretentious design, suitable for use in a Zen
environment. The coloring of cinnabar red lacquer

T O W A R D CATHAY

405

applied over a base of black lacquer is called

negoro-nuri, after Negori-ji, the temple in
present-day Wakayama Prefecture, which was
thought to have been the center of production for
this ware from the thirteenth century (see cat.
250). A variety of vessels, trays, and tables were
produced using this technique.
While maintaining a consistently recognizable
profile, Negoro ewers exhibit a variety of styles,
ranging from attenuated shapes with fairly complex design schemes to the simple and robust
example seen here. The bail handle is typical of
Negoro ware vessels: it rises in two curved segments from the shoulder of the vessel to a
strongly horizontal uppermost transverse which
effectively echoes the predominant horizontally
of body and lid. Thin circumference bands on the
lid and body are reserved in black, as are the lid
knob and the foot. Variations in the basic negoro
ewer style typically consist of decorative
flourishes where the handle joins the body and on
the spout, both at the lip and at the point of join
with the body. Bodies are also seen with multiple
horizontal ribbing lines or with a wide circumference band of visible wood grain covered
by translucent lacquer. The triangular foot is
also common. This ewer has a slightly raised
circular base.
j.u.

52

PORTABLE SHRINE (Oi)

i$th century
Japanese
wood with gilt bronze and painted decoration
height 79.2 (3^/4)
Matsuo-dera, Nara
Shugendo refers to a regime of asceticism practiced in Japan from at least Early Heian (794-897)
times. Its followers were called yamabushi (literally, "one who lies in the mountains"). Their disciplined journeys into designated "sacred"
mountains were intended to facilitate spiritual
rebirth as well as confer the gifts of healing, exorcism, and other thaumaturgic powers. Various
forms of mountain faith (sangaku shinko) surely
were manifested in pre-Buddhist Japan. Mountains, or certain mountains, were numinous sites.
Their rugged profiles asserted physical realities
and symbolized spiritual realities. Notions of
arduous training, ascent, and descent, as well as
more complex understandings of the mountain as
womb, all figured into the metaphor of the mountain as the site of spiritual transformation of the
seeker. It has been suggested that the early
Japanese forms of this spiritual phenomenon
406

CIRCA

1492

reflected elements of Siberian shamanistic practice. When Buddhism arrived in Japan from the
continent, particularly the Esoteric teachings of
the Tendai and Shingon sects proved sympathetic
to the "mountain faith" and eventually assimilated its practices. Imagery and iconography of
Buddhism as well as specific ritual implements
were incorporated into the yamabushi's accouterments. Many of these implements, including small
Buddhist statues and sutras, were transported in a
portable altar or carrying case called an oi. Ita oi
and hako oi are the two principal categories or
types of these carrying cases.
Early sources define the oi by their users rather
than by their forms, and employ a somewhat dif-

ferent terminology: the fuchi oi was used by

advanced practitioners or teachers, the yoko oi by
novices. It has been suggested that perhaps the
fuchi oi was comparable to the it a oi, and the yoko
oi to the hako oi, but this remains a speculation.
The it a oi somewhat resembles a modern backpack, with a decorated textile bag attached to or
suspended within a frame formed of an unpainted
tree branch curved into horseshoe shape. The bag
is secured to the curve of the branch, whose two
ends form the legs of the oi. Ita oi are depicted in
charming detail in such early narrative handscrolls as Ippen Shonin Eden (Illustrated Biography of the Monk Ippen, 1299) and Saigyo
Monogatari Ekotoba (Illustrated Biography of

253

PORTABLE SHRINE (Oi)

i6th century
Japanese
carved lacquered wood
75.0 x 51.5 x 84.8 (2^/2 x 2ol/4 x 334/ioj
Chuson-ji, Iwate Prefecture
Shugendo monks used this three-legged type of
carrying case as a kind of backpack for the transport of Buddhist sutras and ritual implements. Its
face the outward, visible surface when carried
on the backwas usually elaborately decorated.
Here a comprehensive and fantastic landscape is
dominated by a camelia bush. At the base of the
camelia, literally and figuratively overshadowed
by it, are symbols of pine, cranes, and a turtle,
all alluding to long life or immortality. These
emblems of longevity are mutually consistent in
scale, but all are dwarfed by the camelia. Other
design elements include a quince pattern and a
rose-like flower pattern. The doors are vertically
hinged.
These raised decorative elements were rendered
by the Kamakura bori technique, a simpler, less
time-consuming, and hence less costly version of
the Chinese carved lacquer process, devised to
meet the Japanese demand for objects in the
"Chinese taste/' Chinese carved lacquers were
created by the infinitely painstaking process of
coating a wooden form with multiple thin layers
of lacquer, sometimes in several colors, then carving through the layers to precise depths to produce the design. In the Kamakura bori technique,
known from about the fifteenth century, the carving was done in the wood itself and lacquer was
then applied over the carved decoration. Here the
tinted lacquers make up a color scheme called
koka-ryokuyo (red flower-green leaves). The
inside of the Of also is decorated. Oi with Kamakura bori decoration were particularly popular in
northeastern Japan, in areas such as Iwate, the
source of the work seen here.
j.u.

the Monk Saigyo, 13th century).

The hako oi hako meaning "box/' or "chest"
is of two types: a four-legged wooden case, or
box, with decorative metal fittings, and a threelegged version decorated with lacquer (see cat.
253). The of from Matsuo-dera, shown here, is
four-legged; some of its gilt bronze fittings are
purely decorative, others, such as the pagoda or
the Wheel of the Law, symbolic of Buddhism.
Upper doors open to reveal a shelf holding five
seated Buddhist statues. Side panels at the same
level open outward to reveal paintings. Decorating the lower shelf, which contains other religious implements, are gilt bronze appliques of
Monju, Bodhisattva of Wisdom, on the left and

Daikoku-ten, God of Plenty, on the right.

On early bronze-decorated of the metal is thick
and the designs are comparatively simple. Later
examples exhibit more thinly cut and elaborately
detailed metal work.
j.u.

TOWARD CATHAY

407

faithful copy of earlier, lost, kyobako. A running

arabesque of lotus and tendrils ornaments the
sides of the box. On the lid a central, formal lotus
design, seen from above, is flanked by two lotuses
in side view, and then two more fanciful and simplified lotus motifs. The technique is excellent,
but the motifs are rendered with less relief than is
found in the thirteenth-century flower trays from
Jinsho-ji. The lotus refers, of course, to the Lotus
Sutra that was originally contained within the
luxurious box.
S.E.L.

55

HOT-WATER KETTLE FOR THE

TEA CEREMONY, SHINNARI TYPE
c. 1500
Japanese, from Ashiya (present-day Fukuoka),
Kyushu
sand-cast iron
height 17 (63/4); diameter 24.5 (^5/s)
references: Yamada 1964; Castile 1971

Tokyo National Museum

254

SUTRA CONTAINER (KYOBAKO)

dated to 1555
Japanese
ajoure gilt bronze
length 30.6 (12), width 19.1 (jl/2), height 10.9
references: Nara 1979, 155
Yoho-ji, Kyoto
According to the inscription on a copper sheet on
the bottom of this sutra box, Lord Narita Nagahiro presented Yoho-ji in 1555 with an eight-roll
set of the Lotus Sutra (Hoke-kyo), which was
placed in this gilt bronze container. The sutra is
the principal text for the Tendai sect and also
important for Jodo (Pure Land Buddhism), the cult
of Amida and the Western Paradise, which became
especially popular beginning in the early eleventh
century. It was an act of piety to copy the text, or
to commission a copy, preferably in gold and/or
silver calligraphy on deep blue or purple paper.
Earlier sutra containers exist: one, made to hold
a single roll and dated to the thirteenth century,
is at Mantoku-ji in Aichi Prefecture. Even more
famous prototypes for the ajoure (pierced) technique in gilt bronze are the flower trays of Jinshoji in Shiga Prefecture; one of these is now in the
Honolulu Academy of Art.
The pierced gilt bronze of the "Nagahiro" kyobako is worked into scrolling designs of lotuses
and hosoge (an imaginary flower peculiar to
408

CIRCA 1492

Buddhist contexts) arabesques. This is the earliest

such well-preserved container for the Lotus
Sutra. Because it contained a sacred text presented
as an offering to deity, because religious ritual
depends for its efficacy on precise adherence to a
prescribed model, and because the Tendai sect laid
particular emphasis on rituals and ritual furnishings, we can be sure that this sutra container is a

Like all utensils for the Tea Ceremony (Cha no

yu), the kettle (kama) in which the water was
boiled was chosen with exhaustive care for its
appearance and history. Of all the orthodox
shapes, this one, called shinnari (truth-shaped),
was probably the most used. Ornamenting the
two lug handles are kimen (C: taotie; ogre mask);
ogre masks decorating vessel handles descend
from Zhou dynasty China (1045-256 B.C.). About
two-thirds of the way down the body, where the
kettle is damaged, was originally an encircling

boar's eye openings in the top serve to release

smoke. Six openwork panels with alternating
plum and bamboo patterns form the central body
cylinder. Above each such panel are smaller,
double-panel rectangular openings. One of the
bamboo-patterned panels serves as a door opening
into the lantern. With the exception of that door,
the lamp was cast as a single piece. The base plate
is a flat hexagon, supported by three feet.
The earliest dated metal hanging lantern bears
a 1319 inscription. Stylistic development moved
from comparatively simple and understated form
to a preference for the complex ajoure panels seen
here. The boldly executed floral designs suggest
certain painting trends during the same period.
j.u.

257

DOMARU ARMOR
late 15thearly i6th century
Japanese
height of cuirass 56.0 (22)
height of helmet (without the horns) 11.8 (45/s)
length of shoulder-and-arm guard 43.7 (i?1/^
Sata Shrine, Shimane Prefecture

skirt or mantle; this sloped downward and acted as

a flange to hold the kettle on its support within
the ro (fire pit) during winter or on the furo
(brazier) during midyear. The cover is a bronze
replacement for the lost original iron lid.
Between the skirt and the lip of the kettle is a
relief decoration of pine trees against an allover
pattern of relief dots (J: arare; hailstones), the
whole hand-carved into the interior of the mold in
which the kettle was cast. The result is a graceful,
native style image (yamato-e) of bending pines
growing along an undulating sand beach. The
pine beach (hamamatsu) was a common motif in
the arts of the Muromachi period. The dark purplish color of the iron surface, often found on
Chikuzen-Ashiya kettles, is highly prized.
S.E.L.

256

HANGING LANTERN
dated to 1550
Japanese
ajoure cast bronze
height 29.7 fn3/4J
Tokyo National Museum

In 1910 this cast bronze lantern was excavated on

the grounds of Chiba Temple in Chiba city to the
east of Tokyo. An inscription on the top surface of
the headpiece of the lantern indicates that it was
cast in 1550 for use in the Aizen-do of the temple.
Extant examples of lanterns of this excellent quality and style were produced by the Temmyo
metalworkers of Sano in Tochigi Prefecture during
the mid-sixteenth century. It has been suggested
that this lantern may also have originated in the
same workshop.
Headpiece, body, and base are all hexagonal,
though not identical in conformation. A "flaming
jewel" finial, pierced for hanging, tops the headpiece. From the center the headpiece slopes in
a regular, gentle curve to a hexagonal edge, with
the six angles slightly upturned. Three so-called

Domaru originated in the Heian period (7941185) as a cuirass for foot soldiers. In the Muromachi period (1333-1573), as mounted archers
were superseded by infantry pikemen and swordsmen, high-ranking warriors replaced their earlier,
more cumbersome armor with the domaru, supplementing the cuirass with one-piece shoulderand-arm guards of similar construction, and a
helmet. The whole was called a "three-piece set"
(mitsumono).
The standard domaru cuirass was a lamellar
sheath around the chest and belly, fastened at the
wearer's front right, with an attached lamellar
skirt of eight panels (for ease of movement) protecting the thighs. Most of the lames were lacquered leather, interspersed with iron at critical
points; the individual lames were tied into horizontal bands, which in turn were laced together
vertically. Braided cords, often (as here) of silk,
were used for the lacing. An iron border, usually
ornamented, sometimes leather-clad, edged the
top of the cuirass, and similarly decorated iron
plates hung from the shoulder guards to protect
the shoulder straps of the cuirass.
This domaru is a representative three-piece set.
Red is the main color of the leather lames; the
shoulder and chest areas are corded with light blue
and white, the skirt with white only. Differentcolored cording for the sleeves and skirt was
particularly popular in the Muromachi period.
Braided silk cords were expensive, as were the gilt
bronze openwork arabesque and paulownia-shaped
studs ornamenting the solid iron edges of the
cuirass and shoulder guards.
T O W A R D CATHAY

409

A pair of horns flanking an upright threepronged sword's point ornament the front of the
helmet. On this ornament are names of deities in
openwork: Amaterasu Kotaijingu (Sun Goddess
Amaterasu) on the sword tip, Hachiman Daibosatsu (Great Boddhisattva Hachiman, god of warriors) on the (viewer's) right horn, and Kasuga
Daimyojin (Great Bright Wisdom Deity of the
Kasuga Shrine) on the left, suggesting that these
Shinto deities figured prominently as protectordivinities for warriors.
An inscription inside the lid of the chest containing this helmet states that the helmet was
consecrated to Sata Shrine by Amako Tsunehisa
(1458-1541), daimyo of a domain in southwestern
Honshu.
H.Y.
410

CIRCA 1492

258

DOMARU ARMOR
i6th century
Japanese
height of cuirass 55.5 (2i7/s)
height of helmet (without the horns) 11.6 (42/2J
length of shoulder-and-arm guard 42.4 (i65/s)
Kagoshima Shrine, Kagoshima Prefecture
The small leather or iron lames of which Muromachi period (1333-1573) domaru armor was
made are pointed on top and measure 5-6 centimeters long by 1.5 centimeters wide. These
lames, called sane, were strung together, slightly
overlapping, into bands, and fixed in place with

lacquer. The bands were joined vertically with

tanned deerskin or braided silk cords. The colors
of the cords were carefully chosen for decorative
effect against the black-lacquered lames, as was
the ornament on the solid metal portions of the
cuirass.
On this cuirass purple cording was used for
the topmost band of the chest and shoulder areas,
with white and red cording alternating below.
White alternating with color was a favorite
scheme in the Kamakura (1185-1333) and Muromachi periods.
Over the chest lames is pasted tanned leather,
dyed with a design of lions against an overall
background of peony flowers and leaves. The
ornamental metalwork on the solid iron parts of

the cuirass consists of floral arabesque rendered in

gilt bronze openwork, and studs in the shape of
double-petaled chrysanthemums.
The horns of the helmet flank a three-pronged
sword tip an ornament with Buddhist significance.
A set of similar domaru armor but with different-colored cording is extant at the same
shrine. Both sets are said to have been an offering
by Shimazu Takahisa (1514-1571), a daimyo of
southern Kyushu, and his clansmen.
H.Y.

259

TEA BOWL, TEMMOKU TYPE

first half of i6th century
Mino ware (?): stoneware with off-white crackled
glaze and silver rim mounting
height 6.j f22/3J, diameter 12.3 (44/s)
references: Jenyns 1971, pi. 460; Seattle 1972, no. 25
Hinohara Setsuzo
Uncertainty still surrounds this tea bowl and
another of the same type, equally rare and famous,
in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. The
date given above is approximate. Current writers
favor Mino, north of Nagoya (in present-day Gifu
Pref.), as its kiln site, but it may equally well have
been made at one of the older and more southerly
kilns at Seto (closer to Nagoya, in present-day
Aichi Pref.). The historical importance of the two
bowls, however, is unambiguous.
Their simple, natural, and roughly symmetrical
shape was certainly copied after Chinese Song
dynasty (960-1279) tea bowls from Fujian Province. These were called jian ware (after Fujian) by

the Chinese but temmoku by the Japanese, presumably from the Japanese pronunciation of Mt.
Tianmu, site of the Buddhist establishment in
Zhejiang Province, where many Japanese studentmonks acquired the bowls and brought them back
to Japan.
Jian ware was made exclusively for drinking
tea; tea bowls were the only shape produced. The
body was a purple-brown stoneware with a thick
"treacly" brown-to-black glaze, often marked
with streaks (and then called "hare's fur") or,
more rarely, with silvery "oil spots." Tea, long
credited in East Asia with health-giving properties, was additionally prized by Chan Buddhists as
a stimulant conducing to the alertness necessary
for meditation. When in the twelfth-thirteenth
century Chan reached Japan, there to flourish
mightily as Zen, tea and its appurtenances became
almost mandatory for the Japanese monasteries
and, by extension, the powerful ruling warrior
class. Direct imitations of temmoku bowls were
made at Seto from the late thirteenth through the
fifteenth century. These are easily identified by
their gray body, radically different from the dark
body of the Chinese wares.
This bowl retains the regularity of the Chinese
ware but is covered, save for its lower quarter and
the foot, by a thick, opaque, crackled, warm white
glaze. The unglazed body, now dark from use
and accumulated grime, was originally gray, like
Seto ware. The silver rim, a later addition with
precedents among the jian wares of China, suggests how greatly the bowl was valued. The glaze
anticipates one of the classic Tea Ceremony wares
of the Momoyama period (1573-1615) Shino
ware made at Mino hence the importance of
these two bowls. They stand at the transition
from the derivative Seto wares of the fourteenth
century to the innovative and unique "tea taste"
wares of the late sixteenth century.

260

TEA CADDY, CALLED "ROKUSHAKU"

(PALANQUIN BEARER)
OR "MASANOBU SHUNKEI
KATATSUKI CHA-IRE"
late i$th century
Japanese
black-glazed Seto ware
height 7.7 (3J, diameter 6.4 (23/2J
Fujita Art Museum, Osaka
Undocumented tradition tells of the founding of
the pottery kilns at Seto, to the east of presentday Nagoya, by one Kato Shirozaemon Kagemasa
(also known as Toshiro) in the first half of the
thirteenth century. Kagemasa purportedly
traveled in China during the 12205 studying
ceramic technique, particularly the manufacture
of tea caddies. On returning to Japan, he declared
the clays at Seto to be most suitable for the production of ceramics. Archaeological investigation
does confirm the production of glazed Chinese
style ceramics at Seto during the period of Kagemasa's ostensible activity. Vessels related to Tea
Ceremony that were produced in China and
eagerly collected by successive Ashikaga shoguns
clearly served as the prototypes for the tea caddy
seen here.
The formal Japanese title for this vessel,
"Masanobu Shunkei katatsuki cha-ire," describes a
square-shouldered tea caddy that was a joint
creation of Yamana Zensho Masanobu and Kato
Shirozaemon Shunkei. Not much is known about
Masanobu (act. 1469-1486), except that he was a
retainer to Yamana Sozen (1403-1473) and practiced the Tea Ceremony and the manufacture of
related vessels a bent thoroughly consistent
with the cultural interests of the warrior class.
Shunkei, a descendant of the semilegendary Kagemasa, instructed Masanobu in making ceramics.
The Yamana had been the dominant clan in
western Honshu from the early fourteenth century, when eleven of Japan's then sixty-six provinces were in their hands and the clan head was
referred to as "Lord of One-Sixth [of the Country]" (Rokubun no Ichi Dono). By Sozen's day
their domain had shrunk, though they were still
powerful enough to be one party to the prolonged
and disastrous Onin War (1467-1477).
More than a century after its creation this tea
caddy was a favorite of Kobori Enshu (1579-1647),
the renowned tea master and garden designer. It
was Enshu who named this piece "Rokushaku,"
meaning "Palanquin Bearer," and inscribed the
name on the box containing the caddy. Only the
neck and shoulder portions of the vessel are
glazed; the remainder is bare clay, which
apparently reminded Enshu of the minimally
attired bearers.
An amber glaze infused with black created the
smoky yellow color which covers the caddy from
T O W A R D CATHAY

411

mouth to a line just below the shoulder, where a

run breaks its otherwise even edge. A horizontal
groove circumscribes the unglazed body approximately at midpoint, intersected by several evenly
spaced incised vertical lines. The red-black surface
of the clay blends attractively with the dark
glaze. From the shoulder to the cantilever, where
the torso is supported by a trim, narrow foot,
the vessel shows a slightly bulging cylindrical
silhouette.
The cultivation of a heightened sensibility for
cha-ire by Japanese warriors constitutes one of the
more curious features of medieval aesthetic history. Cha-ire became a currency powerful all out
of proportion to their unassuming size. They
were cherished rewards for loyalty or battlefield
valor. Perhaps their intimate scale and subtle,
unobtrusive beauty functioned as the ultimate
corrective in a world of extreme danger and
uncertainty. In the calmer times of early Edo
(1615-1868) these diminutive vessels were appreciated as elements in the Tea Ceremony in part for
the level of nuance added by their incongruous
heritage of violence.
j.u.

26l

TSUBO STORAGE JAR

late i$th century
Japanese
Shigaraki ware: stoneware with ash glaze
height 42 fi61/2J
reference: Cort 1979, 1981, 19103, fig. 96
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L.
Severance Fund
Large size and globular profile are the most
immediately striking characteristics of this storage
jar. From a flat base it swells to its widest diame412

CIRCA

1492

ter at about mid-height, then rounds inward to a

brief, constricted neck and slightly flared (damaged) mouth. It was made by adding coils of clay
to the flat clay disk that formed the base, and
smoothing the surface inside and out with a
paddle of wood or bamboo. The clay is typical of
the Shigaraki area, dark and rough and heavily
sprinkled with white feldspar inclusions ranging
in size from granules to an occasional pebble.
High-temperature (approx. 1300 C) firing produced a skin ranging in color from orange to cinnamon to a dark purplish hue. Areas of greenish
glaze formed on the upper part, where the wood
ash used as a flux fell on the vessel and interacted

with iron oxides in the clay during its reduction

firing in the high, wood-fired, double-tunnel
kilns typical of Shigaraki manufacture. The crosshatched pattern incised between parallel lines
around the shoulder is typical of Shigaraki jars,
although the parallel lines are not always three
in number.
The high Shigaraki valley lies near the border
between Shiga and Mie prefectures, about thirty
kilometers northeast of Nara and some twenty
to twenty-five kilometers south of Lake Biwa.
Always famous for timber, the region became
a ceramic center at the end of the thirteenth century, stimulated principally by influence from the
older kilns at Tokoname, south of Nagoya. A brief
period of political fame came to the town from
744 to 745, when the emperor Shomu chose it as
his new capital and built the Koga Palace there.
This palace, barely completed, was abandoned
because of ill omens and changing court politics.
Shigaraki, like others of the traditional "Six Old
Kilns" of medieval times (c. 1O5O-C. 1600), limited its production almost wholly to jars (tsubo),
wide-mouthed containers (kame), and grater
bowls (suribachi). Postwar studies and excavations
have revealed many more than six old kilns, but
the term remains. Aside from domestic use as
storage, fermentation, and grinding implements,
the medieval ceramics were used as funerary jars
for cremated remains and as offering containers
for Buddhist and Shinto rituals. The decorative
motif at the shoulder has been, perhaps fancifully,
called both cypress-fence weave (higaki) and lotus
petal, but is most widely known as rope pattern
(nawame).
S.E.L.

263

262

COVERED JAR CALLED "IMOGASHIRA"

(POTATO HEAD)
c. 1500
Japanese
stoneware with ash glaze
height 20.3 (8)
references: Faulkner and Impey 19^1, 23-26, 45-51;
Tokyo 1985

Eisei Bunko, Tokyo

Although its precise place of origin is not known,
this jar seems likely to have been made in the
Seto-Mino area, respectively east and north of
Nagoya. Certainly the dark-glazed Seto wares of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries influenced
Mino production in the earlier stages of its development. In shape this jar somewhat resembles
Seto ware jars made in the Kamakura period
(1185-1333) under the influence of the Chinese
guan shape.
The date of manufacture is likewise approximate, but Imogashira is a transitional vessel,
coming somewhere between the rough farm utensils originally produced by the Six Old Kilns (including Seto) and the wares made by these same
kilns for the Tea Ceremony in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. It was apparently
not made as a cold-water jar (mizusashi) for the
emerging Tea Ceremony (Cha no yu), its mouth
being awkwardly small to accommodate the

bamboo ladle used to dip the cold water. Imogashira was originally made as a small covered
storage jar. Like the Korean peasant bowls
imported to Japan, it was adopted, or rather
"found" to be a useful part of the Tea Ceremony some fifty to a hundred years after its
manufacture.
The roughly incised markings in the glaze are
asymmetrical enough to satisfy the new "Tea
taste," and the glaze is rough-textured enough to
suggest rocks and to subtly complement the environment and other utensils of Cha no yu. The
mere fact of being named attests the high regard
in which a Tea vessel was held by its owner, and
the deliberately colloquial and astringent name
Imogashira was part of the ambience bestowed on
this well-known Tea treasure by the Hosokawa
daimyo family in which it descended.
S.E.L.

TSUBO STORAGE JAR

i$th century
Japanese
Tamba ware: stoneware with ash glaze
height 31.7 fi22/2J

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Near Osaka, just over the first range of mountains
to the north, lies Tamba, site of one group of the
so-called Six Old Kilns. Like the other kilns of
this category, Tamba began production with Late
Heian (897-1185) and Kamakura (1185-1333) renditions of Sue and Sanage type stonewares, reaching peak production during the Muromachi period
(1333-1573). Excellent wares of the old types are
still produced there today.
The Tamba body is more homogeneous and less
contaminated with flecks of quartz than Shigaraki
ware (cat. 261), and the accidental ash glaze, often
runny, seems greener-tinged and slightly more
viscous than on wares of the other Six Kilns.
Decoration is uncommon but "kiln marks" or
logos occur more often, usually on the body at the
shoulder. Tamba shapes are not so full-blown as
either Shigaraki or Tokoname or even Bizen, and
the rims of the jars are usually rather large and
thin, though less prominent than those characteristic of Tokoname. In all respects Tamba ware
satisfied late medieval Tea taste for unpretentious
farm/folk products.
S.E.L.
TOWARD CATHAY

4*3

KOREA

264

attributed to An Kyon
4i8-after 1464

LANDSCAPE OF THE FOUR SEASONS

Korean
album leaves; ink on silk
35.8 x 28.5 (i^/s x n2/4J
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
Of the ten leaves of this album, attributed to
An Kyon, eight represent landscapes of the four
seasons, a traditional theme popular during the
Choson period. By devoting two leaves to each
season, the painter of this album was able to
depict each season toward its beginning and
its close.
An Kyon, a gifted court painter, enjoyed the
patronage of Prince Anp'yong (1418-1453). That
414

CIRCA 1492

nobleman was famous for his collection of paintings and calligraphies predominantly by Chinese
artists of the Northern Song (960-1127) and Yuan
(1279-1368) dynasties. An Kyon, the only Korean
painter honored by inclusion in this collection,
therefore had the unusual opportunity of studying
many Chinese paintings of the Northern Song's
Li-Guo school and of the Yuan dynasty. He was
also acquainted with contemporaneous Chinese
paintings of the Zhe school, rooted in the Ma-Xia
school of the Southern Song (1127-1279) dynasty,
which had been newly introduced to Korea. By
synthesizing many styles of ancient masters both
Korean and Chinese, An Kyon created his own
style, which dominated Korean painting until the
seventeenth century.
Each of the landscapes in this album has a
clearly distinguished fore-, middle, and background. The forms of mountains, trees, and buildings are massed along one vertical half of each

pictorial surface, leaving the other half for the

representation of vast space. Such a composition,
combining dramatic verticality with equally dramatic spatial recession, was widely adapted by
Korean painters who followed An Kyon during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The fantastic
mountain forms, sparsely textured with wavering,
threadlike brush strokes, tend to remain separate
pictorial entities rather than suggesting organic
mountain ranges. Their extremely exaggerated
outlines are rendered in short, twisting and turning brush strokes of variable width. Despite the
pictorial excitement created by energetic brush
strokes and strong contrasts of light and dark, the
forms themselves seem weightless. These stylistic
features are also characteristic of An Kyon.
Each seasonal pair of album leaves is meant to
be viewed with the early phase of the season at
the right and the late phase at the left. Viewed
thus, as a single composition, each pair comprises

deep, misty space in the center, "framed" by the

massed forms along either side.
The pictorial means employed in each leaf
convey the mood of the season. In the early
winter scene, for instance, fantastic mountains are
rendered in deep black brush strokes of fluctuating width and show sharp contrasts of light
and dark, thus evoking the harshness of nature
in winter.
K.P.K.

265
Kang Hui-an
1419-1464
A SAGE IN CONTEMPLATION
mid-i$th century
Korean
album leaf; ink on paper
23.4 x 15.7 (92/4 x 6I/s)

seal of the artist

National Museum of Korea, Seoul

An eminent scholar-official of the early Choson
period, Kang Hui-an rose steadily in the bureaucracy after passing the Erudite Examination
(munkwa) in 1441, and was sent to Beijing as
vice-ambassador of a Korean mission in 1455. He
was also a noted poet, calligrapher, and painter.
Here Kang has divided the pictorial space into
two planes. In the foreground is a stream indicated by horizontal brush strokes in light ink.
Small rocks and water weeds at lower left are

balanced by large boulders along the water's edge

on the right. Slightly off center, on the largest
boulder, a scholar lies prone, gazing out at the
river in front of him. From a sheer cliff rising
behind the solitary figure grows a canopy of overhanging vegetation.
The emphasis on verticality, the concentration
of pictorial weight on one side, bold and assertive
brushwork, emphatically black ink showing no
effort at subtle tonal gradation, and empty space
which is not used to imply infinite recession all
suggest prior knowledge of Chan (K: Son; J: Zen)
Buddhist painting and of the work of leading
Chinese Zhe school painters such as Dai Jin
(1388-1462), Li Zai (act. c. 1425-1470), and Zhou
Wenjing (act. c. 143O-C. 1460), who dominated
painting at the Ming court, where Korean emmissaries were frequent visitors.
Under normal circumstances Chinese pictorial
methods soon found their way to Korea. New
stylistic developments introduced from China
were usually taken up by innovative Korean
scholar-painters, each innovation initiating a new
progressive trend. Sage in Contemplation, which
reveals Kang as the earliest Korean proponent of
the Zhe school mode, represents the progressive
direction in mid-fifteenth century Korean painting. By the sixteenth century painting in the Zhe
style had become enormously popular in Korea.
Kang survived one of the most violent political
struggles of the Choson dynasty, in which Prince
Anp'yong (1418-1453), the famous collector and
patron of arts, was assassinated in 1453 by the
faction of his brother, Prince Suyang. Many
worthy scholar-officials perished then in their
defence of the young king, Tanjong (r. 14521455), who was eliminated by his ambitious uncle,
Prince Suyang. The ruthless Suyang, ascending
the throne as King Sejo (r. 1455-1468), proved
an able ruler. In this painting the touch of selfmockery in the sage's expression may not have
been Kang's conscious intent, but it would not be
inconsistent with the probable feelings of a
scholar-official serving the usurper who had put
to death of many of his friends and colleagues.
Kang's paintings are rare and usually lack
inscriptions or signature. This work bears only a
square intaglio seal reading Injae, Kang's studio
name (K: ho).
K.P.K.

266
Yi Sumun
active first half of 15th century

INK BAMBOO
dated to 1424
Korean
album leaves; ink on paper

30.6 x 45 (12 x i/3/4J

inscription with signature and seal of the artist

Matsudaira Yasuharu
Although Yi Sumun is not mentioned in Korean
sources of the Choson period (1392-1910), his
name occurs in Japanese sources of the Muromachi period (1333-1573)- He is believed to have
married a daughter of the Soga family, and his
style is considered to have been the source of the
Soga painting lineage in Japan. He taught painting to the famous Zen monk Ikkyu (1394-1481),
of the Kyoto monastery Daitoku-ji, and was
known for his monochrome ink depictions of
bamboo as well as for landscapes with figures and
flower-and-bird paintings.
For a long time Yi Sumun (pronounced Ri
Shubun in Japanese) was mistaken for the famous
Japanese monk-painter Tensho Shubun, approximately his contemporary, although the two names
employ a different character for the syllable Shu.
To complicate matters further, Tensho Shubun
(act. first half of 15th century), who was an
important figure in early Japanese ink painting,
came to Korea in 1423 with a Japanese embassy
sent to obtain the printed Buddhist sutras, returning to Japan in 1424. This album, according to the
inscription on the last leaf, was "painted by
Sumun [J: Shubun] in 1424 at Pukyang after
coming over to Japan."
Bamboo first became an important theme
among Korean scholar-painters during the twelfth
century (Koryo dynasty). Such prominent Koryo
scholars as Kim Pusik (1075-1151) and Yi Illo
(1152-1220) painted ink bamboo. They were great
admirers of the scholar-official-poet Su Shi (10371101), a seminal and leading figure in the literati
painting movement in Northern Song China
(960-1127), and of Su's friend Wen Tong (10191079), who is considered the first great master of
ink bamboo. During the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth century, when the Korean court maintained a library named the "Hall of Ten Thousand
Volumes" (K: Mangwan Dang) in the Chinese
capital (at present-day Beijing), many Korean
scholar-officials made frequent visits there. Yi
Che-hyon (1287-1367), who served the Korean
King Ch'ungson, became acquainted with the
painters Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) and Li Kan
(1245-1320) both known for their bamboo
painting, and the latter also for his Treatise on
Bamboo (Zhupu). To the Confucian scholar-officials who dominated the succeeding Choson
TOWARD CATHAY

415

dynasty (1392-1910), bamboo symbolized Confucian virtues of resilience and fortitude, thus
enhancing the significance of bamboo painting.
Yi Sumun's album comprises ten leaves, each
showing bamboo growing in a natural setting.
These settings vary from a private garden to a
wild grove. The most dramatic leaves show
bamboo blown by wind or pelted by rain, the most
lyrical leaf represents bamboo against the full
moon. Unlike most bamboo paintings executed
after the sixteenth century, which were explicitly
conceived as vehicles to express the painter's
nature or emotions, Sumun's bamboo, with their
thin stalks and narrow leaves, look like the plants
they represent. The windblown or rain-drenched
bamboo, for instance, seem to convey the artist's
direct experience of nature. Tonal gradations in
the paintings imply air and light, also enhancing
the illusion of a real world. On the last leaf are
several tall bamboo beside a fantastically weath416

CIRCA 1492

ered garden rock, together with new bamboo

shoots. Compositionally, this leaf is the most unusual for its time: bamboo paintings of this period
rarely depicted the new bamboo shoots or cut off
the top part of the bamboo.
At the upper left of this leaf is an inscription
accompanied by the artist's signature, Sumun, and
a rectangular relief seal also reading Sumun.
K.P.K.

267
Yi Sumun

active first half of 15th century

LANDSCAPES OF THE FOUR SEASONS

Korean
pair of six-fold screens; ink on paper
each 92.7 x 348.7 (^/2 x i}?1/^
references: Matsushita 1961, no. 21; Nara 1973, no.
24; Matsushita 1974, 64-65, figs. 53, 54; Princeton
1976, 217, n. 11; Cleveland 1977, 4-5, no. 2; Tanaka
1977, 81-82, pis. 6, 7
The Cleveland Museum of Art,
John L. Severance Fund
The four seasons are depicted as was customary,
from right to left and beginning with spring. A
gentleman-scholar attended by two servants opens
the scene; standing before a pavilion built on a

spit of level land, he gazes out over an expanse of

calm water. Not far away (in the second panel) are
two more gentlemen, similarly attended. They are
crossing a footbridge that will take them toward
the pavilion, and have stopped to admire a tree
in flower. Beyond them, in the middle distance,
fresh, tall bamboo are shown below towering
vertical peaks. At the center of the next three
panels a copse of willows in full foliage marks the
summer. Autumn opens the left-hand screen.
Past distant tree-clad hills sloping down to fencedin houses and moored boats, gentlemen-scholars
are being ferried to a viewing pavilion built out
over the water from a peninsula stretching into
the distance. The last two panels give us distant,
rugged country, snowbound by winter.
The composition is simple but ingenious. Each
screen is centered on a foreground repoussoir
one a rising mountain mass, the other a sharply
receding series of plateaus. Framing these central

repoussoirs are views set in the middle distance.

The result is stable and balanced. Some of the rock
forms recall the 45 angle projections in Yi
Sumun's Ink Bamboo album (cat. 266). The solid,
dark ink washes for farmland and wet ground in
the right-hand screen resemble nothing like such
areas in Chinese and Japanese paintings, but they
do resemble ink washes in a Korean painting of
The Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang (exhibited in
Nara, 1973), though the nervous brush manner
there bespeaks a different artist.
At the lower outer edge of each screen is the
seal of the artist, Sumun, in fine-line "maze"
characters within a vertical oblong. The same
characters on a differently cut seal appear on
Catalogue 266, accompanied by the artist's signature. Still another Sumun seal marks a hanging
scroll depicting the Chinese poet Lin Heqing
(Lin Bu, 967-1028) in a landscape; this has been
accepted as genuine by Matsushita (1961, no. 21).

When the Cleveland screens were discovered

(before 1950), the Ink Bamboo album (cat. 266),
which documents Yi Sumun's arrival in Japan
from Korea, was unknown; and until its publication in 1961 the painting of Lin Heqing was virtually unknown. Since at the time the Cleveland
screens came to light Yi Sumun (the "Korean
Shubun") was scarcely known to exist, the
seals on these screens are highly unlikely to
be spurious.
Any study or discussion of early Choson ink
painting and the place of Yi Sumun within that
tradition must take account of these Landscapes of
the Four Seasons.
S.E.L.

TOWARD CATHAY

417

268

269

YiAm

i6th century

Sin Cham
1491-1554

DOG AND PUPPIES

SEEKING PLUM FLOWERS

Korean
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
73 42.2 (283/4 x i65/s)
two seals, one of the artist

mid-i$th century
Korean
handscroll; ink and color on silk
43.9 x 210.5 (ly1/* x 827/s)

National Museum of Korea, Seoul

National Museum of Korea, Seoul

Under a leafy tree sits a mother dog suckling her

puppies, appearing simultaneously contented and
alert. Yi Am executed this painting using primarily the "boneless" technique as in the
strong, gently curving tree trunk, the lush leaves
filling the top part of the painting, and the sleek
bodies of the dogs. He used outline strokes only to
describe the dogs' paws, the white puppy clinging
upside down to the mother dog to nurse, and, in
light ink, a dozen long grass blades. Apart from
this, the brush is apparent only in some dark
triangular dots texturing the ground beneath the
tree. The sensitive contrast between a lightcolored puppy dozing on its mother's back and
two other pups, one dark and the other white,
eagerly suckling below testifies to Yi's keen
observation of his subjects.
Yi Am (i499-after 1545) was a great-grandson
of Prince Imyong, who was the fourth son of the
illustrious King Sejong (r. 14191450). His paintings, of animals, birds, insects, and flowers, are
imbued with a childlike innocence, and his dogs
and puppies are always shown as much-loved
creatures inhabiting a tranquil private garden. A
red collar with a bright metal bell around the neck
of the mother dog not only draws the viewer's
attention to her but also conveys Yi's own feeling
for her.

The scholar-painter Sin Cham was renowned as a

master of the "three perfections" (K: sum jol; C:
san jue)poetry, calligraphy, and painting. He
was particularly famous for his calligraphy in the
Chinese cursive and clerical modes. After passing
the standard literary examination (K: chinsa; C:
jin shi) for government service, Sin began his
official career in 1513. In 1519, however, the factionalism that plagued Choson government eventuated in a great purge of high-ranking civil
servants; Sin Cham was banished to the hinterlands and not reinstated until 1543. Thereafter
he served as magistrate in several counties until
his death.
Sin is known for his ink renditions of orchids,
bamboo, and grapes, appropriate in medium and
subject matter alike to the Confucian scholar-official. Here he has painted a landscape with figures
inspired by a classical subject also dear to the
hearts of scholar-officials, whose duties usually
confined them in cities. The gentleman seeking
plum flowers is Meng Haoran (689-740), a
Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, who was
admired by many men of letters in Korea. Meng,
a friend of the famous Tang poet Wang Wei (699759), is said to have refused high government
office, preferring to live in "reclusion" (i.e., out
of office) on Mt. Lumen. Each spring he is sup-

418

CIRCA 1492

Only eight or nine paintings by Yi Am have

survived. They are mostly in Japanese collections
and lack signature or inscriptions. This work is
likewise unsigned and uninscribed, but it bears a
tripod-shaped relief seal reading Kumhon and a
square intaglio seal reading Chongjun, which is
Yi's style or courtesy name (K: cha; C: zi).
K.P.K.

posed to have set out over the Ba Bridge in search

of the first plum blossoms.
The scroll opens on the right with a large hill
nearly the height of the painting surface. Trees
clinging to its slope lead the viewer into the painting. Using a series of contrasts, Sin divided his
composition roughly into balanced halves: the
empty space forming the background on the right
contrasts sharply with the mountain forms that
fill the background on the left; the road paralleling the pictorial frame on the right contrasts
with the bridge on the left; and a repoussoir in
the form of hillocks with two large trees on
the right contrasts with the absence of repoussoir
on the left.
Mountains, hills, and trees show unusual solidity and monumentality, which Sin created by
unobtrusive outlining with long, even strokes
and by shading his forms with broad wet brush
strokes. In the early sixteenth century Korean
painting was dominated by the followers of An
Kyon (i4i8-after 1464), whose works were
characterized by vigorous brush strokes, variable
"calligraphic" outlines, and a sense of vast space.
Sin's departure from this style is striking, and
appears as well in his abrupt cutting off of the
tops of the tree branches as well as the sides of
the landmasses that begin and end the scroll. At
the beginning and end of the scroll blossoming
branches of the old plum trees allude to Meng
Haoran's romantic preoccupation with plum
blossoms.
K.P.K.

270
Yi Sangjwa

active i6th century

SEATED ARHAT WITH GOAT

hanging scroll; ink on silk
138.6 x 78.2 ($4l/2 x 303/4J
signature and seal of the artist
Tokyo University of Fine Arts

Arhats (C: luohan) are the ideal figures of early

Buddhism, the Theravadin tradition, which is
sometimes referred to as the Southern tradition
because its present-day adherents are mostly

found in southern and southeastern Asia. Like

bodhisattvas, arhats are fully Enlightened beings,
free forever of passions and defilements and
therefore capable of entering Nirvana, or extinction, at the end of their current life. Arhats differ
from bodhisattvas in concentrating their efforts
on their personal salvation, while bodhisattvas are
dedicated to freeing all beings from the cycle of
rebirth. Arhats, who were, historically, Indian, are
usually represented in assemblages of sixteen,
sometimes eighteen, early holy men who indeed
attained Enlightenment and freedom from the
cycle of rebirth. Though Zen (K: Son) springs
from the Northern, or Mahayana, tradition of
Buddhism, the individualistic and focused nature
T O W A R D CATHAY

419

of the arhats' single-minded pursuit of Enlightenment, and their avoidance of rote devotional
practices caused their images to be revered in
Zen circles.
Traditions of arhat iconography emerged and
were sustained in China; Korean and Japanese
interpretations followed one of two fundamental
Chinese painting styles. One was a polychrome
tradition particularly well articulated in works
attributed to two Song dynasty painters recorded
only in Japan: Zhang Sigong and Lu Xinzhong,
both of whom were active in the port city of
Ningbo in Zhejiang Province. Their works were
much exported and were widely copied in Japan
during the fourteenth century. The arhats were
sometimes painted in various groupings, sometimes individually, though the paintings of individual arhats might be composed as sets. Usually
they were depicted in outdoor settings, which
afforded the artist some creative latitude, the
figural iconography being largely immutable. The
other tradition for arhat representation names as
its source the style of the Chinese Chan adept
and poet-painter Guan-Xiu (832-912). Although
nothing of Guan-Xiu's painting survives, later
paintings of gnarled, quirky, and grotesquely featured holy men depicted in vigorous, expressionistic brushwork are usually associated with his
name or said to be "after his style/' Guan-Xiu
purportedly painted such figures on temple walls.
Rubbings from stone engravings have, ostensibly,
transmitted his style, but our knowledge of it
remains derivative and speculative.
In the present painting the arhat is seated in a
casual pose on a partially visible rock, surrounded
by scattered tufts of grass or bamboo grass. The
figure grasps a monk's staff (J: shakujo) with
both hands, holding it not upright in the usual
fashion but across his lap, parallel to the ground.
Tradition assigns to this wooden staff with its
metal finial and loose metal rings two purposes,
both imparted by the Buddha to his disciples and
both accomplished by the jingling of the metal
rings when the staff is shaken: to announce the
presence of an alms-seeking monk while preserving his vow of silence, and to warn off small
creatures that might otherwise be crushed by a
monk's inadvertent step. Although the painting's
subject is merely identified as an arhat, the
twelfth arhat, Nagasena, is often depicted with
a goat, symbolizing that holy man's Enlightened
ease with other orders of the sentient world.
In this painting a goat stands before the figure, its
head turned toward him with an expression of
affectionate trust. The arhat, hunched forward,
returns the gaze with intense, delighted eyes.
The present painting is rendered on roughtextured silk. Its essential elements, though
sparse, are carefully composed in a series of vectors and diagonals which not only convey the
communion between arhat and beast but also
create a sense of space and dynamism. The skillfully rendered parallel between the arhat's posture
420

CIRCA 1492

and the goat's creates overall visual coherence and

also suggests the religious hypothesis underlying
the painting that the Enlightened being is at
one with the universe.
In the upper right corner of the painting is the
artist's signature, Hakp'o, rendered in carefully
blocked script, and beneath it his seal, Yi Sangjwa.
Other of his works survive, including a tiger and
an interpretation of the Daoist Immortal Xia Ma,
sufficient to identify Yi Sangjwa as a representative painter of the sixteenth century. Although
many features of this painting place it in the
Guan-Xiu tradition, the brushwork is controlled
and the modeling of the figure and his dark outer
robe carefully executed. These features suggest
the "professional" touch common to Chinese
paintings of the Zhe school, which particularly
influenced such Korean artists as Yi Kyongyun
(1545-?) and Yi Chong (1541-1622), both of
whom were active at the time this painting was
made.
j.u.

27^

Ham Yundok
i6th century

MAN RIDING A DONKEY

Korean
album leaf; ink and light color on silk
15.5 x 19.4 (6Vs x 7%j
National Museum of Korea, Seoul

Except that he was a professional painter active in

the sixteenth century, not much is known of Ham
Yundok. Here he has employed a type of composition apparently introduced into Korean painting
by Kang Hui-an (cat. 265) in the mid-fifteenth
century: a pictorial surface divided into two
planes; in the foreground a central figure on
which the composition is focused; the background
divided vertically between the solid mass of a cliff
and empty space; overhanging vegetation growing
from the cliffside serving to canopy and further
frame the traveler on his donkey. Across the road
and parallel to it runs a narrow stream. Beyond
the stream the cliff rises on the left, cutting off
the traveler's view and ours, while on the right
space recedes and beckons.
In this painting more than the composition is
reminiscent of Kang Hui-an. The brisk depiction
of the cliff with a minimum number of short,
irregular, parallel brush strokes; the large leaves
indicated by wet ink dabs; and the small triangular rocks in the creek all recall the earlier master.
Between the traveler and his mount there appears
a pointed contrast the man erect and smiling,
the donkey with head hanging and legs splayed,
exhausted by his burden.
The road leading past the picture frame, the
implied motion of the donkey, and the quickly
executed, spirited brush strokes convey a sense of
energy and movement and are characteristic of the
Chinese Zhe school mode, which became popular
with both professional and amateur painters
of Korea during the sixteenth century. The light
pink of the traveler's robe adds a lighthearted
quality to the painting.
K.P.K.

272

TALL JAR
early i$th century
Korean
punching ware with incised, impressed, and slipinlaid decoration
height 49.7 fi95/sj
references: Gompertz 1968, 25-42; Rhee 1978,
3:p/.2
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
This imposing gray-bodied stoneware vessel has
an approximately cylindrical body, which narrows
only slightly in its descent from high shoulders to
broad base. The short neck widens to the everted
mouth rim, and the surface is fully decorated
from the area inside the mouth down to the base.
Primary motifs in the complex design are marshalled into broad horizontal zones separated by
narrower scroll-filled borders. Four pendent
panels on the shoulder an arrangement called a
"cloud collar" for its resemblance to the collars of
princely Mongol dress are filled with stylized
waves and floating blossoms. Two dragons stride
across cloud-flecked skies in the zone below,
and a fence of upright lotus-petal panels encircles
the base.
The designs were produced by incising the clay
with a sharply pointed instrument and filling the
depressions with slip (clay diluted with water).
Here both white and dark-colored slip were used.
Forming the backdrop for the cloud collar on the

shoulder and covering the neck and mouth interior is a dense mesh-like ground, produced by
stamping the clay surface all over with a patterned
die or a piece of woven material, then rubbing or
brushing the stamped surface with white slip.
Finally the vessel was covered with glaze and
fired.
Potters active during the early Choson period
(1392-1910, also called the Yi dynasty for the surname of the ruling family) inherited a rich
ceramic tradition from their predecessors of the
Koryo period (918-1392) who had distinguished
themselves creating exquisite, highly refined,
consummately graceful celadon wares. The term
celadon refers to high-fired ceramics covered with
a muted green glaze the color resulting when
iron oxide in the glaze was fired in an oxygendeprived, or reducing, atmosphere. Although the
basic techniques of celadon manufacture and
decoration had been learned from the Chinese,
Koryo potters modified their ceramic models and
invented and perfected the inlaid-slip technique
for celadon decoration. The resulting coloristic
and graphic effects contrasted with the monochromatic carved celadons of the Chinese tradition.
The carefree and somewhat slapdash technique
evident in the present piece reflects the deterioration that had beset the potters' art in Korea
during the last century of Koryo rule, a deterioration believed to have originated with the Mongol
invasion of Korea in 1231 and the subsequent
weakening of the Koryo state and spirit. Yet,
for all its technical and artistic gaucherie, the
approach and aesthetic here reflect a fresh vigor,
robustness, and vitality which are the hallmarks of
Choson ceramic style. Coarse body fabric, heavy
potting, emphasis on slip decoration, and a thin
transparent glaze that is not a true celadon color
are characteristics of Choson period stoneware.
Punch'ong, as this ware is called, is a shortened
form of the term punjang hoi ch'ong sagif
"powder-dressed gray-green ceramics"
"powder-dressed" referring to the slip decoration
and "gray-green" reflecting the celadon ancestry.
Transitional between typical Koryo and Choson
wares in technique, the present piece seems transitional in shape as well: between the popular
Koryo type of tall, high-shouldered, smallmouthed bottle called maebyong (from the
Chinese mei-pingf "prunus vase," a term used for
wine containers) and the broader, larger-mouthed
Choson period jar. The decoration, both motifs
and composition, was borrowed wholesale from a
fourteenth century Chinese blue-and-white porcelain vessel. However, in the Korean version, the
dragon has acquired a note of humor and whimsy
which, along with the more casual workmanship,
demonstrates a significantly independent attitude
toward the model.
M. A.R.

273
BOTTLE
15th century
Korean
punching ware with impressed and slip-inlaid
decoration
height 26.8 (io5/s)
references: Kim and Gompertz 1961, pi. 82;
Gompertz 1968, 25-42
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
Pear-shaped bottles like this onewith slender
neck and gracefully everted lipwere quite popular during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
in China and particularly popular during the fifteenth century in Korea, where numerous examples were produced in a variety of wares. The
present piece owes its special attractiveness in
large part to finely balanced and evocative proportions. Such features as its full, swelling body, its
low center of gravity, and the firm and steady
anchoring provided by the low ring-foot produce a
strong impression of ripeness and plentitude, stability and strength. Surface adornment is present
but does not compete with the beauty of the form.
The impressed and slip-inlaid mesh pattern is a
perfect wrapping for the vessel, and the glaze,
while providing a high gloss, is neutral in color
and also visually passive. Great care, however, was
exercised in the decoration; this is evident in the
fastidiously reserved narrow band, free of slip,
encircling the neck and in the balance between
impressed floret bands at the lip and on the foot.
These flowers resemble small chrysanthemum
blossoms seen from above, hence the term chrysanthemum-head pattern, a pattern sometimes
employed as an overall body design.

TOWARD CATHAY

421

Notwithstanding the humble or plebeian

character attributed to punch'ong wares, they also
enjoyed official patronage. The ceramics destined
for official or royal use were deposited in warehouses for safekeeping before they were distributed. Inscriptions, produced usually by incising
and slip inlay, exist on a good number of extant
stamped and slip-inlaid punch'ong wares. These
inscriptions include the names of such government agencies as those in charge of royal household cuisine, entertaining, and ceremony. And
punch'ong wares have been discovered among
grave goods in princely burials.
Government supervision may in fact have been
instrumental in encouraging more careful crafting
of some wares; the present piece, though uninscribed, reflects meticulous manufacture. Such
wares were also in aesthetic accord with the new
Confucian emphasis that marked the early years
of the Choson period (1392-1910). The highly
aristocratic and often precious taste which prevailed in ceramic patronage during the height of
Koryo rule gave way to a mood and tenor perfectly at ease with the austere and spartan quality
of the new punch'ong wares.
M.A.R.

74

PLACENTA JAR
first half of i$th century
Korean
punching ware with incised, slip-inlaid, and
impressed decoration
height 37.8 (i47/8)
references: Gompertz 1968; Rhee 1978, j:pl. 10
Ho-Am Art Museum, Kyonggi Province

422

CIRCA 1492

From its flat, stable base this jar widens gently

to high taut shoulders, then narrows slightly
through the brief neck to a wide mouth with
strongly everted lip. The generous opening at the
top is a characteristic feature of the outer of two
receptacles which together served as the burial
vessel for a placenta. The inner jar was narrower
and might be provided with loop handles on the
shoulder for securing a lid. The outer jars were
likewise provided with covers, presumably lost
in the present example. An outermost casket of
stone formed a durable protective casing for the
ceramic jars and their contents. Whereas placenta
receptacles of the early Choson period (13921910) are predominantly from punch'ong kilns, in
the later Choson (Yi) period white porcelain was
prevalent. According to Itoh Ikutaro, "Underground burial of the placenta was the custom in
Korea from the Three Kingdoms [37 B.C.-668
A.D.], through the Unified Silla [668-918], Koryo
[918-1392], and Yi [Choson] dynasties. In Yi
times, the royal family installed placenta jars in
'placenta chambers' on the peaks of celebrated
or scenic mountains/7
The expansive body zone of the present jar
is entirely covered with an impressed and slipfilled mesh pattern. Above and below this uninterrupted field of design are borders of petals
formed by series of roughly parallel incised lines,
likely a simplified rendering of the ubiquitous
lotus-petal motif. Lotus-petal bands encircling
vessels, usually around the shoulder and just
above the base, were originally inspired by the
lotus thrones that supported images of Buddhist
deities. Such was their suitability as a border
design that they have continued as a stock decorative device down to the present. An abbreviated
depiction of the key-fret motif (called thunder
pattern in East Asia) decorates the neck.
The mesh pattern of the main body zone, called
a "rope-curtain" design in Korean, is generally
said to have reminded Japanese connoisseurs of
the multifold columns of tiny characters in the
almanacs printed at the Mishima Shrine, on Izu
Peninsula, Shizuoka Prefecture. Therefore the
name Mishima was applied in Japan to these slipdecorated wares from Korea, and the term was
extended to punch'ong wares in general, whatever
their slip-inlaid decoration. The term is likewise
used in the West. An alternate explanation for
the use of the name Mishima, and one that would
account for its generalized use, is that Japanese
pirates once operated from a group of islands
called Mishima, and it was these Mishima pirates
who first brought punch'ong wares to Japan.
In any case, the Japanese have always greatly
treasured punch'ong wares. The impromptu
approach of the Korean potter, the lack of precision and finish in his works, as well as their
natural unpretentiousness, were all qualities that
directly appealed to the sophisticated taste of tea
masters in Japan, qualities which we still can
easily admire today.
M.A.R.

75

BOTTLE
late 15th century
Korean
punching ware with slip coating and incised
decoration
height 30.5 (12)
references: Gompertz 1968, 25-42; New York 1968
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Supported on a strongly cut foot, the gently pearshaped body narrows to a tall, slender neck, then
flares slightly to a modest mouth opening and
cautiously everted lip. White slip was applied
with a large brush while the piece was turned on
a wheel or turntable, the coarse brush leaving
horizontal striations still visible on the finished
bottle. The design was produced by incising
through or scraping away the hardened slip,
exposing the darker body fabric. The design is
organized into two horizontal bands: plump fish
occupy the wider one around the belly, and
sketchily drawn stylized lotus petals encircle the
lower and wider part of the neck. The contrast
between the dark, iron-rich clay body and the pale
creamy slip makes the design stand out sharply
and clearly. The glaze is no more than an unobtrusive window to the design, neutral in color and
perfectly transparent.

Punch'ong ware with brush-marked slip is

popularly known as hakeme (brush-marked), a
term borrowed from Japanese connoisseurship.
Several centuries prior to the development of
punch'ong ware in Korea, Chinese potters at
numerous kilns throughout northern China had
perfected a slip-decorated stoneware called Cizhou
ware, Cizhou in Hebei Province being the major
center of production. In China the vessels were
usually dipped in the white slip, whereas a sturdy
brush proved to be most effective in making slip
adhere to the coarse, iron-rich clays of Korea.
Chinese slip-coated ceramics might be left plain,
or designs might be painted in dark slip on the
white ground, or incised through the white slip to
the darker body beneath. All of these methods
were used also by punch'ong potters. By the fifteenth century painted designs predominated in
the Chinese wares, and Chinese potters had
almost completely abandoned the slip-incised or
carved technique, which was carried on by their
Korean counterparts.
The present piece exemplifies the refreshing
simplicity and straightforward technique and
design that make these wares so endearing and
admired. An interesting contrast obtains between
the formal regularity of the lotus panels and the
whimsical informality of the fish, a very popular
motif within the limited repertory of representational designs on punch'ong wares. In China fish
symbolized affluence and abundant progeny, and a
pair of fish represented connubial bliss; given the
profound and far-reaching influence of Chinese
thought in Korea during the Choson period, the
same symbolism probably obtained. The founder
of the Yi dynasty and his early successors modeled
their new state of Choson on Ming dynasty China,
adopting enthusiastically and wholeheartedly the
form and content of that highly bureaucratic state
shaped by Confucian doctrine and manned by
officials who acquired their positions by way of
exhaustive, state-sponsored examinations in Confucian learning. In China the Confucian scholar
was likened to a carp fighting its way upstream
past the rapids of Longmen (Dragon Gate);
perseverance and eventual triumph transformed
the humble fish into a glorious dragon, as
perseverance and success in the examinations
transformed the struggling student into an honored official. The possibility of some relation
between that Chinese metaphor and the prevalence of fish motifs on ceramics of Confucianist
Choson society is buttressed by fifteenth-century
Korean bottles whose slip-inlaid decoration
includes fish metamorphosing into dragons: their
bodies are those of common fish, their heads
those of dragons.
The fish motif, however, could as well have
been inspired by more mundane concerns. Being
good to eat, fish were a most suitable motif for
this widely produced and used tableware. The
Chinese characters youyu, meaning "I have a
fish/' are homophonous with different characters

meaning "there is enough and to spare/' making

the fish an especially appropriate motif for a wine
bottle. It was also believed that overimbibing
could transform one into a fish. But that was held
a happy fate, if the punch ong wares are any indication, since most of the fish appearing on them
have upon their faces quite unmistakable smiles.
M.A.R.

276
JAR
i6th century
Korean
punch'ong ware with slip coating and incised
decoration
height 43.8 (if/4)
references: Gompertz 1968, 25-42; Rhee 1978,
3:pLi}
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
This substantial jar has an everted lip, constricted
neck, low sloping shoulders, and a trunk which
tapers gradually to the wide base. White slip was
roughly brushed over the entire surface of the
vessel, and the design was produced by incising
and scraping through the hardened slip to the
dark body clay below. In certain areas the glaze,
irregularly applied, streaked down the sides and
streamed into thickened globules. A massive lotus
scroll swings and curls rhythmically around the
expansive body zone, bordered near the base by a
band of pointed petal shapes and at the shoulder

by geometricized lotus-petal panels. Several clusters of curved lines, which may represent grasses,
are spaced around the neck.
Due to the paucity of dated material the exact
chronological development of punch'ong wares is
uncertain. It is generally and logically believed,
however, that the carefully wrought incised or
impressed slip-inlaid wares are earlier than the
more spontaneous, uninhibited slip-brushed wares
with either incised or iron-oxide brown painted
decoration. Bold design and dynamic, vigorous
execution are characteristics associated with the
later wares, of which the present jar is a superb
example. Although the workmanship may at first
seem overcasual, the genial freedom and exuberance of the piece are exceedingly attractive,
and one soon comes to appreciate the carefree
approach of the decorator. The unconcealed creative process, in fact, becomes part of the aesthetic,
and in the end quite seductive.
The great stylistic diversity among punch'ong
ceramics is not a result of temporal factors alone.
Produced at numerous kilns throughout central
and southern Korea, the wares reflect the differences in local materials, in the skills of particular
workers, and even in local tastes which influenced
style. This rich, vital, and widespread indigenous
tradition, which served Korean society so well
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was
devastated by the invasions from Japan initiated
by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) in 1592.
During the ensuing seven years of upheaval the
wholesale destruction of kilns and uprooting of
potters was so thorough and complete that the
production of punch'ong wares, those paragons of
simple grace and ruggedness, either diminished to
insignificance or vanished entirely from the repertory of the Korean potter.
M. A. R.

77

COVERED BOWL
i century
Korean
white porcelain
height 22.5 (87/s)
reference: Gompertz 1968, 43-47
Horim Museum of Art, Seoul
Slightly above its modestly flared ring-foot the
body of this bowl swells to its greatest diameter,
then contracts gently to the wide mouth. The
high, domed lid has a thickened ridge where it fits
over the mouth of the bowl, serving, like a belt at
the waistline, to emphasize the contraction. Atop
the lid is a finial in the shape of the magical wishfulfilling gem of Buddhist iconography, encircled
by two incised rings. The gently balanced rotundities of bowl and lid are typically Korean. Gray
TOWARD CATHAY

423

glaze ends, or bits of sand or grit adhering to a

roughly finished base, do not strike us as flaws or
blemishes. Meticulous execution was simply not
the Korean potter's primary aim, which might
have been instrumental in preserving Korean
ceramics from the stiffness, coolness, and remoteness that often accompany technical perfection.
The aesthetic power of Korean wares lies in
their tactile strength, directness, and sculptural
beauty qualities that came to glorious fruition
in the fully independent Choson porcelain style
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
M.A.R.

278

EWER

tinges the white body fabric and the clear, thick

glaze, which seems suffused with soft light.
Superb white porcelains were produced during
the fifteenth century in Korea as craftsmen and
court patrons responded to China's lead. So
attractive were these wares that even the Chinese
emperor, who commanded the choicest wares of
the finest Chinese potters, sought to acquire
them. In 1425 an emissary from the court of the
Xuande emperor, who reigned in China from 1425
to 1435, requested that porcelains from the official Choson kilns near the royal capital at Seoul be
provided for presentation to the Son of Heaven.
Although strongly influenced by early Ming
dynasty porcelains, the Korean potters were not
slavish imitators of Chinese white wares. The
basic shape of the present bowl, for example, is as
ancient as the potter's art itself, yet it is at the
same time distinctively Korean. The distinguishing difference was produced primarily by
substituting the high-domed lid for the shallower
one typical of Chinese covered bowls, and the
effect is at once suave and imperious. Although
capacious, wide-mouthed bowls were produced in
China, a closer model was to hand in eleventhtwelfth century Korean metalwork.
Contemporaneous with the white wares are
punch'ong bowls of similar proportion, shape, and
size, but their lids are flattened and sometimes
surmounted by standing rings rather than by finials, so that when inverted, the punch'ong lids
could also serve as receptacles. Punch'ong bowland-cover sets thus are clearly functional one
can easily imagine them being used as ordinary
tablewareswhereas the more majestic and
formal appearance of the porcelains seems more
suitable for use at court or in religious ritual.
Slight imperfections, such as potters' fingermarks in the glaze, uneven borders where the
424

CIRCA

1492

15th century
Korean
white porcelain
height 33 (13)
reference: Gompertz 1968, 43-47
Horim Museum of Art, Seoul
A relatively high foot with thickened rim supports the pear-shaped body of this ewer. Its brief
neck expands slightly to form the mouth opening
into which a domed cover fits. Attached to one
side of the ewer, where a hole was cut through the
body, is a strongly curved spout, balanced by the
high arc of the handle on the opposite side. Two
ring-shaped loops, one affixed to the neck above
the handle and the other to the lid, would have
secured a cord or chain that kept the small cover
attached to the ewer. Body fabric and glaze unite
with the shape to produce an effect of purity, softness, and consummate grace.
White wares of great delicacy and refinement
were produced during the Koryo period (9181392), albeit in small numbers compared with
contemporaneous celadon production. These
white wares reflect the profound influence of the
greatly esteemed Song dynasty (960-1278)
ceramics produced in north and south China alike.
Astonishing strength and gravity, however, set the
early Choson porcelains aesthetically apart from
those earlier wares; on the whole the Choson
pieces were more sturdily constructed and their
shapes adhered closely to fifteenth-century
Chinese prototypes.
Yi Song-gye (1335-1408, r. 1392-1398), a general of the Koryo state, overthrew the Koryo
rulers and established a new dynasty in 1392. He
looked to Ming China as the perfect model upon
which to structure his own state. So important
were the approval and support of China's powerful
Hongwu emperor (r. 1368-1398) that Yi Song-gye
requested that exalted being to select from two
alternatives the name by which the newly formed
Korean kingdom would be known. The Chinese

emperor selected Choson, "Land of the Morning

Calm," a name which was formally adopted by
the Yi dynasts. The Choson state paid respect and
obeisance to the Ming rulers in the form of tribute, presenting vast quantities of gifts and goods
at least annually. As was customary in the tribute
relationship, the Chinese reciprocated with precious gifts, including porcelain vessels from their
imperial kilns at Jingdezhen.
During the rule of the Ming dynasty's Yongle
emperor (r. 1402-1424) pure white porcelain
some with the subtlest of incised or impressed
decor but much of it immaculately undecorated
was unquestionably the favored ware, a direct and
immediate reflection of the emperor's personal
taste and preferences. The extraordinary white
porcelains, masterworks of the Yongle imperial
kilns, included such ewers as would have provided
a model for the present piece, albeit the Korean
potter altered the form slightly by reducing the
flare of the mouth, shortening the neck, and modifying somewhat the curve of the handle.
During the reign of Sejong (r. 1419-1450) only
white wares appear to have been used in the royal
household, suggesting unstinting approval of
Chinese models. And in fact, in 1466 production
of white wares was restricted to those ordered by
the court. The purpose, apparently, was to
preserve the supply of raw materials necessary for
the fabrication of fine white ware as well as to
ensure the exclusivity of these marvels of the potter's art.
M.A.R.

2/9
JAR
late i$th century
Korean
white porcelain with underglaze blue painted plum
tree and bamboo
height 41 (i6Vs)
reference: Gompertz 1968, 53-68
Ho-Am Art Museum, Kyonggi Province
From a short, wide neck the body of this massive
jar first swells outward, then curves rather
sharply inward before flaring gently outward just
above the thick foot. Between borders of ornate,
stylized lotus petals at the shoulder and base the
entire body is given over to a picture of a blossoming plum tree and stalks of bamboo. The
gnarled trunk and branches of the old tree twist
and recurve; only the younger twigs sprout blossoms. Leafy bamboo intersects and intermingles
with the plum. Balancing this powerful primary
zone of decoration, the lotus panels are strongly
painted and their interiors richly embellished.
The lower ring of petals in particular engages our
attention, since it functions not as a mere abstract
border but pictorially, as a fence blocking our view
of the base of the plum tree and the bamboo stalks.
Blossoming plum and bamboo were of course
prized for their natural beauty, but in addition

they were endowed by the Chinese literati (and,

following their lead, by the Koreans) with attributes which they themselves esteemed and identified with. The plum, which blossoms when
winter still grips the land, symbolizes purity and
loftiness; the bamboo, which bends under the
storm but does not break and straightens when
the storm has passed, was a symbol of resilience
and straightness. These two, together with the
pine, which stood for courage, steadfastness,
and incorruptibility, were known as the "Three
Friends of Winter/7 emblematic of scholarly
perseverance and integrity. That such images
should have wide appeal during the fifteenth century in Korea is easily understandable; it was a
period of intense literary activity and one during
which the highest value was placed on scholarly
principles and pursuits.
A number of early Ming Chinese porcelain jars,
splendidly painted in underglaze cobalt blue or
copper red with the "Three Friends of Winter"
bordered by lotus panels, serve as precedents for
this one. Korean decorators however, usually
depicted only two of the "Three Friends" on any
one piece, as was done on the present jar. Most
noteworthy here, however, is the astonishing
technical proficiency and aesthetic individuality
of the painter. The undulating outline of the tree
moves swiftly and rhythmically, breaking here
and there and resuming with great verve and

strength. Much as in calligraphy, the brush line

possesses independent aesthetic interest while
still clearly describing the subject. The dark-onlight patches of blue forming the plum blossoms,
the thin, pale outlines of the bamboo stalks with
their even lighter interiors, and the treatment of
the bamboo leaves all contribute to the uniqueness of this vessel's style and design.
Although the shape of the jar and the subject
and composition of its decoration as well as certain elements of style relate to late fourteenth and
early fifteenth century Chinese wares, other features, such as the use of fine outline with pale,
even wash, compare with Chinese wares of the
later fifteenth century, that is, from the reign of
the Chenghua emperor (1464-1487) onward.
Approximately contemporaneous with the Chenghua reign-era was the reign of King Songjong in
Korea (r. 1469-1494), when court painters were
called upon to assist in decorating blue-and-white
ceramics. On a well-known maebyong (C: meiping) bottle in the Dongkuk University Museum
is a design of pine and bamboo, painted with stirring individuality; the vessel bears a date corresponding to 1489. Very probably this as well as
the present jar with plum and bamboo are examples of the superlative work produced by the
highly skilled and creative artists of the royal
Choson court.
M.A.R.

280

BOTTLE
i$th century
Korean
white porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
height 25 (9%]
reference: Gompertz 1968, 53-68
Ho-Am Art Museum, Kyonggi Province
A fuller upper torso than is usual for a "pearshaped" vessel characterizes this bottle. From a
low, wide ring-foot, which imparts a feeling of
steadiness and stability, the globular lower body
contracts gently toward the narrow neck and
gracefully everted lip. To produce the painted
decoration, cobalt oxide pigment was brushed
onto the clay body before glazing; firing transformed the gray-black pigment to the rich and
vibrant blues visible here. Where the pigment was
thickly applied, it fired to an inky blackish hue,
which on this piece is particularly noticeable on
the snout of the dragon charging through a cloudfilled sky. Its body and outstretched limbs are
crusty with scales, and a ridge of jagged upright
scales runs the length of its serpentine back. The
beast is bearded and maned. Its long snout is
snapped shut and its bulging eyes are intently
TOWARD CATHAY

425

which include the present example, were done in

Chinese style.
The hue and quality of the blue, the style of
painting, and the form of the dragon in almost
every detail are all but indistinguishable from
Chinese dragons of the Xuande reign-era; were
it not for the character of the clay, the casual
treatment of the bottle's foot and base, and the
appearance of the glaze, the piece could easily be
mistaken for Chinese. Gifts of blue-and-white
porcelains presented by the Xuande emperor to
the Choson court in 1430 included vessels with
dragon-and-cloud designs, so it is not impossible
that the painter of this piece had an actual Xuande
period porcelain close at hand. Unfortunately the
Korean potters did not adopt the Chinese practice
of inscribing reign-marks on their ceramics, thus
making it impossible to tell exactly when such
fastidious renditions of China's classic blue-andwhite style began to be made.
M.A.R.

focused, giving a purposeful expression to this

majestic symbol of royal goodness and might.
During the fourteenth century Chinese potters
had created an array of cobalt-blue decorated porcelain that marked the beginning of a new stylistic
direction in Chinese ceramic art and was furthermore a staggering economic success. High quality
cobalt oxide was imported from the Middle East
a major market for the ware since local ores
produced less intense and far less brilliant and
attractive blues. During the early Ming, under
enlightened imperial patronage, blue-and-white
ware attained such aesthetic and technical excellence that connoisseurs have ever since considered
that period the classic phase of Chinese blueand-white, with wares of the Xuande reign-era
(1426-1435) singled out as supreme.
When Korean potters began to make underglaze blue decorated porcelains, they imported
Middle Eastern cobalt from China along with the
technique and current styles. Production was
severely limited, however, by the prohibitive cost
of the cobalt. In fact, in 1461 an attempt was made
to limit the use of blue-and-white wares to the
royal household, with military personnel permitted the use of blue-and-white wine bottles;
awards of cloth or official rank were offered for
presentation to the court of the coveted ware.
Today only a small number of fifteenth-century
examples survive. Some of these were decorated
in a rather spare and sketchy style, anticipating
the major trend in later Choson period blue-andwhite porcelain, but the most ambitious wares,
426

CIRCA 1492

28l

TEA BOWL, CALLED "KIZAEMON"

late i5th-i6th century
Korean
stoneware, slipped and glazed
diameter 15.3 (6)
references: New York 1968, 46-47; Jenyns 1971;
Covell and Yamada 1974, 60-61, pis. 20, 21;
Hayashiya et al. 1974
Koho-an, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto
One of a small number of Korean wares adopted
for the Tea Ceremony in early times (late sixteenth-seventeenth century), "Kizaemon" is a
cultural document of importance because of its
association with Tea and its particular character
within that context. Tea bowls of this type are
generically designated Ido ware; the origin of the
term is unknown but the bowls were made in
Korea, where they were used as rice bowls. There
they were a country form of what is called pun-

ch'ong ware, stoneware on which slip was applied

in a variety of decorative ways (see cats. 272276), but on Ido wares used simply to cover the
rough gray stoneware body. In firing the glaze
and slip often bubbled, resulting in large granular
formations of nodules where the glaze was thickest, at the foot or even on the base. These rice
bowls, a staple of sixteenth-century country production in Korea, were appreciated and appropriated by the Japanese warlords who devastated
Korea at the time of Hideyoshi's invasion (15921598). The bowls were prized for their roughness
and simplicity, qualities that had come to be
esteemed by practitioners of Tea, who included
the officers and officials of the occupying army.
In a very real sense the Ido bowls are "found
objects/' like the bicycle seat and handlebars of
Picasso or the urinal presented satirically as a
work of art by Marcel Duchamp. Arriving in
Japan, these "old Ido" wares (ao Ido) acquired
an aura that only increased in the succeeding
centuries of growing enthusiasm for the Tea
Ceremony.
The bowl "Kizaemon" was reputedly once
owned by a seventeenth-century Osaka merchant,
Takeda Kizaemon, who died impoverished and ill,
holding his tea bowl. All subsequent owners of
the bowl were also afflicted, until "Kizaemon"
was given to the Daitoku-ji subtemple Koho-an.
This tale has been told of many treasures, East and
West, but its significance here lies in its demonstration of the romantic and cultist nature of the
later Tea Ceremony.
The spirit of Zen, directing and confirming the
new masters of Japan in their appreciation of utilitarian Korean farm vessels, helped to make the Tea
Ceremony an insignia of the cultural elite of the
post-Momoyama (after 1615) period. In this
development Korea was a passive and humble but
ultimately potent agent: invaded by the Japanese
(1592), despoiled by the invaders of not only its
folk wares but many of the potters who made
them and thereby coming to exert strong and

lasting influence on the aesthetics of the Japanese

cult of Tea.
The initial instincts of the "finder" of such a
tea bowl were largely correct. The Ido type bowl
was an almost perfect expression of the ideals of
the early Tea Ceremony (Cha no yu): humble,
rural, natural, and congenial to hold. The neutral
"loquat" color, the rough surface, the granitic,
stony nodules of the base, the straightforward
shape and casual potting, all combine to express
the not ignoble ideals of the Tea Ceremony in its
early and most convincing form.
Today the world of Tea is far different: a contemporary tea bowl (J: cha wan) or a cold-water
jar (J: mizusashi) may be bought for less than half
price it one does not insist also on acquiring the
accompanying wooden container, inscribed not by
the potter but by a leading master of a contemporary Tea Ceremony organization. "Kizaemon"
became a tea bowl in a far different time and context. It exists in its own right and, stripped of
old and modern myth, bespeaks the humble and
forthright virtues of what we condescendingly
call folk art.
S.E.L.

282

flowers, Xs, or dots. Paired phoenixes allude to a

flourishing marriage, and the box may have held
valuable presents, perhaps a headdress with
accompanying ornaments.
Mother-of-pearl inlay was common to the
decorative arts of China, Korea, and Japan, and
flourished particularly in China in the Tang (618907) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties and during
the Heian period in Japan (794-1185). Mother-ofpearl-decorated Korean objects antedating the
Choson period (1392-1910) are rare, one notable
example being the thirteenth-century sutra box in
the British Museum. With the Choson period
examples become more numerous, and early ones,
such as this box, retain to some extent the small
scale and finely detailed execution of Chinese
works. On later objects the floral arabesque is
omnipresent, and the motifs tend to be much
larger and rougher in execution. In their boldness
and strength those designs recall the decoration of
the popular (or "folkish") Cizhou ceramics produced in Northern Song (960-1127) China.
The style of decoration on the present box falls
somewhere between the small scale of the thirteenth century and the bold works of the seventeenth century and later. Decorative fields
bounded with twisted wire, as on this box, seem
to be characteristic of Korean lacquer work. S.E.L.

ORNAMENT CASE
i$th century
Korea
lacquered wood with mother-of-pearl inlay
height 15.2 (6), width 28.5 fn2/4J, length 19.8 f/3/4J
Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne
The design, complex and well executed, is focused
on the lid, with a pair of flying phoenixes flanking
a circular motif (sun?) within a cusped cartouche;
the remaining decoration on the lid, and on all
four sides of the box, consists of seven-petaled
floral arabesques within rectangular borders of

T O W A R D CATHAY

427

MING

CHINA

283
PORTRAIT OF THE HONGZHI EMPEROR
i6th-iyth century
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
209.8 x 115 (825/s x 452/4)
National Palace Museum, Taipei
To manifest and to consecrate the glory of the
emperor and his reign may be regarded as the
general function of all court art, but this proposition is nowhere so clear as in formal imperial portraits. These present and magnify not so much the
specific individual, although affording some verisimilitude in facial details (such as the full beard
in the present example), but rather the institution
itselfthe eternal throne rather than its temporary occupant. Symbols and their extended
connotations are thus of more than ordinary
importance and carry much of the intended
meaning of such paintings.
Yellow, the color of the northern loess soil of
the Middle Kingdom, was the actual name of one
of China's most famous legendary rulers and,
from about the sixth century onward, only the
emperor could wear garments of that color. The
dragon, general symbol of fertility and male
vigor, also signified the emperor from the Han
dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) onward, especially
dragons with five claws; nine dragon-filled rondels are visible on the robe here and additional
dragons appear on the three-panel screen which
encloses the Son of Heaven and on the rug beneath his throne. Monkeys alternate with tigers
on the cushion which bolsters the ruler and
appear also in vessels depicted just below the waist
of his robe. The very loose and flowing sleeves
bear images of pheasants, which are female symbols and here represent the empress.
A red sun and white moon embellish the shoulders, and paired insignia extend vertically from
waist to hem of the robe; two sacrificial vessels
(one decorated with a monkey, the other with a
tiger), water plant, flames, rice, ax, and a fu pattern (symbolizing the distinction between right
and wrong). Together with the dragons and
pheasants, and with the addition of symbols for
mountains and constellations (not seen on this
robe), these make up a standard group of twelve
imperial insignia that were incorporated into the
Ming legal code by the dynastic founder. Long
before that, however, since about the third century B.C., these symbols had been hallowed by
428

CIRCA 1492

association with Emperor Shun, an early successor

to the Yellow Emperor: "I wish to view the symbols of the ancients. Take those for the sun, the
moon, the stars, the mountain, the dragon, and
the pheasant and do paintings in color on ancestral

temple vases; take those for the water plant, fire,

husked grain, rice, the ax, and the symbol of distinction and embroider them in color on robes of
fine linen/' Relating to the emperor's powers as
well as to his ritual obligations, the symbols also

assert his explicitly cosmic role as intermediary

between heaven and earth.
Having learned so much about the emperor's
status from the painting, it may seem ungrateful
to observe that it tells us little about Zhu Youtang
(1470-1505) himself. Born the third son of the
Chenghua emperor (r. 1464-1487) and an aborigine maid in the palace, Zhu grew into a humane
and much admired monarch (r. 1487-1505) who is
also notable for his devotion to one woman, his
empress and the mother of all his children.
Although the court academy of painters was quite
active under this ruler, the only portrait of him by
a known artist was painted by a man who refused
an invitation to join that body. Recommended by
a provincial governor, Jiang You traveled to Beijing and successfully completed a portrait of Zhu
but then declined a permanent appointment on
the grounds that he was uncultivated and rustic.
The present painting, however, which adheres
closely to established laws and protocols for
imperial portraiture, must be the work of some
court specialist in the genre.
Among the twenty-seven extant large-scale
imperial portraits of the Ming period, five are
half-length bust images (four depicting the first
emperor and one his empress), and one is an
equestrian portrait of the Xuande emperor (r.
1425-1435).The remaining twenty-one portray
their subjects seated; within this group there are
considerable differences among the earlier eleven
portraits, whereas the ten beginning with Zhu
Qizhen (1427-1464) are very close in composition, detail, and even physical condition, suggesting that they may not all date from the lifetime
of the person portrayed. This in fact is certain in
the case of the emperor posthumously titled Xian
Huangdi, for Zhu Youyuan (1476-1519) was elevated to imperial status only posthumously and
never actually ruled.
According to an account of Beijing during
the late Ming period, written by Sun Chengze
(1593-1675):

284
Wang Ao and Shen Zhou
1450-1524 and 1427-1509

ODE TO THE POMEGRANATE

AND MELON
c. 1490
Ming China
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
i47x86(577/8X337/8)
references: Edwards 1962, 75, 76, xxxn, pi. 460;
Goodrich and Fang 1976, 2:1343-1346; New Haven
1977,195, 263-264, no. 32

Detroit Institute of Arts

The calligrapher Wang Ao signed this work and
added one seal, the painter Shen Zhou appended
two seals but no signature. Of the four collector's
seals, the two on the left are unidentified, the two
on the right are those of the noted connoisseur
Liang Qingbiao (1620-1691).
Wang's long poem is executed in xing-cao (part
way between semicursive and cursive) style, a
sketchy mode which may be traced back to the
Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 25-220). Richard

Edwards has summarized the poem as a "kind of

talisman, a propitiatory offering for the birth
of a son to one long denied this blessing, to be
presented to a mutual friend/' In many cultures
the pomegranate has been a symbol of fertility
and fecundity, a symbolism reinforced here by the
ever-replenishing nature of the melon.
Shen's authorship of the painting, attested by
his two seals and by Wang's poem, which names
him as the painter, is confirmed by the high
quality, freshness, and spontaneity of the image.
Branches, twigs, and vine are linear and calligraphic, while the better part of the painting is
executed in colored washes without ink outlines
what the Chinese call the "boneless" (mo gu)
method. The result is a wet and apparently
burgeoning depiction of leaves and fruit, visually
suggesting the celebration of fertility written
above.
Wang Ao rose from the peasantry to become a
scholar-official and eventually Grand Secretary at
the court of the Zhengde emperor (r. 1505-1521).
An accomplished Confucian scholar, he followed
the conservative Han dynasty Confucian tradition
rather than the more fashionable Neo-Confucianism of the thirteenth and later centuries. His

The Spirit-Shadow Hall is to the northeast of

the imperial ancestral temple. It receives and
stores portraits of emperors of the various
dynasties. Each year, on the sixth day of the
sixth lunar month, the temple provides them
with festive coverings and they are taken to the
ancestral temple. On their return to the SpiritShadow Hall they are hung to dry in the sun.
On the fall of the capital to the Manchus in 1644,
the entire group of Ming and earlier imperial portraits became part of the Qing imperial collection.
The paintings were stored by the new rulers from
the north in the Southern Fragrance Hall and
were recorded in palace inventories taken in 1749
and 1816. Subsequently moved to a summer
palace in Manchuria, the paintings were returned
to Beijing in 1913 and, in 1948, were transported
to Taiwan, the easternmost portion of the domain
ruled by this august Ming personage.
H.R.
T O W A R D CATHAY

429

relationship by marriage to the imperial family,

along with his native ability and subtlety, enabled
him to endure and prevail amid the swarming
intrigues of court and army during the middle
Ming period. He was also a learned student of his
region, editing gazetteers of Suzhou and of the
Lake Tai area. His calligraphy, prose, and poetry
were much admired.
Shen Zhou was primarily a landscape painter;
for him, flowers or "fur and feathers'' were infrequent subjects. This Pomegranate and Melon picture is one of his very best essays in the genre
an opinion concurred in by Liang Qingbiao, one of
the two or three greatest collectors in Chinese art
history, who included this work among the relatively small number of Ming paintings in a vast
collection devoted primarily to earlier works.
S.E.L.

285
Zhu Yunming
1461-1527

THOUSAND-CHARACTER ESSAY
dated to 1523
Chinese
handscroll; ink on paper
31.1 x 372.9 (i2V4 x i467/s)
reference: New Haven 1977
National Palace Museum, Taipei
. . . Although my brushwork is clumsy, it has
never before come out like this. On the i6th
day of the 4th intercalary month of the year
[1523], I went by Yunzhuang's house. After
drinking wine, he brought out some sutra paper
and requested me to write the ThousandCharacter Essay. Yunzhuang and I are close
friends, so I forced myself to write this, but it
will certainly be laughed at even by the generous. The old wood-gatherer of Zhi Mountain,
Zhu Yunming.
The Qian Zf Wen, or Thousand-Character Essay,
employs one thousand characters, each only once.
At least two partly differing versions of the text
are known. Authorship of the original essay is
also unclear, but one tradition holds that Zhong
You (151-230) was the first to write the text and
that Wang Xizhi (303 7-361 ?) followed him.
During the Sui dynasty (589-618) a descendant of
Wang Xizhi, the monk Zhi-Yong (act. late 6th
century), over a period of about thirty years wrote
some eight hundred copies of the text in his
ancestor's style of calligraphy and distributed
them among various monasteries, thereby ensuring that Wang's style gained ever greater acceptance and authority. The Qian Zi Wen attained
great pedagogical importance, for it was often
written employing a different mode of script in
430

CIRCA 1492

detail

each of the parallel vertical columns, thus providing students with canonical models to learn from.
Accomplished calligraphers also wrote the text,
which became so well known that viewers could
concentrate their full attention on style rather
than content, on the writing performance rather
than the denotative meaning of the characters
themselves.
Zhu Yunming is widely hailed as the greatest
calligrapher of the Ming dynasty, peer of the
greatest masters of antiquity. He was trained in
literature and guided in his early study of calligraphy by his father, Zhu Xian (c. 1435-c. 1483), and
by his two grandfathers, the scholar-official Zhu
Hao (1405-1483) and Grand Secretary Xu Youzhen (1407-1472). Zhu later married the daughter
of the highly regarded calligrapher Li Yingzhen
(1431-1493), who was also the teacher of Zhu's
close friend Wen Zhengming (cat. 286, 317).
After passing the second-level examination in
1492, Zhu held office for only about five years, as
magistrate in Guangdong Province from 1515 to
about 1520, and enjoyed most of the rest of his life
in Suzhou with such friends as Wen and Tang Yin
(cat. 297-299).
According to Zhu himself, his father forbade
study of any modern calligrapher, insisting that
the precocious youth learn from the great masters
of the past. Wen Zhengming thus wrote of his
friend: "... [Zhu Yunming] alone was able to
absorb the merits of all the different scripts. The
reason is that when he was young, there was no
calligraphy he did not study; but having once

studied it, there was nothing in which he was not

able to achieve complete mastery" (translation
from New Haven 1977, p. 205). Zhu's particular
interest in the cursive style was likely inspired by
his grandfather Xu Youzhen, who himself followed the Tang paragons of that style, Huai-Su
and Zhang Xu. Zhu Yunming's highly subjective,
"wild" transformation of this mode was exceptionally innovative, therefore drawing great
opprobrium from conservative critics. His nonconformist personality and his iconoclastic ideas
on history and society seem entirely congruent
with his cursive writing, in which he at times
sacrificed coherent and balanced structure in order
to achieve maximum visual impact from simple
forms spontaneously written.
Zhu's Thousand-Character Essay of 1523 is
unusual within his oeuvre, and his colophon suggests that he was aware of that fact. It is written
in semicursive script (xing shu). The columns of
the text are spaced rather closely, which tends to
stress lateral connections and hence balances the
verticality of the columns themselves. Most of the
individual characters have broad or squat constructions, but within each column Zhu established a rhythmic progression of vertical,
horizontal, and oblique strokes that creates a
powerful and compelling movement from beginning to end. The strokes themselves are generally
fleshy and broad, with the clear and decisive
changes in width that suggest pulsating energy.
Zhu's various earlier models had long since been
internalized as a stylistic vocabulary that he could

manipulate freely. Although that freedom sometimes led him to flamboyant excess or to careless
instability, the present work shows him at his
very best, with strong, forceful, and individual
brushwork creating pictorial structures that are
truly classic in their disciplined balance and
restraint.
H.R.

286
Wen Zhengming
1470-1559
TEN FAMILY ADMONITIONS
dated to 1541
Chinese
handscroll; ink on paper
32.7 X 1,463.9 (l27/8 X 5/63/8J

National Palace Museum, Taipei

This scroll is not only a superb example of Wen

Zhengming's mature style of calligraphy but, considering the content of the text as well as the
artist's own inscription and the colophon, it is also
a document illuminating some basic cultural and
social values. It is inscribed:
Prefect Ziwu [Chen Yide] brought the admonitory words he had received from his father and
asked me to write them out so he could keep
TOWARD CATHAY

431

detail
them always at his side. How could I then not
sympathize with his desire not to neglect the
documents he had received ? It is unfortunate
that my writing is less than exemplary and
thus not a match for the ideas. On the 24th day
of the 2nd lunar month of the year [1541],
inscribed by Wen Zhengming.
The colophon reads:
This scroll was written by Master Hengshan
(Wen Zhengming) after I paid my respects and
requested it of him. During the eighth lunar
month, autumn, of the year [1538] of the Jiajing
reign-era, my father, the venerable minister
and prefect, personally wrote out a scroll and
presented it to me, entitling it Further Words
on Transgressions for the Family. I knelt down
[to receive the scroll] and then kept it as a treasure, carrying it in my hands wherever I went.
It is now thirty-two years later, but each time I
hold and read the scroll I truly hear my parent's
teachings and am overcome by emotion. I had
the scroll carefully traced and engraved in stone
and also wrote it out myself, keeping that in the
ancestral shrine together with the sacrificial
vessels.
Now I present this scroll [by Wen Zhengming]
to my second son, Compiler Siyu, hoping
that it will be handed down forever and never
perish. Throughout his life my father was honored for his essays on government affairs and
was written up in the dynastic records for a
title, but this need not be repeated here. It is
now ninety-six years since my father was born
and one hundred years since Hengweng (Wen
Zhengming) was born. In winter of the year
1570 I, the unfilial son Yide, wipe away my
tears and respectfully inscribe this with a hundred prayers at the age of seventy-four.
The text was originally composed by Chen
Hongmu (1474-1555), an official who rose in rank
from censor in Yunnan Province to vice-president
432

CIRCA 1492

of the Ministry of War in the capital. Chen

was not the first in his family to achieve official
prominence, for both his father, Chen Liang
(1446-1506), and his grandfather, Chen Yong
(1420-1462), had also served with distinction.
Given his heritage and training, it is natural that
Chen Hongmu's "family admonitions" in fact had
little to do with strictly household concerns but
rather dealt with the kinds of situations and problems that would be encountered by his son when
he took office. The sections thus touch on law,
trade, hearing litigation, etc., but concentrate
mostly on human relations, as two examples will
demonstrate:
If you should happen to meet a prominent
official at a rest station along the road, make it
your business to assist him with respectful
attention. Answer when questioned, but you
must not speak excessively. And even in ordinary intercourse it is good to consider [your
words] carefully.
When in office, all public business will naturally be done according to law. But you will also
serve senior officials sincerely and deal with
colleagues harmoniously; meet your superiors
with proper etiquette and your subordinates
with fairness. This is most important
By 1538, when he was in his mid-sixties, Chen
Hongmu had retired and was living in seclusion at
the foot of Mt. Gaowu. Perhaps feeling the pressures of advancing years, Chen, according to his
own statement here, "freely wrote out these ten
precepts as the spirit moved me. Although my
words are not in orderly sequence, they are moral
and practical. If you are able to embody them in
your actions they will serve as foundation for
great and far-reaching [undertakings]." Chen then
presented the scroll to his son, Chen Yide, who
had earned his second-level degree in 1525 and
later served as a prefectural official. Yide kept his
father's writing with him at all times, hence by
1541 the scroll must have shown signs of wear.

Yide then requested Wen Zhengming to write the

present copy, which in 1570 was passed on to
Yide's son, Chen Siyu, who five years earlier had
passed the top-level examination and who served
ultimately as vice-president of the Ministry of
Rites. Five generations of the Chen family are
thus known to have achieved some degree of success in officialdom, and both the strength and the
burdens of that tradition are evident from Chen
Yide's account here.
Most artists of the brush tend to become specialists in either painting or calligraphy; Wen
Zhengming is one of very few who is famed
nearly equally for both achievements. While still
a student in the prefectural school, Wen had
already demonstrated his determination to
become a good calligrapher by declining to join
his fellows in play during an absence of the teacher, rather spending the entire day copying and
recopying the Thousand-Character Classic. Wen's
assiduous dedication may be attributed in part to
the practical need for good writing when taking
the official examinations, but perhaps even more
to his family circumstances. Wen's grandfather
was a collector of some note, owning, for example,
calligraphy masterworks by such as Wang Xianzhi
(344-388). At least by 1488 Wen was studying
both calligraphy and painting with Shen Zhou
(cat. 316) and met and studied the Classics with
Shen's close friend Wu Kuan (see cat. 312). Three
years later Wen's father, the highly respected
scholar-official Wen Lin (1445-1499), introduced
the dedicated youth to Li Yingzhen (1431-1493),
then the ranking calligrapher in Suzhou and also
the father-in-law of Zhu Yunming (cat. 285). Wen
and Zhu played important roles in the mid-Ming
revival of earlier styles of calligraphy and established paradigms of excellence that remain standards yet today.
By 1541, the year in which he wrote the Ten
Family Admonitions for Chen Yide, Wen
Zhengming was generally recognized as the preeminent calligrapher in the country, especially in
the small regular (kai shu) and the semicursive
(or running, xing shu) script styles. His early
style of semicursive calligraphy had been strongly
influenced by that of the great Song dynasty
master Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), several of
whose works were owned by Shen Zhou. The
present rather cursive example of large semicursive style reveals Wen's study of the works of ZhiYong (act. late 6th century) and Wang Xizhi
(303 ?~36i ?). Wen's typical control is visible in the
straight lines and ordered disposition of the individual characters, which are given equal visual
weight by the forceful yet free and elegant
strokes. The heritage of such Yuan dynasty masters as Kangli Naonao (1295-1345) is here transformed by a more disciplined approach in which
the direction, orientation, shape, tonality, and
speed of each stroke is calculated with reference to
an ideal aesthetic whole.
H.R.

287

Shang Xi

active c. 1425-0. 1450

GUAN Yu CAPTURING PANG DE

c. 1430-1441
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
200 x 237 f/83/4 x 932/4J

references: Erewitt-Taylor 1925, 147-156; Cahill

1978, 25-26

Palace Museum, Beijing

Little is known about Shang Xi except that he was

from Puyang, now in southern Hebei Province,
just over fifty miles southeast of Anyang, last
capital of the Shang dynasty (trad. 1766 B.C.-1045
B.C.). By the Ming dynasty this region, the heartland of ancient China, had become artistically
conservative. Shang Xi must have been recognized as a talented master to have been called to
the court of the Xuande emperor (r. 1425-1435)
and to have been appointed Commander in the
Embroidered Uniform Guard. This, the emperor's
personal bodyguard, functioned as a sinecure for
the ruler's personal favorites, including professional court musicians and painters. Shang was

noted as an animal and figure painter, but only

some four of his major works survive.
It is no coincidence that the huge scale, brilliant
color, and theatrical figures in this painting recall
the comparable world of the great Chinese novels,
which were a literary innovation of the early
Ming dynasty. The subject is taken from the earliest of these inventions, the Romance of the
Three Kingdoms (San Guo Zhi Yan Yi) by Luo
Guanzhong. Written in simple and accessible
literary style, tending even to the colloquial in
passages of dialogue, Romance of the Three Kingdoms was based on the turbulent events of the
years 168-265 A.D., encompassing the breakdown
TOWARD CATHAY

433

and fall of the four-hundred-year-old Han

dynasty. Narrative, action, and dialogue in this
work are basically pictorial, and were embroidered
for dramatic, popular, and theatrical effect. The
late Yuan and early Ming period also witnessed
the rise of Chinese drama, and Shang Xi's
painting may well owe much in its appearance
to the grand poses and heroics beloved of the
Chinese theater. Even though the point of view in
these new literary genres was populist and antielitist, they were still most popular among
scholar-officials. Judging from Shang's large-scale
decorative painting shown here, they pleased the
court as well at least in its relaxed and "unofficial" moments.
The subject came from chapter 74 of San Guo
Zhi Yan Yi, in which the powerful officer Pang De
(d. A.D. 219) was charged by the wicked general
Cao Cao (A.D. 155-220) with the capture of the
virtuous general Guan Yu (d. A.D. 219). But Guan
was a master strategist: taking advantage of an
imminent flood, he turned the tables on Pang De,
taking him prisoner after destroying most of his
army in a heroic assault abetted by the rising
waters. Guan Yu then held a summary court on
the field of battle:
[Guan Yu] then returned to the higher ground
where his tent was pitched and therein took his
seat to receive his prisoners
[Pang De] was
sent for. He came, pride and anger flashing
from his eyes; he did not kneel but stood
boldly erect.
"You have a brother in [Hanzhong] and your
old chief was Ma Chao (A.D. 176-222), also
in high honor in Shu. Had you better not
join them?"
"Rather than surrender to you I would perish
beneath the sword," cried [Pang].
He reviled his captors without ceasing till,
losing patience at last, [Guan Yu] sent him to
his death. He was beheaded. He stretched out
his neck for the headsman's sword. Out of pity
he was honorably buried.
(Translation by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor.)
Obviously Shang Xi has not literally followed
the text: there is no tent for Guan Yu; Pang is
shown pinioned by his hair and right leg to a post
and stake; the flooded battlefield is suggested only
by ribbons of water gliding between cedar copses.
But simplifications such as these were used, then
and after, in Chinese theater. All emphasis is on
the actors, especially the two protagonists, who
are portrayed significantly larger than the bland
attending official, the guard with his halberd, and
the two soldiers binding the defeated general. The
facial expressions are histrionic, and suggest theatrical makeup. Probably the overall effect is just
what was intended high drama, highly visible
from a distance, not unlike the mural art of Buddhist temples during the Tang dynasty but wholly

434

CIRCA 1492

unlike the grave and reserved figure paintings

illustrating various classical episodes of Confucian
decorum. Some of the drama in the painting is
derived from the convincing detail of the military
costumes. These are rendered with a realism and
complexity quite different from the flatter, simplified symbolic fragments of nature in the settingpine, bamboo, briar, rock, cedar, and water
forming a somewhat perfunctory mise-en-scene
for the fully realized figures.
In another hanging scroll in the Palace
Museum, comparable in size to this one, Shang Xi
depicted The Xuande Emperor and His Hunting
Party. But how different this work from the scene
of Guan Yu and Pang De! Here the eclectic-traditional mode is dominant, and a more Confucian
decorum rules. Overall composition and disposition of the figures derive from traditional Tang
dynasty (618-907) depictions of imperial processions. The horses clearly echo the fourteenthcentury manner of the classic masters of the
genre, Zhao Mengfu, Zhao Yong, and Ren Renfa,
in turn beholden to Tang masters like Han Gan.
But the landscape and wild-animal elements are
all owed to the court painters of the Song dynasty
(960-1279). Indeed a survey of the gully on the
right presents almost a compendium of the
achievements of twelfth- and thirteenth-century
masters the crackling branches of Ma Yuan, the
birds and animals of Li Di, the pines of Liu Songnian. Mastery of these styles was required of an
important court painter of early Ming, as was
emulation of the realist style practiced in the
famous "Academy" of the last Northern Song
emperor, Hui Zong.
What truly distinguishes this scene is its inactivity. No one is hunting. No one has hunted.
In place of the older, more believable huntsmen
found in earlier scenes of this type, here we find
boy attendants resembling those at scholars'
party-gatherings. The cases that they bear could
contain qin a kind of zither, and the badge of the
gentleman-scholaras easily as bows. This is a
hunting scene for a sybaritic and aesthetic monarch. Tradition continues, but reality escapes. The
artist's talent for the dramatic, so fully expressed
in Guan Yu Capturing Pang De, has been overcome by the requirements of archaism and
protocol.
Besides Song Hui Zong (r. 1101-1126), the only
really gifted and accomplished painter in the long
roster of China's imperial rulers was the Ming
Xuande emperor (r. 1425-1435). And like Song
Hui Zong, the Ming artist-emperor was a
devoted, even too-generous patron of the arts,
recapturing at least in part the reputation of his
Song predecessor.
S.E.L.

288

Dai Jin
1388-1462
ZHONG Kui TRAVELING AT NIGHT
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
189.7 x 120.2 (745/s x 473/s)
signature and two seals of the artist at center left
references: Siren 1958, 4:128-133; Cahill 1978, 4553, pis. 10, 12-14; Rogers 1988, 117-118
Palace Museum, Beijing
Traditionally the legend of Zhong Kui began in an
emperor's dream. During the Kaiyuan reign-era
(713-741) of the Tang dynasty Emperor Ming
Huang dreamt that a small demon stole his jade
flute and his concubine Yang Guifei's purple scent
bag, whereupon a large and frightening demon
in scholar's cap and boots grabbed the thieving
demon, gouged out his eyes, tore him to pieces,
and devoured him. In the dream the large demon
identified himself as Zhong Kui, who some hundred years earlier had dashed out his brains in
shame and chagrin at having failed the civil service examination. The then emperor had ordered
an honorable burial befitting an official for the
failed scholar, who in gratitude vowed to be a
Demon Queller. Pictures of Zhong Kui with a
retinue of obedient, subservient demons still are
displayed during the twelfth lunar month just
before the Chinese New Year, and on the fifth day
of the fifth month, "Dragon Festival" day. Naturally Zhong Kui also became a kind of patron saint
for scholars and a generally protective and auspicious deity.
The New Year was customarily celebrated at the
Imperial Palace by a great exorcism of demons,
carried out by attendants and servants dressed to
represent various demon expellers, including
Zhong Kui, Pan Guan (Daoist Judge of Hell), Zao
Jun (the Stove King, or God of the Kitchen), and
others. Among commoners the Twelfth Moon
festivities were mostly focused on the Stove God,
Zao Jun, but small groups of beggars and unfortunates impersonated Zhong Kui's demons and
thus provided visual stimulation for pictorial
representations.
This masterly depiction of a demanding subject
situates Zhong Kui and his accompanying six
demons in a chilly, wintry landscape, with twisted
trees and branches competing with powerfully
drawn rocky cliffs and a waterfall foaming over
stepped rocks. Nevertheless figures dominate the
landscape, by virtue of strongly brushed drapery
and body boundaries as well as shaded ink wash
modeling. This is not a landscape with figures but
figures in a supporting setting. In its manner of
resolving the tension between figures and landscape, Dai Jin's work resembles Sesshu's
Daruma and Eka. The sheer size of the scroll

suggests its use in a large chamber or hall, perhaps

even in a noble, princely, or imperial setting, as a
decoration on Twelfth Moon day. In the strength
and especially the solidity of the figures this work
recalls the early fourteenth-century master Yan
Hui, who pursued a relatively "realistic" lightand-shade modeling technique which rivals anal-

ogous achievements in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury European painting. Unfortunately, aside

from such rare essays as this one by Dai Jin, this
way of painting was abandoned by the leading
masters of the Ming dynasty, thus cutting off
certain possibilities for variety and complexity in
later Chinese painting. Mao Dalun, writing in the

seventeenth century, offered a perceptive appreciation of Dai's accomplishment: "... his pictures
of gods were most dignified and the devils were
fierce. He mastered completely the coloring of the
garments and the drawing of their folds (with
light and dark tones) and was not inferior to the
great masters of the [Tang] and [Song] periods."
(Translation from Tuhui Baojian, xuzuan, in Siren
1958, 131.)
One should note that the red-haired demon
bringing up the rear carries Zhong's sword and
zither (qiri), attributes of the scholar-official, and
that the tattered parasol and lightweight bamboo
chair-litter seem more appropriate for south
China than for this wintry environment. Still, the
lone sprig of blossom in the demon-scholar's cap
suggests the approach of spring.
Dai Jin, from Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province,
is traditionally acknowledged as the founder and
first master of what came to be known as the Zhe
school of painting (after the first syllable of his
native province, Zhejiang). He was considered a
great master in his own time, and legends and
anecdotes gathered about his name. His excellence
at figure painting and realistic depiction found
(apocryphal) expression in the tale of his locating
a larcenous porter by circulating the local wine
shops with a sketch of the man. Dai may have
worked on the Bao'en Si, a major Buddhist temple
begun under imperial auspices in 1407 at Nanjing,
then the Ming capital. By 1421 the capital had
been moved to Beijing, and Dai followed in hopes
of appointment as a court painter. Though recommended by a high court official, Dai Jin fell afoul
of the intrigues and jealousies of the Xuande
emperor's court and its leading painters and fled
Beijing for Hangzhou, re-embarking on a career
of Daoist and Buddhist figure painting. The animosity of the imperial art advisor, Xie Huan,
remained unappeased, however, and forced Dai to
flee to Yunnan Province in the far southwest, to
the entourage of Mu Sheng (1368-1439), a nobleman well known as a connoisseur and collector.
Ultimately he returned to Beijing, probably after
1440 (when the Xuande emperor was dead), and
finally achieved the measure of success his outstanding talent and accomplishments deserved.
Among his prominent supporters in the capital
was Wang Ao (1384-1467), a famous official and
calligrapher.
Dai Jin's excellence was fully understood by his
only rival of the time in fame, Shen Zhou, the
leading master of literati painting (wen ren hud)
and founder of the Wu school, centered in
Suzhou. Contemporaneous and near-contemporaneous records and critical literature were
highly respectful of Dai Jin's art; only in late
Ming and in Qing, after Chinese art had become
polarized between the "professionals" and the
wen ren, with the wen ren seizing the moral and
aesthetic high ground, did the Zhe school in general and Dai Jin in particular begin to lose their
luster in received opinion.
S.E.L.
TOWARD CATHAY

435

289
Huang Ji
active late 5th century

SHARPENING THE SWORD

Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
170.7 x 111 (6'71/4 x 433/4J
Palace Museum, Beijing
A bearded, fiery-eyed, and muscular figure,
standing barefoot in a river, whets the blade of his
sword. The tattered gown and the double-gourd (a
medicine container) attached to his sash make him
a Daoist, and the nearby crutch incongruous for
this strapping fellowidentifies him as Li Tieguai, "Iron-Crutch Li," one of the most potent of
the Eight Immortals of Daoism. As suggested by
the astral emanation rising from his head, Li was
able to roam the universe in spirit, leaving his
mortal body behind in the care of a disciple. Once,
however, the disciple was called away to the
deathbed of his mother and, hastily concluding
that his nearly overdue master was never returning, cremated Li's body before leaving. When Li
did return, he found his own body in ashes, and
for mortal housing his spirit was forced to enter
the body of a crippled beggar who had just died
not far off. Lao Zi, the progenitor of Daoism, then
gave Li an iron crutch for the crippled leg and a
halolike gold band to restrain his disheveled hair.
A sword, on the other hand, was the standard
accouterment of the leader of the Eight Immortals, Lii Dongbin, who used his "Exorcising Evil
Spirits" blade throughout the realm on behalf of
the forces of good. The tense posture and heedful
expression of the present figure suggests that the
powerful Daoist is in fact on guard, ready at a
moment's notice to fly with righteous sword in
hand to the defense of the realm. This interpretation of the iconography is supported by a label,
recorded as having belonged to the painting,
which read: "Single-handedly Guarding Court
Principles."
The unusual combination here of the whetstone
rock and a river is also to be found in the oath of
allegiance sworn to the founder of the Han
dynasty, Emperor Gao Zu (r. 206-195 B.C.), by
subjects being ennobled. Those so honored promised fealty until sacred Mt. Tai was reduced to the
size of a whetstone and the mighty Yellow River
narrowed to the width of a sash. Thus the present
painting may also have connoted loyalty to the
throne, and might have been intended for presentation to an official charged with overseeing court
ethics.
Virtually all that is known of the painter of this
arresting image comes from his inscription here:
"Painted by Huang Ji of Sanshan, a Judge in the
Embroidered Uniform Guard attached to the Hall
of Humane Knowledge." Huang thus held rank in
436

CIRCA 1492

the personal bodyguard of the emperor and came

to court from coastal Fujian Province, the birthplace of a number of artists who served the court
during the fifteenth century. A local gazetteer
records that Huang Ji was summoned to court
with Zhou Wenjing, but Zhou's dates are as elusive as those of Huang. Perhaps the clearest indication of Huang's period of activity comes from
the legend on one of his seals appearing on this,
his only known painting: Daily Approaching the
Pure Radiance. This legend appears on the seals of
a significant number of artists who served the
court of the Chenghua emperor (r. 1464-1487),
the presumed source of "pure radiance" during his
reign. The succeeding Hongzhi emperor (r. 14871505) was himself a moral man and highly principled ruler who is known to have praised one of
his court artists for "skill in manipulating his craft
for the purpose of admonishment." The present
painting, which in expressionistic style suggests

acquaintance with the work of Yan Hui of the

early Yuan dynasty, manifests a didactic intent
that is commensurate with a dating to the late
fifteenth century.

H.R.

290
WangE
c. 1465-0. 1545

GAZING AFAR FROM

A RIVERSIDE PAVILION
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
143.2 x 229 ($63/8 x yoVs)
Palace Museum, Beijing
A scholar, attended by no fewer than three servants, stands on the veranda of a viewing pavilion
built over the shoals of a wide expanse of water; a
covered walkway connects that quiet retreat with
a larger building complex situated on the rocky
shore. Tall pines overhang the building but are
dwarfed in turn by the massive bulk of the overhanging escarpment. This cliff serves to emphasize the seclusion of the house and its degree of
separation from the mundane world, which is represented by the fishing village on the far shore
and the roofs of large structures visible above the
distant mist.
Deep recession into pictorial space is achieved
through skillful manipulation of size relation-

ships, judicious decrease in the amount of descriptive detail, and careful grading of ink tonality.
This self-contained pictorial world is organized
around the diagonal axes of the picture so as to
create tension between the lower right corner,
filled with solid, discrete forms, and the upper
left, occupied by mist and far less substantial
forms. The painting is further distinguished by
the use of meticulous, ruled-line drawing for the
architecture and slashing "ax-cut" brush strokes
to texture and model the rock and mountain
forms. These stylistic features are all hallmarks of
an academic style of painting associated especially
with the Southern Song master Ma Yuan, whose
"one-cornered" compositions were surely models
for the present painting.
Its technical virtuosity, sheer size, and unusual
format all mark Gazing Afar from a Riverside
Pavilion as a painting destined for the topmost
levels of contemporaneous society, for only the
very rich or artistocratic could command the services of an artist so accomplished, or possessed
houses sufficient to accommodate the finished
work. The painting was clearly designed to function as the centerpiece of some room and was
originally mounted either to be hung in a formal
reception hall or as a screen similar to that seen in

the painting by Du Jin (cat. 293). The precise

provenance of the present work is in fact indicated
by the legends of two of the seals impressed on its
surface: Hongzhi, which was the reign-name used
by Emperor Zhu Youtang (r. 1487-1505), and
Guang yun zhi bao, a legend appearing on seals
used by the Xuande emperor (r. 1426-1435) and
his successors.
Wang E, the painter of this striking landscape,
was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, near the
important port city of Ningbo. His earliest teacher, an artist named Xiao Feng, was from the same
district and may have held rank in the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the imperial bodyguard. It
was likely via recommendation by such as Xiao
that Wang E first came to the attention of the
imperial court, which he served during the Hongzhi reign while attached to the Hall of Humane
Wisdom. Wang's skill in painting soon drew the
praise of such notables as the philosopher Chen
Xianzhang (1428-1500), but seemingly no one
admired his work more than the reigning
emperor, who expressed his respect for the artist
in terms of comparison with the great Southern
Song master: "Wang E is the Ma Yuan of today."
During the succeeding Zhengde reign (15061521), Wang seems to have been reassigned

T O W A R D CATHAY

437

to the Hall of Military Valor and was promoted

first to battalion commander and then to guard
commander in the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
In the year 1510 the emperor also conferred on
Wang a seal which he subsequently used on his
paintings, together with a patterned sash and
strings of white-gold cash.
Although Wang was one of the major court
artists of the mid-Ming period, only two of his
extant paintings can be associated with specific
dates; both were painted for Japanese envoys on
their departure from the court in Beijing. The
earlier work was done for Minamoto Nagaharu in
1510, the later for Sakugen Shuryo (1501-1579),
who made two trips to China, first in 1539-1541
and again in 1547-1550. Wang E's painting, which
most likely commemorates Sakugen's earlier trip,
bears seals whose legends testify to his imperial
service extending over two reigns: "Seal presented by the emperor to Wang E" and "Twice
invited to face the Brightness [i.e., into the
presence of the emperor]." It is said that Wang
retired from court service because of illness and
returned home, where he trained several students
before dying past the age of eighty. This would
suggest that Wang was born about 1465 and died
about 1545.
H.R.

291

Lii Wenying

active late fifteenth century

RIVER VILLAGE IN A RAINSTORM

c. 1500
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk
169.2 x 103.5 (665/s x 4O3/4J
signed (at upper right): Lii Wenying/ seal of the
artist: Ri Jin Qing Guang (Daily Approaching the
Pure Radiance)
references: Cahill 1978, 108, 125; Cleveland 1980,
no. 139

Cleveland Museum of Art

Until the appearance of this painting in 19691970, Lii Wenying was known only through two
figure paintings of the traditional virtuoso subject
The Knickknack Peddler, requiring technical
virtuosity in the depiction of the "hundred
things/' but not much imagination or invention.
The wild, driving quality and singleness of purpose of this painting is therefore astounding by
contrast it is one of the very best renditions of a
rainstorm within the traditional mode of Chinese
painting, revealing Lii the prosaic figure painter
as Lii the master of dramatic landscape.
Lii became a vice-commander in the Imperial
Guard of the Hongzhi (r. 1487-1505) and
438

CIRCA 1492

Zhengde (r. 1505-1521) emperors, and is said to

have given up painting for civil administration by
1507. Contemporaneous records associated him
with Lii Ji (c. 1440-^ 1505), who as the more
famous of the two was "Big Lii" to Wenying's
"Little Lii." Aside from this we know nothing
except his capabilities as attested by this painting.
Rainstorms had become a subject for Chinese
painting at least as early as Southern Song (11271279), in lost works by Xia Gui (c. n8o-c. 1220),
and the genre was continued by such Ming stalwarts as Dai Jin (1388-1462). In this rendition Lii
achieved a perfect if precarious balance between
inspiration and skill. Nature in a violent aspect
was presented with sweeping grandeur, at the
same time that the technical virtuosity of the
artist was allowed full play. Some scholars see a
reliance on the traditions of the Southern Song
dynasty, but a more localized reading suggests the
artist's awareness of his contemporaries, especially

Zhou Chen's (d. c. 1536) landscapes (cat. 295).

These in turn owe much to thirteenth-century
styles, but in place of the tranquil landscapes
of the Southern Song tradition offer a daring
new view of nature in its most dramatic, even
threatening aspects. Lii Wenying's painting,
revealing a striking balance between professional
control of technique and dynamic realization of
the forces depicted, is a major work by a major
S.E.L.
artist.

Works like Ma's hanging scroll of Spring in the

Cleveland Museum of Art were available at court
to be studied. To the smaller scale and decorous
elegance of the Ningbo tradition of flower-andbird painting, Ming court painters added elements
from this currently approved Southern Song
court style. They could hardly have known that
their manner would soon and for centuries to
comebe roundly denigrated in China by the
practitioners and theorists of the ascendant literati
(wen ren) mode.
Japan, however, offered fertile soil for their
achievements. From the port city of Ningbo,
which had long been also a center of commercial
decorative painting, flower-and-bird paintings
were shipped in quantity to Japan, where they are
still to be found in large numbers. Their conservative, decorative style, realistic in detail, obviously recommended itself to Japanese buyers.
Likewise, the style of the Southern Song academy
became a major force in Japanese art. This scroll
and others anticipate the decorative revolution of
the Kano school in Japan (cat. 236), which began
only about two decades later.
s.E. L.

293

Dujin

active c. 1465-^. 1500

ENJOYING ANTIQUITIES
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
126.1 x 187 (495/s x 735/sj
National Palace Museum, Taipei

292
Yin Hong
active c. 1500

FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF EARLY SPRING

hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
168.7 x IO2-7 (663/s x 4O3/s)
signature and one seal of the artist
The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
Yin Hong is known by only two works, both in
American collections the present scroll and
The Hundred Birds Admiring the Peacock in the
Cleveland Museum of Art. Nearly contemporaneous records indicate that his specialty was "fur
and feathers" and that he rivaled his famous contemporary, Lii Ji, in his depiction of bird, flower,
and animal subjects. The Hundred Birds, which

epitomizes the respect due the emperor from his

subjects, suggests that Yin was working at or near
the imperial court. The Kimbell painting, less
traditional, anticipates fruitful future developments by later artists, especially in Japan, in the
"fur and feathers" genre.
A bolder sense of design than was traditional in
"fur and feathers" paintings is more than manifest in this work. Though Early Spring employs
standard motifs pheasants and other exotic
birds, rocks and torrents, snow-covered cliffs and
overhanging tree limbs these are shown close up
and dramatically organized for a daring, largescale, highly kinetic decorative effect. The sources
for this seem evident; as part of their effort to
restore bygone glories, Ming emperors patronized
the styles of the Song emperor Hui Zong (r. 11011126) and of such Southern Song court painters
as Ma Yuan (act. before ii9o-c. 1230)

Two scholars examine a variety of ancient bronze

and ceramic vessels while a servant approaches
with a chess board in the lower left; two women
attendants unwrap a musical instrument on a
marble-topped table which bears several scrolls
and albums. The four canonical scholarly pleasures of lute, chess, calligraphy, and painting thus
await their turn to enrich the lives of the gentlemen, who inhabit a realm separated from the
outer world both physically and symbolically by
works of art. The inscription makes great claims
for art the verse asserting the moralizing effect
of connoisseurship, the prose claiming a transcendental theme for the painting itself:
Enjoying antiquities is of course common
and their scope is great;
In paying homage to images and determining
their names lie propriety and pleasure.
If a man's days lack propriety and pleasure
then to the contrary he will be ashamed;
Doing this will rectify one,
and that is what I wait for.
[signed] Du Jin, called Chengju. Jianmian
T O W A R D CATHAY

439

requested an Enjoying Antiquities picture

together with an inscription. I seem to have
sought for something beyond the forms, and
that concept is manifested apart from my
words. Viewers can judge for themselves.
Unusual in both size and shape, the original
format of Enjoying Antiquities was undoubtedly
a fixed-frame screen of the type portrayed in the
painting itself at upper right. The illusionistic
device of portraying another painting within a
painted screen so-called double-screen picturesseems to have been popularized in the
tenth century by such artists as Zhou Wenju.
Paintings-within-paintings also appear in Gu
Hongzhong's (act. 943-960) Night Revels of Han
Xizai, a scroll known to have been copied by the
present artist and one which provides clear
precedent for the diagonal placement of the utensil-laden table seen here. Thus, in its original
format, Enjoying Antiquities not only engaged
the eye and protected the body from winds and
drafts but also carried historical and stylistic connotations that would have served to validate the
high cultural status of its owner.
440

CIRCA 1492

Du Jin was born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province,

but was a registered resident of Beijing during
most of his adult life. During the Chenghua reign
(1464-1487), after pursuing a course of classical
studies, Du sat for the highest-level examination
in the capital; failing to place, he gave up the idea
of an official career and turned to writing and
painting. Du's prose was characterized as strange
and antique, his poetry as elegant and assured, but
it was as a painter that Du made a lasting mark.
The painter and art collector Zhan Jingfeng (15201602) ranked him as the foremost figure painter
of the Ming dynasty, and Du's influence can be
seen in the work of both Qiu Ying (cat. 301) and
Tang Yin (cat. 297). In fact, according to Zhan
Jingfeng, Tang based his own copy of the Night
Revels scroll on Du's version rather than on the
original painting.
Du Jin must have been very close in age to
Shen Zhou (cat. 311-315), who wrote to his friend
(addressing Du by his earlier surname, Lu):
"... I would like to keep you here through the
winter; in a deep bamboo grove by the clear river
is a rustic hut/' When Tang Yin met Du in Beijing

in 1499, the master was not only old but poor,

suggesting that the taste for Du's elegant and
highly skilled renditions of classical subjects was
being eroded, especially in the north, by the far
more forceful styles of Wu Wei and Wang Zhao.
The calligraphic scribbling of rock textures in one
of Du's latest extant paintings suggests that Du
himself perceived a limited future for the harmonious restraint exemplified so beautifully in
Enjoying Antiquities.
H.R.

294

Dujin
active c. 1465-c. 1500

ON VIEWING A PAINTING
OF THE PEACH-BLOSSOM SPRING
Chinese
section of a handscroll; ink on paper
28 x 108.2 (11 x 425/s)
Palace Museum, Beijing

A gowned and capped scholar stands before a

fixed-frame screen in the corner of a secluded
garden, his only companions a large, fantastically
weathered garden rock, banana palms, and a servant holding a scroll and lacquered box. As in

Enjoying Antiquities by the same artist (cat.

293), the high and focused viewpoint is reminiscent of handscroll compositions of the tenth
century; here, as in those earlier paintings, the
isometric perspective creates an extremely inti-

mate mood as we peep through a corner crack of

the angular pictorial box and experience for a
moment the privileged life of a Chinese literatus.
According to an inscription written for this
scroll in 1500 by the well-known calligrapher,
T O W A R D CATHAY

44!

poet, and painter Jin Zong (1449-1501), someonewhose name was subsequently erased,
presumably to avoid embarrassment when that
person disposed of the scroll commissioned Jin
to write out twelve famous poems by the greatest
of Tang and Song dynasty poets. Jin continued:
I then took these and requested Du Chengju
(Du Jin) to do illustrations of them. Chengju
didn't mind that my calligraphy was presumptuously placed in the position of honor. When
the pure traces [of his brush] are present, and
his paintings are finished, there will certainly
be those who will say that the pearls and jade
are to the side and will regard my imitations as
corrupt. But how can I excuse myself?
Despite those polite words of Jin Zong, the absence of Du's signature and seals on his paintings
suggests that in fact he was the less important
member of the artistic partnership.
Second among the nine extant sections of the
original twelve, Du's On Viewing a Painting of
the Peach-Blossom Spring illustrates a poem by
Han Yu (768-824) describing his reaction to a
painting received from a friend; that painting
illustrated the Peach-Blossom Spring, a prose tale
composed by Tao Qian (365-427). Du's painting
thus portrays the Tang poet Han Yu as he is led
by the thoughtful gift first to muse on the original story, in which a fisherman discovers a paradisiacal village lost to the outer world since the
third century B.C. , and then to consider the
epochal political and social changes since then.
442

CIRCA 1492

Han's tense posture and concentrated expression

suggest that he is composing his own poem as we
watch, his upraised hand beating out the metric
rhythms of his lines.
In the screen painting at which Han Yu gazes,
the fisherman, in straw coat and hat, has moored
his boat and walks with oar on shoulder toward
the cave from which the spring emerges and
which, in Tao's original story, gave access to the
hidden valley. Quickly and spontaneously drawn
strokes structure the amorphous washes in the
painting-within-a-painting, much as they do the
strangely shaped rocks in the garden within which
both screen and poet stand. Du's landscape style
thus appears quite up-to-date and "modern" in
comparison with the more conservative style
found in Enjoying Antiquities. But given Du's
knowledge of earlier motifs and styles, as well as
the subtlety with which he used them, it is also
possible that the screen painting at which Han Yu
gazes embodies to some extent Du's conception of
Tang landscape styles, especially that termed po
mo, "splashed or broken ink/' which is known to
have flourished during the ninth century and
within the lifetime of Han Yu.
Du's stylistic range in figure painting, broader
even than that in his landscapes, extends from the
tautly controlled line-and-color approach of
Enjoying Antiquities to the freer, more relaxed
rhythms found in this bai miao monochromatic
linear style. This too has Tang dynasty precedents,
in the work of Wu Daozi (d. 792), for example,
but Du's more direct models were such literati

masters as Li Gonglin (c. 1049-1106) of the Song

and Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) and Zhang Wu
(act. c. 1336-c. 1366) of the Yuan dynasty. Du
came to be regarded by some critics as the finest
Ming practitioner of the bai miao style. Zhan
Jingfeng (1520-1602) was one such admirer, and
his comments on Du's paintings are most
perceptive:
His drawing of both large and small figures is
the best of this dynasty. The brushwork of his
trees and rocks too is exceptionally dynamic,
unusually crisp and free, but in composition he
sometimes sinks to histrionics, an everlasting
injury to the painting. Throughout his whole
life he concentrated his mind on painting the
figures, whereas for the occasional tree or rock
he didn't pay attention and was careless
Some viewers today may well agree with Zhan,
while others, responding more to formal than to
descriptive criteria, will appreciate the spontaneity and expressiveness of those "careless" passages. It redounds to Du's credit and reputation
that he was able to present complex iconography
in such richly varied pictorial terms that his
paintings are as fresh and captivating now as they
were then.
H.R.

296

295

Zhou Chen
died c. 1536

THE NORTH SEA

Chinese
handscroll; ink and color on silk
28.4

X 136.6

(ll2/4 X 533/4J

signed: Dongcun Zhou Chen; seal of the artist:

Zhou Shi Shunqing; title (inscribed by the artist):
Bei Ming Tu (Picture of the North Sea)
references: Cahill 1978, 168-193; Cleveland 1980,
192-193
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Ari, Kansas City,
As one unrolls the handscroll from right to left,
the first motif to appear is the one embodied in
the title. An expanse of turbulent sea all rolling
waves and whitecaps is masterfully depicted
with varied linear brush strokes. A wind-lashed
pine tree marks the first land, then a two-story
scholar's residence appears, with the owner seated
in the upper "viewing pavilion/' From the left a
friend approaches, via a slender bridge over a
stream and falls. Deciduous trees compete in
movement with the thrusting large rocks leading
up to the mountain behind the house, a solid mass
that closes the picture. It is a deceptively simple
composition, but it powerfully expresses conflict,
stress, and agitation.
Laurence Sickman has pointed out that the title,
The North Sea, originates in the first chapter of
the Daoist classic Zhuang Zi, where a "great fish,

called [Kun], living in the North Sea . . . transforms itself into a monstrous bird called [Peng].
With a mighty effort the bird rises, and its wings
obscure the sky as it flies south, mounting on a
typhoon to a height of ninety thousand li.
Through this story, the North Sea (a Dark Ocean)
with its towering waves becomes a symbol of the
man who has high ambitions to succeed, and so
[Bei Ming] may serve as a man's hao [by name]
or a suitable name for his studio/'
Cahill has described the work as a "near-perfect
replication of the Li [Tang] mode as practiced in
the Southern [Song] period by Academy
artists
" The manner rivals the best of Southern Song (1127-1279) water pictures, such as the
Ma Yuan album in Beijing or the album leaf by Li
Song in Kansas City. But the look of the scroll is
pure Zhou Chen, impossible to confuse with earlier works. The solid realism evident here may
well derive from Song attitudes to the natural
world, but Zhou's strong individuality and thorough professionalism are manifest in a manner
more brusque than Li Tang's, an organization that
is simpler and more direct, and tonal contrasts
that are less extreme, less dramatic. Zhou was the
teacher of Tang Yin (cat. 297-299) and Qiu Ying
(cat. 300-302). He was not a wen ren and few of
his works bear inscriptions by others, but he
surely knew Shen Zhou, and he was recognized in
his own day as one of the best masters of Suzhou,
though in fame and reputation he fell short of
Shen, Tang, and Qiu. Current studies are beginning to rectify that imbalance.
s. E. L .

Zhou Chen
died c. 1536

BEGGARS AND STREET CHARACTERS

dated to 1516
Chinese
album leaves mounted as two handscrolls; ink and
light color on paper
31.9 x 244.5 (12l/2 x 962/4)
inscription with signature and three seals of the
artist; three colophons
references: Cahill 1978, 168-193, pi. 83; Cleveland
1980, 194-195; Siren 1958, 4:205-207, 6:pl. 236
The Honolulu Academy of Arts (scroll i)
Cleveland Museum of Art (scroll 2)
This album of 24 leaves has been equally divided
and mounted as two handscrolls; the first is in the
Honolulu Academy of Arts. The second bears the
artist's inscription, signature, three seals (Dongcun, Shunqing, Echang Sanren), and date of 1516.
The artist's inscription is a succinct account of the
origin and purpose of this unusual and remarkable
painting.
In the autumn of the [bingzi] year of Zhengde
[1516], in the seventh month, I was idling
under the window, and suddenly there came to
my mind all the appearances and manners of
the beggars and other street characters whom
I often saw in the streets and markets. With
brush and ink ready at hand, I put them into
pictures in an impromptu way. It may not be
TOWARD CATHAY

443

worthy of serious enjoyment, but it certainly

can be considered as a warning and admonition
to the world. (Translation by Wai-kam Ho in
Cahill 1978, p. 191.)
"A warning and admonition to the world" might
suggest that Zhou was warning viewers against
wrongdoing, which (according to Buddhist teaching) would cause their rebirth into such lives of
misery as he had depicted. But of three colophons
added to the Cleveland section of the scroll during
the second half of the sixteenth century, one construed the beggars metaphorically as unworthy
office-seekers ("beggars" for position and wealth),
another interpreted them as a protest against governmental harshness and misrule, and the third
saw merit in both interpretations. Certainly these
colophons place the work unmistakably within
China's very sparse tradition of social protest.
The first colophon, by Huang Jishui (15091574), a literatus and collector and, interestingly,
author of the Pinshi Zhuan (biographical sketches
of poverty-stricken scholars), is dated to 1564:
This album depicts the appearances of all the
different kinds of beggars whom [Zhou Chen]
observed in the streets of the city, capturing
perfectly the special aspect of each. Looking at
the pictures, one can't help sighing deeply.
Nowadays people come around on dark nights
[covertly], begging and wailing in their desires
for riches and high position if only we could
bring back Mr. [Zhou] to portray them!
The summoned scholar Woyun brought out
this album to show me, and I wrote this
impromptu inscription at the end. (Translation
by James Cahill.)
444

CIRCA 1492

Zhang Fengyi (1527-1613), a scholar, poet,

and playwright from Suzhou, wrote the second
colophon:
This album presents us with the many aspects
of miseryhunger and cold, homeless destitution, infirmity and emaciation, deformity and
sickness. Anyone who can look at this and not
be wounded to the heart by compassion is not a
humane person. The [bingzi] year of the
[Zhengde] era... was only a few years after the
seditious [Liu Jin] spread his poison; this was
the height of [Jiang Bin's] and [Wang, or Qian?]
King's exercising of their brutality. I imagine
also that the officials and nobles were seldom
able to nurture and succor the common people.

Thus this work by [Zhou Chen] has the same

intent as [Zheng Xia's] "Destitute People": it
was meant as an aid to government and is not a
shallow thing one can't dismiss it as a 'play
with ink'." (Translation by James Cahill.)
Zheng Xia (io4i-ni9)was an official-artist who
in the famine of 1073-1074 depicted scenes of
starvation and used them as an admonition to the
emperor, following good Confucian practice.
Third colophon by Wen Jia (1501-1583), son of
Wen Zhengming, dated to 1577:
This painting by [Zhou Chen] depicts the
appearance of hungry and chilly beggars, in

order to "warn the world/' Huang [Jishui] takes

it to represent those who "come around on a
dark night seeking alms/' while [Zhang Fengyi]
compares it to [Zheng Xia's] picture of the [Anshang] Gate. These views of the two gentlemen
both have their points.
In the old days [Tang] Yin, whenever he saw
a painting by [Zhou], would kowtow deeply
before it and cry " Master [Zhou]!" so much
was he aware of not being able to equal [Zhou's]
divine wonders. This album could not, I believe,
have been done by anyone else; I am in complete agreement with [Tang] Yin's heartfelt
obeisance
(Translation by James Cahill.)

The artist's self-abnegating "It may not be

worthy of serious enjoyment..." is a recognition
that his subject matter is nonstandard by professional as well as wen ren criteria, as well as emotionally disquieting. But clearly his realistic
images did reach at least some of their moral targets over the next sixty years, only to be ignored
thereafter until the present day (the few remaining seals on the scrolls are of recent owners).
These paintings are rapid and sketchlike, as if
resulting from direct on-the-scene observation,
despite the artist's explicit "there came to my
mind
" Sharp memory and superb technique
combine to provide immediacy. Paintings of a
Cockfight, at the Princeton University Art

Museum, and Bidding farewell at a Brushwood

fence, at the Nanjing Museum, both by Zhou
Chen, demonstrate that the artist often used a
rapid, sketchy manner for declasse subjects. In
that respect Beggars and Street Characters is not
a lone gesture.
S.E.L.

T O W A R D CATHAY

445

297
Tang Yin
1470-1523
PALACE LADIES OF THE STATE OF SHU
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
124.7 x 6}.6 (492/8 x 25)
inscription with signature of the artist
reference: Shanghai 1922, 23: pi 8
Palace Museum, Beijing
In lotus-blossom headdresses and Daoist robes,
They daily served their sovereign and
entertained in private palace chambers:
These flowery willows don't realize that the
man has already gone,
And year after year struggle over greens and
wrangle over reds.
The last ruler of the Shu kingdom was always
in the palace with his young ladies. He ordered
the palace concubines to wear Daoist robes and
to don lotus-blossom caps, and daily sought out
"flowery willows" to serve at drinking parties.
Rumors had already spread to every ear in Shu,
but the ruler did nothing to counter them, so
in the end his frivolity brought him to ruin.
I think in retrospect of the time when people
shook their heads [in dismay] [and note that] he
then had someone to grasp his wrist [i.e., to
admonish him] . Tang Yin
Four exquisitely gowned and carefully groomed
court beauties converse in a group, their fluttering hands serving as visual analogue for the music
of their high-pitched voices. Tightly unified by
their general similarity of posture and form, they
are each individually characterized by variety in
costume, position, and orientation. Distinguished
from high-born ladies of their court by their vivacious manner and deep decolletages, these lovely
young women were courtesans or entertainers
who served, according to the artist's inscription,
as attendants and companions at imperial drinking
parties. The inscription further identifies the
court as that of the last ruler of the Kingdom of
Shu in present-day Sichuan Province. It is telling
of the great and continuous length of Chinese
political history in which there were two kingdoms named Shu some seven hundred years
apart; the last rulers of both, as might be
expected, were noted for addiction to the pleasures of the flesh. The painting has thus been
published as illustrating ladies of the court either
of Liu Chan (207-267, r. 223-263) or of Meng
Chang (919-965, r. 934-965). Although the
expression Shu Houzhu, or "last ruler of Shu/
seems to have been associated especially with Liu
Chan, it is most likely that the artist had Meng
Chang in mind when he painted the composition.
Like many young men of his day Meng Chang
446

CIRCA 1492

loved to ride and play polo but he was equally

enamored of the Daoist sexual arts, for which he
acquired an enormous imperial harem. Meng
desisted from collecting girls only after being
admonished by one of his own officials. Meng's
court was also embellished by the creations of
such artists as Huang Quan (903-968), who in
925 had been given complete charge of the court
painting academy. Although Huang is known
today primarily as a painter of flower-and-bird
compositions, historical records attest his great

skill in figure painting as well. The delicate

washes, subtle color combinations, and elegant,
descriptive brushwork of the present painting are
precisely those characteristics of Huang Quan's
works noted by earlier critics; the lack of defining
environment and the creation of pictorial space
solely through placement of the figures also
characterize paintings from the time of Huang or
slightly earlier. In style as well as in subject the
painting may thus be taken as a reference to the
tenth-century court of Meng Chang.

Although Meng Chang in the end turned away

form his "flowery willows/' the courtesans so
denoted continued to strive after the high position often symbolized by red robes and after the
salaries connoted by the color green. "Reds and
greens" often referred as well to both cosmetics
and painting, so the range of possible bones of
contention in the harem was wide indeed.
The inscription on the present painting is not
dated, but another version of the composition,
differing only in details such as the textile patterns, is dated to 1523 (Shanghai 1922). The
recently deceased Zhengde emperor (1491-1521)
had been even more avid than Meng Chang in
collecting concubines. His generally dissolute life
and inattention to the business of ruling almost
cost him his throne in 1510, when a prince of the
realm rebelled. Tang's painting may have been
inspired by the Zhengde emperor's profligacy, or
by another rebellion that nearly brought disaster
to his own life. Tang had been invited in 1514 to
the court of Zhu Chenhao, a Ming imperial prince
enfeoffed as Prince of Ning. Just as Meng Chang's
father came to the throne by revolting against his
king, so too did the Prince of Ning rebel in 1519
against the Zhengde emperor, only to be defeated
in a short campaign led by the philosopher-soldier
Wang Yangming (1472-1529).
Though not wise enough to refuse the prince's
invitation, as many of his artist-friends had done,
Tang at least had sense enough to leave this dangerous patron long before he mounted his unsuccessful rebellion. In the last sentence of his
inscription Tang may be indicating his regret that,
unlike Meng Chang, he had not allowed good
advice to turn him from bad company at critical
junctures in his life (see cat. 298).
H.R.

298

Tang Yin
1470-1523
CLEARING AFTER SNOW
ON A MOUNTAIN PASS
early i6th century
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and light color on silk

69.9 x 37.3 (27^/2 x i45/s)

inscription with signature of the artist

National Palace Museum, Taipei
When snow clears from blocked passes
travelers crowd densely,
Lightly loaded are the mules,
heavily laden the oxen;
In front of Tadpole Inn
the mountains hoard iron,
Beneath Frog Hill
wine pours out like oil.
Painted by Tang Yin of Jinchang.

Born the son of a Suzhou restaurateur, Tang Yin

was a prodigy whose quick intellect and brilliant
artistic talent earned him the respect of Shen
Zhou (see cat. 311-315) and Wu Kuan (see cat.
286) and the lifelong friendship of Zhu Yunming
(see cat. 285) and Wen Zhengming (see cat. 286,
317). Tang easily passed the lowest-level civil service examination and in 1498 took first place in
the provincial examination held in Nanjing (failed
several times by his friend Wen), creating almost
universal expectations that he would do equally

well in the metropolitan examination in Beijing.

There, however, Tang and a friend were accused
and convicted of having obtained prior knowledge
of the questions. In 1499, after a short term in
prison, from which he was released on the intervention of friends, Tang returned home in disgrace, forever debarred from official position and
status.
Although Tang had begun painting at least by
the age of sixteen, it was not until about 1500 that
his changed expectations led him to paint for his
TOWARD CATHAY

447

livelihood and to associate himself with the ranking professional master in Suzhou, Zhou Chen
(cat. 295). Clearing After Snow on a Mountain
Pass is not dated, but the clear influence of Zhou
Chen here would suggest that it was painted
toward the end of the first decade of the sixteenth
century. The monumental composition is conservative in its dynamically organized and complex structure and represents a revival of the
twelfth-century mode of Li Tang. From that same
source comes the characteristic brush schemata
known as ax-cut strokes, which here texture and
facet the surfaces of rocks and cliffs.
Despite those references to past styles and attitudes, however, the painting is very much up to
date in its strong emphasis on the frontal picture
plane. The size and prominent placement of the
artist's inscription insist on the primacy of the
two-dimensional arrangement of shapes, just as
the construction of hills and mountains as a series
of flat, overlapping stages carries little visual
implication of continuous spatial recession. While
the sense of deep pictorial space, monumentality,
and awesomeness that characterized landscapes of
the Northern Song era have been lost, the visual
impact of Tang's picture is more immediate, more
intimate, and also more revealing of a distinct
creative personality at work.
H. R.

The degree to which this painted image evokes

specific aspects of the reality of nature allies it
with much of Song dynasty (960-1279) painting,
when naturalistic values held sway over abstract
ones. Yet Tang Yin's painting is very nearly as
compelling when considered solely as brush
strokes of varying intensities and textures organized into shapes which divide the format into
visually stimulating patterns. Tang's ability to
pursue pictorial and abstract goals simultaneously
at such a high level of technical and descriptive
competence is virtually unmatched during the
middle Ming era and places him on a par with
Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), the great Yuan
dynasty master who was one of the first to meld
calligraphy and painting into one aesthetic whole.
At upper left is a colophon inscribed by the
Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1795) in 1755. A
second colophon, on the mounting, was written
by the official Zhang Ruogui in 1774, when this
painting was presented to him by the emperor.
H.R.

3OO

Qiu Ying
died 1552

PASSING A SUMMER DAY

IN THE SHADE OF BANANA PALMS
299

Tang Yin
1470-1523
MYNAH BIRD ON OLD TREE BRANCH
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink on paper
121 x 26.7 (47% x loVz)
inscription with signature of the artist; two
colophons
Museum of Art and History, Shanghai
In mountain hollows all is silent,
Sequestered from the sounds of man,
The roosting mynah calls
To announce the end of the spring rain.
Tang Yin
High on an elongated, vine-entangled tree
branch perches a cawing mynah, its head raised
and beak open. Free-flowing ink and the lack of
crisp details suggest a moisture-laden atmosphere
for this highly focused vignette of nature. While a
formal stability is achieved by keeping the forms
within the frontal picture plane and largely along
the central vertical axis, the immediacy of a fleeting moment in time and space is yet captured
through the precarious placement of the bird and
through the spontaneous execution itself.

448

CIRCA 1492

Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
279.1 x 99 (109% x 39^
National Palace Museum, Taipei
Qiu Ying's normally tight and disciplined brushwork is here somewhat relaxed and, as in calligraphy, more overtly focused on the process by
which the forms are created. Pictorial space is
limited, and the rocks and trees are arranged so as
to create a shallow stage for the two scholars and
their attendant. Textured surfaces and linear
patterns play especially important roles in this
painting, for the sound of music is suggested,
indirectly but effectively, by the vigorous
rhythms of arcing bamboo, angular fronds, and
crystalline rock.
The subject as well as the manner of its presentation here embody values and attitudes held dear
by literati of the middle Ming period. Making
music was considered to be a complete experience
only in the presence of a sympathetic and
knowledgeable listener, and the two gentlemenamateurs shown here were further linked by their
appreciation of the ancient bronze vessels and
scrolls laid out for later contemplation. Though
the setting is rustic, the scene is unobtrusively
elegant, revealing lives of privilege, sophistication, and most prized of all privacy.

The artist who so successfully evoked that rarefied life was himself a professional painter of no
formal education; he seems to have acquired cultural literacy mostly through association with the
Suzhou collectors and artists who were his
friends, peers, and patrons. Probably born sometime in the 14905, Qiu studied painting with Zhou
Chen, and met such other Suzhou luminaries as
Tang Yin, Wu Kuan, Zhu Yunming and, at least
by 1517, Wen Zhengming. Qiu became especially
famed for his paintings of classical subjects in a
variety of styles, from facsimile copies of antique
originals to, as here, freer and more creative
transformations of traditional themes.
The present painting bears the collection seals
of Xiang Yuanbian (1525-1590), a major patron
and collector with whom Qiu often stayed during
the final decade of his life. Xiang and his elder
brothers were ardent collectors of earlier painting,
and during the years Qiu lived with the family he
was, according to Xiang's grandson, able to see
more than one thousand Song and Yuan dynasty
paintings. Xiang Yuanbian first mentioned Qiu in
an inscription written in the year 1547, when he
himself was twenty-two years of age, and the
present work probably dates from about that time
as well. The unusually large size of the painting,
and the use of a paper ground rather than the silk
that Qiu seems to have preferred for more technically polished large works, suggest that the
painting was commissioned directly by Xiang and
was intended to associate its owner with the literati class to which that businessman aspired.
By reason of virtually identical size, seals,
mediums, subject, and style, Passing a Summer
Day in the Shade of Banana Palms is paired with
another hanging scroll in the National Palace
Museum, entitled Conversation in the Shade of
Firmiana Trees. The two are usually described as
the extant half of a set of four paintings depicting
different views in each of the four seasons. In
such a set the present painting would have been
the summer scene, and the Firmiana Trees trees
which lose their leaves each fallwould have represented autumn. The set must have been broken
up some time before the late eighteenth century,
for Banana Palms is recorded in the Imperial Collection catalogue of 1793, but Firmiana Trees does
not appear in the Imperial Collection until the
catalogue of 1816 and hence probably entered
the palace at a somewhat later date. In neither
catalogue are the paintings associated with one
another or described as parts of a set. An intriguing question about the nature of the postulated set
and the possible survival of the two lost scrolls is
posed by a Qiu Ying painting now in the Shanghai
Museum. Entitled Wang Xizhi Inscribing a Fan,
that work measures 280.5 x 99-^ cm' was also
painted in ink and color on paper, and bears the
same collector seals of Xiang Yuanbian as the pair
in Taiwan. If the very close similarity between
these three paintings can be taken to indicate that
they once belonged together, then the location of
T O W A R D CATHAY

449

the signatures on the National Palace Museum

pair suggests that they were the first and fourth
in the set, with Firmiana Trees on the right and
Banana Palms on the left. The composition and
style of the unsigned Wang Xizhi blend best with
Banana Palms, making that painting the third in
the set, and leaving only the second still unaccounted for.
If this hypothesis is accepted, however, the
modern idea that the set represented the four
seasons must be discarded, for the Wang Xizhi
painting seems to have no specific seasonal connotations at all. To the contrary, it suggests that
each of the four original paintings illustrated a
narrative subject embodying conservative cultural
values. This is a plausible assumption, just as Qiu
Ying's paintings remain visual affirmations of the
worth of such classical ideals as rationality, harmony, and emotional restraint.
H.R.

3O1

painting by Qiu Ying

d. 1552

calligraphy by Wen Zhengming

1470-1559
THE GARDEN OF SOLITARY PLEASURE
dated to 1558
Chinese
handscroll; ink and color on silk
27.8 x 381 (n x 150)
references: Siren 1949; Cahill 1978, 201210;
Cleveland 1980, 206-209; Little 1985, 41-73; Young
(date), 1:255-257
The Cleveland Museum of Art,
John L. Severance Fund
Superb technical mastery of brushwork, color,
representation, and composition characterize the
art of Qiu Ying. Though a professional painter,
pupil of Zhou Chen (cat. 295), Qiu nevertheless
450

CIRCA 1492

moved in the circle of the Suzhou literati and was

by late sixteenth century acclaimed one of the
Four Masters of Suzhou, along with his fellow
pupil and fellow professional Tang Yin (cat. 298)
and the two great wen ren painters Shen Zhou
(cat. 311-313) and Wen Zhengming (cat. 316317), the last-named of whom wrote the essay and
poems attached to this scroll. Qiu is usually associated with works even more colorful than this
one, in the "blue-and-green" manner associated
with landscapes of the late Six Dynasties (222589) and the Tang dynasty (618-907). He is
recorded as having colored one of Wen Zhengming's paintings at Wen's request. Qiu Ying's
almost frightening facility in various styles is
borne out by a comparison of this scroll, roughly
in the style of Li Gonglin (c. 1049-1106) of the
Northern Song dynasty, with the totally different
hanging scroll Passing a Summer Day in the
Shade of Banana Palms (cat. 300), in which
he combined the brush technique of the Zhe
school with the austere, pure flavor of the wen
ren school.
Qiu's supreme ability both to copy and to create
in various manners both ancient and modern,
while maintaining the suppleness of original
invention, put him much in demand by collectors
scrupulous and unscrupulous. Of these the most
famous was Xiang Yuanbian (1525-1590), who
once owned this painting as his fifty-nine
seals on the scroll testify. At least two collectors
besides Xiang patronized Qiu, who repaid
their hospitality with commissioned copies and
original works.
Wen Zhengming's son, Wen Jia, expressed in
1578 the feelings of Qiu's contemporaries and
immediate successors before 1600:
Qiusheng [Qiu Ying] had superior talent,
He excelled at mastering the principles
of painting.
Then, in his prime, he withered away,
Remaining are his landscapes,
which he has deserted.
Until now his name in the garden of painting,
Was a fresh wind filling everyone's ear.
(Translation by Stephen Little.)

The scroll shows the seven sections of a famous

garden in sequence, ending with a distant view
across water to mountains and forests. In this
garden the shelters range from copses of live
bamboo to substantial timber, tile, and thatch
pavilions; the plantings from neatly subdivided
rectangular plots, each growing a different plant,
to "rustic" groupings featuring fantastically
weathered garden rocks. Then and now Suzhou
boasted the most famous gardens in all China, and
Qiu Ying's familiarity with these "living specimens" added to the variety and convincing reality
of this representation. It should be noted that Qiu
has modified the continuity usual in handscroll
composition to allow slight separation of the
seven historic gardens here recreated in one. Hallowed precedent for this could be found in the
most famous of all landscapes of the Tang
dynasty Wang Wei's (699-759) depiction of his
own garden residence, the Wang Chuan Villa
handscroll.
The following discussion and translations are by
Ling-yiin Shih Liu, Henry Kleinhenz, and Waikam Ho, in Cleveland 1980, pp. 206-209.
Colophon by Xiang Yukui (grandson of Xiang
Yuanbian):
The painting of the Garden of Solitary Pleasure
on the right by [Shizhou, Mr. Qiu, i.e., Qiu
Ying], is in the style of Li [Gonglin]. Its mood
is peaceful, as if meeting the ancient gentleman
face to face among the brushes and silk; it lifts
one above the sordid bustle of life. Formerly,
my late father handed me this scroll which had
only the painting without the written essay. I
considered asking a good calligrapher to write
the essay to add to it but was afraid that the
quality of writing would not match the painting. Several years later, I saw at a friend's house
this essay and poems [of Sima Guang] written
by Heng-shan [Wen Zhengming], once owned
by my grandfather; so I spared no expense to
obtain it. I rejoiced at this and said, "The divine
swords are finally united. How things are
predestined." Now my friend [Zhang Gongzhao] technique for mounting [painting and

calligraphy] is excellent. Therefore by daring to

take them out and join them together, I can
preserve this beautiful story of [a] singular
reunion.
. . . recorded... two days before New Year's
Eve in the [jiashen] year of the [Chongzhen]
era [1644].
Remarks:
The subject of [Qiu] Ying's painting and the
calligraphy following it by Wen [Zhengming] is
the essay with poems of the great Northern
[Song] statesman and historian [Sima Guang,
1019-1086], in which he memorializes his

Garden of Solitary Pleasure built in 1073. By

that time [Sima Guang], the conservative
leader of the Confucian political revival, had
left his high office and retired to [Luoyang] in
opposition to the new reforms brutully
enforced under the sponsorship of Wang
[Anshi]. His essay opens with historical references to the meaning of happiness and then
continues with a description of the garden's
topography.
In the poems following the essay, [Sima Guang]
associates each of the seven divisions in the
garden with a specific historical figure whom

he admires. He relates the Reading Hall

[Dushu Tang] to the Western Han Confucian
scholar [Dong Zongshu, 179-93 B-C.], who
became so engrossed in his studies he never
looked out on his garden for three years. The
Pavilion for Playing with Water [Longshui
Xian] is identified with the late [Tang] poet and
statesman [Du] Mu (803-852) who washed his
inkstone in the water next to his study pavilion.
[Yan Guang], the childhood friend of the Eastern Han emperor [Guangwu], is the subject of
the third poem, on the Hut of the Angling
Fisherman [Diaoyu An]. When the emperor
took power in A.D. 25, [Yan Guang] refused his
T O W A R D CATHAY

451

summons to serve, preferring a life of fishing

and farming. Next, the Studio for Planting
Bamboo [Zhongzhu Zhai] was inspired by
Wang [Huizhi, d. A.D. 388], son of the famous
calligrapher Wang [Xizhi, 303 7-361 ?]. Wang
[Huizhi] retired from the world and surrounded himself with bamboo
The fifth
poem, Plot for Picking Herbs [Caiyao Pu] discusses Han [Kang]. For thirty years this Eastern Han figure sold herbs in the [Changan]
marketplace, charging the same honest
price
he fled to the mountains for fear that
his virtuous reputation would bring him
trouble. [Sima Guang] alludes to the bibulous
[Tang] poet [Bo Juyi, 772-846] in his sixth
poem, the Pavilion for Watering Flowers [Jiaohua ting]. Demoted to the position of magistrate of [Jiangzhou], [Bo Juyi] built a garden
retreat at [Xiangshan] to grow flowers, make
wine and poetize in the company of eight good
friends
Terrace for Seeing the Mountains
[Jianshan Tai], the final poem, was inspired by
a famous line, "I pluck chrysanthemums at the
eastern hedge; easily the Southern Mountain
comes into view/ written by the [Jin] recluse
[Tao Yuanming, 365-427], who gave up the
imperial bureaucracy to nurture his soul in the
mountains. Thus, as [Sima Guang] walked
about his garden in retirement, each place he
would stop to rest provided him with an example of Confucian virtue facing predicaments
similar to his own.
... Qiu Ying followed [Sima Guang's] essay
... even though he [reversed] the order in the
garden by placing the Pavilion for Playing with
Water before the Reading Hall. Otherwise, he
constructs each scene with remarkable fidelity
to the literary description [for an English translation, see Siren 1949, pp. 77-78]
Written among [Xiang Yuanbian's] seals at the
beginning of the painting in the lower righthand corner is the character shu, part of a code
of characters which frequently appear on paintings he owned. The meaning of the code
remains unknown because no catalogue of
[Xiang's] collection was published. However,
since [Xiang Yuanbian's] cataloguing of his own
collection was based on the system of the [Qian
Zi Wen, Thousand-Character Classic], in which
the character shu is numbered 681, the present
painting should have entered [Xiang's] collection prior to the year 1547.
S.E.L.

452

CIRCA 1492

302

Qiu Ying
died 1552

EMPEROR GUANG Wu OF THE EASTERN

HAN DYNASTY AND His ENTOURAGE
FORDING A RIVER
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
170.8 x 65.4 (6y2/4 x 253/5J
signed by the artist; seal (at lower right): Shi Fu

soft, the mists in the upland valleys sensitively

depicted, and the whole is a complex blend of narrative realism, decorative color, and homage to
both historical and artistic antiquity. The painting
reveals a professional mastery equaling that of
Qiu's Suzhou colleagues, Zhou Chen (cat. 295)
and Tang Yin (cat. 297, 298).
The manifest excellence and importance of the
picture are confirmed by two seals (at upper left)
of the greatest of all Chinese collectors, Liang
Qingbiao (1620-1691).
S.E.L.

The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

The four centuries of Han dynasty rule were
broken at about midpoint by a fourteen-year
usurpation (A.D. 9-23). After a bloody civil war
Liu Xiu (6 B.C.-A.D. 57), a prince of the Han
dynasty, regained the throne. As Emperor Guang
Wu (Brilliant Martial Emperor, r. A.D. 25-57), ne
moved the capital from Chang'an (present-day
Xi'an) eastward to Luoyang, center of his own
power base. Retrospectively, therefore, the two
periods of Han rule have been called Former and
Later or Western and Eastern Han. Guang Wu
proved an able ruler, and was particularly noted
by later historians for his fostering of agriculture,
a policy exactly consonant with ancient Chinese
traditions of good and wise rule.
Presumably the painting was commissioned, its
subject assigned to the artist rather than independently conceived. In any case, the subject was
both historical and laudatory, and therefore its
manner of depiction was governed by some
ancient pictorial conventions. Although the incident depicted dates from the first century A.D.,
the conventions available to a professional artist
such as Qiu Ying were basically those of the late
Six Dynasties period and the Sui and Tang dynasties (spanning approximately the 4th to the end of
the 9th century). Qiu Ying's painting reflects the
landscapes of that period, with their characteristic
preferred palette of blue, green, and gold and their
tall, narrow mountain peaks. To artists and critics
of the tenth and eleventh centuries this style was
already archaic, and they described those mountains, graphically, as resembling the teeth of a
court lady's comb. The costumes of the emperor
(on a white horse) and his principal attendant (on
a buckskin) resemble summer traveling dress of
the Tang dynasty (618-907), and the saddle blankets on the horses also approximate those of Tang.
The superlative talents of Qiu Ying, however,
could not be totally concealed behind such pious
archaisms. The sure construction of the space
embracing the foreground clearly indicates the
emperor's intended path: across the river to the
earth-covered wooden road on the far right, then
along that road as it passes below a waterfall and
veers left, then upward and to the right again,
through a pine forest to the distant palace. The
mineral colors (azurite, malachite, cinnabar) are

303

Sun Long
c. 1410-c. 1480

BAMBOO, BLOSSOMING PLUM,

AND BIRDS IN SNOW
second half of i$th century
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
116.6 x 61.8 (457/s x 243/sj
Palace Museum, Beijing
Four sparrows huddle on the snow-laden branch
of a blossoming plum tree; another of the small
birds hovers in the still air above, while a white
pigeon stands motionless beneath the tree on the
frozen ground. Especially noteworthy is the technique by which the densely muffling snow is
manifested, for the snow-covered areas are not
painted at all but rather blank silk around which a
defining background has been painted. Since
these "blanks" in fact represent the most substantial matter of the painting the pigeon, the snowcovered rocks and branches, and the distant
peakthere is a figure-ground reversal that
engenders a visual tension in the otherwise quiet
scene.
The absence of firmly drawn, discrete contours
is referred to by Chinese writers as mo gu, "linesuppressed" or "boneless" painting. Although the
technique appears already in Tang dynasty (618907) paintings, traditional criticism associates it
especially with the tenth-eleventh-century Song
painters Xu Chongsi and Zhao Chang. During the
thirteenth century the Buddhist priest Luochuang
used a similar method for Bamboo and White
Hen, and in the fourteenth century the literati
master Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) painted an
entire landscape, Nine Peaks After Snowfall, in
reserve. The present artist thus did not originate
his evocative technique, but he did use it in pursuit of pictorial, i.e., descriptive or narrative,
goals, that were unusual in his day and closer in
spirit to those of the early Song masters.
At least three artists named Sun Long were
active during the Ming dynasty, but details of
their varying lives and careers are sometimes con-

founded, yielding composite (and fictitious) biographies. The most easily distinguished of these
men is the official and calligrapher whose work is
recorded in the collection catalogue Tingfanlou
Shuhua Ji (preface 1843). That work is a handscroll dated to the year 1600, and hence could not
have been by either of the other artists named
Sun Long, both of whom were active during the
fifteenth century. Probably the earliest of them all
was the Sun Long whose byname (zf) was Zongji;
a colophon composed by him at the age of
seventy-two is recorded in the collection catalogue Shiqu Baoji Xubian (preface 1793) as having
been written for a painting by the artist Zhao Qi
(1238-1306). This Sun Long, from Rui'an in Zhejiang Province, was active from the Yongle era
(1403-1424) onward and served as prefect in
Anhui Province during the Tianshun era (14571464). Sun's specialty in painting eventually
earned him the name "Plum-Blossom Sun," and
his paintings were valued equally with the muchprized bamboo paintings of his contemporary Xia
Chang (1388-1470). Sun's daughter, who followed
him in painting, eventually married another
Rui'an artist-official, the calligrapher Ren Daoxun
(1422-1503), who also continued Sun Long's style
of painting.
The Sun Long who painted the present
Bamboo, Blossoming Plum, and Birds in Snow

TOWARD CATHAY

453

detail

was born in Wujin (present-day Changzhou),

Jiangsu Province. His grandfather, Sun Xingzu
(1338-1370), had been one of the young heroes
who assisted Zhu Yuanzhang in overthrowing the
Mongols and reestablishing a native Chinese
dynasty in 1368. Following his death in battle,
Xingzu was posthumously enfeoffed as the Marquis of Yanshan and awarded the title Zhongmin,
"Loyal and Sympathetic"; the legends on several
of Sun Long's seals declare him the "Grandson
(or, sometimes, the Descendant) of the Loyal and
Sympathetic Marquis at the Founding of the
Realm." The local gazetteer of Wujin records that
Sun was called "the little fool" and that he "was
clever and quick from birth. He excelled in painting grass and insects and rabbits in snow. He was
spontaneous in dotting and washing so his paintings had a lifelike flavor."
Perhaps during the 14405 or 14505 Sun was
called to court; his byname (zi), Tingzhen, means
"raised or recalled to court" and his later nickname was Duchi, "the capital fool." Other evidence of his court service comes in the form of the
legend on another of his seals: Jinmen gongyu,
"Supplying the Emperor at the Golden Gate," this
last being the location where, in the imperial
palaces of old, the various attendants awaited
summons. In the Tuhui Baojian Xubian of 1519
(a biographical dictionary of painters and calligraphers) Sun is described as "having the air and
bearing of an Immortal. In painting birds, animals, grasses, and insects he developed his own
style in what were called mo gu in, 'boneless
pictures/" The present painting is a fine example
of that style, based, according to Zhan Jingfeng
454

CIRCA 1492

(1520-1602), "on the mo gu concepts of the Song

dynasty masters but developed into an individual
style free and untrammeled images without the
application of color. But his new ideas are not far
distant from those of the ancients."
H.R.

304

Shi Zhong
1438-0. 1517
CLEARING AFTER SNOWFALL
dated to 1504
Chinese
handscroll; ink on paper
2$ X Jiy (94/5 X 12$3/5)

inscription and two seals of the artist

references: Cahill 1978, 128-153; Rogers, 1988, 123

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The two seals, Wochi Lou (Fool's Rest) and Chi
Weng (Old Fool), are the artist's sobriquets for his
home and himself. The poem is his own composition in his own hand:
The sky is clear; snow covers mountain
and river,
The myriad trees tower high; this is
nature's work.
Alone and always happy to suffer poverty,
This old man, moved to tears, records the
divine pine.

In spring of the jiazi year of the Hongzhi reign

[1504], when snow fell heavily, the Fool
made this picture and added the poem to
accompany it.
(Translation by Kojiro Tomita.)
Although Shi Zhong is not usually regarded as
one of the Heterodox painters, his few extant
works place him in this context. He came from
Nanjing but was apparently known to Shen Zhou
and well regarded by him. In childhood he is said
to have been simple and (literally) dumb, which is
doubtless a stereotypical "explanation" of his
unknown origins.
Shi's major contribution to painting development is perfectly embodied in the present work.
He was obsessed by the possibilities of "negative"
images: creating forms in reserve from the play
of ink on paper. Because snow scenes lend themselves so readily to this approach, they make up
the major part of his extant works. The wild,
"scribbly" (James Cahill) brushwork follows no
school, as Shi himself asserted hence his classification as "heterodox." As employed by Chinese
critics, "heterodoxy" (xie xue pal] not only
implied "beyond the two norms" of academic and
wen ren style; it suggested perverseness defiance of propriety as well. Heterodox painting
provoked real moral outrage; a critic writing in
about 1550 railed: "I wouldn't even use them as
dust rags for fear of disgracing my furniture"
(translation by Howard Rogers). The drunken or
willfully unorthodox works of disappointed professionals or failed scholar-artists found no ready
acceptance in the evolving dichotomy of profes-

sional and amateur painting. By the late sixteenth

and early seventeenth century, when Individualist
painting triumphed, the Heterodox painters and
their works had been largely forgotten.
S.E.L.

305

Zhang Lu
c. 1490-0. 1563

HAWK PURSUING A RABBIT

Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
158 x 97 (62V5 x iSVs)
signed: Pingshan

Nanjing Museum
A hawk plummets in pursuit of a wild hare that
desperately leaps for cover in tall grasses, while
two small sparrows near the ground fly out of
harm's way to the right. Time and action are
momentarily stayed, allowing us to comprehend
the scene while anticipating its imminent transformation. The contrasting natures of predator
and prey are emphasized by their forms, angular
and sharp for the former, curvilinear and smooth
for the latter, with the tremulous grasses providing appropriate notes of agitation and suspense.
The fierce hawk was a well-known symbol for
a rapacious official; the white rabbit, a generalized
emblem for good fortune, acquired during the
Tang dynasty the more specific meaning of good
governance owing to a benign imperial censor.
Zhang's painting thus symbolically conjoins the
potential extremes of political behavior.
Like Sun Long (cat. 303), Zhang Lu commanded a reserve technique of dazzling virtuosity. Here large areas were washed in first, creating
an amorphous background for the narrative elements left starkly in reserve and then detailed
with the "gossamer" line for which Zhang Lu was
famous. The reserved forms, luminous against the
ink wash of sky and earth, create an almost theatrical evocation of a moonlit hunt.
During his years as a professional artist Zhang
Lu came to know many high officials and had
sometimes to deal with those who regarded his
work as craft rather than art. But as he himself
put it: "How can one simply regard [painting] as
a profit-making activity?" The eminent scholarofficial Xue Hui (1489-1541) described Zhang's
reception of those who approached him for a
painting in what he deemed an insufficiently
polite manner: "High officials fly about and
spread his fame but do not easily get what they
want; the visits of nobles with their requests are
empty and without benefit." The marriage of
Zhang's son to a member of the imperial clan
directly descended from the Ming dynasty's

founder attests and must have enhanced the

high status that permitted Zhang such independence in his dealings with court circles and power
ful officials. The painting is signed Pingshan,
which was Zhang Lu's byname.
H.R.

306

Yin Shan (?)

ZHONG Kui AND DEMON ATTENDANTS
before 1503
Chinese
handscroll; ink on paper
24.2 x 112.8 (91/! x 443/s)
references: Xu 1987; Huai'an 1988
Huai'an County Museum, Jiangsu Province

Very* few portable Chinese paintings of premodern times can be absolutely and securely
dated. Forgeries, copies, works "in the style of"
abound. Therefore any scientific excavation that
reveals portable works, usually handscrolls or
hanging scrolls, arouses tremendous interest. In
recent years a Liao dynasty (916-1125) tomb produced two tenth-century hanging scrolls of landscapes, and the tomb of a Ming prince (Zhu Tan,
1370-1390) in Shandong Province revealed a
handscroll of White Lotus signed and sealed by
the famous Qian Xuan (c. 1235-after 1301). The
1982 excavation of the tomb of Wang Zhen (14241496) and his wife, nee Liu (d. 1503), in Huai'an
County in northern Jiangsu Province, yielded
twenty-five scrolls. Two of these were Ming
copies (or forgeries) of works by famous paintersRen Renfa (1254-1327) and Wang Yuan
(c. i28o-after 1349). Most were landscapes, a few
TOWARD CATHAY

455

depicted flower or bamboo subjects; almost all

were in wen ren taste and not of the highest
quality. Wang Zhen evidently acquired some of
these scrolls from a certain Zheng Jingrong who,
according to inscriptions on some of the paintings,
traveled south from Beijing in 1.446. Presumably
Wang Zhen acquired the works bearing Zheng's
seals and inscriptions at that time or soon
thereafter.
The two paintings in this exhibition from the
Wang tomb are conservative works one without

456

CIRCA 1492

signature, seals, or any other clue to attribution

(cat. 307), and this one, bearing a seal (Yin Shi
Cong Shan) which suggests that the name of the
painter was Yin Shan, about whom nothing is
currently known. Zhong Kui was a popular subject, and particularly meaningful for the scholarofficial class (cat. 288), but this work has been
executed in a mannered variation of the brushwork used by professional Buddhist painters of
Ningbo to render Hell scenes. The profusion of
nail-head strokes delineating the muscles and

sinews of the demons are most characteristic of

such icons. Although the landscape is basically
Southern Song (1127-1279) in type, derived from
Li Tang and the Ma-Xia adaptations of Li's type
forms, it employs these conventions as modified
by the Ningbo painters. In its decorative treatment the stream at the beginning of the scroll is
comparable with the stream in the Kimbell
Museum scroll by Yin Hong (cat. 292), a leading
fifteenth-century court painter of decorative bird,
flower, and "seasonal" paintings.
S.E.L.

detail

307
WHITE TIGER IN A FROSTY WOOD
before 1503
Chinese
handscroll; ink and color on silk
2(}.8 X 69 fl!3/4 X 2Jl/8)

references: Schafer 1963, 247; Xu 1987; Huai'an

1988

from a tomb excavated 1982 in Huai'an County,

Jiangsu Province
Huai'an County Museum, Jiangsu Province
The particulars of the tomb in which this
painting was found have been summarized in
catalogue 306.
The tiger entered Chinese art during the
Bronze Age, appearing as a favorite motif on
bronze ritual vessels and on jades of the Shang
period (trad. 1766-1045 B.C.); its symbolic significance at that time, if it had any, is uncertain. As a
symbol of the western quandrant of the compass,
or indeed of the cosmos, the tiger appeared in
Chinese art by the fifth century B.C. As governor even divinity of that quadrant, the tiger
was confirmed, together with the other Animals
of the Four Directions (Si Shen), during the Western Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 8). By the reign of
Han Wu Di (r. 141-87 B.C.) the cosmic correspondence between symbolic creatures, directions,
elements, colors, and moral qualities was firmly
acknowledged: the tiger connoted the west, the
element metal, the color white, and the Confucian
virtue of righteousness (yi).

This symbolism was fundamental and has

endured into the twentieth century, much
embroidered over the millennia. Since at least the
Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220) the tiger has
been a potent guardian against demons, appearing
widely in that role on clothing and household
equipment. "The Chinese word for 'amber'... has
been pleasantly explained as 'tiger's soul,'... and
the etymology has been rationalized by the tale
that the congealing glance of a dying tiger forms
the waxy mineral" (Schafer, 1963, 247). Legend
also had it that the tiger lived a thousand years,
turning white at the midpoint of its life. In China
the tiger (not the lion) was king of the beasts,
often so identified in art by the character for
"king" on its forehead, and its native power and
ferocity recommended tiger skins and tiger motifs
for military dress.
The tiger was also a favored subject in paintings
of the Southern Song (1127-1279) dynasty, particularly in those with Daoist or Chan Buddhist
themes. It is to these works that the present
painting looks back for inspiration.
The auspicious beast is depicted at the center of
the scroll, looking back over its left shoulder and
apparently snarling. White opaque pigment colors
his body and partly covers the ink stripes. In the
landscape about him the artist has taken drastic
liberties with relative scale. Bamboo leaves and
red-tinged Japanese maple are huge, and the far
tree trunk on the left is as large as the one in the
nearest foreground. The result is bizarre, or perhaps "folkish," showing something of the nonchalant roughness found in much Korean painting of
the early Choson dynasty (1392-1910) (cat. 270).

But the boldly cut-off trees, rocks,

and river bank, and the bold brushwork outlining
the rocks, all relate to the professional painter's
habits, as may be seen in the works of Zhang Lu
(cat. 305).
S.E.L.

308
THE LUOHAN VAJRIPUTA
c. 1500
eastern Tibetan or Chinese
thangka (icon in hanging scroll format) ;
color and gold on cotton
81.3 x 50.8 (32 x 20)
references: Fong 1958; Gordon 1959,104; Pal and
Tseng 1975; Pal 1984, 126, 127, 214, pi. 59; Tate
1989-1990,196-206, fig. 10

Navin Kumar Gallery, New York

This image is more Chinese in character than
most Tibetan representations of luohan (S: arhat,
person who has attained Enlightenment by his
own efforts). Except for the marked difference
in scale between the luohan and his devotee, and
the decorative emphasis on the colors of the robes,
the painting is remarkably realistic, in the Chinese sense, and especially natural in its handling
of the landscape environment. The pine, bamboo,
and prunus behind the luohan are the "Three
Friends" symbols of incorruptibility and endurance and one of the favorite motifs of Chinese
TOWARD CATHAY

457

scholars. From the tradition of Chinese Buddhist

painting centered in Ningbo since the Song
dynasty (960-1279) comes the representation of
peacocks and peonies, as well as the experienced
ease in the handling of the twisting trunk and
branches. In the famous set of Five Hundred
Luohan, one hundred paintings by Zhou Jichang
and Lin Tinggui painted some time in the late
twelfth century, which are now divided among
Daitoku-ji in Kyoto (88?), the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston (10), and the Freer Gallery in
Washington (2), there are numerous figures
whose heads prefigure that of Vajriputa. An even
closer prototype is The Fourteenth Luohan with
Attendant, by Lu Xinzhong (act. mid-late i3th
century) (also in the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts), but quieter and simpler than the present
work, reflecting Song taste.
The mountain landscape is even more traditional, harking back to the blue, green, and gold
mode of the landscapes of the late Six Dynasties
458

CIRCA 1492

period (222-589) and Tang dynasty (618-907),

but filtered through the archaizing styles practiced by Qiu Ying (cat. 302) and his imitators and
fashionable in the early sixteenth century. Qiu in
turn was aware of the archaistic landscapes occasionally painted even by such literati paragons of
the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) as Zhao Mengfu,
Qian Xuan, and Chen Ruyan. The manner was
sensuous, decorative, and appealing to popular
taste, and it became a staple way of representing
landscape in thangkas made for Lamaist templeswhether in China or Tibet and whether
painted by Chinese professionals or skillful priestpainters in eastern Tibet.
This luohan has previously been identified as
Vanavasi, the third in the Lamaist canon of Sixteen Luohan. Clearly, however, the figure here
is making the gesture of teaching (S: vitarka
mudrd) with his right hand while his left holds
a fly whisk (S: camara), so he must be the fifth
luohan, Vajriputa, reputedly from Sri Lanka. S.E.L.

309

THE LUOHAN CUDAPANTHAKA

i$th century
eastern Tibetan or Chinese
thangka (icon in hanging scroll format),
now mounted as a panel; gouache on cotton
797 x 50.9 (3^ x 20)
reference: Pal and Tseng 1975, 25, 42
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Compared with the painting of luohan Vajriputa
(cat. 308), this image of a disciple of the Buddha
who has attained Enlightenment seems deliberately obscured, even camouflaged by the rich surface patterns of the composition and the crowding
and complexity of the staffage, with landscape
background, throne, implements, and variously
patterned textiles packed into relatively modest
dimensions. The painting affords almost a sum-

mary of earlier Chinese inventions, both aesthetic

and representational.
The luohan (S: arhat), attendant, and dancer
are defined as Indian by their slightly dark and
gray-toned skin, though the luohan's meager
beard and intensely meditative eyes are more
Chinese, and he is seated on a raised Chinese platform (kang). Since Cudapanthaka is the "meditation" arhat, his expression is appropriate, as is the
tiny figure of a bodhisattva (in Nepalese style)
meditating in a cave directly above the goldroofed, multicolored palace in the distance on
the left. The luohan wears a brilliantly colored,
multi-patterned priest's robe and holds a large
rosary in his left hand. Behind him is a plaited
backrest, an essential for scholarly ease. His
monkish attendant, also in colorful patterned
garb, is holding an unhusked chestnut, which he
is about to husk and place on a tray. This tray has
a lotus base supported by a pedestal in the form
of a Chinese dragon, which rises from a red and
yellow lacquer base. On a red lacquer footstool are
the luohan's shoes. Nearly centered at the lowest
point in the picture is a monkey. At lower left is
an extraordinary attendant figure, dancing on a
mat, with a flute lying half on and half off the
mat. With left arm horizontal and right arm
raised, the dancer echoes similar figures some
seven hundred years earlier, dancing in Tang
dynasty (618-907) representations of the Western
Paradise of Amitabha Buddha. Even the monkey,
both in pose and configuration, recalls works
attributed to or in the style of early Song (9601127) "fur and feather" paintings, such as those of
Yi Yuanji (act. 1064-1067), the most famous of
artists specializing in the genre. The patterns of
the various textiles recall Tang and Song designs.
The setting, a rocky but verdant outlined landscape in lapis blue, turquoise green, and gold, is
also indebted to Tang; the style began in China
in the sixth century and continued as archaistic
homage well into the Ming dynasty. Qiu Ying
(cat. 302) made extremely sophisticated use of the
"blue-green-gold style" at about the time this
thangka was painted. By its interweaving of
rocks, trees, and clouds the setting compounds
the camouflaging density of the composition.
What we have here is a compendium of the
copy-books inherited from generation to generation of traditional icon painters. The individual
motifs, however, were woven into a thicket of
obsessive design produced for a non-Chinese
audience. Here the aesthetic wealth of China was
placed at the service of the complicated theology
S.E.L.
of Tibet.

poem, acknowledging that he cannot see himself

as others see him, asserts that spirit, not appearance, counts:
Some people say my eyes are too small,
while others say my jaw is too narrow;
I myself have no way of knowing,
nor do I know what is lacking.
But why bother to judge appearance,
when one should fear only loss of morality;
Carefree for eighty years,
I am now next door to death.
In a second inscription, added somewhat later,
Shen suggests that beyond a certain point such
philosophical speculation matters little in
comparison with the sheer fact of survival:
Is it like or not like, true or not true?
From bottom to top it only reflects the
exterior man.
Death and life are both a dream,
And heaven and earth are entirely dust.

31O

The stream endures within my breast,

From spring it will be another year.

PORTRAIT OF SHEN ZHOU

dated to 1506
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
28 x 20.9 (11 x 8l/4)
inscription with signature of the artist
Palace Museum, Beijing

H.R.

311

Shen Zhou
1427-1509
LOFTY MOUNT Lu

The white-haired and bearded old man with angular face and piercing eyes appears shrunken in
comparison with his peaked scholar's hat and
undecorated literati robe. This contrast functions
expressively to characterize the subject as a man
of advanced age, just as the slightly asymmetrical
placement of the body and head present him as a
man of subtle depth.
Although some stylistic features of the painting
are common in ancestor portraits, and some
aspects of the face may have been emphasized to
accord with general rules of physiognomy, the
strong sense of a very specific personality here
suggests that this is in fact a portrait painted from
life. The identity of the artist responsible for this
sensitive interpretation of character and personality is in some doubt; the painting has been published as a self-portrait by Shen Zhou and as the
work of an anonymous artist. Though Shen Zhou
is not remembered as a figure painter, it may be
noted that the fixed, sidewise gaze of the sitter
here would be natural for an artist concentrating
on his own reflected image as he painted.
About the identity of the sitter there is no
doubt, for the longest inscription is signed:
"During the first year of the Zhengde reign-era
[i.e., 1506] the old man of the Stone Field [Shen
Zhou] inscribed this [portrait of] himself." Shen's

dated to 1467
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
193.8 x 98.1 (76^4 x j85/8)
National Palace Museum, Taipei
The focal point of the painting is the small figure
of a scholar, placed on the medial axis and further
emphasized by his very isolation. Twisting forms
constructed by constantly curling brush strokes
fill the entire format, leaving the eye no place to
rest save around that calm figure, who thus serves
as the measure of this monumental and imposing
vision of nature. Although remarkably complicated and dynamic, the composition is yet stable
and coherently organized, just as the vibrant surface is clarified by means of texture and color.
Art-historical precedents for this style can be
found in the works of Xu Ben (1335^. 1379) and,
most especially, Wang Meng (1309-1385). In
common with the styles of those fourteenthcentury masters are the extreme elaboration of
surface, the richly tactile brushwork, and the localization of pictorial movement within stable units
of form. The artist's student, Wen Zhengming
(1470-1559), who became a major master in his
own right, would later note that his teacher's
TOWARD CATHAY

459

works before the age of forty were all small in

scale, those after forty much larger; the present
painting may well have been the original basis for
that statement, for it was done when the artist
was just forty and moreover is modeled on the
style of Wang Meng, mentioned by Wen as his
teacher's favorite source of inspiration during
those middle years.
The artist's long inscription begins with the
title, Lu Shan gao, 'The loftiness of Mt. Lu," and
then continues to describe the height, vast extent,
and scenic beauties of that famous mountain
located near Lake Poyang in Jiangxi Province. The
mountain is then associated with the family of a
scholar named Chen Kuan a family which had
lived at the foot of the peak for generations before
moving to the Suzhou region. The artist then
continues:
I once traveled to the master's gate. After
seeing the full extent of his loftiness, that of
Mt. Lu was put to shame. Having retired to a
hilltop garden at the age of seventy, he works
hard at literary composition, his white hair
tangled like autumn brambles
This poem
and painting were done by your disciple Shen
Zhou of Changzhou, who respectfully submits
them in hope of a long life for the venerable
and virtuous Master Xing'an [Chen Kuan].
The painting was thus done to celebrate a major
milestone in the life of the artist's literary teacher,
Chen Kuan (1398-1467 or later), and both subject
and style were chosen particularly for the occasion. As the ancestral home of Chen's family, Mt.
Lu could function easily as metaphor both for the
family and for the particular eminence of Chen
himself. The artist's father and uncle had both
studied with Chen Kuan's father, Chen Ji (13701434), and he in turn was the son of Chen Ruyan
(c. 1331-c. 1371), himself a landscape painter of
some note and a friend of Wang Meng, whose
style so influenced the present painting.
Shen Zhou's family estate in Suzhou was
founded during the early years of the Ming
dynasty by his great-great-grandfather Shen
Liangchen (mid-late 14th century), a collector
and connoisseur of art who was also a friend of
Wang Meng. Shen Zhou continued what had
become a family tradition by declining to seek
office and rather concentrating on scholarship,
poetry, and collecting. He also became an excellent calligrapher, but it was as a painter that he
achieved the ultimate accolade of history: recognition as the founder of a major school of painting, called the Wu school after the old name for
the Suzhou region. Along with Tang Yin, Qiu
Ying, and Wen Zhengming, Shen was also later
celebrated as one of the Four Great Masters of
Ming. Wang Shizhen (1526-1590), an important
critic of the late Ming, rated Shen as "the best
of our dynasty"; to Wen Zhengming, Shen's
most illustrious pupil, Shen was "an immortal
among men."
H.R.
460

CIRCA 1492

312

Shen Zhou
1427-1509

THREE JUNIPERS OF CHANGSHU

c. 1484
Chinese
three album sheets mounted as a handscroll; ink on
paper
46.1 x 120.6 (i8l/s x 472/2J
with artist's inscription and colophon by Wu Kuan
(1436-1504) dated to 1484 and 1492
references: Tseng 1954, 22-30; Edwards 1962, 93;
Cahill 1978, 95-96

Nanjing Museum
Some twenty miles northeast of Suzhou, home of
Shen and birthplace of the Wu school, is Changshu. There, in the time of Shen Zhou, grew one of
the remarkable sights of the region, the "Seven
Stars/' seven juniper trees of aged and hoary
aspect. Of the seven originally planted by a Daoist
priest of the Liang dynasty (502-557), four had
been replaced by Shen Zhou's day but three had
survived. Presumably these were the ones painted
by Shen Zhou when he visited the compound in
1484 with his friend, the poet, statesman, and
calligrapher Wu Kuan (1436-1504).
Old trees are most particularly honored by the
Chinese scholar, partly for reasons of self-identification, since they connote incorruptible endurance through many an adverse season, but also
because of their traditional connection with the
world of myth and the powers of nature. Old trees
were a favorite subject of the great early masters
of Chinese landscape painting such as Li Cheng
(c. 9i9~c. 967) and Guo Xi (c. looi-c. 1090) of
the Five Dynasties period and the Northern Song
dynasty. But this subject received particular attention from Shen Zhou and his pupil Wen
Zhengming.
The picture we now consider was probably the
first major effort of its kind in Chinese painting
a depiction solely of old trees, without background
or setting. As their branches twist and turn, and
their twigs reach and gesture, these trees evoke
dragons, those benign but awesome lords of water
in all its aspects, anthropomorphic powers of rain
and cloud and mist. What is tree? What is
dragon? Here? There? The metamorphic character
of this scroll, implied by the way in which the
trees are represented, becomes explicit in later
variations of the theme by other artists. Judging
from a rather dry copy in the Honolulu Academy
of Arts, Shen Zhou's pupil Wen Zhengming
(1470-1559) attempted a handscroll of all seven of
the junipers along with an inscription by the
artist emphasizing their anthropomorphic, metamorphic, and dragonlike character. Wen was
equally explicit in the inscription on his handscroll of an old pine (Cleveland Museum of Art):

"Constantly its form is changing, chances are it

will never be captured; its dragon-whiskers bristle
like lances, rank after rank/'
Shen Zhou's Three Junipers needs no literary
embellishment. Anyone who has seen and studied
junipers recognizes the reality Shen produced.
Careful and just observation guided his hand and
guarded against the enemy of exaggeration. The
ink is rich and the brush strokes subtly varied
from full and fat to dry and lean, from pale to
dark, and from sharp to a shaded wash. The quite
free and easy delineation of the natural shapes and
profiles gives the impression of a sketch "from
life," although it is certain that the scroll was
painted in the artist's study or workroom. Its perfect blend of strength, movement, solidity, and
description is a major visual accomplishment. To
write about this masterful scroll is a frustrating
task. "I am a picture; do not ask me to speak!"
(Heine) would be advice well taken here.
S.E.L

313

Shen Zhou
1427-1509

NIGHT VIGIL
dated to 1492
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper
84.8 x 21.8 (H3/8x85/8)
signed: Shen Zhou; two seals of the artist: Qi'nan,
Shi Tian
references: Edwards 1962, 56-58; Sullivan 1974,
52-55; Cahill 1978, 90-91
National Palace Museum, Taipei
In contrast to Three Junipers of Changshu (cat.
312), here the inscription, its content and implications, dominate the scroll. Words prevail over the
image, even mold and magnify it. Since most
scholars of wen ren painting consider this scroll a
key monument, it is necessary to present the
inscription in full, as translated and paraphrased
by James Cahill (see References):
On a cold night, sleep is very sweet. I woke in
the middle of the night, my mind clear and
untroubled, and as I was unable to go to sleep
again, I put on my clothes and sat facing my
flickering lamp. On the table were a few folders
of books. I chose a volume at random and began
to read but, tiring, I put down the book and sat
calmly doing nothing. A long rain had newly
cleared, and a pale moon was shining through
the window. All around was silence. Then after
a long time absorbing the fresh brightness, I
gradually became aware of sounds.

(He listens to sounds farther and farther off

the wind in the bamboo, the growling of dogs,
the drumbeats that mark the hours, and finally,
near dawn, the sound of a distant bell. His
meditations turn to the difficulty of breaking
through the constant operation of his own
intellect, which seeks for knowledge more in
books than in direct experience.)
My nature is to enjoy sitting in the night. So I
often spread a book under the lamp, going back
and forth over it, usually stopping at the second
watch. Man's clamor is not at rest, and the
mind is yet bent on bookish learning. Until
now, I have never attained a state of outer tranquillity and inner stability [rest].
Now tonight all sounds and colors come to me
through this state of tranquillity and rest; they
serve thus to cleanse the mind, spirit, and feelings [instead of, as ordinarily, muddying them]
and to arouse the will. (But this will, this
central point of consciousness, cannot easily
dissociate itself from attachment to sensory
data.) It is not that these sounds and colors do
not exist at other times, or that they do not
strike one's ears and eyes. My outward form
[body] is [usually] slave to external things, and
my mind takes its direction from them. [True
perception through] hearing is obscured by the
sounds of bell and drum; [true perception
through] seeing is obscured by patterns and
beauty. This is why material things benefit
people seldom, harm them often. (Once,
however, he has arrived at a state of inner tranquillity, the effect of sensory stimuli is very
different.) Sometimes it happens, though, as
with tonight's sounds and colors, that while
they do not differ from those of other times,
yet they strike the ear and eye all at once,
lucidly, wonderfully becoming a part of me
[absorbed into my very being]. That they are
bell and drum sounds, patterns and beauty, now
cannot help but be an aid to the advancement of
my self-cultivation. In this way, things cannot
serve to enslave man.
(Physical sensations are ephemeral, while the
will remains more constant.) Sounds are cut
off, colors obliterated; but my will, absorbing
these, alone endures. What is the so-called
will? Is it inside me, after all, or outside? Does
it exist in external things or does it come into
being because of those things? In this [i.e., the
realization I am now experiencing] there is a
means of deciding these questions. Ah! I have,
through this, decided them.
How great is the power of sitting up at night!
One should purify his heart and sit alone, by
the light of a newly trimmed, bright candle.
Through this practice one can pursue the principles that underlie events and things, and the
subtlest workings of one's own mind, as the
T O W A R D CATHAY

461

462

C I R C A 1492

TOWARD CATHAY

463

basis of self-cultivation and [a proper mode of]

response to external things; through this, we
will surely attain understanding.
I have composed this record of my night vigil in
the [Hongzhi] era, [renzi] year [1492], fifteenth
day of the seventh month.
[Shen Zhou of Changzhou.]
Contrary to CahilPs following comments, it seems
that Shen is relating this meditation specifically
to the nature of artistic creation. Ten times he
mentions components of the arts dear to the heart
of a literatus: sounds, colors, drum, bell, patterns,
and beauty. Although characteristically rambling
and vague, Shen's thoughts are discernible and his
theme is refreshingly simple. The artistic process
may occur in parts, or stages, but its successful
realization in the Confucian sense of "self-realization," since wen ren art is the expression of the
character of the man requires an intuitive
achievement of wholeness.
Joining his Western peers in this intuition of
the supremacy of intuition, the Chinese master
also finds the night a sympathetic occasion for
receiving these glimpses of real "reality." Between
sleep and waking, in "outer tranquillity and inner
stability," intuitions arise. In all this there are
Buddhist overtones as well, less explicit than the
Confucian ones, but implicit in the idea of contemplation as emptying oneself of a preoccupation
with the things of this world.
The picture is not mentioned in this long colophon, unless "composed the record" includes the
making of the image as well as the writing. It
seems to be a kind of visual aide-memoire, echoing the rather unfocused, informal, and rambling
nature of the inscription. A firmly and rapidly
brushed mixture of dabs, strokes, and washes
builds a convincing landscape setting for the notso-convincing architectural elements, especially
the stone slab bridge. Along a diagonal running
from mid-left to lower right the picture divides
between a dynamic and darkly brushed lower
foreground and a paler, calmer middle and far
distance. One thing seems certain from both text
and image. Wine's creative assistance played no
part in the making of Night Vigil, in contrast to
other similarly informal and casual works by the
artist, notably the Landscape for Liu Jue, also in
the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The intuitions of night-long vigils can be comparable to
those called forth by alcoholic exaltation, a constant theme in the history of later Chinese painting. Here the Chinese artist finds equivalents in
the Western tradition.
In Night Vigil, inscription and picture combine
to permit insights into the "literary man's" painting tradition. It is so particularly and deeply
embedded in that tradition that it can enter a
larger world of art only with difficulty.
S.E.L.

464

CIRCA 1492

3*4
Shen Zhou
1427-1509
DRAWINGS FROM LIFE: PLANTS,
ANIMALS, and INSECTS
dated to 1494
Chinese
album of 16 leaves, ink on paper
each leaf 34.7 x 55.4 (i}5/s x 2i3A)
inscription with signature of the artist
National Palace Museum, Taipei
Accompanying the album is an inscription by the
painter that clarifies the artistic process as well as
the specific intent of Shen Zhou in this case:
With wriggly things as well as those that grow,
I can still manipulate my brush and plumb the
wellsprings of the universe;
On a sunny day by a small window I sit in
a solitary place,
Spring breezes fill my face and my heart
grows subtle.
Playing with the brush I did this album, creating shapes in accord with the forms of the

objects by depending on the inspiration from

my own agreeable, leisurely, and well-fed existence. Those who seek me in my paintings will
find me apart from the painting. Inscribed by
Shen Zhou during the year [1494] of the Hongzhi reign-era.
Shen Zhou first stated what has become a
truism of painting: subject matter is no more than
the starting point for what the artist wishes to
communicate. Quite ordinary plants and creatures
as well as their more exotic or rarefied relatives
can provide the raw material on which the artist's
imagination works. The natural forms of those
subjects were not distorted for expressive purposes and are still easily recognizable the
painted shapes do correspond with the threedimensional forms of the subjectsbut verisimilitude was not the main point of any of these
paintings. The limits in that direction were
spelled out by Shen Zhou in another inscription
written for a similar series of paintings in that
same year: "All flowers, leaves, berries, melons,
flying birds, and walking animals were brought
forth within limits established by the operation of
nature, and cannot be imitated through human
effort."

Granting, then, the impossibility of exactly

replicating the things of nature, the artist had
no compelling need to limit the sources of his
inspiration to nature and could draw on earlier
paintings as well. The duck, for example, is very
close in style and appearance to one painted by
Chen Lin, a protege of Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322).
Like Chen and Zhao before him, Shen Zhou gives
us in the leaves of this album a series of ink-plays,
performances in ink using a variety of techniques,
including the "boneless" (mo gu) mode. It is precisely because the subjects are so commonplace, so
well known to all his audience, that viewer attention is focused rather on the means of representation than on the creative process itself. It is this
last that reveals the genius of Shen Zhou, for, as
he himself noted here, the paintings tell us on a
superficial level only that he was conversant with
the basic forms of cats, donkeys, frogs, crabs,
shrimp, clams, birds, butterflies, flowers, fruit,
and vegetables. It is in the penetrating insight,
technical freedom, and humor with which Shen
Zhou treated these subjects that something of his
personality and the seemingly charmed circumstances of his existence is revealed.
H.R.

TOWARD CATHAY

465

466

CIRCA 1492

315-316
Shen Zhou
1427-1509
LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES
Wen Zhengming
1470-1559
RAINY AND WINDY LANDSCAPE
c. 1490
Chinese
six album leaves mounted as a handscroll;
ink on paper; ink and light color on paper
38.7 X 60.2 fl52/4 X 233/4J

signatures, seals, and inscriptions by the artists:

leaf i, signature and two seals; leaf 2, signature,
two seals, and poem; leaf 3, signature, seal, and
poem; leaf 4, signature, seal, and poem; leaf 5,
signature, two seals, and poem; leaf 6 (by Wen
Zhengming), two seals and poem. Thirty-five
additional seals of collectors and two colophons,
one by Wen Zhengming dated to 1516, and one by
Xie Lansheng (1760-1831) dated to 1824.
references: Edwards 1962, 38-41, 95-96; Sullivan
1974, 48-51; Ann Arbor 1976, 28-34; Cleveland
1980,185-187
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
Nelson Fund

This deservedly famous and much praised set of

album leaves reveals the art of Shen Zhou in his
old age, and at its highest level. Richard Edwards
has dated the scroll to about 1480, which seems to
this author a decade too early. The masterful ink
handling, differing for different subjects but sure,
strong, and predominantly wet, seems more compatible with the early 14905, comparable with the
1494 album of Plants, Animals, and Insects (cat.
314). This dating accords well with Wen Zhengming's statement, in his colophon of 1516, that the
"venerable" Wu Kuan (1436-1504) asked him to
paint four leaves following the six by Shen Zhou.
(Four of the album leaves have been lost, three by
Wen and one by Shen.) At sixty, Wu would have
qualified as venerable, but hardly at forty-five.
Leaf i, the genre scene with gardeners, is the
only leaf without poem or inscription, and most
likely the omission was deliberate: workingmen
were not an approved wen ren subject (in contrast
to the subjects of the other four leaves), hence
unworthy of poetry. Nevertheless this composition is the most innovative of the set, matched in
quality only by leaves 2 and 3. Some elements in
leaf i are "conventional" in the sense of having
precedents the right foreground with its catalpas (?) and bare willows recalls the "one-corner"
compositions of the thirteenth-century Ma-Xia
school and its early Ming descendant, the Zhe
school, and the rock platform under the bamboo
(?) fence had appeared in paintings for centuries.
But observation and inventiveness are manifest
in the way in which the fence is angled to divide
TOWARD CATHAY

467

the pictorial stage, and in the diagonal recession,

diminution in scale, and increasing atmospheric
haziness that together suggest recession of the
ground plane. Old Shen still had his eyes open to
reality as well as to pictorial tradition.
Leaf 2 is a most unusual and bold composition,
with its enormous, nearly central crag a "stone
ledge flying in space" dominating both the
solitary figure and the screen of trees and rocks to
the right. The conceit of showing the figure (Shen
himself?) looking at his poem hanging in the
space between ledge and distant hills is a wonderful example of the unity of word and image in the
best wen ren painting.
Leaf 3 is likewise a modified "one-cornered"
composition, with the trees in the lower right
foreground balanced by distant hills at upper left.
The crisp clarity of ink and color convey the feel
of a brisk fall day ("white clouds and red leaves").
On leaf 4 the poem refers even more specifically
to autumn, while the image suggests a wind that
not only fills the boats' sails but even seems to
make the exaggerated ledge to lean in the same
direction. Leaf 5 recalls the undramatic, even,
"bland" look of Night Vigil (cat. 313) of 1492; its
poem seems unfocused and only partly related to
the image. The travelers do not "look back"; there
is no "carriage wheel" in sight.
The sixth leaf, the only one remaining of the
four painted by Wen Zhengming at Wu Kuan's
request, must be a very early work by the artist
Edwards suggests a date before 1504, the date of
Wu Kuan's death, when Wen was thirty-seven, a
mere youth by Chinese scholars' standards. He
refers to himself as "pupil" to Shen Zhou, and
Storm over the River, though rendered in his
more elegant and more miniature brushwork,
clearly shows his debt to the older master. A comparison of leaf 6 with leaf 4 by Shen is instructive
in this regard.
Of the following signatures and seals, poems,
and colophons, those on leaves 1-5 are by
Shen Zhou, leaf 6 and the colophon are by
Wen Zhengming:
Leafi: Signed Shen Zhou; Seals: Qi'nan,
Shi Tian
Leaf 2:
White clouds like a belt
encircle the mountain's waist
A stone ledge flying in space
and the far thin road.
I lean alone on my bramble staff
and gazing contented into space
Wish the sounding torrent
would answer to your flute.
Signed Shen Zhou. Seals: (below signature)
Qi'nan; (lower right) Boshi Weng
Leaf 3:
Carrying a crane and my [qin]
homeward bound on the lake
468

CIRCA 1492

White clouds and red leaves

flying together
My home right in the very
depths of mountains
The sound of reading within bamboo,
a tiny couch, a humble gate.
Signed Shen Zhou. Seal: Shi Tian
Leaf 4:
The red of autumn comes to river trees
The mountain smokes freeze fast the
purple evening.
Are those who long for home,
Returning from a thousand 111
Signed: Shen Zhou. Seal: Qi'nan
Leaf 5:
Deep and dark, emerald trees of mottled green,
Anglers' punts loll at the [Zha's] western shore.
Travelers on the bank look back in vain,
Each departing, by horse's hoof or
carriage wheel.
Signed: Shen Zhou. Seals: (below signature)
Qi'nan; (lower right) Shi Tian
Leaf 6:
The spring flood carried the rain,
swifter by evening.
And at the wild ford, no one
only the empty, lurching boat.
Seals: Tingyun Sheng, Wen Bi yin
Colophon by Wen [Zhengming]:
Venerable [Shi, i.e., Shen Zhou] was lofty
in spirit when wielding the brush;
He was by nature placid as the
languorous clouds.
Do not think he follows
[Yuanhui's, i.e., Mi Youren's] style,
For he himself depicted [Suzhou's] mountains
after rain.
What [Suzhou] place did he portray in
drippy wet ink?
Pre-eminent were the western hills, so striking
after rain
Who can capture even one part of this
scenery's mood?
In a thousand years, only the painted poetry
of [Mo-Qi, i.e., Wang Wei].
Years ago his poetry was noted for
its excellence;
In later years greatness in painting all
but obscured this earlier fame.
Life's affairs are vast and uncertain,
who knows what will obtain ?
Your old pupil, though white-headed now,
is still inept and ashamed.
Shen [Xiuwen, i.e., Shen Yue],
that noble man, is no longer seen;
And how many times since has the sun set on
[Yuzisha]?
T O W A R D CATHAY

469

Looking, through tears, at the broken ink and

remnants of his work;
Emerald peaks, rank on rank, melt into the
sad clouds.
Shen [Zhou] was a man of the highest integrity.
His writings were perceptive and rich, and his
scholarship deeply grounded. Emerging during
odd moments of spare time, his paintings
afforded an amusing diversion. They are not,
indeed, something which indifferent artisans
or commonplace craftsmen can realize. In his
early years he followed Wang Meng [13091385] and Huang [Gongwang, 1269-1354] and
proceeded on into the chambers of [Dong Yuan,
d. 962] and [Ju-Ran, act. c. 960-980], his creations becoming ever more profound. There is
no knowing what its genesis might be.
These six leaves were done for Wu [Kuan,
1436-1504]. In brushwork and compositional
placement especially do they surpass his usual.
Venerable old [Pao, i.e., Wu Kuan] bade me
fill in the extra leaves. I declined with thanks,
pleading inadequacy. However, I could not
brush aside his request. With four [Tang] couplets casually in mind, I smeared and scribbled
in a desultory way. But how could such clumsy
and inferior skills as mine bear being attached
to a renowned brush? The disciple was sincerely embarrassed.
By now it has been several years since the venerable old [Pao] passed on, and the venerable
old [Shi], too, is dead. His [Wu's] nephew [Siye,
i.e., Wu Yi] brought the album to show me.
I cannot help sighing over the fact that the
[qin, a kind of zither] remains but the man is
gone. And so, I have composed four poems
and inscribed these remarks.
Written by the pupil Wen [Zhengming] in the
[Yuqing shanfang] during the eighth lunar
month in the autumn of the [bingzi] year of the
[Zhengde] era [1516].
(Translations from Cleveland 1980,185-187.)
NOTES:
Mi Youren (10751151), a famous painter, was the son
of Mi Fu (1051-1107), an even more eminent painter,
calligrapher, and scholar, and one of the accepted creators of wen ren painting and aesthetics.
Wang Wei (699-759), tne traditional patriarch of the
wen ren tradition, was famous as poet and as the first
artist to paint a particular landscape, his country villa
Wangchuan.
Shen Yue (441-513) was a scholar whose name was
used by Wen as a complimentary reference to Shen
Zhou. Yuzisha was Shen Zhou's villa.
Xie Lansheng's colophon of 1824 describes the scroll
as it is now: "Originally it had six leaves, with four
other leaves added by Wen Hengshan [Wen Zhengming], based on couplets from Tang dynasty poems.
In the album now there are only five of Shen's and
one of Wen's left."
S.E.L.

470

CIRCA 1492

317

Wen Zhengming
1470-1559

SPRING TREES AFTER RAIN

dated to 1507
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
94-3 x 33-3 (371/8Xi}1/8)
inscription by the artist
National Palace Museum, Taipei
The theme of this painting as well as the circumstances under which it was created are stated in
the artist's inscription:
After rain spring trees produce green shade,
I love best that on West Mountain toward the
last light of day;
There must be people's houses at the
mountain's foot,
Across the river one sees from afar where the
white mists are born.
I painted this picture for Laishi, who after
several days requested me to add a poem. Laishi
is about to leave for the north. When he looks
at this on the boat, will he wonder if Tianping
and Lingyan still exist?
The artist's poem specifies a season and a time
of day and hints at atmospheric conditions; these
particulars, combined with the names of three
specific famous scenic areas in Jiangsu Province,
might well create expectations of a painting
almost exactly opposite to what the painter has
given us. Rather than the immediacy of a particular place on a somewhat humid evening in spring,
we view a scene in which the formalized, warmcool color combination, the general lack of spatial
or atmospheric recession, and the meticulous,
very dry, and refined drawing all tend to evoke a
mood of nostalgia, a sense of a world far removed
in time and place from the present.
Much of this approach harks back to Zhao
Mengfu (1254-1322), who was one of the earliest
artists in China to self-consciously distort natural
forms and relationships for purely expressive
purposes. The sense of disengagement which
characterizes the present painting is particularly
appropriate to the purpose, for Spring Trees After
Rain was painted as a gift for a man who was
leaving the lush river and lake country of the
Yangzi River region for the drier, more austere
north. The artist suggests in his inscription that
as the physical environment changed, his painted,
dreamlike vision might well come to seem more
substantial than his friend's memory of the southern scenery.
Wen Zhengming, mentioned above as the most
important pupil of Shen Zhou, was also a boyhood
friend of Tang Yin and a close artistic associate of
Qiu Ying. Wen originally aimed to be a scholar-

official like his father but failed time after time to

pass the district examination. In 1522, following
Wen's tenth failure, the governor of Jiangsu Province recommended him for appointment at court;
after serving unhappily until 1527, he resigned
and returned home to pursue aesthetic rather
than political goals. Wen's unflagging productivity during his long life and his numerous disciples
and students were instrumental in the spread
and acceptance of the Suzhou style of painting
throughout the entire country by the end of
the sixteenth century. From then onward the
restraint, the refinement, and the discipline
already apparent in this early work of 1507
became hallmarks of literati painting.
H.R.

beings served in Chan temples as exemplars,

patrons, and guardians of the faith.
Iron appears in Chinese art at least as early as
the fourth century B.C. , when it was used to make
belt-hooks as well as tools and weapons. During
the Han dynasty Emperor Gao Zu (r. 206-195
B.C.) instituted the practice of conferring iron
tallies at enfeoffment ceremonies; these were
inscribed in gold with a pledge of allegiance
enduring "until the Yellow River becomes a belt
and the Tai Mountains a whetstone" (see cat. 289).
By the tenth century the tallies were also granted
in recognition of meritorious service and carried
with them such extraordinary privileges as legal
immunity from the death penalty. The founder of
the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398, r.
1368-1398), often compared himself with Han
Gao Zu and, probably to further the comparison,
he revived the practice of granting iron tallies
very early in his reign. Imperial iron foundries as
well as imperial kilns were established, and iron
as well as ceramics became important factors in
international trade.
An inscription cast into the back of the
luohan reads:

318
LUOHAN
dated to 1497
Chinese
cast iron
height 112 (44 Vs]
inscription
Palace Museum, Beijing
Shaven head and plain robes identify this figure
as a Buddhist monk, seated with legs crossed in
the posture of meditation, his hands extended in a
gesture of revelation and his head slightly bowed.
Beneath bushy brows the eyes are narrowed to
slits, the mouth is set, and the neck tendons are
strained, all being outward manifestations of
inner resolve, strength, and concentration. Particularly striking are the elongated earlobes and the
circular protrusion in the center of the forehead,
both attributes of the Buddha himself but used
here to manifest the Enlightenment, or Buddhahood, of one of his disciples, or luohan (S: arhat).
Entering the Buddhist record as sixteen disciples of Sakyamuni Buddha, the luohan increased
in number as Buddhism moved eastward, first to
eighteen, then to five hundred, ultimately totaling as many as twelve hundred. Since luohan
attained spiritual perfection by their own efforts,
they played a major role in the limited pantheon
of Chan Buddhism, which emphasizes individual
effort and responsibility, and which became one of
the major Chinese schools of Buddhism from the
tenth century onward. Images of these perfected

Made during [the year 1497] of the Hongzhi

reign-era [1488-1505] of the Great Ming
dynasty for donation by eunuch Yao Jushi.
Other iron luohan images bearing dates include
a set of four made in 1477 (Rosshka Museum,
Goteborg), a single figure cast in 1482, and a figure with partially obliterated Chenghua reigndate (1465-1487; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort
Worth, Tex.). The Kimbell sculpture was cast in
Baoding District, near Beijing. Since Yao Jushi
likely lived in Beijing, the present piece may have
been made in Baoding as well. The observable
popularity of iron images during the fifteenth
century may be related to a well-known group of
large-scale glazed ceramic images of luohan from
Eight Luohan Mountain near Yizhou, immediately to the south of the capital. Although the clay
figures were first dated to the Tang dynasty, they
have more recently been ascribed to the eleventh
or twelfth century, and an even later dating is far
from impossible.
Its selection as capital of the Yuan dynasty
greatly expanded Beijing's population and economy, which would surely have spurred local
artists and artisans to greater and more ambitious
efforts. This creative impulse continued into the
Ming dynasty and was likely the impetus for the
iron luohan.
The high degree of verisimilitude that characterizes this entire group of ceramic and iron
luohan distinguishes them from pre-Song images,
when luohan were portrayed with distinctly
otherworldly, often grotesque, physiognomies.
Creation of a more serene, humane image is usually credited to the literati painting master Li
Gonglin (c. 1049-1106), and the present piece

derives from that lineage. With his plain robe

connoting a simple life free from worldly vanity,
and his sunken cheeks and lean neck suggesting
a meager diet, the luohan sits with disciplined
intensity, his moral and intellectual strength
immediately apparent. While Yao Jushi may well
have despaired of equaling such an exemplar,
his meritorious donation must still redound to
H.R.
his credit.

319
VlRUPAKSHA
i$th century
Chinese Lamaist workshop
gilt copper, hollow cast, with silver, turquoise, coral,
and lapis inlays
height 68.5 (27)
references: Gordon 1959, 3-7, 92; Von Schroeder
1981, 502-513, 524-525; Snellgrove 1987
Musee des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, Paris
Virupaksha, one of the four Guardian Kings of the
Four Directions (S: lokapdla), watches over the
west. The architectural model of a stupa-pagoda,
here held in his right hand, is one of his Lamaist
attributes; as king of the nagas (serpent deities)

T O W A R D CATHAY

471

he holds a snake in his left hand. His complex

armor and padding is of Chinese style, derived
ultimately from Tang dynasty (618-907) representations of the Guardian Kings.
Its direct antecedents are to be found on the
ceremonial marble gate called Juyong Guan, built
north of Beijing between 1342 and 1345 by the
Mongol rulers of Yuan dynasty (1279-1368)
China. There the Four Guardian Kings dominate
the reliefs decorating inner walls of the vaulted
passage. The vigor of these reliefs, and the
inscription repeated in six languages Chinese,
Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and
Tangut attest the extent of Mongol power and
the complexity of the Mongol domain in the fourteenth century. In the service of their Lamaist
form of Buddhism the Mongol rulers brought
Nepali and Tibetan artist-craftsmen to their
capital at Beijing, including the young Nepalese
artist Aniko. Arriving in Beijing in the company
of the distinguished Tibetan monk Thags pa
(1235-1280), the young Aniko quickly became
minister in charge of the imperial workshops
producing religious art, and a major stylistic
innovator.
Much of the iconography and representational
conventions established in the Yuan dynasty for
Lamaist paintings and sculpture continued to
govern Lamaist art during the succeeding Ming
dynasty both the images intended for Chinese
Lamaist temples and those exported to central
Asia and Tibet. The close and mutually beneficial
ties between Tibet and China in the early Ming
period can be symbolized by the two-year visit
(1406-1408) to the capital, Nanjing, by the fifth
incarnation of the chief lama of the Karma-pa
lineage, De-bzhin-gshegs-pa (1357-1419), who
acted as spiritual advisor to the Yongle emperor.
Many imperial reign-marked pieces both images
and implements of fine quality are known from
this time.
Lamaist works of middle Ming continued to
show a creative mixture of Nepali, Tibetan, and
Chinese stylistic elements. If the main images of
Vajrayana Buddhism (Tantric Buddhism with an
admixture of pre-Buddhist Tibetan "Bon" worship
of nature deities and demons), even those of
Chinese manufacture, are strongly Tibetan in
appearance, such secondary images as Guardian
Kings (like Virupaksha) and luohan (cat. 308) are
more indebted to Chinese modes of representing
warriors and sages.
Inlays of semiprecious stones, uncommon on
Ming Chinese artifacts, were more common in
Tibet, perhaps indicating (according to Von
Schroeder) that this image of Virupaksha was
made for Tibetan use.
s. E . L .

472

CIRCA 1492

32O

PORTABLE SHRINE IN TRIPTYCH FORM

i$th-i6th century
Chinese
carved and engraved hardwood
height 25.4 (10)
references: Gordon 1959, 106; Sawa 1972, fig. 60;
Paris 1977, 107-109; Snellgrove 1987, 2:397-408,
2:429-434, pis. 65, 72; S. Huntington and].
Huntington 1990, 218-395, 55^~5^
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and
Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Identification of the twenty-one deities represented within the confines of this small folding
shrine is beyond the competence of this writer.
The central figure in the upper register of the
central section is Padmasambhava (Lotus Born),
and the rest are major deities of the Lamaist persuasion. Here the content is not as important as
the context. Padmasambhava was a historicallegendary sage, founder of the Indo-Tibetan
Lamaist tradition. He is reputed to have come
from Nepal circa 779 at the request of the Tibetan
ruler and to have quelled the gods and demons
(Bon) of the region. He also founded the first
monastery, bSam yas, and there installed the
Indian version of Tantric Buddhism, which generated a rift in Tibet between sects looking south
to India and those looking to powerful Tang
China. Ironically, this later shrine extols Padmasambhava, champion of Indian Tantrism, although
its manufacture and style are clearly Chinese.
Probably by the sixteenth century the early sectarian divisions were no longer live issues.

Portable shrines, both diptychs and triptychs,

played major roles in the dissemination of the
faith and the popularization of certain deities.
Ivory and wooden fragments exist of shrines of
this type dating between the fifth and eighth century. One single example is perfectly preserved,
and still emanates the magic that must have issued
from all of these early material evidences of the
new, true faith the portable shrine at Kongobuji, the Shingon Buddhist temple on sacred Mt.
Koya in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. Legend has
the shrine brought to Japan by Monk Kukai (Kobo
Daishi, 774-835), who returned in 806 from study
in China to establish the enormously influential
Shingon (True Word) school of Esoteric Buddhism
in Japan. It is not unlikely; who but a man of
Kukai's intellect and charisma could have commanded such a treasure? In form and size the
Kongobu-ji shrine is almost identical with the
shrine exhibited here, but its iconography is quite
different. The Kongobu-ji shrine is a classic
presentation of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni,
flanked by two bodhisattvas, secondary figures,
guardians, lions, and attendants. The present
Lamaist shrine is centered on a quasi-historical
founder of a complex faith who, by the time this
shrine was made, had acquired wholly legendary
status and attributes.
The refinement of the detailed carving and
engraving suggests a Chinese craftsman accustomed to working in fine-grained hardwoods and
a workshop producing the rosewood (huanghuali)
or boxwood small sculptures fashionable among
the scholar-official class of the Ming dynasty.
S.E.L.

ated, form a band of scrolling decoration around

the shoulder. The drawing of this piece is especially vigorous. Unlike the more schematic and,
later, emblematic creatures of the later Ming and
Qing, these dragons are convincingly full-bodied,
their motion believably animated and undulating.
Over the white fabric of the jar the glaze has a
particularly fine oily sheen. The base has a shallow ring-foot and, within its stepped underside, a
six-character reign-mark in cobalt blue.
S.E.L.

3^3
COVERED JAR

321

3 22

PALACE BOWL

JAR

Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)

Chinese
white porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
height 6.8 (25/s), diameter at mouth 14.7 ($3/4)
references: Brankston 1938, 46, 47, pi. 26c- Jenyns
1953, 79-85, pis. 62-63; Medley 1963, A.6/\.6

Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)

Chinese
white porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
height 8.7 (33/s), diameter 12.8 (5)
reference: Medley 1962-1963, pis. na, lib

National Palace Museum, Taipei

The term "Palace Bowl," proposed by Brankston
for bowls of this shape and size, seems to have
been accepted almost universally. The shape is
very simple, with little or no reflex curve from
the side to the lip. The six-character reign-mark
and the two fine-lined circles enclosing it are
brushed in underglaze blue on the slightly
convex, fully glazed base. Encircling the wall of
the bowl inside and out is a hibiscus(?) scroll with
five blooms and leaves; in the well of the interior
is a five-leaf floral "whorl" enclosed in a single
fine-lined circle. Double lines mark the lip inside
and out, and on the exterior a double line encircles
the foot. Characteristic of these Chenghua period
bowls, the design is simple, elegant, and finely
balanced, and the blue color is enhanced by the
large area of white surround. As Brankston notes,
the scrolling stem that links the blooms and leaves
was not drawn with a single continuous brush
stroke, unlike the scrolls of earlier imperial wares
made at Jingdezhen. Pale blue wash alongside the
darker blue in blossoms and leaves effects a subtle
kind of shading, simply achieved.
S.E.L.

The Asia Society, New York,

Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller jrd Collection
On this small jar of squat form, with a high shoulder and rolled mouth rim, the principal decoration
is of two fish-tailed dragons soaring above a
raging sea. Hooked foliate scrolls, obliquely situ-

Chenghua reign (1465-1487)

Chinese
white porcelain with dou cai decoration
height 11.1 (43/s), diameter at mouth 6.3 (22/2J,
diameter at foot 9.1 (j3/s)
references: Jenyns 1953, 77-93; Medley 1966;
Los Angeles 1989
National Palace Museum, Taipei
Perhaps the rarest of all Chenghua period porcelains, this jar has no counterpart in the West.
Given the sybaritic life of the emperor, empress,
and inner court, the compressed and softly swelling shape and wide, low-rimmed mouth suggest
that it was used to hold small delicacies.
Dou cai decoration combined underglaze drawing in cobalt blue with overglaze enameling; separately the two techniques antedated the Chenghua

TOWARD CATHAY

473

reign-era, and there seems to be evidence (cat.

326) that dou cai itself, formerly thought to be an
invention of the Chenghua imperial kilns, was in
use as early as the Xuande reign-era (1426-1435).
Nevertheless, dou cai decoration is always primarily associated with the ceramic production of
the Chenghua reign. Soft cobalt blue was used to
outline the motifs and to wash in some of them,
then transparent glaze was applied and the piece
received its first, high-temperature, firing. Leadbased enamels were then painted within the
remaining blue outlines and fused by a second,
lower-temperature, firing. The result was a
superb, delicate fabric, characteristically slightly
ivory-tinged and with a distinctive oily sheen
that was only partially achieved in the succeeding
Hongzhi (1488-1505) and Zhengde (1506-1521)
reigns, and hardly at all in later copies. An accidental effect of the firing also helps to identify
genuine Chenghua pieces: the foot usually shows
an ivory to pale cinnamon discoloration, an effect
of the high-temperature firing on the glaze and
body within the confines of the foot rim.
Dou cai, literally "competing colors/' suggests
a rather high degree of contrast. But in woodworking, fitting, or joinery, dou cai can also mean
"agreeing" or "harmonious." With characteristic
Chinese subtlety the term dou cai encompasses
both meanings: "agreeable contrast" nicely
describes the delicate sprightliness of dou cai
color schemes.
Here the underglaze soft blue was used to
outline the undulating dragons and to wash in
the stylized clouds. Overglaze enamels color
the green dragons and the two bands of yellow
gadroons accenting the rim and foot. Floral
arabesques on the lid repeat the green of the dragons on.the jar. The only red is in a border of
rosettes encircling the rim of the lid. Instead of a
reign-mark, the glazed base bears the character
tian (Heaven), brushed in underglaze blue.
The Chinese have always ranked the dou cai
porcelains of Chenghua among the very finest
works in their extraordinary ceramic tradition.
Never spectacular, always subtle and delicate, they
reflect the sensuous and hedonistic proclivities of
the emperor, his formidable and pleasure-loving
empress, and the eunuch-dominated court.
S.E.L.

324

"CHICKEN" CUP
Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)
Chinese
white porcelain with dou cai decoration
height 3.5 (i3/s), diameter j.6 (3)
references: Medley 1966, no. ^749; Los Angeles
1989, no. 41
National Palace Museum, Taipei
On the fine white porcelain body of this wine cup,
under a warm, transparent glaze, underglaze
cobalt blue outlines leaves, flowers, and chickens
and also fills in the shaded rocks. A double underglaze blue line marks the upper boundary of the
design, below the slightly everted rim, and a
single line marks the lower boundary, just above
the base. On the recessed underside of the base
cobalt blue also renders the six-character reignmark and the double line that forms a rectangular
cartouche around it. Dou cai (cats. 323, 325, 326)
enamels of red, green, yellow, and aubergine color

474

CIRCA 1492

in the outlines of lilies, peonies, leaves, chicks,

hen, and rooster.
This elegant, tiny wine cup resonates with
Chinese aristocratic and scholarly traditions. Wine
was a time-honored accompaniment of elevated
discourse and elegant gatherings. For the scholarpoet or scholar-painter wine was both inspiration
and solace in times of trouble. The most famous
Chinese wine party of all time was held in spring
of the year 353 in the Shanyin District, near
present-day Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province. There
forty-one poets joined their host, the celebrated
calligrapher Wang Xizhi, at the Lan Ting (Orchid
Pavilion). The guests were seated along the banks
of a small stream, down which wine-filled cups
were floated. When a cup drifted to shore near
one of the poets, he drank the wine and composed
a verse. After the party the poems were copied
out as the Orchid Pavilion Collection (Lan Ting
//), to which a celebrated preface was added by
the host. The earliest known representation of
scholar-poet with wine cup (now in the Nanjing
Museum) is found on a relief formed of molded

clay bricks from a fifth-century tomb at Xishanjiao, Nanjing, where Ruan Ji (210-263), one of the
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, lifts his cup to
his lips in company with his fellows.
Wine and its cup continued to be essential
accouterments of the gentleman-scholar-artist's
life. In addition, the motifs decorating this cup
and others like it are emblematic of good fortune:
the cock was a symbol of achievement and harbinger of fame and, combined with the peony, a rebus
of riches and honorspresumably devolving on
the imbiber.
Tradition has it that the Chenghua emperor's
favorite concubine, Wan Guifei, had a voice in
determining the wares produced at the imperial
kiln at Jingdezhen. If this be true, then the exquisite beauty and fine quality of Chenghua porcelains reflect the sensitive and subtle taste of a
sophisticated, pleasure-loving court.
S.E.L.

325
WINE CUP
Chenghua mark and period (14651487)
Chinese
white porcelain with dou cai decoration
height 4.8 (i7/s)
The Cleveland Museum of Art,
John L. Severance Fund
This wine cup, shaped like the wider end of an egg
on a low ring-foot, is made of fine white porcelain
under a warm transparent glaze. Underglaze blue
outlines the design and colors the rocks; the same
blue bounds the design top and bottom, with a
single line just under the rim and a double line
encircling the ring-foot. On the faintly cinnamon-

tinged underside, cobalt blue also renders the sixcharacter reign-mark within a double-outlined
rectangular cartouche. Red, green, and yellow
enamels fill in the costumes, flowers, and leaves of
the subject boys flying kites on a garden terrace.
The complex composition required for this small
wine cup attests the porcelain decorators' skill, as
does the admirably controlled underglaze drawing
in slightly violet cobalt blue. The warm oil-sheen
white, perfectly even, seems particularly rich
and unctuous.
The subject, which alludes directly to fertility
and abundant progeny, had by Ming times become
generally auspicious and congratulatory. It originated at least as early as Tang (618-907) times,
when bai zi (one hundred, i.e., many, children)
curtains were used in marriage ceremonies.
During the Song dynasty (960-1279) children
playing, whether few or many, became a common
motif, rendered by painters of the imperial academy as well as by those lesser lights who painted
auspicious subjects for restaurants, pleasure quarters, and affluent homes.
A mate to this cup is in the National Palace
Museum, Taipei the only other example of
Chenghua date known to the author, although
Zhengde (1506-1522) copies exist. In the Percival
David Foundation, London, is an unpublished
handscroll titled Gu Wan Te (Myriad Special
Antiques), dated to 1728. It is one of at least eight
and probably more scrolls (one is reported to be in
the Victoria and Albert Museum) which together
provide a visual catalogue of the Yongzheng
emperor's (r. 1722-1735) collection. Depicted in
the David scroll is a pair of wine cups, identified
as Chenghua and appearing identical to the now

separated Cleveland and Taipei examples. The

provenance of the Cleveland cup indicates that it
probably came from the Palace Collection in the
19205 or 305 as collateral for loans by the Shanghai Salt Bank, a provenance shared by many
of the imperial porcelains in the Percival David
Foundation.
S.E.L.

326
PAIR OF PLATES
Chenghua reign (1465-1487)
Chinese
white porcelain with dou cai decoration
height 3.8 (iVz), diameter 16.6 (6lh)
reference: Rogers 1990, 75-76
National Palace Museum, Taipei
Ornamenting each of these most unusual plates is
a virtually identical lotus pond inhabited by a pair
of mandarin ducks, rendered in a dou cai scheme
of soft underglaze cobalt blue outlines colored in
with red, yellow, and green overglaze enamels.
In the well of each dish, bordered by a circular
double outline in underglaze blue, this design was
composed into a somewhat stiff, naively drawn
pondscape, seen from above, with the lotuses and
water weeds very large in scale compared with the
ducks. The same motifs appear around the outside
TOWARD CATHAY

475

of each dish, but here there was no attempt to

organize them into a scene; they march around
the cavetto in strict alternation, at eye level, the
richness of the coloring emphasizing a certain
resemblance to heraldic blazons.
Since mandarin ducks mate for life, since the
Chinese character for lotus (Han) is homophonous
with other characters meaning "to connect" and
"to love/ and since lotuses produce vast numbers
of seeds, lotuses and ducks are frequently combined in Chinese applied arts to symbolize happy
and fruitful marriage. It is not unlikely that these
dishes were made to celebrate a marriage.
Encircling the inside rim is an inscription in
Tibetan characters further evidence for the
often close connections in early and middle Ming
between China and Tibet. The underglaze cobalt
blue in which the characters were brushed is particularly vibrant, with a watery texture common
to most Chenghua porcelains.
In the Sakya monastery, Tibet, is a bowl bearing
the same dou cai design and a Xuande reign-mark
(1426-1435), and apparently of the period. This
would suggest that the dou cai technique, as
well as this unusual design, originated as early as
circa 1430.
S.E.L.

3^7

DISH
Hongzhi mark and period (1488-1505)
Chinese
white porcelain with underglaze blue decoration and
overglaze yellow enamel
diameter 26.4 (io3A)
references: Jenyns 1953, 66; Medley 1966, 42
National Palace Museum, Taipei

476

CIRCA 1492

The spectacular decorative scheme on this dish

was originated at the Jingdezhen potteries as early
as the Xuande reign-era (1426-1435), continued
popular during Chenghua (1465-1487), and was
in great demand by the Imperial Household, as
evidenced by its orders to the potteries, during the
Hongzhi reign-era.
On the unfired white body the design was
painted in cobalt blue before being clear-glazed
and fired: inside, in the central roundel a vigorously drawn floral spray, possibly tree peony;
around the cavetto evenly spaced fruiting sprigs
of lichee, loquat(?), chestnut, and crabapple;
evenly disposed around the outside wall of the
dish are four identical floral scrolls, more stylized
than those on the inside. Fine double lines encircle the rim inside and out, the central roundel,
and the foot, setting off the motifs. The base is
glazed and bears the Hongzhi reign-mark in
underglaze blue.
In the Xuande period this type of design was
probably rendered only in underglaze blue on
white. But Chenghua and Hongzhi dishes of the
type were painted with overglaze yellow enamel
covering all but the blue motifs and the base, then
fired a second time to fuse the enamel. Design
and color combine to make these blue-and-yellow
wares among the boldest imperial porcelains of
the Ming dynasty.
S.E.L.

328
TABLE SCREEN
Zhengde mark and period (1506-1522)
Chinese
white porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
height 45.8 (18)
references: Jenyns 1953, 98-105; Medley, 1963,
#3687, 64
courtesy of the Percival David Foundation
of Chinese Art, London
A single piece of porcelain forms this entire
screen, though its base is designed to resemble the
wooden mounting of a single-panel painted screen
(J: tsuitate). In its center is a quotation from the
Koran in Arabic script, set in a diamond-shaped
cartouche with a double outline. Enclosing the
diamond and touching it at its four corners is a
double-outlined circle. A double line also traces
the perimeter of the screen, which has cusped
corners at the top echoing the cusps on the base.
Cloud scrolls fill the spaces between the diamond
and the circle, and floral scrolls the space between
circle and perimeter. Save for a double-lined
rectangle containing the six-character Zhengde
reign-mark of the Ming dynasty, the lower edge
of the screen is blank. Both inscriptions and all

the decoration are in underglaze cobalt blue.

The back of the screen is unglazed.
The elegantly written Arabic text has been
translated: "The words of [God] Almighty... and
that the places of worship belong to God, so call
on none along with God. And that when the servant of God (Sayyidua Muhammad) arose calling
on Him they (the Jinn) were near to being too
great an oppression for him. Say: I worship my
Lord alone and associate none with Him" (The
Qur'an: Surat al Jinn [LXXII] v. 18-20, trans.
D. Cowan).
This highly unusual piece is one of the so-called
Muhammadan waresblue-and-white porcelains
bearing inscriptions in Arabic or Persian against
a background of distinctive, rather stiff scrolls
outlined in dark blue and filled in with paler
blue. Muhammadan wares, mostly accessories of
the scholar's writing table, appeared during the
Zhengde reign. They were produced for the Palace
eunuchs, mostly Muslim, who by virtue of heavy
influence over this emperor wielded vast power,
corruptly, in the imperial administration. The
Zhengde emperor himself was rumored to have
converted to the Muslim faith, particularly after
an edict late in his reign forbade the killing
of pigs.
S.E.L.

329

DISH
probably Chenghua (1465-1487) or Hongzhi
(1488-1505) reign
Chinese
porcelain with monochrome red (ji hong; sacrificial
red) glaze
diameter 17 (63/4J
references: Brankston 1938; Hetherington 1948,
60-66, 75-78; Jenyns 1953, 52-56; Medley 1976,
211, 212; Cleveland 1990, nos. 44, 47
The Asia Society, New York,
Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller jrd Collection

suspended bubbles. In shape this dish resembles

a yellow-glazed dish in the Millikin Collection
at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which bears a
genuine Chenghua reign-mark; it is also like the
one illustrated by Brankston (Brankston 1938, 86,
table ivf) and ascribed by him to the Hongzhi
reign.
The hue is remarkably like that of certain rare
Xuande (1426-1435) porcelains, such as the reignmarked dish in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Copper oxide, fired in a reducing kiln, produces
this red, which on porcelains of Ming date is
called ji hong or you li hong. Before firing, a
clear, untinted glaze was applied over the coppercharged glaze. Where this clear glaze ran down
from the rim, leaving the copper glaze exposed
during firing, the copper volatilized, and the
white porcelain body color shows through.
Except for a few accidental or exceedingly crude
examples, copper red first appeared in the ceramic
decorator's palette during the Mongol Yuan
dynasty (1279-1368). Yuan potters attempted to
create underglaze red-and-white wares with the
same decorative vocabulary as the more common
underglaze blue-and-white wares, but found the
underglaze red very difficult to control, particularly on larger pieces and on those with elaborate
decoration. Most often such pieces emerged from
the kiln with the red turned to gray, silver, even
black, and often rather thin and "bleeding" in
appearance. Small monochrome-glazed bowls and
stem cups fared better, and this miniature mastery continued into early Ming, especially the
Xuande period, and (as in this example) even to
the end of the fifteenth century. Among Ming
ceramics, however, copper reds are rare, because
the potters had still not entirely mastered the
high temperatures (exceeding 1500 C.) and carefully controlled reducing atmosphere necessary in
the kiln. In the sixteenth century the underglaze
red technique was abandoned in favor of the
more easily controlled overglaze red enamels and
was not attempted again until the seventeenth
century.
The direct descendants of the early Ming
copper reds are the technologically masterful
productions of the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen,
Jiangxi Province, during the Qing dynasty, especially the reign-era of the Kangxi emperor (16621722). The "oxblood" (lang yao) and peachbloom
glazes of that time are justly famous for their
range and brilliance of hues.
The precise use of the Ming red-glazed ceramics is not known, but their shapes almost exclusively dishes, stem cups, and bowls suggest
luxury food services and small altar vessels.
S.E.L.

330

MEI-PING VASE
late 15th century
Chinese
white porcelaneous ware with fa hua decoration
height 36.8 (1^/2)
references: Jenyns 1953, 75-76; Medley 1976,
207-208
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of John L.
Severance
Clearly outside the rarefied and intellectual realm
of Imperial blue-and-white or monochrome porcelains is the vividly colored group of wares exemplified by this handsome mei-ping (plum-blossom
vase). This decorative mode is called fa hua, a
term that, as written by most Chinese authors,
means "French" (or "Prankish") decoration. Fa
hua ware falls within the more general classification of porcelain or porcelaneous ceramics clad in
low-fired glazes applied over the biscuit (fired
body). Fa hua wares are clearly distinguished
by designs outlined in raised threads of slip and
colored in a palette of deep aubergine, cobalt blue,
turquoise, and yellow glazes, and white (in
reserve). The technique, palette, and style of
decoration resemble cloisonne enameling on
metal, a medium associated with the Prankish
countries as early as the Yuan dynasty (1279-

Cloaking this shallow dish is a deep and variable

glaze ranging from blood red to cherry, with an
"orange peel" texture resulting from many tiny
TOWARD CATHAY

477

1368) and popular during the Ming and Qing

dynasties. In this piece the lotus blossoms have
been reserved in white under clear glaze, with the
remainder of the design pale blue and yellow
against a dark blue background.
Fa hua wares bear no reign-marks, but the
author believes those with high-fired white porcelain bodies to be earlier than those with lowerfired, less homogeneous bodies. The high- and
low-fired pieces employ the same cloisonne technique but are differentiated by size and shape.
The presumably early, higher-fired porcelains are
usually of substantial size and occur in shapes
popular for Yuan and early Ming blue-andwhite the mei-ping vase and the guan jar. The
lower-fired, ostensibly later pieces consist mainly
of small vases and bowls related in shape to other
late Ming and early Qing wares. On these pieces,
because the firing temperature was too low, the
glaze tends to be cracked and crazed, a flaw not
usually found among the high-fired earlier
examples.
The Cleveland mei-ping is one of a moderate
number of remarkably similar pieces, all
characterized by the "early" mei-ping shape,
a hard white porcelain body flecked with iron
impurities, and a decorative vocabulary of hanging
cloud-collar motifs on the shoulders, a frieze of
lotus on the body, and "rising gadroons" above
the foot. All these motifs were in common use
between 1350 and 1500. The precise use of these
mei-ping is not known, but their decoration and
color strongly suggest flower vases or perhaps
decorative objects in their own right. Similar
but not identical shapes may well have been
wine bottles.
The rich and bold effect of fa hua designs
pleased Western collectors of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, and fa hua ware,
rather than (or in addition to) Japanese design,
may well have influenced Art Nouveau and Art
Deco ceramics. Thereafter fa hua fell from popular grace in the West, but recent years have seen a
clear revival of interest in the earlier, more striking shapes. Certainly fa hua colors and designs fit
Western criteria for the decorative arts. They may
also reflect the bold and "vulgar" pictorial qualities of Ming court and academic painting of the
fifteenth century.
s. E. L .

331

TWO-HANDLED PAN BASIN

second half of i$th century
Chinese
gilt bronze with cloisonne enamels
diameter 34.9 (ij3/4)
references: London 1958, 47-49, no. 303, pi. 81;
Feddersen 1961; Garner 1962; Jenyns and Watson
1980,106, 113; New York 1989, 102, nos. 24, 27
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
478

CIRCA 1492

Although some evidence exists for enameling on

metal in East Asia before the fourteenth century,
there is little doubt that the Mongol Yuan dynasty
(1279-1368), extending from China across
Central Asia to Byzantium and into Europe, was
the conduit through which cloisonne enamels and
enameling were introduced into China. The necessary techniques were already known to the
Chinese, having been developed to a very high
level during the course of China's already threethousand-year-old glazed ceramic tradition.
Relatively low temperatures were required for
enameling on metal, easily within the reach of
Chinese technology. By the Xuande reign-era
(1426-1435) reign-marked enameled bronzes
were being produced by accomplished means
wedded to a subtle and varied decorative tradition,
especially that of the now dominant underglaze
blue-and-white porcelains.
This pan basin is an unusual shape for so early
a date. Its peony-scroll (not lotus) arabesque
design occurs on numerous blue-and-white bowls
of the Yongle (1403-1425) and Xuande reign-eras.
The pan shape is archaistic: bronze pan originated
in the Anyang period (13th century B.C.-1045
B.C.) of the Shang dynasty and were respectfully
reiterated in bronzes and ceramics of later dynasties, especially from Song (960-1279) times on.
Many of the early Ming cloisonnes echo archaic
bronze shapes: gui basins, gu beakers, and ding
tripods may well have been used as altar offering
vessels, but, being relatively small, seem more
suitable to less formal, more domestic contexts.
During later Ming large cloisonne vessels were
common and conspicuous altar furnishings in
important Buddhist temples, including imperial
temples, in the form of beakers for liquid, containers for food offerings, lamps, candle-holders,
and censers.
Technically the fifteenth-century works display
a sound and forthright manufacture. The bronze

bodies are heavy, the gilding is thick and deephued, and the enamel colors, principally red, pink,
yellow and two different blues, are translucent and
rich. The flowers and arabesque are natural and
flowing, echoing the same elements in blue-andwhite porcelain. On the present basin the wingedlion handles are particularly fine, heavily gilded
and cast separately. The arabesque incised around
the rim is also notable. Incidentally, the suggestion of Brinker and Lutz (New York 1989,102)
that the cloisonnes imitate fa hua porcelains (see
cat. 330), reverses the relationship of the two
wares. Fa hua ceramics do not seem to antedate
the Xuande reign-era, nor are there pre-Ming
precedents for the cloison technique in ceramics.
It seems far more likely that the porcelain makers
imitated the metal workers, changing their
palette and adapting the cloison relief technique
to porcelains.
S.E.L.

332

Li DING TRIPOD
second half of the i$th century
Chinese
gilt bronze with cloisonne enamels
diameter at mouth 19.6 (j3/*)
reference: New York 1989, nos. 31, 32, 34, 35
National Palace Museum, Taipei
The li ding, a trilobed container whose bulbous
lobes narrow to form hollow feet, is one of the
oldest vessel shapes in Chinese history. Ceramic
prototypes exist from at least the third millennium B.C., bronze vessels of the type from at least
1600 B.C., found at the early Shang dynasty site of
Zhengzhou. Like all ancient bronzes, including

333
MEI-PING VASE WITH
LOTUS DECORATION

PLATE
by Wang He

c. 1500
Chinese
gilt copper and cloisonne enamel
height 52.1 (2ol/2)
references: Jenyns and Watson 1980, 105-114, 134,

dated to 1489
Chinese
carved polychrome lacquer fti caij
diameter 18.8 (j3/s)
inscribed (over door): second year of Hongzhi
[1489]; signed (on door jamb): Wang He
references: London 1958, 39, 73, pi. 66;
Ch'en 1966, 62-66; Riddell 1979, 208; ]enyns and
Watson 1980, 214

135; New Yor/c 1989, 102, no. 41

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

the guif li ding of Shang (trad. 1766-1045 B.C.)

and Zhou (1045-256 B.C.) date served as ritual
vessels and emblems of authority. It was only
natural that the Chinese, profoundly historicalminded and revering precedent, should repeat the
traditional shapes and treasure their historic
resonance in later ceramics and jades and, after
1400, in cloisonne.
But the ancient Shang decorative repertory of
"ogre masks" (taotie), "thunder patterns"
(leiweri), and various birds and beasts, though it
continued to be employed in later dynasties on
archaistic bronzes (including some cloisonnes),
gave way on most cloisonne vessels to the flora
and fauna and spirited dragons found on the
ubiquitous underglaze blue-and-white porcelains.
Precedents for the grapevine motif on this li
ding are found on vessels as early as the late Six
Dynasties period (A.D. 222-589), and grapevines
were much used on metalwork of the Tang
dynasty (A.D. 618-907). Thereafter they fell into
desuetude until the early fifteenth century, when
the grape and vine reappeared on rather splendid
large white porcelain dishes with underglaze blue
decoration. The luscious decorative effect of the
design may seem to some traditionalists incongruous with the gravity of the ancient shape. But
the combination of motif and medium must have
appealed to some scholar-officials, for cloisonne
grapevines appear on a brush holder and a seal box
in the Uldry collection in Zurich. A li ding from
the same collection is similar to the present vessel
but has lost its gilding and lacks the engraved
design of repeating "thunder pattern" around
the rim.
S.E.L.

334

Although the mei-ping shape is rare in cloisonne

enamel, it was often produced in glazed porcelains
by the master potters of the Jingdezhen area in
Jiangxi Province (cat. 330). The shape, literally
"prunus vase," was particularly favored during the
Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), but remained
a standard vase form until modern times. The
body of this vase is decorated with lotus blossoms,
buds, and leaves, supplemented by peony and
mallow motifs. In the shoulder and neck registers
are aquatic flora, and encircling the base are
rising leaf forms, which on later vessels became
abstracted into "gadroons."
S.E.L.

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Technically and historically this dish is one of the
most important of all carved lacquers of the Ming
dynasty. Technically primitive carved lacquers
have survived from as early as about 1200 B.C.
(during the Anyang period of the Shang dynasty),
but the earliest known complex and accomplished
pieces are rectangular sutra containers decorated
with Buddhist motifs. These were excavated from
the Rui'an pagoda, not far from Hangzhou in
northern Zhejiang Province, which is dated to A.D.
1043. Other carved lacquers in various collections
are attributed to the Song dynasty (960-1279),
but without full documentation. By the Yuan
dynasty (1279-1368) artisans had certainly mastered the technique; surviving works of that time
are fully developed, technically and aesthetically.
Examples include boxes excavated from the Ren
family tombs near Shanghai, dated to 1351.
This dish seems to be the earliest known example of carved polychrome lacquer. It is, moreover,
a tour de force of carving, in which three different
colored layers of lacquer were made to yield a
highly detailed and complex pictorial representation. The technique, in brief, was as follows: the
sap of the lac tree (Rhus vernicifera, C: qi shu)f
refined and pigmented, was applied in many thin
coats over a wood or cloth base, each coat being
allowed to dry before the next was added. For
carved polychrome lacquers, such as this one, the
colors were laid on in layers, each layer composed
of several coats of that color. More than one layer
of each color might be applied, so that each color
could show up at various depths in the design.
When the final coat of lacquer had dried, the
carver created the design by cutting each element
down to its predetermined color and depth. The
technique is vastly time consuming, the lacquer
is toxic, but the results are aesthetically unique.
In addition, lacquer is highly resistant to liquids,
even to some acids. The art was in its heyday
probably from 1350 to 1550, and marked pieces
made for the Yongle (r. 1402-1424) and Xuande
(r. 1425-1435) emperors are much sought after.
Signed pieces are reasonably common, though
famous artisans' names are often forged.
The elegant and detailed carving on this dish
depicts in cinnabar red, yellow, and green one of
TOWARD CATHAY

479

tal, floating in a small skiff; and the Immortal Qin

Gao, who toured the world's oceans on the back of
a giant magic carp.
The bracketing and tiling of the buildings are
meticulously rendered, but the wealth of detail is
controlled and dominated by the overall design of
large units disposed within the circular frame.
S.E.L.

335
TABLE SCREEN
by Wang Yang (?)
Hongzhi reign (1488-1505)
Chinese
carved cinnabar lacquer fti hongj
height 44.7 (i75/s)
reference: Tokyo 1977
Tokyo National Museum

the most famous subjects of the gentlemanscholar (wen ren) tradition the drinking-cumpoetry party at the Lan Ting (Orchid Pavilion).
In April of A.D. 353 Wang Xizhi (303 7-361 ?), the
patriarch of Chinese calligraphy, received fortyone friends and relations at the Orchid Pavilion,
situated in Zhejiang Province near Shaoxing, a
city famous for its wine. When the wine had been
drunk and the poems composed, Wang Xizhi compiled them into a handscroll and supplied a preface, the Lan Ting Xu, which became the most
famous of all Chinese calligraphies.
This essay on life and history, produced in a
state of physical and spiritual intoxication, was
recognized by all as a work of inspired calligraphy,
and its subsequent history of theft and loss, true
or untrue, became a prime legend for the scholarly
class. For the wen ren, the Lan Ting Preface surpasses in significance any comparable text in the
whole history of China. The dish itself confirms
the importance of this text by offering a fiftysix-character excerpt from the essay in a large
square at the center of the underside, framed by
arabesques of the lingzhi fungus, symbolic of
480

CIRCA

1492

immortality. Around the rim of the underside

auspicious dragons and phoenixes alternate with
four cartouches, two containing pairs of scholars
greeting each other and two showing a single
scholar with an attendant or acolyte.
On the obverse of the dish we see the Orchid
Pavilion with the guests gathering, beneath a sky
full of clouds and cranes, the birds preeminently
associated with scholars and immortality. Guests
watch, talk, or take refreshments in various rooms
of the three main wings of the pavilion. Two parties are arriving, one on horseback on the terrace,
accompanied by domesticated deer (also associated
with immortality), the other by boat. Around the
rim flows a conventionalized sea of "fish scale"
waves, out of which rise the triple-peaked Islands
of the Immortals. These are repeated four times,
evenly spaced, alternating with four figures of
Immortals or wonder-workers. Clockwise from
the top these appear to be: the explorer Zhang
Qian (cat. 342, 343) in his log-boat from which
hangs a double-gourd; a figure astride a dragon
who may be the legendary emperor Fu Xi;
another male figure, presumably a Daoist Immor-

In its original format this small screen undoubtedly had cusped top corners and two braces along
the bottom edge that allowed it to stand vertically
on desk or table. The multi-storied pavilion scene
is elaborate but organized with a clear accommodation to the rectangular format. Although even
more complex than Catalogue 334, it is not quite
so convincing in detail, and the single color limits
the possibilities for suggestion of depth.
The scene may be nocturnal; a servant girl
at the lower left holds what may be a light or a
censer. The welcoming entourage of ladies on the
path at the lower edge recalls Southern Song fan
paintings by the Ma family and others, celebrating the pleasure houses and barges of beautiful
Hangzhou. The substantial buildings are surrounded by gardens and stone walls, the latter
with reliefs of running long-ma (?) or some comparable dragon-headed, four-footed mythical
animal. The lone guest proceeds to the left in procession with the servants. An empty chair and
two servants await him just inside the entrance to
the left, should his progress have overtired him.
The host and perhaps one other guest wait on the
second floor.
The ambience is all that the gentleman-scholar
(wen ren) could desire. In the garden bamboo,
plantain, pine, wutong (Firmiana simplex, sometimes called phoenix tree), and willow abound,
along with the inevitable garden rock on its stone
or bronze pedestal. Above (and thus, according
to Chinese perspective, in the distance) are small,
writhing clouds on a fine-textured cloud background. Distant mountains in "comb-tooth"
shapes rise above the clouds. The most distant
roof, for it is only that, is puzzling. At the crossing of its two wings is a f inial resembling a Buddhist "precious jewel of the Law," but below there
is no supporting structure. Is the base lost in the
mist? Or is this an apparition, a holy and magical
temple?
S.E.L.

336

PLATE WITH PHOENIX

AND DRAGON DESIGN
dated to 1522
Chinese
yellow and red carved lacquer (ti caij
diameter 21.1 (S1/^
references: Schafer 1969,110114; Garner 1979

outer band of decoration four long panels feature

yellow peony-scrolls against a dark red-brown
plain background; between these panels are four
symbols in yellow against a background of yellow
intersecting circles on a red ground; the four
symbols are: below, books for scholarship and
protection; to the right, a coin for wealth and
material success; to the left, a pair of rhinoceroshorn beakers for luck and the strong character
of a scholar; and above, a parasol (?) for majesty.
The strong central design shows a writhing fiveclawed dragon and a phoenix (feng-huang) in
flight. The dragon is the emblem of the emperor,
represents the eastern direction and the season of
spring, and lives in a vaporous, watery atmosphere embodying the masculine principle (yang).
The phoenix's abode is in the south, and this
magical bird contains the Five Cardinal Virtues, is
the emblem of the empress, and embodies peace
and the feminine principle (yiri). Dragon and
phoenix both pursue a flaming pearl at the center
of the design, representing purity and the heart
of the Buddha. Below the two are carved yellow
waves lapping at the three Mountain-Isles of the
Immortals in the Eastern Sea, the legendary home
of Daoist spirits and source of the elixir of life.
The only purely decorative element is the peony
arabesque filling the panels, and even here a scent
of symbolism remains, for the peony represents
spring, wealth, and honor, and is empress among
flowers.
The remarkable appearance and concentrated
symbolism of the plate suggest a particular imperial commission; the date, 1522, the first year of
the Jiajing reign-era, strengthens the suggestion.
Perhaps the symbolism of the plate reflects the
emperor's particular devotion to Daoist longevity
magic, even in his youth (he ascended the throne
at fifteen in 1521). So severely did the Jiajing
emperor's devotion to Daoism distort his rule and
deplete the imperial treasury that in the second
year of his reign (1523) Grand Secretary Yang
Tinghe (1459-1529) advised him not to take part
S.E.L.
in Daoist services.

337
BRUSH WASHER
i$th century
Chinese
green jade with reddish brown markings
height 5.5 (2V2), length 16.0 (6l/4)r width 12.3 (4%)
Hong Kong Museum of Art, Urban Council
All surfaces of this rectangular basin are carved,
including the base, where swirling currents and
breaking waves establish the conceptual foundation for the rest of the decoration. Three dragons
emerge from those watery depths and climb
exterior walls carved deeply with cloud formations to peer into the more oval interior, which is
more lightly incised with clouds. Dragons have
both seasonal and directional implications. Following their winter hibernation they rise from
the eastern ocean to the heavens, where they
begin the spring rains and sport with pearls (one
of which appears at the right front corner), causing the thunder which accompanies the rainfall.
Potters, metalworkers, and painters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries all adopted and
advanced the theme of dragons amidst waves and
clouds, and James Watt has noted a Yuan dynasty
(1279-1368) jade carving that is immediately
precedent to the present piece: a black jade wine
bowl over four feet in diameter carved with dragons and waves on its exterior surfaces. Close
ceramic parallels to the design here can be found
on the large globular "moon flasks" of the Yongle
(1403-1425) and Xuande (1426-1435) reign-eras,
which is also the period during which imperial
workshops are known to have produced jades for
use at court. Although this brush washer is not
marked or inscribed, its magnificent design and
superb execution indicate that it was intended for
a client of exceedingly high status.
H. R.

National Palace Museum, Taipei

On this most unusual piece of Ming carved lacquer, yellow has replaced the customary cinnabar
red as the dominant color in a complex and intricately detailed design. The red background of the
central design was divided between a geometric
crisscross pattern representing sky or clouds and
a "fish-scale" pattern representing water. In the
TOWARD CATHAY

481

339
ZHI Hu WINE EWER
i6th century
Chinese
green jade with brown and black markings
height 25.1 (97/s)
reference: Weng and Yang 1982, 262
Palace Museum, Beijing

338
MAN GROOMING A HORSE
I4th-i6th century
Chinese
light green jade with brown markings
height 9.5 (33/4J, length 15 (6)
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery
Brundage Collection
A squat but powerful groom in belted tunic and
boots stands poised on an uneven rocky outcropping with his charge, a stocky Mongolian pony
with short legs, thick body, and halter round his
massive head. Their proximity to each other and
the similarity of their expressions the groom
grinning, the horse turning to look at him with
lips similarly drawn back implies a close relationship between the two. Fine striations texture
the tail and mane of the horse, and a patterned
roundel decorates the back of the groom's tunic.
Comparable figure groups had appeared much
earlier in painting and in ceramic sculpture, but
the lighter mood and naturalism of this pair seem
to have become common only toward the end of
the Song dynasty (960-1279). Epochal changes in
aesthetics and art theory occurred during the
Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), making possible the
greater expressiveness seen here, and that period
too saw the use of roundels containing inscriptions in the Tibetan Thags pa script.
The present piece was clearly built on that late
Song-Yuan stylistic foundation, and probably
dates to the middle Ming period. Beautiful material, strong and skillful carving, and an interesting
subject make this a most attractive object for display, a function for which the sculpted base was
well designed. Possibly the groom, roundel,
smiling face, and horse compose an auspicious
visual pun, or rebus, of the type discussed in
Catalogue 341.
H.R.

482

CIRCA 1492

From the narrow sides of the flattened, gourdshaped body extend the handle and spout, whose
lines suggest a rectilinear frame for the body even
while their curving contours provide contrapuntal
accents to the dominant rhythms of the body
itself. An oval foot is echoed in smaller scale by
the mouth rim, which is surmounted by a removable lid. The swelling, undecorated surfaces of the
piece set off by contrast the main areas of decoration: peach-shaped cartouches on the broad sides,
each containing four figures, and, perched on
the lid, three-dimensional figures of a sheep and
a bearded old man.
The bald pate of this figure, plus the mushroom
of immortality (lingzhi) held by his animal companion, identify him as the God of Longevity,
who lives at the South Pole in a palace whose
garden grows the aromatic and exotic herbs that
contribute to long life. The peach-shaped medallions below are further references to him, for the

peaches of immortality, which originated in the

gardens of the Queen Mother of the West, are
among the god's standard attributes. In like fashion the eight figures within the two medallions
are the special group of Daoist saints known as
the Eight Immortals. Individually identifiable
by characteristic attributes, these transcendants
are gathered here in joint celebration with the
god above.
This iconography was held particularly appropriate for men's birthdayswomen celebrated
with the all-powerful Queen Mother at their
head and more specific anniversary wishes are
indicated by the characters jiu ru appearing on the
scroll held by the Immortal of the Southern Pole
on the lid. Literally meaning the "nine similitudes/' the allusion, according to Wan-go Weng,
"is to a song dating to the first half of the first
millennium B.C. in which listeners are offered
health and happiness, and compared in turn to
ageless mountains and mounds, ridges and hills,
the swelling of a new stream, the constancy of the
moon, the rising of the sun, the indestructibility
of South Mountain, and the luxuriance of pines
and cypresses." Since yang meaning "sheep" is
homophonous with yang meaning "to look up
respectfully," the whole forms a pictorial rebus for
the phrase "the Eight Immortals offer up wishes
for longevity."
The Eight Immortals figure prominently in art
from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) onward, and

ceramic ewers in shapes comparable to the present

one were produced at the imperial kilns by the
early fifteenth century. It was, however, during
the Jiajing reign-era (1522-1566) that Daoist iconography became all-pervasive, just as Daoism
itself permeated all levels of contemporaneous
society. This vessel, whose color approximates the
patina on antique bronzes, appears to date no earlier than the Jiajing reign-era. When used to pour
warmed wine at a celebration, the ewer would
have contributed not only functionally but
symbolically and aesthetically to the pleasure
of the guests.
H.R.

340

CYLINDRICAL CUP
late i6th-iyth century
Chinese
white jade with brown markings
height 8.4 f32/4J, outer diameter 6.7 (25/s)
reference: New York 1980, 106
Quincy Chuang, Hong Kong
The simple cylindrical form, supported by three
feet carved with animal masks, has been incised
with profuse and complex decoration. On the ring
handle with curved thumb-rest is a taotie animal
mask, on the underside of the cup a horned
dragon strides among clouds. In the central and
widest decorative frieze on the body are zoomorphic motifs in low relief: a frontal animal mask
bisected by the handle, and two mythical creatures set against a key fret pattern called leiwen
(thunder pattern). Above and below this central
band are borders filled with interlocking horizontal C-shapes. The creatures, one with phoenix
head, the other perhaps a dragon, are both heraldically rampant; behind winged shoulders their
bodies continue as rectilinear abstract designs that

suggest but do not describe their hindquarters

and tails.
Almost all of these elements have much earlier
prototypes, beginning with the shape of the cup
itself, which appeared in both jade and lacquer
about the third century B.C. Shang dynasty (trad.
1766-1045 B.C.) bronze workers pioneered the use
of a leiwen background, and bronzes of the Zhou
(1045-256 B.C.), and Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220)
dynasties reveal comparable abstraction of animal
bodies and decorative use of taotie masks. The
insistent archaism here represents an important
trend in Ming dynasty jade carving a trend
which began with excavations of antique bronzes
and jades during the Song dynasty (960-1279),
and which was propagated from the eleventh century onward by publications, often illustrated,
about these ancient treasures. The present example, however, does not simply replicate earlier
designs but rather displays a knowing and exceedingly sophisticated manipulation of them, a general characteristic of the later Ming period, when
scholarly interest in and appreciation of the past
was at its height.
One of the most celebrated of the Suzhou
craftsmen who catered to that antiquarian taste
was Lu Zigang, active mainly during the second
half of the sixteenth century. James Watt has
noted that the present cup is very similar to two
other cups, both of which have lidspresumably
lost in this case and also incised signatures of Lu
Zigang. This cup may thus be dated to the late
sixteenth-seventeenth century, when jade workshops abounded on Zhuanzhu Street in Suzhou,
and it was boasted that "although the good jade is
found in the capital, it's Suzhou for the good
workmen/'
H.R.

341

THREE BOYS WITH LARGE JAR

i6th century
Chinese
gray-green jade with brown markings
height 8.3 (32/4J
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery
Brundage Collection
Three nicely dressed lads, their eyes tightly
closed, encircle a large storage jar (guan) and hold,
respectively, a mouth organ (sheng), a scepter
(ruyi), and a lotus (Han). The jar too is decorated,
with a frieze of so-called lotus petals around its
base and a border of ruyi lappets around its mouth
rim. Rene-Yvon dArgence has suggested that the
decoration and shape of the jar indicate a date
within the Jiajing reign-era (1522-1566), a period
during which children at play were a common

decorative theme on blue-and-white wares as well

as enameled porcelains.
Given that their language is highly homophonous, it is natural that the Chinese have long
enjoyed verbal puns. During the Ming they
became increasingly fond of visual or pictorial
puns, or rebuses, in which a word or phrase is
indicated by objects whose names are similarly
pronounced. For example, a monkey on a horse
together with a bee is a rebus for the auspicious
wish "May you immediately be enfeoffed as a
marquis/'
Here the key symbols are the lotus, the mouth
organ, the jar, and the scepter. This last embodies
in its name the idea "according to your wish,"
while its form resembles the mushroom of
immortality (lingzhi), which connotes long life.
The musical instrument sheng, consisting of varying lengths of bamboo pipes, is homophonous
with two other characters pronounced sheng, one
meaning "to rise in rank" and the other "to give
birth to." The lotus has two names, Han and he;
the first of these is homophonous with the character Han meaning "continuously," the second with
the character he that denotes "peace and concord."
Guan (storage jar) is also the pronunciation of the
character meaning "official" as well as another
meaning "string of cash." Obviously this sculpture has a wide range of connotations, all auspicious, and generally susceptible of the following
benevolent summary: "May your many sons live
long in peace and rise continuously in rank and
status." That such matters rest primarily with fate
may be the intended meaning of the shuttered
eyes, which seem to increase the dependence of
the children on their auspicious accouterments.
H.R.

T O W A R D CATHAY

483

342
BOAT-SHAPED WINE CUP
\ century
Chinese Ming period
gray-green jade with dark markings
length 10.8 (4^/4)
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery
Brundage Collection
A bearded old gentleman wearing scholar's robe
and cap is conveyed within a hollowed log through
water indicated by lotus blossoms and waves
below; a gourd, hanging here from the rear of the
boat, and a book are other characterizing attributes of the figure. For drinking, the cup was
easily grasped by the protrusion at the rear. Its
smooth yet richly tactile surface would have
yielded additional pleasure as the cup was hoisted,
just as the warm tones of the jade would have
enhanced the natural color of the warm wine.
Boat-shaped wine cups made from a variety of
materials seem to have been particularly popular
from about the fourteenth through the seventeenth century. Those made by the famous silversmith Zhu Huayu (also known as Zhu Bishan,
c. 13OO-C. 1362 or after) bear dates ranging from
1345 to 1362, as well as poetic inscriptions which
confirm their function: "Li Bo was crazy after
one hundred cups, and old Liu Ling was always
besotted; only when you know the pleasure of
wine will you leave behind a good name/' The
poem by Du Ben (1276-1350) translated above,
which was cast onto a cup made by Zhu in 1345,
must have been inspired by the desire to claim
kinship at least during one evening's pleasure
with such "immortals of the wine cup" as Li Bo
(701-762) and Liu Ling (3rd century). Yu Ji and
Jiexi Si (1274-1344), scholar-officials who were
Du Ben's contemporaries, likewise wrote inscriptions for and about Zhu's fabulous cups.
The precise identity of the figure and the full
meaning of the boat are still uncertain because
the evidence itself is ambiguous. Wai-kam Ho has
484

CIRCA 1492

noted Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) references to

"two well-known [Daoist] Immortals traveling
separately to the fairy islands in a lotus boat and a
raft in the form of a hollow tree stump." Tai Yi
Zhen Ren (Great Monad Daoist), as the latter was
called, was credited with many attributes and
powers, but most pertinent here is his manifestation as spirit of the pole star, basic to navigation.
Robert Mowry has called attention to a Yuan
period wine-storage jar with painted decoration of
a scholarly figure floating in a hollow log; hanging from a branch is a gourd (a Daoist emblem),
and in the sky above appears a dipper-shaped constellation orientated with reference to the figure
below. Other Yuan ceramics, especially Cizhou
painted pillows, feature scenes with offering
tables below and constellations above, a meaningful juxtaposition, since official offerings were
made to Tai Yi throughout the Yuan and into the
Ming period.
The boat in turn is no ordinary river conveyance but rather a sky boat which carried Daoist
transcendants from either the ocean in the east or
the source of the Yellow River in the west into the
Sky River, or Milky Way. Even before the Tang
dynasty (618-907) that identification was supported by identifying the figure as Zhang Qian
(160-114 B.C.), army officer and explorer extraordinaire, who in the second century B.C. introduced
into China from Ferghana the grapevine, alfalfa,
and the prized "blood-sweating" horses. By Ming
times the historical Zhang Qian had been thoroughly barnacled with legendary achievements
like sailing the Sky River and was, in the Ming
imagination, both explorer and wonder-worker. In
one version of the tale Zhang's stellar destination
was identified for him by the Daoist wonderworker Dongfang Shuo (154-93 B-C.), who was
held to have been an incarnation of the planet
Venus, just as Li Bo would be many centuries
later.
Why these partially overlapping identities and
meanings should have been merged during the
Yuan dynasty and been given visual form in the
silver wine cups of Zhu Huayu is another perplexing question. Certain it is, however, that scholars
at court had Zhang Qian's explorations very much
in mind. In 1342 a magnificent horse arrived in
Beijing from a Western country identified in
dynastic records as Fulang, a name derived by the
Chinese from the Persian farang and used to designate in general terms the European nations
descendant from the Franks. Court records explicitly compare the Fulang steed with those brought
to China a millennium and a half before by
Zhang Qian.
European records show that the horse was
shipped from Genoa on behalf of Pope Benedict
xn, then in exile in Avignon in France. A close
variant of the name Fulang occurs in the Ge Gu
Yao Lun (Essential Criteria for Judging Antiques),
written by Cao Zhao in 1387, in the course of the
earliest Chinese account of cloisonne; Cao Zhao

noted the resemblance of Arabian cloisonne (Dashi yao) to the inlay or champleve enamels of
"Folang." Recorded examples of cloisonne bearing
reign-marks of the Zhiyuan (1335-1341) and
Zhizheng (1341-1367) eras raise the possibility
that some of the techniques of enameling were
introduced by a tribute mission from Europe,
which may have sparked on its return the visual
and conceptual ideas that resulted in the startlingly innovative landscape setting for the "Good
Government" frescoes commissioned of Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1339 for the Palazzo Pubblico in
Siena, an important enameling center in the fourteenth century.
While the enamels were disdained by such
conservative critics as Cao Zhao, the horse was
received with great wonder and enthusiasm.
On the arrival of the auspicious steed such court
artists as Zhou Lang, Chen Sheng, and Zhang
Yanfu were commanded to paint the "heavenly
horse," and many officials, including Yu Ji and
Jiexi Si, wrote poems and inscriptions to commemorate the occasion. Most germane to our
account among the painters was Zhang Yanfu,
who was not only a friend of Du Ben, author
of the poem on the silver boat-cup, but also
an important priest of the Daoist Tai Yi Temple
in Beijing.
These connections and interrelationships
encourage speculation that the iconography of the
boat-shaped wine cups was invented by that group
of Daoists and scholars active in the capital during
the late Yuan dynasty, and that it was they who
commissioned the silver vessels from Zhu Huayu.
These in turn served as models for later cups in
other materials, such as the present example. We
may be sure, however, that the obscure and seemingly arcane iconography of this drinking cup did
nothing to diminish the pleasure of its users in its
visual and tactile delights. Quite the contrary.
H.R.

343
BOAT- SHAPED WINE CUP
by Bao Tiancheng
active late i6th-i7th century

late i6th century

Chinese
carved rhinoceros horn
height 9.7 (37/s), length 25.5 (10)
signed: Bao Tiancheng
reference: Chapman 1982, 101-105
Museum of Art and History, Shanghai
Extant bronzes and jades in rhinoceros form show
that the imposing creature was already known in
China in the eleventh century B.C. Its seemingly
impenetrable hide was valued early on for shields

and armor, and the horn eventually came to be

used as a drinking vessel, one possessing prophylactic powers as well as the miraculous ability to
reveal the presence of poison in the drink. And
when the horn acquired further reputation as an
aphrodisiac, the great and continuing popularity
of such drinking cups was assured. The Shoso-in
in Nara, Japan, still preserves eighth-century
examples of rhinoceros-horn cups, as well as
plaques, girdles, ornamental pendants, scepters,
rulers, and knife handles and sheaths made from
the same material. Rhinoceros-horn cups bearing
reign-era dates of the Song (960-1279), Yuan
(1279-1368), and early Ming dynasties are not
unknown, but it was from the middle Ming,
or sixteenth century, onward that they flourished
in general popularity.
The present example was first molded and then
beautifully carved in the form of a hollowed-out
log, festooned with vines and serving as a boat for
the bearded scholar who reclines within an arbor
of flowering branches. Despite the complex origins of the iconography (see cat. 342), by the late
Ming period virtually everyone would have identified the subject as the intrepid traveler Zhang
Qian of the second century B.C. , in search of the
source of the Yellow River.
Carved among the branches is the signature
of Bao Tiancheng, a well-known carver from
Suzhou. In addition to rhinoceros horn, Bao
also worked in ivory and hardwoods; his carved
incense sticks and containers, sandalwood boxes
for scrolls, fan pendants, and hair and girdle ornaments were prized, and his skill was acclaimed as
surpassing that of earlier craftsmen. Since Bao's
work was well known to the Ming author Gao
Lian (act. 1573-1581), he was probably active
mainly during the later sixteenth century. H.R.

de force of the carver's art. Toward the exterior

base of the cup is carved in seal script (zhuan shu)
the name of the artist, You Kan, whose signature
appears on several other extant cups.
You Kan was almost certainly related to, and
has been identified by some as identical with, a
Suzhou carver active during the late seventeenth
century and recorded as follows:

344
WINE CUP IN LOTUS FORM
by You Kan
active late i6th-i7th century

late i6th century

Chinese
carved rhinoceros horn
height 9.5 f33/4J, length 14.9 (57/s),
width 11 (43/s)
signed: You Kan
reference: Chapman 1982, 101-105
Museum of Art and History, Shanghai
The rhinoceros horn is not recalcitrant bone
but rather a solidified mass of agglutinated hair,
giving it a potential malleability that is evident
in the form of this wine cup. The inner cavity, a
natural depression shaped by a cranial protrusion
of the animal's skull, was first bored through to
the very tip. In a process described by Jan Chapman, the horn was then heated or immersed in
water in order to soften it. Then the tip was bent
upward, creating a stable base for the piece as well
as a handle by which it could be grasped.
Sometimes described as a water dropper (for
use in preparing liquid ink from an ink stick), this
type of cup and also the boat-shaped cup (cat. 343)
were clearly intended for display as well as use,
and by late Ming times both types were high in
literati esteem. The rhinoceros itself, despite its
continuing reputation for irascibility and for dullness of sight and intellect, became an emblem of
sound scholarly character, and the cups were associated with, and symbolic of, the prized status of
gentleman-scholar.
Exquisitely carved details here include a praying mantis clinging to a lotus stalk on the interior
of the cup, lotus blossoms complete with stamens
and seed pods on the exterior, and organically
intertwined stems on the handle all in all a tour

He excelled in carving rhinoceros horn, ivory,

jade, and gemstones into scholarly trifles, which
in craftsmanship were the finest in the Wu district. When he was just a lad, a family relative
owned a highly treasured rhinoceros-horn cup.
You's father borrowed the cup and came home
to enjoy it. It happened that there was a rhinoceros horn to hand, and You figured out how
to make a copy of the other, exact as to form
and style. The color being insufficiently glossy,
You then pulped some balsam and dyed the
copy as one would dye fingernails. There was
then no difference at all between it and the
original, and when he showed it to the relative,
he too could not tell them apart. Thus it was
that he came to be called "Rhinoceros-horn
cup You/7 During the Kangxi era (1662-1722)
You was summoned to enter the palace
workshops.... "
Although it is possible that this prodigy of carving
was the You Kan who made the present cup, it also
seems likely that only a professional in the trade
would have had an uncarved rhino horn lying
about the house for the boy to commandeer. If the
carver of the present cup was the father of the boy
described above, he would have been active during
H.R.
the late sixteenth-seventeenth century.

345
PAIR OF YOKE-BACK ARMCHAIRS
i$th-early i6th century
Chinese

huanghuali (rosewood)
height 116.3 (453//4J' width 56.4 (222/4J,

depth 45.8 (18)

reference: Wang 1986, 15

Robert H. Ellsworth, New York

Of a type known as a guan maof or "official's
hat/' armchair, because of the resemblance of its
projecting ends to the profile of an official's hat,
these particular chairs are characterized by an
unusually tall back, gracefully curving S-shaped
arms, a recessed seat in place of the original
caning, and plain spandrels whose curves soften
the otherwise rectilinear design. Spandrels and
aprons are attached to the front surfaces of the
two curving armrest supports, between the four
legs beneath the seat, and beneath the foot rest,
TOWARD CATHAY

485

an amenity which raised the feet of the sitter off

the cold stone floors of north China. Tongue-andgroove joins hold the one-piece aprons in place,
wood-pinned mortise-and-tenon joins lock the
thicker elements in place. As is usual, the back
posts and legs of the chair were made of single,
continuous pieces of wood to which the armrests,
seat, and stretchers were attached.
From a single material, and using only a few
elements in simple relationships, the craftsman
fashioned a utilitarian piece of furniture whose
aesthetic impact is yet strong and complex. First
among the contributing factors is the huanghuali
wood, from which a majority of fine Ming furniture pieces were made. Occurring in colors ranging from dark brown to light gold, and with a
distinct and variable grain, this tropical hardwood
is still to be found in Hainan and Southeast Asia.
The simple shapes from which this chair is
formed are arranged in an upward taper so as to
achieve an overall effect of stability. An alternating system of S-curves occurs in both the horizontal plane (top rail and armrests) and the
vertical plane (back splat and armrest supports).
This creates visual variety and a sense of movement, since each change in the observer's point of
view reveals certain curves and conceals others.
486

CIRCA 1492

The profile view is especially telling, for there one

can see the perfect balance between the opposing
curves of the posts and the splat. The balance,
clarity, and harmony of this chair fully justify
description of its style as classic, while the complex richness of its formal relations is sufficient to
elevate it to the level of abstract, nonfigurative
sculpture.
Given the preeminence of Suzhou's artists and
craftsmen in nearly all areas of artistic endeavor
by the middle of the Ming dynasty, it has long
been assumed that fine furniture too was a specialty of that talent-rich region. Wang Shixiang
has recently introduced literary evidence to suggest quite persuasively that the golden age of
Chinese furniture began during the sixteenth
century as a consequence of great urban prosperity coupled with the removal of legal restrictions
on the free importation of the requisite hardwoods. And the late Ming writer Wang Shixing
noted that this general phenomenon was especially marked in Suzhou:
The people of Suzhou, being very clever and
fond of antiques, were skilled at using old
methods to make things... such as small treasures for the study, tables, and beds. Recently

they have liked to use zitan and huali [huanghuali] woods. They preferred plain to elaborately carved pieces; but if they used decoration
it always followed the ancient patterns of the
Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties. This
fashion spread all over China and was especially
popular during the Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli
reigns (i.e., 1522-1619).
H.R.

346
THRONE-LIKE ARMCHAIR
I4th-i6th century
Chinese
zitan hardwood
height 109 (42%), se0f width 98 (j85/8), seat depth
78 (3o%j
Palace Museum, Beijing
Three pieces of zitan, the hardest, heaviest, and
most prized of all the Chinese hardwoods, were
used to make the sides and back of this thronelike
armchair. The undecorated seat and waist are supported by a lower frame with continuous floor
stretchers. Like most thrones, this chair has a
matching footstool, lotus shaped. All surfaces save
for the seat and waist are elaborately carved with
lotus leaves, stalks, and blossoms, intertwined and
overlapped as in nature itself.
Due largely to Buddhism, the lotus is of unique
importance in Chinese thought. In the words of
Wolfram Eberhard, "the lotus comes out of the
mire but is not itself sullied; it is inwardly empty,
outwardly upright; it has no branches but it
smells sweet; it is the symbol of purity, and one of
the eight Buddhist precious things/' By extension,
these carved emblems of ultimate rectitude
became attributes of the exalted personage who
was raised and supported by this chair.
Exactly when and how the chair came to be
introduced into China remains obscure. It seems
likely, however, that this occurred under the auspices of Buddhism, perhaps sometime late in the
Tang dynasty (618-907). Even during the Ming
dynasty chairs wide enough to sit in cross-legged
were termed chan yi, "meditation chairs/ and
early pictorial representations of chairs do in fact
depict monks with their legs drawn up in that
posture. Another early term for the chair was hu
chuang, "barbarian bed/' presumably because it
was believed that foreigners slept seated upright

on such contrivances. Portraits of various Song

dynasty (960-1279) personages reveal that the
chair came to be considered a symbol of status;
abbots as well as emperors and empresses were
depicted seated on textile-covered and ever more
substantial chairs. By the fourteenth century
raised chairs and footstools connoted high rank
and authority, whether secular or religious.
The present chair, according to Wang Shixiang,
is unique, the only extant example that is securely
datable to the Ming period. Although its functionto exalt its occupant was identical with

that of later chairs, its relative simplicity argues

for a fairly early date. In particular its naturalistic
carving is comparable to carved lacquer work of
the late fourteenth century, and the throne may
thereby be dated to a period not far removed. Just
as the lotus growing unsullied out of a murky
pond provided an apt visual analogy for the
enlightened soul unstained by the dust of the illusory world, so too does this throne-like chair
characterize the political or religious sovereign for
whom it was created as a man of strength as well
H.R.
as delicate sensibility.

T O W A R D CATHAY

487

INDIA

347
PARVATI
c. 1450
Indian, Vijayanagar
bronze
height 84.5 (331/4)
reference: New York 1985, 27-28, no. 2

Private Collection

Sprituality and sensuality meet in this image of

Parvati, the sakti or female counterpart of Lord
Siva. The tangible and noblest form of cosmic
divine power, she is also the benign aspect of Kali,
the destroyer. Although the image's stimulating
womanliness might surprise those of us accustomed to unapproachably elevated statues and
paintings of the Virgin Mary and other Christian
saints, this blending of the otherworldly and the
earthly is characteristic of Hinduism. Parvati, the
mountain daughter, was a goddess of beauty,
always admired for her voluptuousness. That her
mere presence was enough to arouse Siva's
unbounded desire was fully understood by the
sculptor, who endowed the image with a superbly
lissome yet ample figure, luxuriantly sinuous
jewelry and coiffure, and a costume vibrant with
form-hugging folds.
This sculpture was created as a tool for meditation (dhyand) according to the traditional canon
of proportion known from earlier bronzes of the
Chola period. Iconographically correct in configuration, its proportions conform to long-reckoned
measurements, from the feet and ankles to the
head. The master who created the image was a
technical wizard, capable of the utmost refinements in modeling the original wax over an armature, building up the mold and fitting its carefully
placed channels for draining the melted wax, and
finally chasing the bronze to the perfected state
seen here. But given that the sculptor had mastered such requirements, only his genius enabled
him to breathe life into this piece, one of the most
artistically moving of all later Indian bronzes.
Devotees sufficiently pure in heart to draw
power from this image's supersensual beauty can
through it achieve the spiritual goal of samadhi,
the merging of the perceiver with the perceived.
s.c.w.

488

CIRCA 1492

348
YASHODA AND KRISHNA
15th century
Indian, Karnataka
copper
height 33.3 (ijVs)
references: Los Angeles 1977, 12#-129; New York
1982-1983, 80-81; New York 1985, 33-34, no. 5
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Purchase, Lita Annenberg Hazen
Charitable Trust Gift, in honor of Cynthia and
Leon Bernard Polsky
Probably the last very great South Indian metal
sculpture, this deeply moving image of Yashoda
and her foster son, the God Krishna, crosses the
barrier that usually separates people from gods.
The sculptor understood and sympathized with
mothers and children and at the same time
revered the divine. Yashoda is shown as a fleshand-blood woman, probably observed from life,
while Krishna gracefully ascends from human
infancy to godliness. If his feet, legs, and left hand
indicate a sensitively observed naturalism, his face
conforms to the familiar South Indian typology
and proportion known from many less extraordinary images.
The iconography is complex, demonstrating
that the lives of the Indian gods were even more
entangled than those of the Greeks. Here the
human warmth of the image is appropriate, for
Lord Krishna, whose name means dark, is the
most humanly accessible of the Hindu deities a
god of youth who gradually emerged from ancient
sacred mystery and legend. Scholars believe that
in pre-Aryan times Krishna was worshiped by a
tribe that deified cows, for in Vedic literature
he is associated with cattle. In the Hindu epic Mahdbhdrata (The Book of Wars), he is described
as a simple cowherd, one of whose wives is an
untouchable. In the Harivamsa (The Genealogy
of Hari) and the Bhagavad Gitd (The Song of
the Lord), Krishna is the eighth incarnation or
avatar of Vishnu, who took this form to slay the
tyrant Kamsa.
When Kamsa was warned that he would be
killed by one of the sons of Devaki, he ordered
that Devakfs first six children were to be murdered at birth. But when Balarama, the seventh
son of Devaki and Vasudeva, was conceived,
Vishnu arranged for the fetus's miraculous transfer to the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva's second
wife. When Devaki's eighth son, Krishna, was
born, Devaki and Vasudeva were imprisoned.
Vishnu arranged for another miracle: their chains
shattered, the guards fell asleep, and Vasudeva
carried the infant to Yashoda, wife of a cowherd,
for nursing. Protected by her husband, Nanda,
from Kamsa's murderous actions, Krishna grew
up in the sacred groves of Vrindavana, where he
developed the talents of the Divine Lover, s.c.w.
T O W A R D CATHAY

489

349
DANCING GANESA (NRITTA-GANAPATI)
i$th century
Indian, Karnataka
bronze
50.3 x 32.9 (19% xi})
reference: Pal 1988, 156, 157, no. 134
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Purchase,
Harry and Yvonne Lenart Funds
Ganesa is admired as the god of learning and good
fortune, and as a destroyer of obstacles. His name
is invoked at the beginning of all undertakings
and is inscribed by devotees as the opening lines
of literary and scholarly works. In Hindu temples,
shrines, and households, his image is usually
placed near the entrance to welcome visitors.
Some believe that the elephant-headed son of the
490

CIRCA 1492

God Siva and the Goddess Parvati was conceived

when the divine couple saw a pair of elephants
mating and decided to enjoy each other "in the
elephant mode/ as a result of which he was born
with this unexpected head.
The legends of Ganesa are infinite in number
and vary somewhat: his pachydermic look is also
ascribed to a crisis in infancy during which his
human head was cut off, then replaced by the one
closest at hand, which happened to be that of an
elephant. According to another tale, Ganesa was
the son of Siva and another wife, Durga, whose
name means "far" or "inaccessible" and who was
noted as a slayer of monsters. Yet another tale
maintains that Ganesa was created by Parvati
alone when Siva had been persuaded by the other
gods to beget no more children. He is invariably
represented as a potbellied, elephant-headed god

with only one tusk, and a snake encircling his

torso. He is either yellow or red, and his four or
more hands hold various attributes, including a
shell or water lily, a discus, a club (or ax), and a
ball of sweet rice (modaka), his favorite food,
believed to contain the essences of his wisdom.
His snake cincture is explained by a delightful
tale: one day while riding his usual vehicle, the
rat, the tired charger was terrified by a large snake
and tripped. Ganesa, who had crammed his belly
with modakas, fell off. His vast belly burst, and
the sweets poured out. Unperturbed, Ganesa
stuffed them back in and sealed his paunch by
wrapping it with the snake that had caused the
accident. The single tusk resulted from a fight
with Parasurama (known for ax-throwing) or with
an angry rishi (holy man), who pulled out the
other tusk when Ganesa tried to keep him away
from Siva, who was meditating.
Here Ganesa, also known as Ganapata (the lord
of the Ganas, dwarf like troops of minor deities), is
shown dancing on a lotus platform, with one hand
free to maintain balance and his trunk reaching
for a modaka. His infectious happy mood, as
much as his other good qualities, accounts for his
great popularity. In Indian thought, however,
there is always ambivalence, perhaps because the
vital monsoon rains are so fickle, sometimes
bringing famine and pestilence as well as plenty.
Happy is he who faces Ganesa, but woe unto
anyone on whom the god turns his back. From the
front, Ganesa spreads benevolence and geniality;
from the back terror and destruction issue forth.
In this late but vital continuation of Chola
period prototypes, tendencies toward metaphorical
abstraction of form are apparent. Characteristically Indian are the full moonlike roundness of
the belly, the fishtail leanness of the trunk, and
the leaf-shaped eyes of this genial dancer. He
seems to be spoofing Siva's demonically powerful
tdndava dance, symbolic of the world's unfolding,
play, and destruction. We should remember,
however, that Ganesa may have originated not as
a remover of obstacles but as a bringer of catastrophe, madness, and misfortune. Even now, he is
worshiped by some through extreme antinomian
meditations. In Hinduism, meanings are forever
alive and changing; one never knows quite what
to expect, and of course one's anticipations are
always right as well as wrong.
s.c.w.

350
SIVA AND PARVATI ON MOUNT KAILASA
i5th century
Indian, Orissa
gneissic rock
32.1 X }6.2 X 7.9 (l25/8 X 142/4 X 32/SJ

reference: New York 1985, 38-39, no. 10

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Purchase,

Harry and Yvonne Lenart Funds and
Museum Acquisitions Fund
In this spirited Orissan stone carving, Siva and his
divine consort, Parvati, attended by Nandi the
bull, Hanuman the monkey chief, and another
figure (possibly a holy man), loll animatedly,
ready for eternal maithuna (cosmic lovemaking)
atop Mount Kailasa. The Himalayan mountain, in
Tibet, is revered as one of the mountains of paradise, formed of crystals and used as a mirror by
celestial beings (apsaras). Saivite devotees consider it the penultimate lingam, the phallus
symbolic of Lord Siva, god of the unknown, of
creation and destruction. A god of dread, Siva, as
the cosmic dancer, is also the embodiment of the
ordered movement of the universe (natardja). But
his role as one of the three major gods of the
Hindu pantheon, along with Brahma and Vishnu,
includes that of the Mahddeva (Great God) and
the Mahayoga (Great Yogi, or ascetic).

Hanuman, son of the wind god (Pavana, Vayu,

or Marut) and an apsard (celestial being), is regarded as almost divine. During the battle against
demonic Ravana in the Rdmdyana (Story of
Rama), he was sent by the monkey-physician
Sushena to gather four healing herbs on Mount
Kailasa. If this explains his appearance here,
Hanuman will have failed in his mission, but to
set things right, he will swallow the entire mountain, leap with it to the monkey-physician, and
disgorge it unharmed upon completing his task.
Nandi is omnipresent at Saivite temples and
shrines. Milky white, he is the chamberlain of the
god, one of the ganas (attendants), and guardian
of all quadrupeds. A musician as well, he accompanies Siva during the cosmic tdndava dance.
Like many other examples of Orissan art, this
work teems with swirling vegetation and
sprightly animals. Sharing the heights of Mount
Kailasa with a holy man (rishi) seated in the
lotus position, staring into the sun are delightful cockatoos, monkeys, elephants, boar, lions, and
tigers. All of them occupy petal-shaped compartments, an Orissan characteristic found in several
splendid ivory throne legs and probably traceable
to lotiform bases for images.
Orissa, with its long coastline in eastern India,
was protected from direct Muslim invasion. Like
south India, it maintained ancient Hindu and animist traditions. Into the fifteenth century and

later, Orissa retained its indigenous flavor. By

1500, however, the brilliance of Orissan art known
from the early medieval architecture and sculpture of Konarak, Bhubaneswar, and Puri had
yielded to idioms touched with the earthier, less
cerebral vitality of folk art. But the humble, less
cosmopolitan Orissan sculptors and painters,
always aware of the earlier masterpieces with
which they lived and to which they prayed, never
forgot their qualities. If they did not consciously
turn to them as models, they understood their
forms and meanings seemingly by osmosis and
intuitively reinterpreted them. In this appealing
sculpture, lively folkish elements combine with
those of more intellectually and spiritually
evolved precursors.
s. c. w.

351

A JAIN AID TO MEDITATION

(SIDDHACAKRA)
c. 1500
western Indian
black ink and watercolor on fabric
49.5 x 48.9 (1^/2 x 19 ViJ

On Extended Loan to the Ackland Art Museum

from Gilbert J. and Clara T. Yager
This visually arresting schematic composition is
in the form of a mandala, a circle within a square.
These symbolical diagrams, believed to be universally present within the human consciousness
from which they sometimes spontaneously
emerge in dreams and visions, were first given
form in ancient India, by Buddhists, Hindus, and
Jains. Intended as "supports" or aids to meditation, these potent centers of psychic energy
enabled devotees to master the cosmic process
and to find their own spiritual centers.
Their use requires discipline and preparation.
After ritual purification and adjustment of mood
in a suitable place, the neophyte "enters" the
mandala (or yantra), usually though not here
through one of four directional gateways. Following the diagram step by step, he progresses
towards the core or center by visualizing a succession of concepts, divinities, or instructive episodes
in their lives. To facilitate this highly structured
meditational quest, he usually intones prescribed
mantras (magical syllables or words) specific to
each of its stages. Fasting, vigils, incense, and the
guidance of a religious preceptor further his progress through the symbolical diagram's increasingly elevated and elevating zones, a process that
could go swiftly or consume a lifetime.
Although intended as tools or engines to stimulate inner visualizations, mandalas and yantraswhich are also seen in three-dimensional
T O W A R D CATHAY

491

figures, animals, architecture, and landscape were

outlined in black or red with reed pens, enriched
with broad areas of red, green, blue, gold, and
white. Their lively, wiry, often folkish formulas
reveal few changes over the centuries, and regional styles are difficult to define.
s.c.w.

352

Two MINIATURES FROM A SHAHNAMA

c. 1450
western Indian, Sultanate
opaque watercolor on paper
folio 73 a: 16.4 x 22 (6l/2 x 85/s)
folio 112 a: 11.6 x 19.8 (4% x y7/s)
references: Goswamy 1988, pi. 2, pi. 11

Museum Rietberg, Zurich

form also serve as defenses against evil spirits,

enemies, mental distractions, and temptations.
Jainism derived from the Sanskrit jina or conqueror of the pains of worldly life is claimed by
its three million or so adherents to be the most
ancient religion in India, older than Aryan Hinduism. It is usually considered to have been founded
by Mahavira (d. 467 B.C.), the last of its twentyfour tirthahkaras or jinas, a contemporary of the
Buddha. Born under the name of Vardhamana as
the son of a local chieftain in modern Bihar, he
renounced the world as a very young man and
became a wandering ascetic. After attaining
kevala jnana (supreme knowledge), he wandered,
taught, and founded an order of monks and nuns
whose aim was to attain liberation from the cycle
of birth and rebirth. Mahavira differed from
the Buddha, who renounced asceticism, believing
that this could only be achieved through extreme
ascetic practices. He denied the existence of a
creator god and the validity of sacrifices as well as
of the caste system. At the age of seventy-two,
Mahavira died, attaining moksha, or final liberation from the miseries of this life. His followers
soon separated into two sects, the Svetdmbara, or
"white clad/' initially centered in Karnataka, and
the Digambara, or "sky-clad" (naked), of Maghada, in the south. To preserve Jain written and oral
traditions, these were reconstructed and codified
at a great council held at Pataliputra. This work,
however, was accepted only by the Svetambaras,
the Digambaras holding to the "former texts"
(Purvas) and unreconstructed fragments.
To Jains, the principle of nonviolence (ahimsd)
is greatly important. Lest they hurt or kill any
492

CIRCA 1492

living being (identifiable with the soul), they

avoid such occupations as agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, or even painting and sculpting,
all of which endanger lives on one level or
another. Paradoxically, Jain works of art, therefore, are commissioned from non-Jains. Most
middle-class Jains, for the same reason, are
money-lenders or businessmen, specializing in
grains, textiles, machinery, paper, and cement.
Others are bank clerks, accountants, jewelers,
and grocers.
This spiritual diagram is one of the most popular of Jain yantras, the Siddhacakra, a wheel of
the siddha, or liberated one, invoked for the
destruction of sin and the promotion of prosperity
and auspiciousness. In form, it consists of a stylized, flat lotus, the petals of which contain mantras and divine beings centered about the
arhanta, who is a being lustrated by two elephants and is attended by fly-whisk bearers. He is
surrounded by a riverlike rendering of the mdntirikam whose five letters [a, h, r, and am) connote the five venerable beings. Immediately above
him is the siddha, or liberated soul, seated atop a
crescent moon. The outer petals of the corolla
contain depictions of the sixteen goddesses of
magic (mahavidy ddevi) r bracketed at top by two
eyes symbolic of clairvoyance and omniscience,
and below by nine vases, symbolizing the planets
and intended, as mallinatra, to increase wealth
and prosperity. Compartments at the corners contain the guardians of the four directions.
Jain painting follows traditional modes. Until
the eighteenth century, when Mughal and Mughalized Rajput styles strongly influenced Jain art,

Two miniatures from a copy of the Iranian poet

Firdawsi's epic, the Shdhndma (Book of Kings),
underscore the impact of Muslim culture on fifteenth-century India. The epic was composed
from earlier legends and histories by Firdawsi of
Tus (c. 931-c. 1020) under the patronage of
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, an Iranian ruler who
made twelve expeditions to India. Although
fragments of earlier Shdhndma manuscripts
illustrated in India are known, this generously
illustrated copy, now dispersed, is the most purely
Indian. Indeed, most of its miniatures are innovative reinterpretations in characteristically western
Indian style of compositions traceable to subtler,
less directly communicative Persian originals.
Their ebullient mode seems pictographic, written
rather than painted. Once we have learned the
vocabulary of forms, simple as comic strips, they
are so direct and persuasive that they remind us of
Pavlov's button for making dogs salivate. Except
for a few ballooning faces thus modeled for
emphasis, compositions are flat, laid out in bold
areas of cheerfully bright color with wire-thin,
lively outlining. Sketchy, calligraphic, quick, and
accomplished, such draftsmanship is the result of
long training and constant practice. These miniatures can be assigned to a workshop, probably in
Gujarat, that would have supplied manuscripts to
diverse patrons, Muslim, Jain, and Hindu.
People, animals, mountains, vegetation, architecture, ornament, and still life all follow formulas
in these good-humored, humble paintings. If this
brings a certain similarity to the repertoire of
faces, horse's masks, knees, and armor, monotony
is avoided through witty variations. People are
expressive but unportraitlike, with little differentiation between one or another pretty girl, handsome hero, or graybeard. Although the anonymous artists clearly derived pleasure from their

work, they scarcely attempted to represent moods

by inventing gloomy palettes for tragedies or jolly
ones for marriages.
Rustam Kills the White Div (folio /3a) is a
particularly Indian version of a heroic subject.
Rustam, the mighty Iranian paladin (knight), slays
the White Div (Demon), a personification of evil
and lieutenant of the Div King of Mazandaran.
Not only do the cave, mountain, trees, and skyline
conform to familiar Indian formulas, but the div is
shown with unmistakably Hindu attributes. As
B. N. Goswamy has pointed out, "His appearance
is more like that of an ash-smeared ascetic wearing strings of rudraksha-beads and caste marks on
his forehead than that of the scaly, animal-headed
demon envisioned in Iranate work" (Goswamy
1988). To please a Muslim patron, moreover, the
Div was endowed with an extra set of arms, bringing to mind poly-armed Hindu images. While the
intent Rustam stabs, five junior divs shamble
about anxiously, attempting ineffectually to aid
and lend solace to their defeated master. Bound to
a tree in the foreground is the potentially traitorous Owlad rendered here as a dark-skinned
Indian a "marcher lord" captured earlier by
Rustam, who promised to appoint him ruler of
Mazandaran in exchange for guidance to the
White Div.
Siyavush Enthroned with his Bride Farangish,
Daughter of Afrasiyab (folio ii2a) is an episode
of rare and gentle poignancy in the heroic account
of strife between Iran and Turan. Siyavush, son of
the Iranian king, was not only welcomed by Afrasiyab, king of Turan, but offered his daughter
Farangish in marriage. In this miniature of one of
the happiest moments of Firdawsi's Iranian epic,
the loving couple are enthroned beneath royal
umbrellas.
Tragedy lay ahead; the seemingly endless war
again turned bitter. Despite Farangish/s tears and
protests from wise Turanian advisers, Afrasiyab
ordered Siyavush's execution. From the earth that
had received the hero's blood grew flowers now
known in Iran as Siyavush's Tears. Before long,
Afrasiyab also lost his head to the sword of the
Iranian Shah Kay Khosrow.
Painted not in Iranian but in Indian terms, a
musician plays an Indian instrument (sarod) and
attendants are rhythmically disposed, recalling
Jain and early Rajput groupings. Their skirts, visible through transparent muslin duppattas (long
scarves), bring to mind the patterns of fifteenthcentury Indian block-printed textiles excavated at
Fostat, near Cairo. The gilt bronze animals of the
lion throne resemble those that often support
images of Jain saints. Among the assorted Indian
metal objects is a salver of pan (betel nut and lime
wrapped in a leaf). Most Indian of all, perhaps,
are the portrayals of plump, dark-eyed Farangish
and stout, black-mustached Siyavush, who bring
to mind the heroes and heroines of current
Indian films.
s.c.w.

T O W A R D CATHAY

493

but as an entity in itself. What could be seen as a

lack of classical perfection and harmony in Bihari
and Maghribi texts is often more than offset by
the vigor of the writing and the sometimes daring
use of colorful decoration" (New York 1985, 123).
This unmistakably Deccani manuscript, with its
Indian verve, is a very late example of Bahmanid
art. It expresses the lingering might of its
dynasty, centered at Gulbarga and later at Bidar,
from which the other three major Deccani sultanatesAhmednagar, Golconda, and Bijapur
broke away. At these highly creative Indian centers, lines between Muslim and Hindu were
sometimes indistinct. Although the Deccani sultans were for the most part nominally Shi'ite
rather than Sunni Muslims, several of their prime
ministers were Hindus or converts from Hinduism. The sultans vied with one another to hire
outstanding poets, musicians, artists, and scholars,
some native born, others brought from various
parts of the Islamic world. The prime requisite
was talent, not birth, and outstanding creativity
was awarded lavish patronage regardless of religious affiliation.
s.c.w.

353
KORAN
dated to 148}
Indian, Deccan, Sultanate
opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper
47.6 x 31.1 (i83/4Xi2y4)
reference: New York 1985, 123-126, no. 71
Archaeological Museum, Bijapur
Muslims are "people of the book/' and the Koran
is as fundamental to them as the Bible is to Christians and the Torah to Jews. Whether written and
illuminated or printed, its creation is a reverential
task. This noble copy is imbued with divine force.

494

CIRCA 1492

Its typically Indian script in Bihari style, the substantial "feel" of its bound folios, and the architectural power of the illumination make this volume
as impressive to behold as a great bridge or
aqueduct.
Annemarie Schimmel has pointed out that
Bihari script "has been used by calligraphers in
India since the early Middle Ages. On the opposite fringes of the world of Islam, in North Africa
and Spain, scribes also wrote in a style of their
own, called Maghribi. In Bihari, the characters are
wedge-shaped, more angular than the classical
rounded forms, and writers of both Bihari and
Maghribi depart from the rules by treating each
word not as a carefully constructed sum of letters

354
DEDICATORY INSCRIPTION
FROM A MOSQUE
dated to 1500
Indian, Bangla, Gaur, Sultanate
schist
41 x 115.3 (iGVs x 453/s)
references: London 1979, 30-31, no. 33;
Metropolitan Museum of Art 1983, 13-14, pi. i;
New York 1985, 129-130, no. 74
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of
Mrs. Nelson Doubleday and Bequest of Charles R.
Gerth, by exchange 1981

Islam spread rapidly from northwestern India

southward to the Deccan and beyond and eastward
as far as the Bay of Bengal. At Gaur and Pandua in
Bengal, a major Islamic substyle developed, one
best known inasmuch as portable objects have
not been identified from its architecture, ornament, and architectural inscriptions.
Among extant inscriptions, the present example
stands out for its masterfully organized processional rhythms. The composition brings to mind
ships in full sail crossing choppy seas or an army
of men, horses, and elephants on the march,
waving high their spears and banners. Such
designs were planned by masters of calligraphy,
employing skills usually associated with painters
or with sculptors of bas-reliefs. To them it was
important that each element be as beautiful as the
totality of the design. After envisioning the finished workfor which the calligrapher must have
contrived an appropriate image such as the ships
or army we have found he would have refined
the placement of the letters before writing the
inscription full scale on paper or directly onto the
already prepared schist slab. Having devoted so
much attention to these initial stages, he
undoubtedly must have supervised the stonemason who with utmost care chiseled, ground,
and filed it until the majestic letters stood out in
low relief from the neutral background.
In the Islamic world, calligraphers ranked
higher than other artists or craftsmen, owing to
their closeness to the inspired words of the Prophet Muhammad and to other sacred texts that virtually every calligrapher copied. Many shahs,
sultans, and emperors were not only patrons of
calligraphy but also practiced the art. Many different styles of writing were developed, some
especially suited to monumental use, from the
time of the Prophet until recent times. In fifteenth-century Bengal a special variant of the
Tughra script known as "bow and arrow" was
evolved, the style brilliantly represented here.
The text of this inscription begins with words
taken from the Hadith, or prophetic traditions:
"The Prophet, the blessing of God and peace be
upon him, said, 'Whosoever builds a mosque for
God will build him a palace the like of it in Paradise/ In the reign of Sultan 'Ala'ad-Dunya Abu'lMuzaffar Husain Shah al-Sultan, may God perpetuate his rule and sovereignty. Prince Daniyal,
may his honor endure, built this congregational
mosque on the tenth of Dhu'l-Hijja of A.H. 905
[7 July 1500]."
Simon Digby, who first translated the inscription, has identified Prince Daniyal as one of
Husain Shah's eighteen sons. The tomb of Shah
Nafa at Monghyr, dated to 1497, also bears the
prince's name. This piece was probably taken from
a ruined building during the nineteenth century
when Gaur and Pandua became a quarry for contractors from Calcutta.
s.c.w.

355
Haji Mahmud
THE PATRIARCH ABRAHAM
PLAYS HOST TO A FIRE WORSHIPER,
FROM THE BUSTAN OF SA'DI
c. 1500-1503
Indian, Mandu, Sultanate
opaque watercolor on paper

folio: 34.6 x 24.5 (i35/s x 95/sj

miniature: 19.4 x 16.2 (y5/s x 63/s)

references: New Delhi 1964, 94-95; London 1982,
67-68, no. 42; Ettinghausen 1985, 40-43; New York
1985, 134-135, no. 79
National Museum, New Delhi

is Master Bihzad of Herat, who with SultanMuhammad belongs at the peak of Persia's artistic
hierarchy. Painting in Herat during the final quarter of the fifteenth century, Bihzad looked freshly
and intently at nature, rarely depending upon
artistic prototypes as his models. He was infinitely and painstakingly skillful, deeply concerned
with human nature, and a lover of animals, trees,
and flowers. His mind functioned with logical
precision, and in his pictures every person, tree,
fence, and wine cup is accurately and specifically
located. Somehow these Bihzadian elements
reached Mandu and were absorbed by the painter
Haji Mahmud, probably Indian-born, whose name
appears as illuminator as well as artist on folios i
and 190 a.
Haji Mahmud can be assigned The Patriarch
Abraham Plays Host to a Fire Worshiper, which
describes one of Sa'di of Shiraz's characteristically
witty yet moralistic tales. Abraham, an orthodox
Muslim delighted by his own exquisite and lavish
hospitality, once sighted a white-haired vagabond
crossing the desert and invited him to dine. Eager
to enjoy a delicious meal, Abraham said grace.
While doing so, he noted the guest's silence and
soon realized that he was a despised Zoroastrian!
Outraged that his purity should be defiled by such
a being, he forced the hungry old fellow back into
the desert, whereupon an angel appeared and
admonished him: "For a century God has provided this fire worshiper's daily bread, and now
you presume to withhold the hand of bounty!"
This copy of the Bustan consists of 229 folios
and 43 miniatures. It was written in bold but
graceful nasta'liq script by Shahsuvar al-Katib
(Shahsuvar the Scribe) for Nasir ad-Din Khalji of
Malwa, who reigned from Mandu between 1501
and 1511. He was the second of two patrons
of a slightly earlier manuscript, a cookery book
entitled the Ni'mat-nama (Book of Delicacies), in
which the patrons' formula for the good life
is delightfully outlined between recipes. This
included a kingdom-within-a-kingdom in which,
except for butchers, the sultan was the only male,
his every need, from gastronomic and musical
to military and administrative, attended to by
beautiful women.
s.c.w.

In India, as in other parts of the Islamic world,

remarkable variants developed from more central
Islamic artistic traditions, inviting comparison
with the changes rung on Italian Renaissance
themes at Fontainebleau under the patronage of
King Francis i. This copy of the thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa'di's Bustan (The Orchard),
dating from the beginning of the sixteenth century and created in central India at the royal city
of Mandu, exemplifies such cultural echoes.
Although the paintings possess a unique character, specialists can detect adaptations from earlier
Timurid or Uzbek work from Herat or Bukhara.
The great creative force behind these pictures
T O W A R D CATHAY

495

III
The Americas

THE AZTEC EMPIRE: REALM OF THE SMOKING MIRROR

Michael D. Coe

In 1566 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of

Cortes' soldiers in the conquest of Mexico and
then an old man, set down his recollection
of that November day in 1519 when he and his
hard-bitten comrades had crossed the pass
between the volcanoes flanking the eastern side
of the Valley of Mexico and beheld the heart of
the Aztec Empire for the first time:

Codex Borbonicus, all predate the conquest.

These are lengths of deerskin folded like an
accordion or screen, coated with white gesso,
and painted with ritual and mythological scenes.
Although their exact provenance is still debated,
these rarest of native American manuscripts
represent indigenous thought in its purest form,
untainted by European concepts.
According to their semilegendary history, the
The next day, in the morning, we arrived at
ancestral tribes that coalesced to form the Aztec
a broad Causeway, and continued our march
nation had originated in western or northwesttowards Iztapalapa, and when we saw so many
ern Mexico, far beyond the confines of civilized
cities and villages built in the water and other
Mesoamerica. Like all such migration tales, the
great towns on dry land and that straight and
accounts are mutually conflicting: some sources
level causeway going towards Mexico, we
place Aztec origins in Aztlan (probably meaning
were amazed and said that it was like the
"place of the white heron"), an island in a lake,
enchantments they tell of in the legend of
while others have the Aztec nation emerging as
Amadis, on account of the great towers and
seven distinct tribes from Chicomoztoc ("seven
cues [temples] and buildings rising from the
caves"). Led by four priests bearing the image
water, and all built of masonry. And some of
of their tribal deity Huitzilopochtli ("hummingour soldiers even asked whether the things
bird on the left"), the tribesmen are said to have
that we saw were not a dream?1
departed Aztlan in A.D. 1111 on a trek toward
But these strange and dangerous beings from
their future destination, the Valley of Mexico,
another world were not there to wonder: they
which they reached by the end of the thirteenth
had come to destroy this civilization and claim
century.
an empire for their sovereign, Emperor Charles v.
Miraculous adventures befell the travelers
For the reconstruction of the Aztec world
along their way, particularly at a place called
that was obliterated by Spain, there is a wealth
Coatepec ("snake hill"), where somewhat
of information that is virtually unique for the
illogically from our perspective, given his presindigenous societies of the Western Hemience at the start of the migrationthe god
sphere. There are the eyewitness accounts of
Huitzilopochtli was born. Within the mytholthe conquistadors themselves, beginning with
ogy of the Aztec state this nativity story is
the politically motivated letters to his sovereign
central.4 On Coatepec lived the Centzon Huitz2
from Hernan Cortes. There are the marvelous
nahua ("four hundred southerners," the stars of
records and linguistic studies undertaken by the
the night) along with their mother Coatlicue
early Franciscan friars, above all the Florentine
Codex, a stupendous, twelve-volume encyclopedia of Aztec life and history compiled by the
remarkable man who was in effect the world's
first field anthropologist, Fray Bernardino de
Sahagun. It was so complete and controversial a
work that it was suppressed at the order of
Philip ii.3 Sahagiin's great opus is the starting
point for every study of Aztec thought and society on the eve of the conquest. In Mexico, he
was followed by other scholars from the mendicant orders, but none of their reports were
ever the match of Sahagun's in understanding
and detail.
Some of our most valuable sources are native.
Richest of all are the pictorial screen-fold manufig. i. Huitzilopochtli. From Codex Borbonicus, p. 34
scripts from central Mexico; except for the
(detail). Bibliotheque de 1'Assemblee Rationale, Paris

fig. 2. Colossal Statue of Coatlicue. Aztec, stone.

Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City

("she of the serpent skirt") and their sister

Coyolxauhqui ("painted with bells"), the moon
goddess (cat. 357). One day as Coatlicue was
sweeping the temple on the top of the hill, a ball
of feathers leaped into her womb and magically
impregnated her with the future tribal deity.
Her jealous and enraged offspring cut off her
head, an act commemorated by the colossal
Coatlicue sculpture in the Museo Nacional de
Antropologia in Mexico City, in which the
mother goddess is depicted with two mighty
gushes of blood in the form of snakes leaping
from her severed neck.
Nevertheless Huitzilopochtli, now identified
as the sun, came forth from his mother's womb
fully armed and, in a cosmic struggle with his
siblings the stars and the moon, slew them with
his serpent staff. After beheading his sister
Coyolxauhqui, he hurled her lifeless body to the
foot of Coatepec and dismembered it.
When the Aztecs arrived at long last in the
Valley of Mexico, they found it dotted with the
cities and towns of long-settled, cultivated peoTHE A M E R I C A S

499

pies who had inherited the mantle of the old

Toltec civilization, which had fallen in the
twelfth century. These looked down upon the
uncouth, warlike newcomers who by this time
were calling themselves "Mexica," rather than
"Azteca," their old name. Following a prophecy
of the great Huitzilopochtli, and after a further
period of poverty-stricken wandering, the
Aztecs eventually settled on low islands in the
midst of the huge, shallow lake that then filled
much of the valley. There, the god had said,
they would find an eagle perched on a pricklypear cactus (tenochtli) and there they were to
found their capital, Tenochtitlan whence their
destiny would lead them to rule the world. And
so it happened.
The story of the rise to power of the Aztecs
closely parallels in time that of the Ottoman
Turks in the Old World and bears some resem-

fig. 3. Colossal Relief of the Dismembered Moon

Goddess Coyolxauhqui. Aztec, stone. Museo del
Templo Mayor, Mexico City
500

CIRCA 1492

blance to it: both represent the rapid progression from a collection of semibarbarian tribes
to an empire. In 1427 the fourth Aztec ruler
or huei tlatoani ("great speaker"), whose name
was Itzcoatl, defeated the cruel Tepanec overlords on the mainland and took over their
extensive domain in central Mexico. By the end
of the fifteenth century the Aztecs controlled a
loosely organized empire that reached to the
Gulf and Pacific coasts and included most but
not all of the Mesoamerican peoples situated
west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Lack of
hard data makes it risky to estimate the number
of people brought under the sway of Tenochtitlan by the Aztec military juggernaut, but the
figure probably lies between ten and twenty
million. Strictly speaking, the empire was a
triple alliance of three polities of the Valley of
Mexico: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan.
However, this alliance was completely dominated by the Aztec capital itself, which claimed
a lion's share of the tribute and war booty.
Although the political economy of the Aztec
state is not fully understood, its main support
seems to have been heavy tribute from the
lands the Aztecs had conquered. Vast quantities
of maize, beans, and other foodstuffs came into
Tenochtitlan on a regular basis, along with more
than a million cotton mantles, large numbers of
war costumes, and other manufactured goods.
There were daily markets in the towns and
cities, the major ones so large that they required
special market judges to settle disputes and
ensure fair trade. Operating outside the marketvendor world were hereditary guilds of longdistance merchants, the pochteca, whose task it
was to travel, often in disguise, to distant markets of peoples such as the Maya. There they
traded for foreign luxury items, quetzal feathers, for example, to be brought back to the Aztec
royal palace.

The great island-capital itself, MexicoTenochtitlan as the Aztecs styled it, was connected to the mainland by three main causeways. In a sense it was a kind of double city, as
the early Aztec polity had absorbed the onceindependent Tlatelolco in the northern part of
the island. Tlatelolco's great market, in a square
described as larger than the one in Salamanca,
was what had so impressed Cortes and Bernal
Diaz. With its myriad canals thronged with
canoe traffic, Mexico-Tenochtitlan reminded
the conquistadors of Venice. In the absence of
real census data, one can only guess the size of
the population in 1519. Cortes5 said the city was
as big as Seville or Cordoba, neither of which
accommodated more than seventy-five thousand souls in the early sixteenth century. The
source known as the Anonymous Conqueror6
assigned the city sixty thousand households,
which would suggest a population of at least two
hundred thousand. This latter estimate is probably too high: the comparable island-city of
Venice had only one hundred fifty thousand
inhabitants at that time, and it is unlikely that
Tenochtitlan, which consisted largely of onestory houses, had more residents than this.
Yet it was one of the world's largest cities.
The population was divided into four classes7:
the nobility (pipiltin), including the royal
household, with extensive private estates and
rights to tribute; the free commoners (mace-

hualtin], with usufruct rights to land organized

into localized wards called calpultin, each with a
temple and schools; the serfs bound to the soil
(mayeque), who worked the lands of the nobles;
and the slaves (tlacohtin), most of whom toiled
as domestic servants, farm laborers, and the like.
Slavery was clearly defined under law, and ordinarily no slave could be resold without his consent. Slaves were generally persons who had
been unable to meet their debt obligations, and
some of them rose to become estate managers
and enjoyed a degree of prosperity.
Religion and the calendar
As the early Spanish friars came to realize,
there were few if any peoples in the world who
could rival the Aztec in piety. They were compared favorably in this with the conquistadors.
When Cortes had the temerity to suggest to the
emperor Motecuhzoma (whose guest he was)
that he be allowed to set up a statue of the
Virgin Mary in the holiest of sanctuaries (the
adoratory of Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca),
the huei tlatoani's measured reply was
If I had known that you would have said such
defamatory things, I would not have shown
you my gods, we consider them to be very
good, for they give us health and rains and
good seed times and seasons and as many
victories as we desire, and we are obliged to
worship them and make sacrifices, and I pray
you not to say another word to their dishonour.8
Everything the Aztecs did, from huei tlatoani
to slave, from priest to warrior, was in some
way religiously motivated, whether it be a
prayer for good harvest, a father's advice to his
son, or a human sacrifice. Permeating life, in
fact energizing the entire Aztec nation and the
universe itself, was a complex yet coherent
system of beliefs nurtured and developed by the
priesthood.9 The Aztecs knew that it was their
destiny to maintain the world in good order, and this
structure guided them in every step along the way.
At once optimistic and deeply pessimistic,
the Aztec world view justified all aspects of life,
including the state and empire.10 Its underlying
premises were very different from those of
European Renaissance civilization, and were not
really understood by the invaders until long
after the Aztec world had collapsed. Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror") was the real Aztec
supreme deity: even Huitzilopochtli himself
was but one of his aspects. This ancient, dread,
and protean supernatural was both giver and
destroyer of life and fortune. Through him the
huei tlatoani and empire derived their legitimacy. The Aztec ethos embraced the principle
of duality, the unity of opposites. The constant

fig. 4. The Founding of Tenochtitlan. The first two Aztec conquests, Colhuacan and Tenayucan, are depicted at
the bottom of the drawing. From Codex Mendoza, ms Arch. Seld.A.l. fol. 2r. The Bodleian Library, Oxford

struggle between Tezcatlipoca, the god of war

and witchcraft, and his antithesis Quetzalcoatl
("feathered serpent"), lord of priests, produced
the ages of the world and time itself.
In a universe both ordered and inherently
unstable, with change and ultimate destruction

implicit in all creation, the sacred calendar

(tonalpohualli) integrated time with space. It
was based upon the eternal permutation of the
numbers one through thirteen with a count of
20 named days, producing an ever-repeating
cycle of 260 days. Of great antiquity, with roots
THE A M E R I C A S

501

fig. 5. Schematic Diagram of the Sacred Calendar

going back into the Formative Period of

Mesoamerican cultural history, the tonalpohualli was so fundamental that not only men
but even gods were named by the day on which
they had been born.
Each tonalpohualli day was assigned in a
counterclockwise succession to a cardinal direction and to a specific color, thus describing a
ritual circuit through space and time. Since each
day sign and its corresponding coefficient had
an auguryeither favorable, unlucky, or neutralthe tonalpohualli provided the fortune of
every individual Aztec and of the gods as well.
The calendric machinery was extraordinarily
complex. The 260 days were grouped into 13day weeks, each beginning with the coefficient
i and each with its own prognostication and
presiding deities. Those born under the sign i
Dog, for example, would become rich, while
those born under i Monkey would be brave but
die in battle. Each night had its own supernatural patron in a succession of nine lords of
the night; there were thirteen lords of the day
as well.
All this knowledge was recorded in screenfold
books kept under the care of the priests, who
directed the tonalpohualli rituals. The grandest
of the ceremonies were geared to the annual
movements of the sun, which had its own god,
502

CIRCA 1492

Tonatiuh, whose attributes had been usurped by

the tutelary divinity Huitzilopochtli. The Aztec
astronomer-priests used a solar year of exactly
365 days (rather than the true tropical year of
3651/4 days), consisting of eighteen months of
20 days each, plus 5 extra nameless days on
which it was extremely unlucky to be born.
Although the xihuitl (365-day year) must
always have run ahead of the true year, the
monthly ceremonies, which took place on a vast
scale in capital cities like Tenochtitlan, were
closely related to the agricultural cycle and to
the alternation of dry and wet seasons. From
the terse accounts in the known sources there is
no way to re-create the drama and magnificence
of these festivals, with their communal dances,
music, costumes, and sacrifices. It is clear that
great celebrations, such as the springtime feasts
in honor of the flayed god, Xipe Totec, must
have involved tens of thousands of participants
in the streets and plazas of the Aztec capital.
As in the rest of Mesoamerica, the xihuitl
permutated with the tonalpohualli to produce
a calendar round of fifty-two years.11 Each of
these years was named for a particular day in
the tonalpohualli, and only four of the twenty
day signs Reed, Flint, House, and Rabbit
could be "year bearers/' Unlike the Maya, the
Aztecs lacked an unbroken day-to-day count
from a single point in the past, so that all of
their history and mythology was embedded in
this recurrent fifty-two-year calendar, leading
to much confusion among modern historians
trying to deal with the Aztec past: we are told
in which year an event occurred, but not in
which calendar round it fell.
As the late Jacques Soustelle has observed,
"At bottom the ancient Mexicans had no real
confidence in the future/'12 and this anxiety was
nowhere so manifest as in the ceremonies marking the close of a calendar round (always in a
year 2 Reed, the sign of Tezcatlipoca), when a
symbolic bundle of reeds representing the old
years would be buried like a dead man. All the
fires throughout the empire were extinguished,
and the fire priests gathered on the Hill of the
Star to watch if the Pleiades crossed the zenith.
If they did, the universe would continue for
another calendar round; the new fire would be
kindled in the breast of a slain captive, and the
smoldering embers carried out into the world.
The Aztecs shared the color-direction concept
with most other Mesoamerican groups and with
many North American tribes. Each of the four
directions had a color (among the Aztecs, east
was white; north, the direction of death, was
black; west was red; and south blue). There
were also a host of other associations. Thus each
cardinal point had a certain kind of tree, on the
top of which perched a specified bird. The sur-

face of the earth had a fifth "direction/' the

center, the conceptual location of the threestoned hearth in every woman's household and
the domain of Huehueteotl, the old fire god.
There were two additional directions, the above
and the below.
In a way the Aztec universe was like the
Ptolemaic, with the above being layered into
thirteen heavens, and the below into nine
underworlds. According to the Codex Rios, a
post-conquest book on European paper, each
heaven was the abode and path of various celestial phenomena: the moon and the rain god
Tlaloc inhabited the first heaven, the Milky
Way the second, the sun god Tonatiuh the
third, and so on. Over all, in the thirteenth
heaven, was Ometeotl, the dual god of all
creation.
The sun, either as Tonatiuh or his avatar
Huitzilopochtli, was a major focal point of Aztec
life; the right-hand or south side of the great
temple in Tenochtitlan was dedicated to his
worship. As the solar orb rose in the sky each
dawn, it was conducted to its noontime position
by a Xiuhcoatl (fire serpent), with upturned
snout embellished with the seven stars of the
Pleiades and back emitting flames (cat. 388).
Thereupon the five sinister cihuateteo
(goddesses), the souls of women who had died
in childbirth, rose up from the western horizon
to conduct the sun on its afternoon journey
(cat. 370). Night marked the death of the sun
and its voyage through the underworld; only
the continued sacrifice of captive warriors
would ensure that the fiery orb would rise again
in the east.
As the sun represented maleness and the
warrior principle, so the moon stood for everything female. The mythological underpinning
for this belief was the Coatepec legend of the
triumph of Huitzilopochtli over Coyolxauhqui,
the moon. The Aztecs had an entire complex of
female divinities with lunar attributes: young
goddesses such as Xochiquetzal ("flower
plume"), the goddess of love and Tezcatlipoca's
mistress, represented the waxing moon, while
aged goddesses stood for the waning one. Associated with this female pantheon were skills
generally assigned in Mesoamerica to the
female sex, such as weaving, curing, and midwifery. The breaking of the somewhat puritanical norms of Aztec behavior was considered
the domain of these divinities. Drunkenness, for
example, was often punished by death, yet the
maguey wine itself was under the care of the
goddess Mayahuel and closely associated with
the rabbit, whose form the Aztec saw on the
face of the moon.
Third in brightness among the heavenly
bodies, the inner planet Venus was closely

watched by the astronomer-priests, especially

during its heliacal rising as morning star every
584 days; ritual codices like the Borgia and
Cospi (cat. 359) record this as a baneful event,
the planet taking on aspects of the death god as
it hurled its rays at various victims. Every 8
years, the Venusian and solar calendars coincided (8 x 365 = 5 x 584, the basis of the Venus
tables in those books), and every 104 years
(2 x 52) saw the meeting of the Venus count
with the calendar round, a great and awesome
event. Venus had strong associations with
Quetzalcoatl, for the god, following his expulsion from Tula, the Toltec capital, was said to
have thrown himself on his own funerary pyre
to be apotheosized as the morning star.
Between the thirteen heavens and the nine
underworlds was Tlalticpac, the earth's surface,
with the world-direction trees at its four corners and the old fire god at its center, as seen
on the first page of the Codex ^ejerv dry-Mayer
(cat. 356). For most earth dwellers the destina-

tion after death was Mictlan, land of the dead.

The exceptions were warriors who had died on
the battlefield or under the sacrificial knife and
women who had perished during childbirth,
losing a battle with the warrior inside them, all
of whom went to the paradise of the sun god;
and those who had died by drowning, by lightning, or by water-connected diseases, who went
to the delightful Tlalocan, the paradise of Tlaloc,
the rain god.
The underground road to Mictlan was
entered through the gaping jaws of Tlaltecuhtli,
the earth monster. As the soul descended
through each successive layer, it had to endure
terrible tests and perils such as a place of bitter
cold where there were winds as piercing as flint
knives. At last it reached the bottommost hell,
"where all the streets are on the left," presided
over by the death god Mictlantecuhtli and his
dread consort Mictlancihuatl. Four years after
the death of the body, the soul ceased to exist.
One can think of an axis mundi passing

fig. 6. Aztec Calendar Stone. At the center is a representation of our own era, 4 Motion. Museo Nacional de
Antropologia, Mexico City

vertically through these cosmic layers: at the

nadir, the male-female ruler of the dead, in the
center, the male-female old fire god, and at the
zenith, residing in the ultimate heaven, Ometeotl, the androgynous dual divinity, the alpha
and omega of Aztec religious thought. In his
magisterial study of Aztec philosophy, Miguel
Leon-Portilla13 has demonstrated that to the
Aztec wise men the entire universe with its
multitudinous gods, lesser beings, and forces
could be reduced to one ultimate reality: Ometeotl, embodying the ancient principle of the
unity of opposites. All else was mere illusion.
Ometeotl was both male and female and
existed before the creation of the universe.
Out of the sexual opposition contained within
his/her body came conception and the world's
beginning: creation was thus equated with
procreation. From this union there were born
not one but four Tezcatlipocas, each assigned to
a world-direction and color. To the north was
the black Tezcatlipoca, the god of war and sorcery and the night sky; to the west the white
one, Quetzalcoatl; to the south the blue Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli; and to the east the red
one, Xipe Totec. A cosmic struggle for hegemony then ensued between Quetzalcoatl and the
black Tezcatlipoca, and time began.
In Aztec thought the perpetual conflict
between these two supernaturals a kind of
repeating Cain and Abel storyproduced the
world ages or "suns," each sun being dominated
by one god or the other. In effect this was a
mythic enactment of the structural opposition
between the warriors, presided over by Tezcatlipoca, and the priests, for whom Quetzalcoatl
was patron and beau ideal. The myth of the five
suns was basic to the Aztec state religion, and it
is exemplified by the greatest of the preserved
Aztec monuments, the huge Calendar Stone.
Ever since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century it has astonished visitors to Mexico City. It
is in fact a view of the universe in space and
through time. At the center of the disk is a face
that is now generally thought to be that of the
night sun, the dead sun in the underworld.
Framing it is the sign 4 Motion, the day name
of the present age or sun, someday to be
destroyed by earthquakes; within the sign's four
arms are the day-signs of the four previous ages,
and the sign itself is encircled by the twenty
named days of the tonalpohualli. Surrounding
the disk are two gigantic fire serpents bearing
the sun on its diurnal journey. And what is the
message? That the sun itself, along with all of
us, is to face certain destruction on some evil
day.
The focal point of the cult of the sun and the
conceptual heart of the empire was the Great
Temple (huei teocalli) on the eastern side of the
THE A M E R I C A S

503

sacred precinct in the center of Tenochtitlan.

Rebuilt and enlarged seven times since its
founding in the early fourteenth century, this
was a double temple, the north half dedicated
to Tlaloc and the south half to Huitzilopochtli.
Significantly, the Huitzilopochtli temple was
known to the Aztec as "Coatepec," for in 1978,
at the foot of the ruined stairway of its fourth
stage, a colossal relief of the dismembered Coyolxauhqui was discovered by chance.14 Subsequent excavations by Eduardo Matos
Moctezuma in what remains of the Great
Temple have provided a wealth of offerings and
other materials related to the cults of Tlaloc and
Huitzilopochtli through much of Aztec history.
In their religion the Aztecs never lost sight of
the fact that they were a farming people who
had once been hunters and gatherers. Tlaloc,
the goggle-eyed rain god, was chief among the
agricultural deities, and the Aztec multitudes
held some of their greatest festivals in his
honor, especially at the start of the rainy season,
sacrificing even little children so that the crops
might have their needed moisture. A verse from
a hymn to Tlaloc points up the anxiety of a
starving people in times of drought and scarcity:
O Lord, Beloved Lord, O Provider!
May it be in your heart to grant, to give,
to bring comfort to the earth
and all that lives from it, all that grows
on it.15
In late spring, just before the coming of the
rains, the Aztec nation celebrated the festival of
Xipe Totec ("our lord the flayed one"); for this
event captives were slain and flayed. The celebrants put on the skins, which symbolized the
new vegetation that was about to cover the
land.
Maize was the staff of life in this agricultural
civilization, and was deified as a goddess with
the calendrical name Chicomecoatl ("seven serpents") and as the young god Centeotl. But the
Aztecs were still proud of their ancestry among
the hunting tribes of northwestern Mexico, so
there were important gods of the chase, such as
Mixcoatl ("cloud serpent," a Chichimec god) and
Camaxtli, as well as an annual ritual hunt carried out in the hills above the Valley of Mexico.
There was a vast Aztec priesthood, since
every major temple in the nation, from the
Great Temple down to the smallest ones, had a
sacerdotal staff. The priests were celibate and
studied for the profession in a seminary (calmecac), where they learned the mythology and
traditions, the rituals, and the workings of the
books in which this knowledge was recorded.
Because every priest owed his allegiance not
only to the god to whom he was devoted but
also to the divine patron of the clergy, Quetzal504

CIRCA

1492

coatl, it is hardly surprising that the two high

priests of the Aztec state were given the Quetzalcoatl title. Like their supernatural mentor,
the priests practiced the most rigorous fasts and
penitences, including the letting of their own
blood in honor of the gods.
The antithesis of the clergyman was the sorcerer, the practitioner of the black arts under
the patronage of Tezcatlipoca as the supreme
wizard. Curers and necromancers, their
most powerful medicine was an arm snatched
from the corpse of a woman who had died in
childbirth.
The omnipotent Tezcatlipoca, who could look
into the hearts and thoughts of men with his
magic mirror, also played a more positive role as
patron of the royal house. The emperor ruled
only by the capricious will of the great god, and
on taking office he directed humble prayers of
this tenor to the "smoking mirror":
O master, O our lord, O lord of the near, of
the nigh, O night, O wind, thou hast inclined
thy heart. Perhaps thou hast mistaken me for
another, I who am a commoner.16
The ruler's office was thought to be a crushing
burden laid on him by Tezcatlipoca, for he
had total responsibility for the well-being of
his people.
Notwithstanding the admonitions of the
elders and councilors to conduct himself with all
humility, the new emperor was to be surrounded with incredible pomp and even to be
the subject of strict taboos to the end of his
reign. He lived in a luxurious two-story palace
adjacent to the sacred precinct; in it were his
throne room, the royal arsenal, judicial courts,
and a temple or hall devoted to the sciences and
music. Bernal Diaz and Cortes were astounded
by the royal zoo and aviary, by the botanical and
pleasure gardens, and by the host of dancers,
buffoons, and jugglers devoted to pleasing their
sovereign. From the royal kitchens came every
kind of savory dish and innumerable cups of
well-frothed chocolate. None could watch while
the emperor dined, nor could anyone ever gaze
directly at his face.
Sumptuary laws were strict: fine cotton
clothes and ornaments of gold, jade, and turquoise were restricted to the nobility, highranking warriors, and the royal family. From
Sahagiin's account and from the europeanized
drawings of Texcocan lords in the Codex Ixtlilxochitl (cats. 372, 373) we have a good idea of
what a ruler would wear: golden ear ornaments,
a labret of cast gold, a cloak, perhaps tie-dyed
and embroidered along the edge, a richly
embroidered loincloth, and golden sandals.
Everywhere the emperor went he was borne in

fig. 7. Mosaic-encrusted Human Skull Representing

Tezcatlipoca. The eyes are convex pyrite mirrors.
This was probably the skull of a sacrificed god impersonator. The Trustees of the British Museum,
London

a litter and accompanied by the highest-ranking

nobles of his court.
The lively arts flourished in these royal
households and were generally held in high
esteem among the population. Poetry metaphorically known as "flowers, songs"was
highly developed and recited to the beat of
the teponaztli (two-toned slit drum, cat. 378).
Oratory was greatly elaborated; the ability to
express one's thoughts in the Nahuatl tongue by
employing metaphorical couplets and triplets,
along with many honorifics, commanded great
respect. There was a complex of gods devoted to
the arts and to pleasure in general, chief of
whom were Xochipilli ("flower prince"), the
god of summertime (cat. 380), and Macuilxochitl ("five flower"), patron of music, dance, and
gambling.
The real focus of Aztec life on the eve of the
conquest was warfare. Every Aztec boy, unless
he was of noble birth and thus qualified for
entrance into a seminary, received military
training in the telpochcalli under the divine
aegis of Tezcatlipoca. Like the squires of
medieval Europe, young cadets could accompany
seasoned warriors into battle as arms bearers.
The Aztec ethos extolled warfare and death on
the battlefield or under the sacrificial knife, for
the glorious soul of the dead warrior rose to
accompany the sun as a beautiful hummingbird. The battleground itself was praised as the
"field of flowers," for in Nahuatl metaphor
flowers symbolized blood; moreover, a perpetual state of hostility between the empire and

the enemy states of Tlaxcallan and Huexotzinco

was glorified as the "flowery war/'
The usual proximate cause of a declaration
of war was an attack by a foreign state on the
long-distance merchants (pochteca). There were
military orders similar to those into which
European knights were organized in the age of
chivalry, with eagle warriors (cat. 385) and
jaguar warriors the most prominent. Each manat-arms carried a round feather-covered shield
of wood or reeds and either a macuauhuitl (a
sword of wood edged with razor-sharp obsidian
blades) or an atlatl (spearthrower, cat. 384) and
handful of darts. Aztec armies were accompanied by semibarbarian Otomi bowmen, but no
Aztec used this weapon. Attacks were signaled
by war cries and accompanied by the din of
blown conch shells and whistles; in the ensuing
melee, high-ranking officers could be distinguished (as the Spaniards were quick to note) by
their magnificent ensigns of reeds, feathers, and
other materials that towered above the shoulders. Hand-to-hand combat was the rule, the
goal of each warrior being to take and bind a
captive for transport to the rear.17
While the actual number of captives (and
slaves bought for the purpose) sacrificed each
year in Tenochtitlan was surely far less than
the Spaniards claimed, this was indeed the fate
of all those taken in war; their heads ended up
on the tzompantli (the great skull rack in the

sacred enclosure). The ritual was perhaps most

poignant in the case of the handsome young
war prisoner who was selected to impersonate
Tezcatlipoca. Presented with four lovely young
women as his mistresses, he was revered as the
god himself for one year, at the close of which
he was taken to his own temple. There he bade
farewell to his paramours and climbed the steps
to the summit, where he was seized by four
priests and stretched over the sacrificial stone.
His heart was torn out and thrown in the
cuauhxicalli ("eagle bowl"), in honor of the
deity in whose place he had stood.
To the Aztecs, death by the obsidian or flint
knife was perceived as a form of life, for it was
the hearts and blood of brave humans that
ensured that the universe would not end, that
our own era 4 Motion would continue for a
while more, that Huitzilopochtli as the sun god
would blaze forth on the eastern horizon each
dawn to bring happiness and survival to his
people.
But for the empire created by the lords of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the universe did indeed
end in destruction: on 13 August 1521, after
seventy-five days of siege, the great city, bleeding and torn, capitulated to Hernan Cortes.
Of all of its marvels and glories, as the veteran
Bernal Diaz lamented in his old age, "today all
is overthrown and lost, nothing left standing."18

NOTES
-L. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New
Spain, trans, and ed. Alfred P. Maudslay, 6 vols.
(London, 1908-1916), 2:37.
2. Hernan Cortes, Letters from Mexico, trans, and ed.
Anthony Pagden (New Haven and London, 1986).
3. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex,
General History of the Things of New Spain, 12
books (Salt Lake City, 1950-1969).
4. See Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Felipe Ehrenburg, Coyolxauhqui, 2d ed. (Mexico City, 1980), 1-8.
5. Cortes 1986, 102.
6. Discussed in George C. Vaillant, Aztecs of Mexico
(New York, 1941), 134.
7. For an overview of Aztec society, see Jacques
Soustelle, The Daily Life of the Aztecs (London,
1961), 36-94.
8. Diaz 1908-1916, 2:78.
9. A succinct but very complete treatment of Aztec
religion is Henry B. Nicholson, "Religion in PreHispanic Central Mexico/ in Handbook of Middle
American Indians, ed. Robert Wauchope (Austin,
1971), 10:395446. A more popular treatment is
Alfonso Caso, The Aztecs: People of the Sun
(Norman, 1953).
10. The best treatment of Aztec philosophy and cosmology is Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and
Culture (Norman, 1963).
11. On Mesoamerican calendar systems and on the
Aztec calendar in particular, see Alfonso Caso,
Los Calendarios Prehispdnicos (Mexico City, 1967).
12. Soustelle 1961, 101.
13. Leon Portilla 1963 has many references to the
tlamatinime.
14. Many books and studies have emanated from the
sensational excavations in the Great Temple, among
which are Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great
Temple of the Aztecs (London, 1988); Elizabeth Hill
Boone, ed., The Aztec Templo Mayor (Washington,
1983); and Johanna Broda, David Carrasco, and
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of
Tenochtitlan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987).
15. Thelma Sullivan, 'A Prayer to Tlaloc," Estudios de
Cultura Nahuatl 5 (1965), 42-55.
16. Sahagun 1950-1969, bk. 6:41.
17. Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare (Norman, 1988), is the
only comprehensive treatment of the subject.
18. Diaz 1908-1916, 2:38.

fig. 8. The First Meeting between Cortes and Motecuhzoma. Page from a map and historical record of the
people of Tlaxcallan that was painted in early colonial times. Standing at the right is Cortes' interpreter-mistress,
Dona Marina. From Lienzo de Tlaxcala, Antiguedades Mexicanas (1892)
THE A M E R I C A S

505

THE AZTEC GODS-HOW MANY?

Miguel Leon-Portilla

INearly all chroniclers of sixteenth-century

Mexico Indians, Spaniards, and mestizos
alike have pondered the great number of gods
worshipped by the Aztecs. As if summing up
what other chroniclers had declared, Francisco
Lopez de Gomara, chaplain of Hernan Cortes,
stated in 1552 in his Conquest of Mexico that
'They affirm there were more than two thousand gods, and that each one of them had his
own name, attributes and signs/'1 Today most
people who have visited the archaeological sites
in Mexico or the museums where Aztec art and
culture are represented will agree that there
were, if not two thousand, at least more than a
hundred Aztec gods. In one sense, this is true;
in a contemporary study some hundred celestial, terrestrial, and other deities are identified.2

Nevertheless, the continuing study of the few

extant pre-Hispanic codices and sacred texts of
the indigenous tradition preserved in sixteenthcentury sources has prompted questions about
this widely accepted image of the "idolatrous"
Aztecs, worshippers of gods of rain, wind, earth,
sun, moon, harvest, wisdom, dance, death:
more gods than man could possibly need. But
the real question is whether the Aztec sages and
priests ever made an attempt to explain or even
to order that plurality of mysterious and powerful beings who received the name of teotl, a
word curiously reminiscent of the Greek term
theos (god). Upon closer observation, a hidden
unity can be demonstrated behind the complex
pantheon of the popular Aztec religion.
Tezcatlipoca, the smoking mirror, was to the

fig. i. Tezcatlipoca. Codex Borgia, page 17. The lower two-thirds of the page
shows the supreme deity with the twenty day-signs of the sacred calendar
assigned to different parts of his body, clothing, and paraphernalia. In his right
hand he grasps a shield and darts, symbolic of his position as god of war, while
obsidian mirrors, which appear at his lower leg, over his chest, and at the back of
the head, signify his role as the omnipotent magician who could look into the
hearts of all who dwell on earth. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Nahuatl-speaking nations, including the Aztecs,

the true supreme deity. He was invoked as
Ipalnemoani (he by whom there is life) and as
Thoqueh, Nahuaqueh (the owner of being close,
the owner of being near), or the lord who is
everywhere. And Tezcatlipoca was also Yohualli,
Ehecatl (night, wind), or invisible and intangible. And he, the smoking mirror, had his own
counterpart, Tezcatlanextia (mirror who illumines things).
All this we know through the extant Nahuatl
texts where the ancient word (huehuehtlahtolli)
is preserved.3 Tezcatlipoca was represented
many times on the pages of the pre-Hispanic
codices. He appears, for instance, in the Codex
Borgia in paired form as one and a double, the
black and the red Tezcatlipoca, the smoking

fig. 2. Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl. Codex Borgia, page 56. The dualism so
fundamental to Aztec philosophy can be seen in this image, which shows Mictlantecuhtli, the death god, back-to-back with Quetzalcoatl, the lord of life, over
an inverted skull representing the land of the dead. Along the edges are the signs
of the twenty thirteen-day weeks that made up the sacred calendar. Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana

THE A M E R I C A S

507

and illumining mirror. Moreover, as lord of the

everywhere, he is depicted presiding over one
or another of the four cosmic quadrants of the
world.4 As lord of the everywhen, he is present
in the first and last pages of the Codex Fejervdry-Mayer (cat. 356), the book of destinies,
as Tonalamatl consulted by the long-distance
merchants (pochtecas). There he appears surrounded by the different cycles of time: the
days and the destinies.5
Lord of the everywhere and of the everywhen, one and double at once: TezcatlipocaTezcatlanextia, smoking and illumining mirror,
receives the same titles, Ipalnemoani, he by
whom there is life, and Tloqueh Nahuaqueh,
lord of the everywhere and everywhen, which
refers to the ultimate reality. In the thought
of the Aztec sages and priests he, the one and
double at once, is Ometeotl the dual god, whose
ultimate abode is Omeyocan, the place of duality. Several texts in the Florentine Codex (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) and in
other indigenous sources speak of him.
The dual god Ometeotl is Ometecuhtli, Omecihuatl, dual lord and dual lady, mother and
father of whatever exists: Tonantzin, Totahtzin,
our revered mother, our revered father, who
through a portentous coition give origin to all
reality. Thus She-He the supreme, the dual god
depicted in the codices beyond the thirteen
heavens, was invoked as the ultimate source of
life, in the words of an Aztec midwife. After
cutting the umbilical cord she washed the newborn and, while so doing, invoked in this
manner:
Lord, Our Master,
She of the jade skirt,
He who shines like a sun of jade,
a baby has been born,
sent by Our Mother, Our Father,
Dual Lady, Dual Lord,
She-He who dwells
in the place of Duality.6
In popular religious belief all the gods are HerHis children. But the Nahuatl texts and the
ancient codices also reveal that, in the thought
of the sages, the teteo, appearing in pairs or at
times even androgynous, are regarded as just as
many presences of the supreme dual god. SheHe is the mirror who illumines the world and
produces the smoke that obscures reality at the
end of a cosmic age. She-He, as several texts
declare, is Quetzalcoatl, a name meaning feathered serpent and also precious twin, manifestation of the wisdom of the supreme Ometeotl,
dual god. Cihuacoatl, feminine twin, our
mother, is Quetzalcoatrs counterpart. She-He

508

CIRCA 1492

appears, in the Aztec epic of creation, at the

dawn of our present age, restoring life to the
bones of humans who existed in previous
cosmic ages.
The codices and texts, including the hymns
and poems, provide the evidence. She-He can
also appear as the god of the celestial waters,
Tlaloc, and as the lady of the terrestrial waters,
Chalchiuhtlicue, or as Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, lord and lady of the place
of the dead, or as Cinteotl, Xilonen, god and
goddess of maize, or as Ehecatl and Mictlantecuhtli, wind-life and death, their backs joined as
if they were one person in Codex Vaticanus
3 773 / or as Tlaltecuhtli, androgynous deity of
the earth.8
As Ipalnemoani, Ometeotl, who is Tezcatlipoca, is fervently invoked by the Aztecs with
the name of Huitzilopochtli. The Aztec tutelary
god Huitzilopochtli indeed has the attributes of
Tezcatlipocahe is his Aztec alter ego. And it is
he who causes the day to exist. So it is proclaimed in a sacred hymn:
Huitzilopochtli, the young warrior!
He who acts above, moving along his way.
Not in vain did I take the raiment of
yellow plumage,
for it is I who makes the Sun appear.
The portentous One,
Who inhabits the region of clouds...
The Sun spreads out...
come adhere to us.9
Huitzilopochtli and Coatlicue, she of the serpent skirt, Tezcatlipoca and Tezcatlanextia,
Omecihuatl, Ometecuhtli, dual lady and dual
lord, are all manifestations of the supreme dual
god, Ometeotl.
Indeed, as in today's Mexico, where the
Virgin and Jesus are often invoked with many
different namesVirgin of Guadalupe, Remedios, Pilar, Perpetuo Socorro, Salud, Senor de
Chalma, de los Milagros, Jesus Nazareno she,
Tonantzin, and he, Totahtzin, in pre-Hispanic
times were called and worshipped everywhere
and everywhen, differently arrayed, but embodying the same ultimate and divine, dual reality.
The question "The Aztec godshow many?"
can in this manner be answered. The ancient
texts of the native tradition give us ample evidence to accept the answer that these plural
gods can be interpreted as various manifestations of a dual reality. Is not the ultimate reality
our mother, our father, who give life everywhere and everywhen, indeed a beautiful form
of approaching the mystery that which is
beyond the wind and the night?

NOTES
1. Francisco Lopez de Gomara, La Conquista de Mexico
(Madrid, 1986), 461.
2. This is the conclusion reached by Henry B. Nicholson in " Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico/' in
Handbook of Middle American Indians, ed. Robert
Wauchope (Austin, 1971), 10:408-430.
3. One collection of huehuehtlahtolli is included in
Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex,
General History of the Things of New Spain, 12
books (Salt Lake City, 1950-1969), book 6.
4. Codex Borgia, commentary by Karl Anton Novotny
(Graz, 1976), 21.
5. This pre-Hispanic book has been published in
facsimile under the title Tonalamatl de los Pochtecas
(Codex Fejervdry-Mayer), commentary by Miguel
Leon-Portilla (Mexico City, 1985).
6. Sahagun 1950-1969, book 6, fol. 148 v.
7. Codex Vaticanus 3773, introduction by Ferdinand
Anders (Graz, 1972), 75.
8. A more detailed and documented presentation of
the multiple manifestations of the divine dual reality
is found in Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought
and Culture, A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind
(Norman, 1982), 90-103.
9. Angel Ma. Garibay has published a translation,
accompanied by a commentary, of these hymns
in Veinte Himnos Sacros de los Nahuas (Mexico,
1958), 31.

THE TAINOS: PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS OF

COLUMBUS' INDIES
Irving Rouse
Jose Juan Arrom

A A>.fter a thirty-three-day crossing from the

Canary Islands, Christopher Columbus' small

fleet sighted land two hours after midnight on
Thursday 12 October 1492. Following the coast
until daylight, Columbus and his men observed
people on land and went ashore to claim this
territory for the Spanish crown. The island in
the Bahamian archipelago on which they first
set foot was called Guanahani in the local language. Columbus renamed it San Salvador, and
it was most probably the outlier that bears this
name today.1
The landing was so momentous an event that
Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, whose abstract of
Columbus' lost journal is our best source for the
narrative of his first voyage, switched abruptly
from the third person to "the very words of the
Admiral in his book" to describe the meeting
with the local inhabitants:
In order that they would be friendly to us
because I recognized that they were people
who would be better freed [from error] and
converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
force to some of them I gave red caps, and
glass beads which they put on their chests,
and many other things of small value, in
which they took so much pleasure and
became so much our friends that it was a
marvel
But it seemed to me that they
were a people very poor in everything.2

of them with red, and some of them with

whatever they find
They do not carry
arms nor are they acquainted with them,
because I showed them swords and they took
them by the edge and through ignorance cut
themselves. They have no iron.4
The nakedness of the Tafnos who occupied the
islands away from the Tamo heartland in Hispaniola evidently aroused great interest in
Europe, as it is the only detail of Columbus'
account that appears in the illustrations in the
earliest printed editions of his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.
Columbus must have been surprised and
extremely disappointed by the utter absence
on Guanahani of the riches that Marco Polo's
account of the Far East had led him to expect.
Nevertheless he was clearly charmed by the
Tamos' innocence. And yet, even at this first

encounter, Columbus allowed himself to think

ahead to the Tamos' possible utility to the crown
and thereby, as we shall see, sealed their fate:
I saw some who had marks of wounds on
their bodies and I made signs to them asking
what they were; and they showed me how
people from other islands nearby came there
and tried to take them, and how they
defended themselves; and I believed and
believe that they come here from tierra firme
to take them captive. They should be good
and intelligent servants, for I see that they
say very quickly everything that is said to
them; and I believe that they would become
Christians very easily, for it seemed to me
that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing,
at the time of my departure I will take six of
them from here to Your Highnesses in order
that they may learn to speak.5

Columbus believed that he was greeting the

natives of an island somewhere in the vicinity of
Japan. In fact, he had encountered a people who
have become known as the Tamos3 and whose
brief recorded his'tory is intimately linked with
his exploration of the islands that were to
become known as the West Indies.
Recognizing the great importance to Ferdinand and Isabella of this first contact with
the native population, Columbus recorded the
appearance and character of these "Indians"
in considerable detail:
All of them go around as naked as their
mothers bore them
They are very well
formed, with handsome bodies and good
faces. Their hair [is] coarse almost like the
tail of a horse and short
Some of them
paint themselves with black... and some of
them paint themselves with white, and some
THE A M E R I C A S

509

Two days later he noted in his journal, for the

benefit of his sovereigns: "These people are
very naive about weapons
with 50 men all
of them could be held in subjection and can be
made to do whatever one might wish/'6
Columbus' route led him right toward the
more highly developed Tamo heartland. His
itinerary was dictated by his pressing need to
locate the gold which, from his researches,
he believed was available in abundance in Japan,
the island Marco Polo had called "Cipango."
On 13 October he wrote:
I was attentive and labored to find out if
there was any gold; and I saw that some of
them wore a little piece hung in a hole that
they have in their noses. And by signs I was
able to understand that, going to the south or
rounding the island to the south, there was
there a king who had large vessels of it and
had very much gold
And so I will go
to the southwest to seek gold and precious
stones... I want to go to see if I can find the
island of Cipango.7
This search for gold took Columbus from the
Bahamas to eastern Cuba, which he believed to
be a peninsula attached to the Chinese mainland, and thence to the island of Hispaniola.
Columbus would not abandon the misconception that he was somewhere off the coast of
China, possibly in the China Sea that Marco
Polo had described as dotted with 7,448 islands,
most of them inhabited.8 When his Tamo guides
described their enemies, the Caribs, as the
people of "Caniba," Columbus [11 December
1492] recognized them immediately as the subjects of the Chinese emperor: "And thus I say
again how other times I said... that Caniba is
nothing else but the people of the Grand Khan,
who must be here very close to this place/'9 He
was also aware that he might be in the spice

fig. i. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,

Tamo Dwelling. Drawing from Historia general y
natural de las Indias, i: fol. 41, manuscript. Huntington Library, San Marino
510

CIRCA 1492

islands or Indies, about which he had learned

from classical literature and from medieval
travel accounts.10
On Christmas Eve of 1492 Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, struck a reef and sank
near the present city of Cap Haitien in northern
Haiti. With materials salvaged from that ship
he erected a fort, naming it La Navidad, and left
there the sailors unable to crowd into his two
remaining vessels. He returned to Spain by way
of the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, where one of his captains had been able to
verify the presence of gold.
His finds aroused great enthusiasm in Spain.
He presented the six Tamo captives he had
brought back with him to Ferdinand and Isabella
when he first reported to them in Barcelona in
April 1493. In the initial enthusiasm for Columbus' discovery, these Tamos were treated as
celebrities: they were baptized, with the king,
the queen, and the infante Don Juan acting as
godparents, and one of them remained attached
to the royal household until his death two years
later. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, a Milanese
humanist at the Spanish court whose writings
helped to spread news of the New World
throughout Europe, immediately connected the
Tamos with classical accounts of the Golden
Age, in which early man lived in innocence,
without property or social controls, in complete
happiness.11
For his second voyage, in the fall of 1493,
Columbus was provided by the crown with a
large fleet manned by 1,500 men. This time he
sailed a more southerly route to the Lesser
Antilles, because his Tamo pilots had told him
that its islands extended out into the Atlantic
Ocean, making possible a shorter crossing. He
stopped at Guadeloupe, which he found to be
occupied by Island-Caribs, the southern neighbors of the Tamos.12 Rescuing several Tafno
women who were being held captive there, he
took them back to their homeland in Puerto
Rico and proceeded to La Navidad in Hispaniola,
only to find that all the men he had left there
had been killed by the local Tainos. He then
turned his attention to the goldfield in the
northern part of the Dominican Republic and
established a base, which he named Isabela,
from which to exploit the field, hoping, though
as it turned out, vainly, that significant quantities of gold could be produced. Having thus fulfilled the crown's instruction to found a new
colony, he resumed his search for a passage to
the Chinese mainland, sailing westward to Cuba
and exploring its south coast until he passed
from Tamo territory into that of a people known
as Guanahatabeys.13 He halted shortly before
reaching the far end of the island and returned
to Isabela by way of Jamaica and the eastern tip

of Hispaniola, believing that he had shown Cuba

to be a peninsula leading to China.
On his third (1498-1500) and fourth (15021504) voyages, this time seeking a more southerly passage through the islands to the Indies,
Columbus reached Trinidad, just off the coast of
South America and the southern part of Middle
America including present-day Costa Rica and
Panama, encountering Indians different from
those he knew in the Antilles. He died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506, never realizing that he
had reached not the Far East, but a New World
undreamed of by the classical geographers
whose works provided the basis for his "enterprise of the Indies."
In the journal of his first Caribbean voyage
Columbus left accurate descriptions of the landscape the Tainos inhabited, their physical
appearance, and some of their customs. Wishing
to know more about their culture, he commissioned Fray Ramon Pane, who accompanied him
on his second voyage, to make a study of the
religious rituals and beliefs on the island of
Hispaniola. Pane spent four years among the
Tainos, learning their language by listening to
their stories and their songs, and prepared a
report entitled Relation acerca de las antiguedades de los indios ("Report about the antiquities of the Indians"), which he submitted to
Columbus around 1498. In it he faithfully
recorded his observations and the statements
that had been made to him, showing none of
the prejudices that characterized the accounts
of the more militant Christians.
Father Pane's report was read by three contemporary authors Peter Martyr d'Anghiera,
Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, and Columbus'
son Fernando, all of whom made use in their
own writings of the information it contained.
An inadequate Italian translation of the report
was published in 1571, after which the original
was lost. Arrom has reconstructed it by translating the Italian version back into Spanish, collating it with the information cited by Peter
Martyr, Las Casas, and Fernando Columbus,
correcting errors, and studying the meaning of
the Indians' own words for the nature and
attributes of their deities as recorded by Pane.
Other sixteenth-century observers, such as
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, have
also contributed to our knowledge of Tamo
culture.14
Further information about the Tainos has
been difficult to obtain. They were not literate,
and their culture disappeared by the mid-sixteenth century, too soon for their oral traditions, customs, and beliefs to be recorded in
detail. Nevertheless, archaeologists and linguists have been able to confirm and correct
the accounts of the conquistadors and to learn

fig. 2. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,

Loincloth. Drawing from Historia general y natural
de las Indias, i: fol. 5V, manuscript. Huntington
Library, San Marino

fig. 3. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,

Tamo Ax. Drawing from Historia general y natural
de las Indias, i: fol. TV, manuscript. Huntington
Library, San Marino

fig. 4. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,

Firedrill. Drawing from Historia general y natural de
las Indias, i: fol. 9r, manuscript. Huntington
Library, San Marino

more about Tamo lifeways. Until recently this

research was concentrated in the Tamo heartland. Relatively little is known about conditions
among the outlying Tamos, who inhabited the
Bahamian Archipelago, most of Cuba, Jamaica,
and the northern part of the Lesser Antilles.
Efforts are being made to correct this lack of
information.15
According to Pane, the heartland Tamos
believed that they had emerged from a cave
in a sacred mountain on Hispaniola and that
their neighbors had come from a smaller cave
nearby; there was evidently no tradition of a
migration from another place. In fact, archaeologists have traced all the native West Indians
back to the mainland. The first to arrive were
the ancestors of the Guanahatabeys, consisting
of two different groups who migrated from
Middle America and South America into the
Greater and Lesser Antilles during the fourth
and second millennia B.C. respectively. The
ancestors of the Tamos, known to archaeologists
as the Saladoid peoples, migrated from South
America to the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico
during the first centuries B.C., replacing the
earlier inhabitants, but did not continue
through Hispaniola to Cuba until around A.D.
600, by which time they had evolved into a
people whom archaeologists call Ostionoids.
The Ostionoids gradually pushed the earlier
inhabitants of Cuba back to the western end of
the island. The origin of the Island-Caribs is
uncertain. According to their traditions, they
were descended from Carib warriors who had

left the South American mainland shortly

before the time of Columbus and had conquered
the southernmost Antilles.
There is reason to believe that both the Saladoids and their Ostionoid descendants spoke
languages belonging to the Arawakan family,
which is still widely distributed through northeastern South America.16 The Saladoids were
the first inhabitants of the West Indies to live in
permanent villages, farm, make pottery, and
worship the deities that the Tamos were later to
call zemis. The Ostionoids, developing all these
practices further, organized themselves into
chiefdoms and evolved into the Tamos around
A.D. 1200.
When Columbus reached the Tamo heartland
he found its inhabitants living in large permanent villages, each composed of family
houses grouped around a plaza. They practiced
an ad\ anced form of agriculture, growing two
root crops, cassava and sweet potato, in large
mounds known as conuco. They also cultivated
corn or maize (the latter term in fact derives
from the Tamo language), peanuts, pineapples,
cotton, tobacco, and other indigenous plants,
using irrigation where necessary. Ironically,
while Columbus searched vainly through the
Antilles for the precious spices and medicinal
plants of the East Indies, which of course were
not present, these humbler vegetables and
plants, many of which the conquistadors took
back to Spain from Hispaniola, turned out to be
among the most important of the New World's
agricultural gifts to the Old.17

The Tamos were expert potters, weavers, and

carvers of wood, stone, bone, and shell. They
created a distinctive form of art, combining
motifs that their Saladoid ancestors had brought
from South America with aspects of the art that
the previous inhabitants of the Greater Antilles
had developed from their Middle American
background.18 The Tamos of the heartland wore
breechcloths or aprons and were fond of feather
ornaments. They could not cast metals, but
they were able to inlay their carvings with gold
leaf and shell plates. Their chiefs obtained pendants made from a copper and gold alloy
(guanm) through trade with South America.
Hispaniola and the rest of the Tamo heartland were ruled by hierarchies of regional, district, and village chiefs (caciques). They lived
alongside the village plazas, generally in rectangular thatched houses (bohio), which contrasted
with the round houses (caney) of the ordinary
people. The caciques received visitors seated on
carved wooden stools (duhos, cat. 411), while
their attendants stood, crouched, or reclined in
hammocks. Each village was also served by
priests and medicine men (behique) and was
divided into two social classes (nitaino and
naboria), which the Spaniards equated with
their own nobles and commoners.
According to Pane, the Tainos worshiped deities called zemis. Foremost among them was
Yiicahu Bagua Maorocoti ("giver of cassava,"
"master of the sea", "conceived without male
intervention"). Arrom has connected this
central deity with the distinctive three-pointed
THE A M E R I C A S

5!!

fig. 5. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Canoe. Drawing from Historia general y natural de
las Indias, i: fol. 8r, manuscript. Huntington Library, San Marino

objects that are a mainstay of the Tamo art (cat.

412) and appear in simpler form as far back as
Saladoid time. Yucahu's mother, Atabey, was
goddess of the moon, tides, and springs and
protectress of women in childbirth.
The Tamos applied the term zemi to a
number of other deities and to the objects they
carved to portray them. For example, Boinayel
and Marohu were twin gods of rain and fair
weather, respectively. Another male zemi, Baibrama, presided over the production and consumption of cassava. The Tamos grated the
fleshy roots of that plant and squeezed out their
poisonous juice before processing them into a
kind of bread, which they prized because it kept
especially well in the hot and humid tropical
climate.
Still another male zemi, Maquetaurie Guayaba, was lord of the land of the dead. He sent
the owl to announce to a family that one of its
members was soon to die, a belief that survives
in the folklore of the Spanish West Indies. The
zemis also included spirits that lived in trees,
caves, or other features of the landscape.
Arrom has pointed out that some of the
objects depicting zemis have features that can
be related to the characteristics of specific gods.
512

CIRCA 1492

For example, the threatening features of certain

statuettes may be those of Baibrama in his role
of enforcing the taboo against eating the cassava
root before extracting its deadly juice. The
cadaverous head with empty eye sockets and
large leathery lips of another type of zemi may
indicate that it depicts Maquetaurie Guayaba.19
The statuettes of the zemis were kept not
only in homes but also in caves. Chiefs derived
much of their power from their zemis. Some
rulers owned so many of these statuettes that
they had to erect separate buildings in which to
house them. The Tamos believed that the spirits
of the deceased were transported to the land of
the dead whence they could return to their
households and influence the welfare of the surviving occupants. Consequently, the Tamos
worshiped their ancestors to ensure success and
to avoid misfortune. They sometimes kept the
bones of ancestors in elaborately decorated
funeral urns or wrapped them in cotton cloth,
but more often put them in baskets (jaba),
which they hung in their homes. As time
passed these receptacles decomposed and the
bones were deposited in the refuse, leading
some archaeologists to conclude that the Tamos
practiced cannibalism.

Before worshiping, the Tamos induced vomiting to purify themselves (cat. 416-417). They
inhaled narcotic powder (cohoba] through tubes
of wood or bone (cat. 418) in order to induce
hallucinations, which they interpreted as messages from their deities.20 Vomiting spatulas and
sniffing tubes were often carved with representations of zemis, as were many kinds of
household furnishings and personal ornaments.
The Tamos danced and sang communally in
their plazas, accompanying themselves with
drums and rattles. They commemorated past
events in the songs (areitos), thanked their
gods, and prayed for success in future endeavors. Villagers in the heartland also held ceremonies in roadways and on more-or-less
rounded courts, which they constructed by
leveling fields, raising embankments, making
stone pavements, and setting up stone slabs that
were occasionally decorated with carvings
depicting zemis.
The Tamos played their version of the ball
game known throughout tropical America. In
the heartland they built rectangular courts
[batey] for the purpose, some of which appear to
have been situated on the boundaries between
chiefdoms. The balls made of rubber amazed the
Spaniards, who had never seen such resilient
material. Players wearing wooden or stone belts
to protect themselves were allowed to hit the
ball with any part of the body except the hands.
The stone belts, also limited to the heartland,
were elaborately carved with figures of zemis
and geometric motifs (see cat. 420). As in
Middle America, the thickest specimens are
too heavy to wear and must have been purely
ceremonial.21
The Tamos were the first native Americans to
come into contact with the Europeans, and they
bore the brunt of the early phase of the conquest. Relatively few died in military confrontations, for they soon realized that their simple
wooden clubs (macana) and wood-tipped spears
or arrows were no match for the steel swords
and lances, the horses and dogs trained for warfare, and the firearms of the conquistadors.
The Tamos who submitted to Spanish rule
were put to work in gold mines, ranches, or
households. Most were assigned to individual
Spaniards in a system of forced labor called
encomienda in which they remained under the
leadership of their village chiefs and were supposed to be allowed to return to their homes
periodically for rest and relaxation. In practice,
however, they were often overworked and
poorly fed, and many died from exhaustion and
malnutrition or committed suicide by hanging
themselves or drinking cassava juice. They also
suffered severely from European diseases, to
which they lacked immunity. In 1518 an epi-

demic of smallpox killed almost half the remaining population.22

Assimilation also played an important role in
the Tamos' disappearance. There was such a
shortage of European women in the colony that
its men married Tamo women, often in the
church and with the approval of the authorities.
These women were absorbed into the dominant
Spanish society; their children were neither
Indians or Spaniards but forerunners of a new
mestizo population.23
Some Tamos escaped into the thickest woods,
where they were able to survive for a time, but
eventually became absorbed into the Spanish
population. The escapees were called indios
alzados and later cimarrones, a term which was
shortened to maroon in English. Others fled to
neighboring islands not yet controlled by the
Spaniards, where they, too, were eventually
engulfed by the wave of conquest. A few took
refuge among the Island-Caribs, who were able
to maintain their independence until the British, Dutch, and French subdued them during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
With the conquest of the Aztec empire in
the 15205 and the Inka empire in the 15305, the
Spanish crown lost interest in the West Indies.
By that time, however, a viable colony had been
established in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and
Cuba. From this base the colonists depopulated
the other Tamo islands, seeking workers to
replace the dwindling number of encomiendas
in their midst, and they further broadened their
pool of labor by importing slaves from all parts
of the Caribbean mainland and from Africa.
By 1550 the remaining encomiendas had been
absorbed into the new mestizo society, and the
Tainos had ceased to exist as a separate people.

NOTES
1. Columbus and his companions did not record
enough information for scholars to be able to identify his landfall precisely. The possibilities are summarized in Donald T. Gerace, Proceedings, First San
Salvador Conference, Columbus and His World,
Held October jo-November 3,1986 (Fort Lauderdale, 1987). We have used the version of Columbus'
routes presented by Samuel Eliot Morison in
Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher
Columbus (2 vols., Boston, 1942).
2. Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr., The Diario of
Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America,
Abstracted by fray Bartolome de Las Casas
(Norman, 1989), 65.
3. The term Arawak is often inaccurately used in place
of Taino, especially in the British West Indies. The
people who called themselves Arawaks were limited
to the area around the mouth of the Orinoco River.
See Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise and Fall of the
People Who Greeted Columbus (New Haven, forthcoming).
4. Dunn and Kelley 1989, 65-67.
5. Dunn and Kelley 1989, 67-69.
6. Dunn and Kelley 1989, 75.
7. Dunn and Kelley 1989, 71-73.
8. Marco Polo, The Travels, trans. Ronald Lathem (Harmondsworth, 1958), 248.
9. Dunn and Kelley 1989, 217.
10. Journals and Documents on the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus, trans, and ed. Samuel Eliot
Morison (New York, 1963), 21-23.
11. Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World: From
Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernandez de
Oviedo, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh, 1986),
53-5412. The Tamos employed the term Carib generically to
refer to the inhabitants of all the small islands to the
east and south of Puerto Rico, regardless of their
cultural affiliation, and the Spaniards followed suit.
Archaeological research has shown that the protohistoric people of the Virgin Islands and most of the
Leeward group had the Tamos' culture, if not also
their language. See Louis Allaire, "The Archaeology
of the Caribbean/' in The World Atlas of Archaeology (Boston, 1985), 370-371, and Rouse, forthcoming.

13. The Guanahatabeys are often called Ciboneys, but

ethnohistorical research has shown that the latter
term actually applies to a group of Tamos in central
Cuba. See Ricardo E. Alegria, El uso de la terminologia etno-historica para designar las cultures
aborigenes de las Antillas (Cuadernos Prehispanicos,
Valladolid, 1981).
14. Jose Juan Arrom, Fray Ramon Pane, Relacion acerca
de las antigiiedades de los indios: El primer tratado
escrito en America, 8th edition (Mexico City, 1988).
15. For summaries of the archaeological and linguistic
research see Rouse, Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movement from Archeological
Remains (New Haven, 1986), 126-151 and Rouse,
forthcoming.
16. Linguists have been able to identify the language
spoken at the time and in the places occupied by the
Saladoid peoples and to assign it to the Arawakan
family. They have concluded that it diverged into
Igneri in the southern part of the Lesser Antilles
and into Tamo in the rest of the islands (Rouse,
forthcoming, fig. 9).
17. Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), 37-79; Alfred W.
Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological
and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport,
Conn., 1972), 165-207.
18. Rouse 1986, 116; Rouse, forthcoming.
19. For more information about the zemis and their
worship, consult Jose Juan Arrom, Mitologia y artes
prehispdnicas de las Antillas, segunda edicion,
corregida y ampliada (Mexico City, 1989).
20. The practice of inhaling cohoba powder goes back to
Saladoid time (Rouse, forthcoming). The Tainos produced it from the seeds of a tree endemic to their
heartland (Arrom 1988,19-20).
21. Our knowledge of the Tamos' courts and their uses
is summarized by Ricardo E. Alegria in Ball Courts
and Ceremonial Plazas in the West Indies, Yale University Publications in Anthropology 79 (1983).
22. Sauer 1966, 203-204; Rouse, forthcoming.
23. Arrom makes these points in more detail and with
ample documentation in Las dos caras de la conquista: De las opuestas imdgenes del otro al debate
sobre la dignidad del indio (Madrid, forthcoming).

THE A M E R I C A S

513

fig. i. Albrecht Durer, Psalm 24, Book of Hours of Maximilian. Fol. 4. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich

514

CIRCA

1492

EARLY EUROPEAN IMAGES OF AMERICA:

THE ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH
Jean Michel Massing

I.n the royal palace in Brussels Diirer saw the

"jewels, shields and clothing" that had been
sent, together with six Aztecs, by Hernan
Cortes to Charles v in 1519. Diirer's reaction to
the Aztec antiquities, which he saw between 27
August and 2 September 1520, is well known, as
he recorded it at length in the diary of his journey to the Netherlands: "I saw the things
which have been brought to the King from the
new land of gold, a sun all of gold a whole
fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the
same size, also two rooms full of the armour of
the people there, and all manner of wondrous
weapons of theirs, harnesses and darts, very
strange clothing, beds and all kinds of wonderful objects of human use, much better worth
seeing than prodigies. These things are all so
precious that they are valued at a hundred thousand florins. All the days of my life I have seen
nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these
things, for I saw amongst them wonderful
works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle Ingenia of people in foreign lands. Indeed I cannot
express all that I thought there/'1 Diirerrs tone
and the astonishment he found so difficult to
express probably reflect a genuine admiration,
not only for the exotic character and the monetary value of the objects, but also for their
craftsmanship and their sheer beauty. After
having been exhibited in the Casa de la Contratacion in Seville and later in Valladolid, the
Aztec artifacts had been brought to Brussels and
displayed there at the time of Charles v's
coronation in Aachen.
There can be no doubt that the gifts that
Motecuhzoma had sent to Cortes had already
aroused great attention among Europeans in
both Mexico and Spain. A list of them was
made before they were dispatched to Spain, and
they are mentioned and described by Bernal
Diaz del Castillo, Andres de Tapia, Francisco de
Aquilar, and various anonymous Spaniards who
saw them before they left Mexico.2 In Spain too
they were widely praised. Like virtually everyone who saw them, Bartolome de Las Casas,
who was to become the great defender of the
native Americans, was impressed by the golden
and silver discs some two yards wide. Peter
Martyr dAnghiera, who viewed them in Seville,
provided an interesting description as did Fran-

cisco Lopez de Gomara in 1553, the latter writing of "two thin wheels, one of silver... with
the figure of the moon [on it], and the other of
gold... made like the sun, with many decorations and animals in relief, a very beautiful
work. They hold these two objects in that land
as gods, and make them of the colour of metal
they resemble/'3
The identification of the two discs as sun and
moon seems to stem from the traditional relation between planets and metals found in Western astrological and alchemical writings: the
Aztec objects, in short, were interpreted in
European terms.4 Similarly, Bartolome de Las
Casas identified Aztec textiles as "cloth of Aras
or Verdure of marvelous workmanship/'5 And
yet to Francisco Javier de Clavijero, writing
some two centuries later, the two discs were
unquestionably Aztec calendars,6 the wheel in
gold representing the image of their century,
that of silver the figure of their year.7 Diirer and
his European contemporaries, without insight
into Aztec culture, could not grasp the symbolic
meaning of the objects presented to Cortes.
Such knowledge was to come from Fray Bernardino de Sahagun that the various costumes
handed over to Cortes were those of the god
Quetzalcoatl in two aspects, Tezcatlipoca and
Tlaloc.8 For Diirer the "sun" and "moon" discs
may even have appeared to be hieroglyphics,
similar to those he had sketched with pen and
ink in 1513 for Willibald Pirckheimer's translation of the Hieroglyphica, the original although
spurious Greek treatise purporting to be a key
to the Egyptian language written by an anonymous author, Horapollo, in late antiquity.9
Diirer's drawing representing the sun, the
moon, and a basilisk10 illustrates the chapter
Quomodo aeuum designetur (how time is
shown); there Horapollo stated that when the
Egyptians intended to symbolize eternity, they
drew the sun and the moon because they are
eternal elements.11 The European reaction to the
Aztec treasures is a typical response to objects
outside their original context. Even the most
sympathetic viewers and Diirer was one of
them could only try to accommodate them to
their own system of values. This same misunderstanding characterizes the first images of
native Americans that appear in European art.

That Diirer was deeply interested in the

exploration of America cannot be doubted.
When he added marginal illustrations to
Emperor Maximilian's Book of Hours,12 he drew
a native Brazilian on folio 41 to illustrate Psalm
24.1: "Domini est terra et plenitude eius orbis
terrarum et universi qui habitant in eo" (The
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the
world, and they that dwell therein).13 The text
of the prayer book, which was arranged according to Maximilian's specifications, was printed
by Johannes Schonsperger in Augsburg, with
colophon dated 13 December 1513. Of the six
copies still extant, one, now divided between
Munich and Besangon, has marginal drawings
by various German artists, including Diirer,
who set the pattern for the decoration and completed the first ten consecutive quires except
the very first, which was left without decoration. These drawings were probably intended
as a model for a prayer book with printed margins which, like many of Maximilian's ambitious artistic projects, was never completed. On
folio 41 the border decoration in violet ink is
signed with Diirer's monogram and dated 1515.
The Brazilian Indian and the accompanying
birds and snail symbolize the fullness of the
earth, while the imperial coat of arms signifies
the emperor's temporal power over it. The fish
seem, like the American native, to have a special
relevance, as the text of Psalm 24 continues on
the next page: "quia ipse super maria fundavit
eum: et super flumina praeparavit eum" (for he
hath founded it upon the seas, and established it
upon the floods).14
Brazil was discovered on 22 April 1500 by a
Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Alvares
Cabral. Already on this first visit the sailors
collected natural artifacts and curios. Pero Vaz
de Caminha, in a letter to King Manuel i,
reported how "The Indians traded bows for
sheets of paper They brought back many
bows and headdresses of birds' feathers, some
green and some yellow."15 At the time of the
Portuguese landing, the Tupi-speaking tribes,
which had moved from the Paraguay Basin, had
progressively driven the Tapuya from the
coastal areas inland. The Tupinikin and Tupinamba were bellicose peoples involved in constant vendettas, taking captives and killing
THE A M E R I C A S

515

prisoners.16 Tupinamba hunters fought with

long bows and arrows. Diirer represented his
Indian with another characteristic weapon, a
ceremonial war club of hardwood with a long
rounded handle decorated with feathers fastened in the knots of a cotton net and with a
flattened, round or slightly oval blade with
sharp edges. It is not known where or when
Diirer may have seen Tupinamba artifacts, but
we can establish that his rendition of the club is
accurate on the basis of a surviving example that
reached Europe later, though perhaps still in the
sixteenth century. The club he drew is quite
similar to a specimen now in the Musee de
l'Homme in Paris, which is perhaps the club of
the Tupinamba chief Quoniambec, a weapon
brought back from Brazil by Andre Thevet in
1555 or 1556.17 Diirer evidently had no idea of
the function of this kind of club and lengthened
it into a lance. This proves that he certainly
never saw a Tupinamba warrior but that he was
acquainted with the weapon only. His human
model, in any case, has no native American features and poses in contrapposto, like a classical
figure. He also wears a feather cloak as though
it were a skirt (the Tupinamba, in fact, went
practically naked).18 Diirer derived his short
feather skirts from German broadsheets.19
Diirer also gave his figure necklaces and bracelets of feathers, with beads perhaps of wood,
shell, or bone typical of Brazilian natives, as
well as a round leather shield of non-European
origin.20 The cap, too, seems to be a real Tupinamba bonnet of small feathers fastened in the
knots of a cotton net. Brazilian natives,
however, wore no shoes nor did they have ladles
carved of horn, the strange object on which
Diirer's figure stands.21
Diirer's concern about people of foreign lands

fig. 2. Tupinamba War Club. Musee de I'Momme,

Paris
516

CIRCA 1492

extended to the state of their souls. False

rumors about Martin Luther's abduction and
possible death prompted Diirer to comment in
his diary that he hoped that Luther's example
would be followed and "that we may again live
free and in the Christian manner, and so, by our
good works, all unbelievers, such as Turks, Heathen, and Calicuts, may of themselves turn to
us and embrace the Christian Faith/'22
Diirer's meticulous but not always accurate
illustration in the emperor's prayer book can be
compared to the Indians that Hans Burgkmair
introduced into the Triumph of Maximilian, the
woodcut pageant conceived by the emperor
himself in 1512 and devised in detail by Marx
Treitz-Saurwein, his secretary. Half the woodcuts were designed by Burgkmair, the others by
Albrecht Altdorfer, Leonard Beck, Wolf Huber,
Hans Schauffelein, Hans Springinklee, and, of
course, Diirer.23 In this gigantic triumphal procession, which was never completed, the people
of Calicut appear just before the baggage train:
'After [the knights] shall come a man of Calicut
(naked, with a loin cloth), mounted and carrying a verse inscription, wearing a laurel wreath;
on the plaque shall be written these words:
'These people are subject to the previously
shown praiseworthy crowns and houses.'"
Verses were also planned:
The Emperor in his warlike pride,
Conquering nations far and wide,
Has brought beneath our Empire's yoke
The far-off Calicuttish folk.
Therefore we pledge him with our oath
Lasting obedience and troth.
The scheme continues: "Then shall come on
foot the people of Calicut. (One rank with
shields and swords. One rank with spears. Two

ranks with English bows and arrows. All are

naked like Indians or dressed in Moorish fashion). They shall all be wearing laurel
wreaths. "24 In Maximilian's time the generic
term Calicut was not restricted to India, but
referred to the inhabitants of all the newly discovered lands, including native Americans.
Until Magellan's trip around the world and even
later, America was considered part of the Asian
continent.25
The two woodcuts signed by Burgkmair show
an oriental on his elephant followed by more or
less exotic natives. No detail in the first print
alludes to America. In the second, some of the
men wear feather headdresses and one of them
probably sports a feather bonnet as in Diirer's
drawing.26 The "skirts" in feather, too, are
Indian, but are a misinterpretation of cloaks.
Although American Indians sometimes did
wear cotton garters trimmed with feathers
under their knees, Burgkmair's version of them
has a decidedly European appearance.27 Such
details of Burgkmair's woodcut as the knots of
the bowstrings would suggest that he based his
observations on European arms rather than
upon the bows and arrows that were widely
used by Brazilian natives, including the Tupinamba.28 The steel ax is also European, as preconquest Indians only had axes of stone.29
Typically Indian however are the Tupinamba
war clubs (tacape), with a round or oval flat
head at the end of a long shaft and handle decorated with feathers and tassels.30 More people
from the newly discovered countries are found
in a woodcut from the baggage train of the
Triumph, also by Burgkmair. Two of them, one
with a small ape and the other with a macaw,
have feather skirts and headdresses. Undeniably
American are the corn shafts.31

fig. 3. German artist, New World Scene, c. 1505, colored woodcut. The New York
Public Library, Spencer Collection, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

detail

fig. 4. Hans Burgkmair, The Triumph of Maximilian, c. 1517-1518, woodcut. Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgar

Diirer's and Burgkmair's approach reflects a

transitional stage in the depiction of American
natives in which artifacts are rendered more or
less exactly but often without a proper awareness of their function. The effect is often composite, a mixture of elements from different
cultural contexts. This is especially true for two
drawings made by Burgkmair after 1519 that
integrate Brazilian and Aztec elements (cat.

405)-32

It is a pity that Dtirer's and Burgkmair's

drawings were done in monochrome,33 as color
would have helped us to identify more precisely
the artifacts they sketched, especially the
feather work. The earliest case we have of carefully recorded Indian objects in European art is
found in a Portuguese Adoration of the Magi
(cat. 32) probably made between 1501 and 1506
for the Capela-Mor da Se in Viseu.34 Instead of
painting a traditional black magus, the anonymous artist showed a Brazilian native with a
feather headdress. His nakedness is covered by a
richly patterned shirt and breeches, presumably
to make him presentable to the Holy Family.35
Even this fanciful European costume is fringed
with feathers. The shoes are clearly of European
origin, but the earrings in white coral and the
various necklaces, the golden anklets and armlets, and the coconut cup all have exotic overtones.36 Most interesting is his arrow, typically
Brazilian with its long shaft and, as here, black
foreshaft. Even the red fore-end is clearly visible, as is the radial fletching bound at the end
and in the middle of the feathering.37
Such careful but composite renderings contrast with most early European images of
Indians, which are based merely on written
descriptions, especially the more sensational
passages. Most book illustrations and broad-

sheets, in fact, caricatured the natives of

America, stressing nudity and cannibalism.38
The first European sketches of real Aztecs
were by Christoph Weiditz, a medal maker born
in Strasbourg who worked in Augsburg from
1526 to 1528.39 Perhaps because of the rivalry of
local goldsmiths, he accepted an invitation from
Johannes Dantiscus to come to Spain to secure
an imperial decree protecting him from his
opponents. He went to Spain in 1529 and after
that to the Netherlands in 1531-1532. Weiditz
seems to have followed the imperial court
through Castile and Aragon to Barcelona in the
spring of 1529. It is probable that he struck his
medals of Charles v and Hernan Cortes at that
time.40 Most extraordinary is a manuscript he
produced, the Trachtenbuch, in which he
recorded Spanish society, from members of the
imperial court to African slaves.41 This volume
of drawings is one of the earliest attempts to
compile a costume book, a genre that flourished
in the second half of the century.42 The interest,
both historical and ethnographic, of Weiditz's
collection of drawings is enhanced by the presence of a portrait of Cortes43 and no fewer than
eleven drawings, two of them on double pages,
of Aztecs. In 1528, when Cortes made his first
return visit to Spain, he brought back with him
a group of Aztecs, including acrobats and
dwarfs. Weiditz's drawings must have been
completed before 22 March 1529, when the
Aztecs left Barcelona for Seville.44
In his album Weiditz drew three Aztec jugglers lying on their backs throwing and catching
a log with their feet. The artist caught the
kinetic progression of the action but in fact
sketched three different Indians; this is confirmed by the variations in their dress and facial
decorations.45 In his History of the Conquest of

Mexico Lopez de Gomara described the jugglers

who entertained Motecuhzoma, using "their
feet as ours do their hands" and holding "between their feet a log as big as a girder, round,
even, and smooth, which they toss into the air
and catch, spinning it a couple of thousand
times, so cleverly and quickly that the eye can
hardly follow it.//46 Lopez de Gomara also
described another game, tlachtli, which Motecuhzoma used to watch at the tlachco (ball
court): "The ball itself is called ullamalixtli,
which is made of the gum of the ulli, a tree of

fig. 5. Christoph Weiditz, "Mexican Juggler/' Trachtenbuch, 1529, pi. 9: "This is an Indian; he lies on his
back and twirls a log-bole on his heels; it is as long as
a man and as heavy; on the ground under him he has
a leather [mat]; it is as large as a calfskin/' Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
THE A M E R I C A S

517

every European who discussed it.53 Another

more puzzling drawing shows an Indian holding
a shield with a grayish-blue cross bordered with
gray feathers who is armed with a tooth-edged
steel-colored lance decorated with white and red
tassels, clearly of European origin. He may be
one of the Indian allies who helped Cortes in his
fight against the Aztecs or may simply have
been intended to illustrate how Indians were
then subjected to the emperor's will.54
Weiditz drew the Aztecs with great care,
recording their features and attending to their
individual characteristics. His approach marks a
new development in the European image of
native Americans. This attempt to depict as
carefully as possible the inhabitants of the
newly discovered countries parallels the attempt
of a few sympathetic scholars, such as Peter
Martyr d'Anghiera, to collect historical and ethnographic information. It also looks forward to
the much more ambitious efforts of several of
the early friars in Mexico, such as Toribio de
Motolinia, Bernardino de Sahagun, and Diego
Duran, who actually learned the native languages and studied the indigenous cultures in
detail.55 Unfortunately other Europeans were
more preoccupied with the plunder and enslavement of the American natives.

fig. 6. Christoph Weiditz, "Mexican Indian." Track tenbuch, 1529, pi. 2:

"Thus the Indians go, they have precious jewels inset in their faces; they can
take them out and put them in again when they wish."
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

the hot country

It is rolled into balls which,
although heavy and hard to the hand, bounce
and jump very well, better than our inflated
ones
The players may hit the ball with any
part of the body they please, although certain
strokes are penalized by loss of the ball. Hitting
it with the hips or thighs is the most approved
play, for which reason they protect those parts
with leather shields. The game lasts as long as
the ball is kept bouncing, and it bounces for a
long time." The aim of this ritual game seems to
have been, according to Juan de Torquemada, to
shoot the ball through stone rings set into the
side walls.47 In Weiditz's drawing (cat 406) the
players knock the rubber ball with their buttocks; they are nude but for the protective
leather garment around their hips and leather
gloves covering their hands.48 Another double
page shows the Aztecs at the game of patolli:
"It is played," said Lopez de Gomara, "with
broad or split beans, used like dice, which they
shake between their hands and cast upon a mat,
or upon the ground, where a grid has been
traced. They put pebbles down to mark the
518

CIRCA 1492

place where the dice come to rest, removing and

adding them [according to the cast]/'49 The
Aztecs played for stakes, wagering according to
their means. At times they would wager "all
their goods in this game, and at times... even
put their bodies to be sold into slavery/'50
The costumes of the Aztecs in the Trachtenbuch match Lopez de Gomara's description of
the dancers of Motecuhzoma's court who performed "dressed in rich mantles woven of many
colours, white, red, green, and yellow..., some
of them carrying fans of feathers and gold."51
Weiditz rendered with great care the idiosyncrasies of Aztec costume, drawing garments
such as the tilmatli, a square cloak worn on one
shoulder. One of the natives, identified as a
nobleman, wears a breechcloth (the skirtlike
row of feathers around his hips seems to be a
later addition) and holds a fan of multicolored
feathers, and on his right fist carries a large
green parrot.52 He also wears a necklace of red
beads and, like most of the Indians sketched by
Weiditz, has stones set into his nose, cheeks,
and chin, a mutilation that shocked almost

NOTES
1. Hans Rupprich, Durer, Schrifdicker Nachlass, 3
vols. (Berlin, 1956-1969), 1:155; see Jan Albert
Goris and Georges Marlier, Albrecht Durer: Diary
of His Journey to the Netherlands, 1520-1521
(London, 1971), 64.
2. The best account and the various early descriptions
can be found in Marshall H. Saville, The Goldsmith's
Art in Ancient Mexico (Indian Notes and Monographs) (New York, 1920), 20-39 an<^ 191-206, n.
13; also Marshall H. Saville, 'The Earliest Notices
Concerning the Conquest of Mexico by Cortes in
1519," Indian Notes and Monographs 9, i (1920),
1-54. Interesting is also Jan Veth and Samuel
Muller, Albrecht Durers Niederlandische Reise, 2
vols. (Berlin and Utrecht 1918), 2:100-108.
3. Francisco Lopez de Gomara, La istoria de las Indias
y conquista de Mexico, 2 vols. (Saragoza, 1552), fol.
xxiv; see Saville Art 1920, 202-203.
4. For example Auguste Bouche-Leclercq, L'astrologie
grecque (Paris, 1899), 315-316.
5. Saville Art 1920,199.
6. Francisco Javier Clavijero, The History of Mexico,
Collected from Spanish and Mexican Historians...,
2 vols. (London, 1787), 424, n.a.; also Diego Duran,
Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, translated and edited by Fernando Horcasitas
and Doris Heyden (Norman, Oklahoma, 1971), esp.
383-411. See Alfonso Caso, "Calendrical Systems of
Central Mexico/7 Handbook of Middle American
Indians 11,1 (1921), 333-348.

7. For a different hypothesis, see Karl A. Nowotny,

Mexikanische Kostbarkeiten aus Kunstkammern der
Renaissance im Museum fur Volkerkunde Wien und
in der Nationalbibliothek Wien (Vienna, 1960), 1012, who proposed that the discs represent the sun
and moon, and that another in feather work also
described by Cortes stands for Venus. For the
Aztecs, the word for gold was teocuitlatl (excrement
of the gods). The association with the sun, it seems,
was made only by the Inkas: for them gold and
silver were respectively the sweat of the sun and the
tears of the moon. See Andre Emmerich, Sweat of
the Sun and Tears of the Moon. Gold and Silver in
Pre-Columbian Art (Seattle, 1965), xix.
8. Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex. General
History of the Things of New Spain, translated by
Arthur J. O. Anderson, 13 vols. (Santa Fe, 19531982), 13:11-13 and 15.
9. For Pirckheimer's and Diirer's interest in hieroglyphics, see Karl Giehlow, "Die Hieroglyphenkunde
des Humanismus in der Allegoric der Renaissance/'
Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des
allerhochsten Kaiserhauses 32 (1915), 1-232, and
Erwin Panofsky, Albrecht Dtirer, 2 vols. (Princeton,
1
943)/177~17910. Campbell Dodgson, "Albrecht Durer (1471-1528):
Sun and Moon, with a Basilisk...," Old Master
Drawings 7 (1933), 1415, pi. 19; and Walter L.
Strauss, The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Durer,
6 vols. (New York, 1974), 3:1354-1355, no. 1513/9.
11. Horapollo, Hieroglyphica, 1.1; for a translation,
George Boas, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo (New
York, 1950), 57.
12. Walter L. Strauss, The Book of Hours of the
Emperor Maximilian the first); (New York, 1974);
for the most important studies, Karl Giehlow, Kaiser
Maximilians i. Gebetbuch mit Zeichnungen von
Albrecht Diirer und anderen Kunstlern (Munich,
1907); and Panofsky 1943, 182-190.
13. For folio 4ir, Strauss Diirer 1974, 3:1536, no. 151531; Strauss Maximilian 11974, 81. See also Hugh
Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of
America from the Discoveries to the Present Time
(New York, 1975), 13, ill.; William C. Sturtevant,
"First Visual Images of Native America/7 first
Images of America, edited by Fredi Chiappelli
(Berkeley-Los Angeles-London, 1976), 423, ill.,
and Susi Colin, Das Bild des Indianers im 16. Jahrhundert (Idstein, 1988), 333-335, no. M.4.
14. The Vulgate has "Domini est terra et plenitude eius
orbis et habitatores eius quia ipse fundavit eum et
super flumina stabilivit ilium."
15. See for example John Hemming, Red Gold: The
Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (London, 1978), 5.
16. For the fundamental studies of the material culture
of Tupinamba Indians, see Alfred Metraux, La civilisation materielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani (Paris,
1928); and Alfred Metraux, "The Tupinamba," in
Julian H. Steward, ed., Handbook of South American Indians 3, Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of
American Ethnology. Bulletin 143 (Washington,
1948), 95-13317. For this war club, La Renaissance et le Nouveau
Monde [exh. cat. Musee du Quebec] (Quebec, 1984),
102 no. 35, ill. For such weapons, see A. B. Meyer
and M. Uhle, Seltene Waff en aus Afrika, Asien und
Amerika, Konigliches Ethnographisches Museum zu
Dresden 5 (Leipzig, 1885), 5, pi. 9,4; Metraux 1928,
80-83, ^8S- 5~6, and Metraux 1948,122, figs. 7b, 8,
9, and 13. For Tupinamba war clubs in European collections, Christian F. Feest, "Mexiko and South
America in the European Wunderkammer," in The

Origin of Museums, edited by Oliver Impey and

Arthur Macgregor (Oxford, 1985), 241.
18. Metraux 1928,140-148. For Tupinamba feather
cloaks in various European museums, Feest 1985,
242-243. For specific studies, Alfred Metraux, "Une
rarete ethnographique du Musee de Bale. Le manteau Tupinamba," in Actes de la Societe helvetique
des sciences naturelles, io8e session annuelle 2
(1927), 227-228; J.-S. Harry Hirtzel, "Le manteau
de plumes dit de 'Montezuma' des Musees Royaux
du Cinquantenaire de Bruxelles," in Proceedings of
the Twenty-third International Congress of
Americanists (New York, 1930), 649-651; Alfred
Metraux, "A propos de deux objets Tupinamba du
Musee d'ethnographic du Trocadero," Bulletin du
Musee d'ethnographie du Trocadero 3 (1932), 3-11;
M. Calberg, "Le manteau de plumes dit 'de Montezuma,'" Bulletin de la Societe des americanistes de
Belgique 30 (1939), 103-133; Annemarie Seiler Baldinger, "Der Federmantel der Tupinamba im
Museum fur Volkerkunde Basel," Atti del ...Congresso Internazionale degli Americanisti 2 (1974),
433-438; Berete Due, "A Shaman's Cloak," folk,
Dansk etnografisk tidsskrift 2122 (19791980),
257-261; Karen Stemann Petersen and Anne
Sommer-Larsen, "Techniques Applied to Some
Feather Garments from the Tupinamba Indians,
Brazil," Folk, Dansk etnografisk tidsskrift 21-22
(1980), 263-270; Laura Laurencich-Minelli and Sara
Ciruzzi, "Antichi oggetti americani nelle collezioni
del Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia di
Firenze: due mantelli di penne dei Tupinamba,"
Archivio per I'antropologia e la etnologia 111 (1981),
121-142.
19. Wilberforce Eames, "Description of a Wood Engraving Illustrating the South American Indians (1505),"
Bulletin of the New York Public Library 26 (1922),
755-761, pi.; Georg Leidinger, "Die alteste bekannte
Abbildung sudamerikanischer Indianer," Gutenberg
festschrift. Zur feier des 25 jdhrigen Bestehens des
Gutenbergmuseums in Mainz (Mainz, 1925), 179181, pi.; Rudolf Schuller, "Die alteste bekannte
Abbildung sudamerikanischer Indianer," in A. Petermanns Mitteilungen 71 (1925), 2124, ill.; Rudolf
Schuller, "The Oldest Known Illustration of South
American Indians," Indian Notes 7 (1930), 484-497,
ills.; F. W. Sixel, "Die deutsche Vorstellung vom
Indianer in der ersten Halfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,"
Annali lateranensi. Annali del Pontificio museo
missionario etnologico 30 (1966), 89, fig. 2; Colin
1988,186-187 no- Bio, fig. 5. Native Americans did
not have feather skirts: see Hugh Honour, "Science
and Exotism: The European Artist and the NonEuropean World before Johan Maurits," in A
Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil: Johan
Maurits von Nassau (16041679] (The Hague, 1979),
27720. For Tupinamba leather shields (tapiroussou), see
Metraux 1928, 84; they were often painted or decorated with feathers. None seem to have survived.
21. Metraux 1928,130-136; Metraux 1948,105; for
such a bonnet, see Bente Dam-Mikkelsen and
Torben Lundbaek, Ethnographic Objects in the Royal
Danish Kunstkammer, 1650-1800 (Copenhagen,
1980), 28, no. and fig. 115932.The sandals in
Diirer's drawing are probably African as are those
found in a woodcut by Hans Burgkmair (in Allago)
based on Balthasar Springer's travel account first
published in 1508. For this woodcut and early depictions of African sandals see Ezio Bassani and Letizia
Tedeschi, "The Image of the Hottentot in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of the

22.
23.

24.
25.

26.

27.
28.

29.

30.
31.
32.

33.
34.
35.
36.

37.
38.

History of Collections 2 (1990), engr. 173, and 185

n. 21, figs. 8 and 13. See also the African in Burgkmair's woodcuts (fig. 4 in this essay).
Rupprich 1956,1:171; Goris and Marlier 1971, 91.
For a good account, Panofsky 1943,179-181. For the
manuscript version, Franz Winzinger, Die Miniaturen zum Triumphzug Kaiser Maximilian i.
Faksimileband und Kommentarband (Graz, 1973);
for the printed work, Stanley Appelbaum, The
Triumph of Maximilian i (New York, 1964).
Appelbaum 1964,18-19, for the translation.
The German words meaning Indian (indisch and
indianisch) were also ambivalent in the early sixteenth century: see Georg Friederici, Amerikanistisches Worterbuch (Universitat Hamburg.
Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslandskunde
53, Reihe B. Volkerkunde, Kulturgeschichte und
Sprachen, 29) (Hamburg, 1947), 313-315.
For these woodcuts, see Appelbaum 1964, pis. 129130. For a study of these works, Honour 1975,14;
Hugh Honour, The European Vision of America
[exh. cat. Cleveland Museum of Art] (Cleveland,
1975), no. 5; Sturtevant 1976, 420-421; Colin 1988,
335-336 no. M.5.
For such garters see Metraux 1928,178-179.
For Tupinamba bows see Metraux 1928, 71-73; E.
G. Heath and Vilma Chiara, Brazilian Indian Archery (Manchester, 1977), 29-45; J- Peter Whitehead,
"Pictorial Record of a 17th. Century Tupinamba Bow
and Arrows," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie no (1984),
111-125.
For the rapid introduction of steel axes, Hemming
1978, 9. Indians are represented working with steel
axes in various early maps of South America; see for
example Honour in Cleveland 1975, no. 17 and Hugh
Honour, L'Amerique vue par I'Europe [exh. cat.
Grand Palais] (Paris, 1976-1977), 26-28, nos. 17 and
i7a.
See note 17.
Honour in Cleveland 1975,14, rightly observed that
it is the first representation of corn in European art.
For these drawings, Colin 1988, 336-337, nos. M.6
and M.7; John Rowlands, The Age of Diirer and Holbein. German Drawings, 1400-1500 [exh. cat. British Museum] (London, 1988), 187-188, nos. i58a
and b, pi. xxm.
These may have been preparatory drawings for
prints that were never executed.
For this work, see Cleveland 1975, no. 4, ill.; Colin
1988, 331-332, no. M.i, with further references.
This sentence is borrowed from Honour 1975, 53.
See Paul H. D. Kaplan, The Rise of the Black Magus
in Western Art (Ann Arbor, 1985).
Coral in the early sixteenth century came mainly
from the Mediterranean; see Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce au Moyen-Age (Leipzig, 1887),
609610. The mounting of the earring is clearly
European. For native American earplugs see
Metraux 1928,170171. For coconuts and mounted
coconuts, Rolf Fritz, Die Gefdsse aus Kokosnuss in
Mitteleuropa, 1250-1800 (Mainz am Rhein, 1983).
For Brazilian arrows, see Heath and Chiara 1977, 5966 and 142-164; also Whitehead 1984,111-124.
For studies of early European images of American
Indians see especially Honour 1975; Sturtevant
1976; Honour 1979 and more recently Colin 1988.
Interesting material is also found in the following
catalogues: Cleveland 1975; Paris 1976; and KarlHeinz Kohl, ed., My then der Neuen Welt. Zur
Entdeckungsgeschichte Lateinamerikas [exh. cat.
Martin-Gropius-Bau] (Berlin, 1982). For American
artifacts collected in Europe in the sixteenth century,
THE AMERICAS

5*9

39.

40.

41.

42.

Feest 1985, 237-244; and Christian F. Feest, "Spanish-Amerika in Kunstkammern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts," in Gold und Macht. Spanien in der
Neuen Welt (Rosenheim, 1987), 43-44, with further
references.
Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart, 37 vols. (1907-1950), 35:267-268; also
Georg Habich, "Studien zur deutschen Renaissancemedaille, iv: Christoph Weiditz," Jahrbuch der
koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 34 (1913),
1-35; and Theodor Hampe, Das Trachtenbuch des
Christoph Weiditz von seinen Reisen nach Spanien
(1529) und den Niederlanden (1531/32) (Berlin and
Leipzig, 1927), 64-75.
For the medal of Cortes, Habich 1913,11-13, P^ IV'
no. 7; Paul Grotemeyer, "Da ich het die gestalt,"
Deutsche Bildnismedaillen des 16. Jahrhunderts
(Munich, 1957), 50, figs. 29-30.
Hampe 1927; for a later copy, Katalog der Freiherrlich von Lipperheide'schen Kostumbibliothek, 2
vols. (Berlin, 1896-1901), 1:5-8; also Eva Nienholdt
and Gretel Wagner-Neumann, Katalog der Lipperheideschen Kostumbibliothek, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1965),
1:1. For a group of drawings of American Indians
done in the early 15505 see Jose Tudela de la Orden,
"Las primeras figuras de Indios pintadas por Espanoles," in Homenaje a Rafael Garcia Granados
(Mexico City, 1960), 319-329.
Heinrich Doege, "Die Trachtenbiicher des 16. Jahr-

520

CIRCA

1492

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

hunderts/' in Beitrage zur Biicherkunde und Philologie August Wilmanns zum 25. Marz 1903 gewidmet
(Leipzig, 1903), 429-444, for a survey of the field.
Hampe 1927, 70, 77, pi. iv; Howard F. Cline,
"Hernan Cortes and the Aztec Indians in Spain/'
The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 27
(1969), 78 and 80, ill.
Hampe 1927, 73, 78-81, pis. xi-xxin; for a fundamental study, Cline 1969 (for the captions of my
illustrations I have used his English translations).
More recently Colin 1988, 340-344, described every
scene. See also Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in
Western Thought (New Brunswick, 1971).
Hampe 1927, 79, pis. xv-xvn; Cline 1969, 70-71, 75
and 72-73, ills.; Colin 1988, 342-343. Similar jugglers (but standing on their heads) are found in the
view of Cuzco in Theodor de Bry, Americae pars
sexta (Frankfurt, 1596); see Sturtevant 1976, 449.
Lopez de Gomara 1552, 2: fol. 42; Francisco Cortes
Lopez de Gomara, The Life of the Conquerer by His
Secretary, translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), 145. See also
Cline 1969, 70-71, for further references.
Lopez de Gomara 1552, 2: fols. 42r-42v; Lopez de
Gomara 1964, 145-146; see also Juan de Torquemada, Los veynte y un libros rituales y monarchia
yndiana, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1615), 2:295. For this
game, see also Cline 1969, 75.
Hampe 1927, 79, pis. xin-xiv; Colin 1988, 343-344.
The players were copied in reverse in the view of

Cuzco in de Bry 1596; see above, note 45.

4.9. Lopez de Gomara 1552, 2: fol. 42; Lopez de Gomara
1964,145. For further references see Cline 1969,
76-7750. Lopez de Gomara 1552, 2: fol. 42; Lopez de Gomara
1964,145.
51. Lopez de Gomara 1552, 2: fol. 43; Lopez de Gomara
1964,147.
52. Hampe 1927, 81, pi. xxn; Colin 1988, 342, pi. 59
[recte i]. See for example the Aztec fans in the various codices.
53. See for example Vespucci's account on the New
gefunden menschen broadsheet in Die neue Welt in
der Schatzen einer alien europaischen Bibliothek
[exh. cat. Herzog August Bibliothek] (Wolfenbiittel
1976), 44, cat. 3, ill. For early broadsheets, see note
19 above.
54. Hampe 1927, 81, pi. xxm; Colin 1988, 343.
55. John Howland Rowe, "The Renaissance Foundations
of Anthropology/' American Anthropologist 77
(1965), 12-14; Pietro Martire d'Anghiera (Secondo
Convegno internazionale degli studi americanisti.
Atti) (Genoa, 1980); Donald Robertson, "The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopedia of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun," Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 9
(1966), 617-627; Fray Toribio de Benavente o Motolinia, Memoriales o Libro de las cosas de la Nueva
Espana, edited by E. O'Gorman (Mexico City, 1971).

SIGNS OF DIVISION, SYMBOLS OF UNITY:

ART IN THE INKA EMPIRE
Craig Morris

Ibn 1492 the Inka ruled the largest empire in

the New World, rivaled only by the Chinese and
Ottoman empires in the Old World. From its
capital in Cuzco it ran southward to central
Chile and included the northwestern part of
Argentina as well as highland Peru and Bolivia.
The empire extended for 2,600 miles from
north to south. A recent and tentative estimate
suggests that the population might have
exceeded fourteen million.1 The Inka had conquered the rich desert kingdoms of coastal Peru,
such as Chimu and Chincha. They were still
expanding northward in Ecuador when
a small group of Spanish invaders under the
command of Francisco Pizarro took Atawalpa,
the Inka ruler, captive on 16 November 1532.
The genius of the Inka was the coordination
of diversity. The resources of drastically different environments, many of them considered
poor today, were put together to form such
wealth that even the looting and disorder following the invasion took decades to dissipate it.
Peoples of different customs and practices were
combined to form an enormous patchwork
polity in which human diversity matched the
spectacular contrasts in the environment and
the variety of the resources it provided.
The Inka called their empire Tawantinsuyu,
"land of the four parts/' The strategies they
used to govern it varied somewhat from region
to region, depending on the nature and organization of the incorporated peoples, on their
amenability or resistance to Inka aims and policies, and on the local resources the Inka sought
to exploit. Fundamental to understanding the
enormous scale of the empire is the Inka perception and organization of space and of the people,
settlements, and resources within it. While
some of these ideas can be seen in religion and
cosmology, it was their concrete realization
in the physical and social world that is most important in understanding the political accomplishments. The Inka certainly produced many
bold and beautiful objects. These notable artistic
achievements are related to the Inka transformation of the landscape and societyto the
ways they maintained diversity and at the same
time brought together the constituent parts.
Political life in Tawantinsuyu seems to have
involved an almost constant tension between
unity and diversity, collaboration and conflict.

Its elaborate political and religious ceremonies

encompassed rituals of peace and growth as well
as of war and destruction. From deep in the history of the Andes came a concept of colonization as a means of access to the goods of distant
and varied regions,2 one that appears to have
been very different from those the Europeans
were to evolve in the Americas. While the Inka
idea was certainly one of domination, it was
also one of economic independence of individual
groups and their responsibility for their own
well being. Different groups shared and collaborated in certain circumstances and acted
independently in others.
The empire was thus maintained through a
careful balance between hierarchically organized
groups. This balance required forces of division
as well as of unification. Inka political ideology
included a vision of space and planning on the
most grandiose scale. It also recognized the
inevitability of conflict and confrontation. The
state and its rulers attempted to control the
changing process by which this balance was
achieved and maintained.
A hallmark of Inka administration was a vast
road system connecting well-coordinated way
stations, warehouses, and centers of government
ceremonies. At the empire's height more than
twenty-five thousand kilometers of roads were
in use.3 Archaeology has revealed that the
towns, cities, and other installations built along
the imperial roads were different in architecture
and planning from the local settlements in the
regions that surround them. The differences
between state and local styles extended frequently, as in the Peruvian central highlands, to
the ceramics and other objects used in the state
installations.
These stylistic distinctions between objects
made by the Inka and by those whom they
ruled provide archaeological keys for the understanding of Inka society and art. Inka art has
sometimes been characterized as rigid and
standardized, uninspired and plain,4 often considered a classic case of political authority exerting strong sway over creative output. Many
objects made under state supervision for state
use were indeed standardized. Because the Inka
state did not extend its control to the lower,
local levels in most of the realm, much of life
and art continued under local traditions. And

some state-sponsored art escaped standardization. Thus the largest part of the archaeological
inventory from Tawantinsuyu reflects these
local traditions or an interplay between local
traditions and those of the rulers from Cuzco.
As in most nonwestern societies there is no
evidence that the Inka had a category of objects
thought of as art. Most of the things beautiful
to the modern eye had functions in Inka society.
Some were utilitarian objects: pottery or metal
vessels to hold food and drink or textiles for
clothing. Others functioned mainly in the symbolic realm, such as figurines used as offerings
or carved stones that related people and society
to the natural and supernatural worlds. The
aspects of these objects that we might call
design or decoration almost always were intimately involved with identity and the communication of identitypersonal, social, and
cultural.
A maker of objects might identify with
several different social and cultural strata. There
were at least two: the level of local or regional
society and that of the Inka state. In some cases
the levels were more complex. Large regional
societies might be divided into subgroups;
towns might have their own identities and
might be further divided into moieties. The
extent to which these separate identities are
reflected in ceramics, cloth, and metalwork
varies considerably from one region of
Tawantinsuyu to another.
The diversity in objects whose production
was not under imperial control is thus related to
the patchwork quality of the Inka empire.
Sometimes local artisans combined elements of
imperial style into local products, and in other
cases they ignored the Cuzco style almost
entirely. Some of these stylistic relationships,
not surprisingly, are related to the extent of
local resistance to Inka rule. Except for occasional imitations of an Inka form, Chimu ceramists continued with the basic black ware they
made before they were conquered by the Inka.
Subtle changes in shape denote the passage of
time and allow Inka-period pottery to be distinguished from older material, but there is no
clear rejection of earlier stylistic ideas.5 In textiles the emphasis is also on stylistic continuity.6
The Inka either did not or could not drastically
change the principal features of Chimu art.
THE A M E R I C A S

521

SOOmi

TRANSVERSE MERCATOR PROJECTION

Longitude West 80 of Greenwich

522

CIRCA 1492

The detectable changes are subtle, and the style

remained more Chimu than Inka. Some accomplished Chimu artisans were taken to Cuzco
where they probably made objects in the Inka
style,7 such objects apparently symbolizing the
Inka state. Yet most of those artisans who continued to work on the Peruvian north coast continued to reflect local traditions, preserving a
strong sense of the conquered Chimu state.
The situation of the south coast of Peru was
somewhat different. The large kingdom of
Chincha was eventually brought peacefully into
Tawantinsuyu, and the more extensive local
imitation of Cuzco elements in Chincha ceramics reflected the close and cooperative relationships between Cuzco and that region. Slightly
farther south, in the regions of lea and Nazca,
the peaceful Inka conquest was marked by the
appearance of innovative new styles that combined a strong degree of artistic independence
with a liberal borrowing of Cuzco Inka elements. These new eclectic styles were most
marked in ceramics and textiles. Among the
most spectacular Inka-period objects from this
area are ceremonial digging boards found in
tombs. These objects were often decorated with
red and yellow resin paint and sometimes
sheathed in gold and silver. Their shapes were
based on agricultural implements, and the iconography of their decoration featured sea birds
eating fish (the process that led to the formation of the guano fertilizer basic to Andean
agriculture).8
The influence of Cuzco and the Inka rulers on
local art thus ran the gamut from almost total
independence to very heavy borrowing of
imperial motifs. At the fringes of the empire
there was also a range of various kinds of polities, each with its own set of political, economic,
and artistic relationships to Tawantinsuyu. One
such was the lowland Pacific coast of Ecuador.
There is no evidence of direct Inka control,9 but
highland regions near the northern frontier that
were incorporated into the empire had particularly active traders who maintained commercial
links with the Pacific littoral.10
Inka art, as usually defined, refers to those
objects produced in the Cuzco style of the ruling
elite beginning sometime toward the middle of
the fifteenth century. It is a style characterized
by the use of relatively simple, bold geometric
designs with a strong emphasis on symmetry,
particularly in textiles. It "is classic in its formal
clarity, balanced proportion and clean outline.
It is compact, integrated and simple/'11 The level
of technical excellence is high, and the repetition of designs and motifs suggests mass
production.12
The visual strength and clarity of Inka art, as
well as its repetitiveness, can be understood as

the result of its official nature. Most of the bold

architecture, metalwork, ceramics, and textiles
were produced by artisans working for the
state.13 The state apparently controlled production not just to provide itself with substantial quantities of necessary and valuable goods,
but also in part because it wanted to stamp those
objects and buildings with its own identity. It
wanted to create an image of the state and its
rulers as providers of hospitality and givers of
valuable gifts. These gifts and hospitality were
dispensed in settings of political and religious
rituals intended to teach the populace a new,
imperial level of social and political order.14 To
do that, state-sponsored artists designed a set of
strong, clear symbols that the conquered peoples could easily identify, and perhaps identify
with.15 Inka-style architecture set the centers
built by the state apart from existing local settlements; these state centers, in many parts
of the realm, provided the settings for rituals,
ceremonies, and administrative activities. In
many such centers, inhabitants and visitors
were served from ceramic, metal, and wood
vessels made in the Inka style.16 Garments and
other items of cloth were also dyed and woven
in state-dictated styles.
The beginnings of Andean art are recorded in
textiles more than three thousand years old.17
Andean cloth was among the world's finest centuries before the existence of Tawantinsuyu.
In Inka times cloth was the most valued of all
goods. It was given or exchanged to celebrate all
of life's turning points; elaborate gifts of cloth
to recently conquered peoples were but one
of the measures of its political importance.18
Designs on cloth were richly symbolic. Distinct
patterns signaled differences in group membership.19 Some patterns symbolized the twelve
royal panaqa (organizational divisions of the
ruling elite),20 and certain garments were
reserved for the ruler. Some of these were used
only for special rituals and calendar events.21
The description by Francisco de Jerez of
the Inka ruler Atawalpa and his retinue entering the plaza of the Inka city of Cajamarca gives
an impression of the brilliance and color of
the Inka court. It also implies that people were
dressed according to their status and duties.
Soon the first people began to enter the
plaza; in front came a group of Indians in a
colored uniform with checks. They came
removing straw from the ground and sweeping the road. Another three groups came
after them, all singing and dancing, dressed
in a different way. Then many people
advanced with armor, medallions, and crowns
of gold and silver. Among them Atawalpa
entered in a litter covered with colorful

fig. i. An early Inka ruler holding in his left hand

what was probably a padded cloth shield. From
Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva coronica
y Buen Gobierno (cat. 441). The Royal Library,
Copenhagen

parrot feathers and decorated with gold and

silver plaques. Many Indians carried him up
high on their shoulders, and after this came
two other litters and two hammocks in which
two other important people rode. Then many
groups of people entered with gold and silver
crowns. As soon as the first entered the
plaza, they went to the side and made room
for the others. Upon arriving in the middle of
the plaza, Atawalpa make a sign for silence.22
The exact meanings of the designs on Inka
textiles will probably never be deciphered. Historical knowledge is scant because the early
Europeans were more concerned with subjugating the New World and taking advantage of its
great wealth than they were with recording the
details of the cultures that had accumulated
such riches. A few investigators have claimed
that the meanings of some of the designs on
Inka cloth are so specific as to make them signs
in what was essentially a form of writing.23
Most, however, do not believe that the system
of signs was sufficiently complete or manipulable to approach writing in the sense of a system
of codes for replicating spoken language.
There is, nevertheless, considerable standardization, particularly of unqo, the tunics worn by

fig. 2. The "administrator of provinces" holding

quipus, stringed devices that were knotted in a decimal system and used in record keeping. From
Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva coronica
y Buen Gobierno (cat. 441). The Royal Library,
Copenhagen

men (cats. 449-453).24 The standardization of

design on these garments extends also to some
technical features.25 It seems probable that the
designs of these tunics were related to the status
of the wearers and, in some cases, to the situations in which they were worn. This would be
consistent with the use of visual insignia of
group membership as one of the essential functions of garments. The use of bright and highly
visible designs would tell knowledgeable
observers at a glance the ethnic identity and
other essential social and political characteristics
of the people they encountered. It would also
allow them to quickly assess the composition of
a large group, such as the functionaries and officials Jerez saw accompanying Atawalpa. This
capacity to communicate social information
rapidly was essential, given the variety of the
components of the empire.
The textiles that appear so starkly modern
should be thought of in their Inka contexts.
They were garments moving from place to place
as the people who wore them moved, helping
define the status and positions of their wearers
and determining the reactions of others toward
them. By making these identifications possible,
textiles were vital to the way the empire was
held together and made to function. The Inka

state invested enormous resources in the production of cloth.26 Part of the interest in cloth
production by the state was related to the
economic and symbolic value of textiles to
the user,27 but it was also related to the state's
interest in creating and controlling a series of
essential signs and symbols.
The artistic peak in Andean ceramics was
reached centuries before the Inka with the
achievements of Chavin, Moche, Nazca, and
Wari potters. The tendency toward standardization already suggested in some of the earlier
styles became especially pronounced in Inka
pottery. Technical standards were high, and the
clean geometric polychrome designs, though
rather limited in range, are vibrant and appealing. Modeled ornaments frequently depict the
heads of pumas; the handles on plates often
take the form of the head of a bird. Rare pieces
model the human form.
The role of pottery in the material culture of
the state was relatively narrow. Of course its
primary use was in the preparation, serving,
and storage of food and drink. The brewing and
storage of maize beer required great quantities
of jars. Pottery was also used as containers for
offerings of food and was common as grave furniture. Unlike some earlier Andean cultures, the
Inka do not appear to have broken pottery ceremonially as part of religious rites. The materials
honored by being sacrificed were mainly textiles.28
Ceramics in standardized Inka styles are
found mainly in Cuzco and the centers built by
the Inka along their road system. They are
sometimes mixed with local styles in non-Inka
sites that were of special political importance to
the Inka.29 The furnishing of state centers far
from Cuzco with pottery in the style of the
capital symbolically underscored the source of
the food, drink, and hospitality prepared and
served there.
Precious metals, specifically gold, were of
primary interest to the invading Spanish. For
the Inka, gold and silver had not become the
universal measure of value that they had in
Europe. The Inka had nevertheless accumulated
vast quantities of precious metals and used
them lavishly. The temple of the sun in Cuzco
had walls sheathed in gold and a garden planted
with golden plants.30 Unfortunately, Spanish
greed and insensitivity assigned most of these
fabulous objects to the melting pots. One need
name only a few of the objects from the long
lists of destroyed treasure to get a notion of the
inconceivable loss:
A golden sheep [llama or alpaca], assessed at
i/cts., weighing one hundred and eleven
marks, five ounces [about fifty-five pounds]

THE A M E R I C A S

523

fig. 3. The Inka site of Machu Picchu before the pinnacle of Huayna Picchu

A golden sheep, assessed at i/cts., weighing

one hundred and thirteen marks, four ounces
A golden woman, assessed at i8cts., weighing
one hundred and five marks, five ounces, and
seven ochavas.31
Francisco Pizarro was allowed by Spanish law
and custom to select for his own an article from
the spoils. He chose a golden litter, said to have
weighed more than two hundred pounds.32
No Inka work in gold or silver even remotely
approaching these sizes is known today, although
smaller figures indicate how some of the animal
and human forms may have appeared. Pedro
Sancho, one of Pizarro's scribes, gives a glimpse
of the destruction that took place when Inka
524

CIRCA 1492

smiths in Cuzco were made to melt down most

of the treasure:
It was a thing worthy of witnessing, this
house where the melting was done, full of so
much gold in plates of eight and ten pounds
each, and in table service; jars and pieces of
various forms with which these lords were
served, among other singular things to be
seen were... ten or twelve figures of women,
of the size of women of this land, all of fine
gold and as beautiful and well made as if they
were living.33
Objects of precious metals were major indicators of status and prestige. Their surface color is
certainly one of the many qualities inherent

in metals that lend themselves to this social

role;34 their brilliance is another. In addition,
the colors of gold and silver had come to symbolize the light of the sun and the moon, forming an important way of linking cosmology and
divine power to elites and rulership.
Early descriptions of the rulers and their
ceremonies show the importance of gold and
other metals.35 Common among surviving Inka
metal objects are the tupu pins, frequently in
silver, used to fasten women's garments. Their
counterparts for elite males were probably ear
ornaments, although almost none have survived
from the Inka period. The Spanish referred to
men of high status as orejones ("big ears"), a
reference to the elongation of their earlobes

fig. 4. The shape of the sacred rock at Machu Picchu echoes that of the mountain behind it

caused by large ear ornaments. The ear ornaments of the Inka rulers are said to have been
of gold.36
Metal objects were frequent religious offerings. Gold and silver figurines of animals and
people were often buried. Some of the most
spectacular examples of these buried offerings
were interred on snowcapped mountains in the
southern Andes of Chile and Argentina (cat.
442).37 It is interesting that the human figures
were clothed, so that the metal surface was
largely covered.
In pre-Inka times the quantities of silver and
gold ornaments in the Cuzco area had not been
nearly as great as those in the north. The Inka
brought Chimu smiths to Cuzco, suggesting

both the importance of the craft and the lack of

sufficient local specialists to supply the rapidly
expanding state.38 These smiths were presumably asked to make objects in a new style. They
apparently abandoned the elaborately ornamented surface detail of sheet metal characteristic of earlier Chimu art for an emphasis on
the simple, more three-dimensional forms
favored by the Inka.
The Inka had inherited one of the world's
most sophisticated metallurgical technologies,
and they clearly appreciated the malleability,
durability, and reflective surfaces of metal.
However, it was not the medium they chose for
expressing their most complex ideas. The
vocabularies for articulating their principal

social and ideological concerns were most often

seen in textiles and architecture.
Architecture built by the Inka state is easy to
distinguish from the buildings of other times
and cultures. It is based on simple forms with
little adornment. In the highlands the Inka built
mainly with stone, relying on relief provided by
the joins for surface character. On the coast
local adobe was the primary construction material. In both regions buildings were frequently
covered with a thin layer of clay that was
brightly painted. Walls were slightly tapered for
stability. The trapezoid was a ubiquitous form,
used for doorways, windows, and wall niches.39
In some of the most famous and monumental
Inka architecture, retaining walls were used to
THE A M E R I C A S

525

fig. 5. The sculpted grotto known as the royal mausoleum, below the Torreon at Machu Picchu

fig. 6. The Inti-watana, a carved natural stone at Machu Picchu

reshape topography. The temple-for tress of

Saqsawaman and the terraces throughout the
sacred Urubamba Valley are primary examples.
The entire site of Machu Picchu is a landscape
architecturally converted into a union of
culture and nature. The sensitivity of detail
in the site, such as the platform that calls atten526

CIRCA 1492

tion to a stone echoing the shape of the mountains behind it, is as remarkable as the town's
overall drama.
Characteristics of Inka architecture that make
it so striking are relatively easy to list. Its construction techniques are also relatively well
understood.40 Knowing that the Inka had access

to battalions of corvee laborers even makes

comprehensible the magnitude of this construction: dozens of cities and hundreds of way stations were built in less than a century. At one
level the symbolic significance of the easily
identifiable Inka architectural style also seems
clear. The buildings signified the state, its
rulers, and its activities. They identified entire
settlements with the state, contrasting them
with other settlements occupied by other
groups in the same region.41 In some cases they
identified compounds or sectors of Inka occupation and activity within settlements built by
other groups.42 Just as textiles helped define
people and groups, architecture identified towns
and parts of towns.
Since architecture helps control and channel
human activities, the symbols it encoded
became part of the backdrop to the performance
of rites that reinforced and legitimized the state
to the people being incorporated into Tawantinsuyu. The way some Inka towns and cities were
laid out mirrored certain principles of imperial
organization.43 Details of the rites and activities
in Inka centers are sketchy at best, but the possibility of a correspondence between town plans
and organizational principles is intriguing.
Such plans could have placed groups of people in
actual physical positions analogous to the positions the state envisioned for them in the new
order of sociopolitical relations it was creating.
Although architecture was involved in critical
ways with the identity of the state, it was less
standardized than were textiles or, more particularly, pottery. Town plans included many
common elements, but the combinations were
quite distinct; no two Inka towns were the
same.44 Even the execution of individual structures could offer surprisingly fresh departures:
the temple at Huaytara with its niches that are
trapezoidal in elevation and triangular in plan,45
the kori kancha, with its curved enclosure and
extraordinary masonry,46 the megalithic wall at
Ollantaytambo.
Stone possessed special in a sense sacred
qualities for the Inka.47 This is seen in the unusual treatment of individual stones incorporated
into the walls of buildings and terraces. It
reaches its height in the treatment of living
rock. In many cases living rock is incorporated
as part of a structure. The buildings are
adapted to natural features and the natural
features are incorporated into the cultural
environment.
Living rock also appears as freestanding
sculpture. Visitors to the Cuzco region and
other parts of the Inka realm have long admired
these extraordinary stones. Whether
strikingly simple or complex, almost all are
enhanced by the landscapes in which they are

set. They have not received the attention and

appreciation given to other native New World
art because they must be seen in their remote
contexts. Recent studies seek to redress this
imbalance. "Inka monumental stone sculpture
. . . should be seen as one of the major sculptural
styles of the world. Like the most accomplished
Egyptian, Greek, Mexican and Romanesque
works of sculpture, it presents a unique intellectual achievement. Mass, volume and voids are
its primary concerns. Its angular aspect and
formal rigidity give it a distinctly 'modern'
feel."48
Although more subtle and much less standardized than other manifestations of imperial
art, these sculptures also served as markers and
symbols of the presence of the Inka. Their uses
and meanings, however, are probably much
more far-reaching and complex. Frequently
they marked boundaries or commemorated
important events in myths and legends, for
example, places of ancestral origin. Perhaps
their most intriguing and powerful meaning is
as instruments of mediation and communication between people and the natural and supernatural.49 As objects fashioned from the realms
of both culture and nature, they were ideal
bridges between people, the natural worlds in
which they lived, and the supernatural world,
which was also populated by extensions of
beings from nature.
Recognizing the pivotal role of Inka art in
communication between people and groups and
even between society and the cosmos does not
detract from the artistic importance of the
objects. Aesthetic strength is, in some sense,
based in communication. The headdresses that
served as insigniae of group membership, the
tunics that may have signaled position in the
hierarchy of state officials, the bright metal
objects that indicated status or symbolized religious beliefs, the stones that helped mediate
between earth and cosmos: all owed some of
their artistic characteristics to the meanings
attached to them.
The creation of an empire like that of the
Inka depended on communication to link its
numerous and varied parts; the dependence
was perhaps even greater because of the lack of
true writing. The creation of an empire also
depended on motivation, inspiration, and persuasion. The use of strong, simple, understandable symbols in architecture, clothing, and
objects of adornment was an important aspect of
the means used by the state to achieve cooperation and participation in its political and economic activities. Objects in the imperial Inka
style had become part of the means by which
the empire was created and maintained. Some
might argue that art and design had become

subservient to propaganda. In broader perspective, however, the sociopolitical dimensions of

imperial Inka style can be seen as the participation of art and visual communication in an
overall process of social growth that contributed
to new political, economic, and aesthetic orders.
To understand fully the role of art in this process we need to know how the imperial Inka
style developed. Unfortunately, both the historical and the archaeological records offer only
fragmentary information on this topic. The
incomplete archaeological evidence suggests
that the style appeared quite suddenly in the
mid-fifteenth century.50 It was preceded in the
Cuzco area by the Killke style, known only from
ceramics.51 While some elements of painted
design on Inka ceramics can be traced to earlier
Killke designs,52 these seem insufficient to suggest a gradual evolution of the imperial Inka
style from the earlier tradition. Rather, with its
crisp new range of shapes, improved technical
quality, and more controlled designs, the Inka
style represents a marked break from the past.
We can only speculate as to how these specialized weavers, smiths, and potters may have been
related to the creation of the style associated
with the state.53 It seems clear, however, that
these widespread designs were not simply the
innovations of individual artists and designers,
later freely copied by others as they became
widely popular. For styles to become standardized and then broadly disseminated as these
were, there had to be some direction from the
governing elite almost from the outset.
The content of Inka art is thus intimately
tied to the nature of the empire in which it was
created and used. As we appreciate the beauty
and social utility of the relatively standardized
objects, we need also to seek a greater understanding of their creative source. It is important
as well not to be so blinded by the boldness of
the state styles that we fail to note the latitude
for individual variation. Though the variety of
regional styles is evident, some of the most
innovative and unique Inka art is actually part
of the imperial repertory. It occurs most notably
in architecture and in sculptures carved in living
stone. Seen in its totality the art of Tawantinsuyu is as grand and complex as the empire
itself, a kaleidoscope of regional variation tied
together by the strong and unmistakable style
of objects created for the Cuzco rulers.
Most impressive about the Inka aesthetic
world are the combinations, the way various
arts and media were used together and incorporated into human activities and the natural
landscape. In spite of its seeming modernity in
many visual features, this was not art produced
by individuals for purely aesthetic ends. It was
art as practiced throughout most of history and

prehistory, communicating ideas and stamping

a new vision of beauty on the physical world
in which people lived. Its scale and effect varied
from the subtlety of small, exquisitely cast
metal figures dressed in textiles and feathers for
offerings on high mountain peaks, through
carved rocks that were also occasionally covered
with textiles,54 to the heroic dimensions of
towns sculpted out of mountains. The careful
ensemble, the combining of elements in the
material world, matched attempts in the social,
political, and economic realms to assemble complementary elements into a vast, balanced, and
wealthy whole.
The remarkable economic, political, and artistic achievements of the Inka did not equip them
to cope with a foreign world. They could not
have envisioned the tragic consequences of the
European invasion. Although many aspects of
Andean creativity continue even today, the
empire and its art were quickly destroyed
during the first decades of outside domination.
To the Inka the recently arrived representatives
of that foreign world must have seemed uncivilized: people driven by greed and religious
fanaticism to acts of brutality and ugliness.

NOTES
-L. John Hyslop, Inka Settlement Planning (Austin,
1990), 291.
2. John V. Murra, "El 'Control Vertical' de un Maximo
de Pisos Ecologicos en la Economia de las Sociedades
Andinas," in Visit a de la Provincia de Leon de
Hudnuco, vol. 2 (Huanuco, Peru, 1972).
3. John Hyslop, The Inka Road System (New York,
1984).
4. J. Alden Mason, The Ancient Civilizations of Peru
(London, 1957), 231.
5. Dorothy Menzel, The Archaeology of Ancient Peru
and the Work of Max Uhle (Berkeley, 1977), 26-29.
6. Ann P. Rowe, Costumes and Featherwork of the
Lords of Chimor (Washington, 1984).
7. See discussion of smiths, below.
8. Dorothy Menzel, "The Inca Occupation of the South
Coast of Peru," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15, no. 2 (1959), 125-142, provides a general
review of the Inka occupation of the Peruvian south
coast. For a more specific treatment of the Inka and
Nazca areas see Menzel 1977, 8-18.
9. John Hyslop, "Las fronteras estatales extremas del
Tawantinsuyu," in La Frontera del Estado Inca, ed.
Tom Dillehay and Patricia Neatherly (Oxford, 1988),
35-5710. Betty Meggers, Ecuador (London, 1966), 162-163;
Frank Salomon, "Vertical Politics on the Inka Frontier," in Anthropological History of Andean Polities,
ed. John V. Murra, Nathan Wachtel, Jacques Revel
(Cambridge and London, 1986), 89-117.
11. Julie Jones, Art of Empire: The Inca of Peru (New
York, 1964), 5.
12. John H. Rowe, "Inca Culture at the Time of the
Spanish Conquest," in Handbook of South American
Indians, ed. Julian Steward (Washington, 1946),
2:287.
THE A M E R I C A S

527

13. The major discussion of state revenues is John V.

Murra, The Economic Organization of the Inca State
(Greenwich, Conn., 1980), especially ch. 5.
14. Craig Morris, "The Infrastructure of Inka Control in
the Peruvian Central Highlands/7 in The Inka and
Aztec States: 1400-1800, ed. George Collier, Renato
Rosaldo, John Wirth (New York, 1982).
15. Archaeologists have argued that simple, bright
designs that can be easily recognized at a distance
are more effective at communicating behavioral
meaning than complex designs that require time to
analyze. See Christopher Carr, "Toward a Synthetic
Theory of Textile Design/ Style, Society, and
Person, ed. Christopher Carr and Jill Neitzel (Cambridge, England, forthcoming); Margaret Hardin,
"Design Structure and Social Interactions: Archaeological Implications of an Ethnographic Analysis/'
American Antiquity 35 (1970), 332-343.
16. Craig Morris, "State Settlements in Tawantinsuyu:
A Strategy of Compulsory Urbanism," in Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to Theory and Contributions, ed. Mark P. Leone (Carbondale, 111., 1972).
17. Junius B. Bird, John Hyslop, Milica Dimitrijevic
Skinner, "The Preceramic Excavations at the Huaca
Prieta, Chicama Valley, Peru/' in Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History
62, no. i (New York, 1985), 146-190.
18. John V. Murra,"Cloth and Its Functions in the Inca
State/' American Anthropologist 64 (1962),
717-722.
19. Bernabe Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, tr.
Roland Hamilton (Austin, Texas, 1979).
20. Murra 1962, 719.
21. Tom Zuidema, "The Royal Whip in Cuzco: Art,
Social Structure and Cosmology," in The Language
of Things: Studies in Ethnocommunication, ed.
Pieter ter Keurs, Dirk Smidt (Leiden, 1990).

528

CIRCA

1492

22. Francisco de Jerez, Las Relaciones de la Conquista

del Peru ([1534] Lima, 1917), 56, trans. Craig
Morris.
23. Victoria de La Jara, Introduccion al Estudio de la
Escritura de los Incas (Lima, 1975).
24. John H. Rowe, "Standardization in Inca Tapestry
Tunics," in The Junius B. Bird Pre-Columbian Textile
Conference, ed. A. P. Rowe, E. P. Benson, A. L.
Schaffer (Washington, 1979), 239-264.
25. Ann P. Rowe, "Technical Features of Inca Tapestry
Tunics," Textile Museum Journal (1978), 5-28.
26. Craig Morris, "Reconstructing Patterns of Nonagricultural Production in the Inca Economy:
Archaeology and Documents in Institutional Analysis," in The Reconstruction of Complex Societies: An
Archaeological Symposium, ed. Charlotte Moore
(Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 49-60.
27. Murra 1962.
28. Murra 1962, 720.
29. Craig Morris and Donald Thompson, Huanuco
Pampa: An Inca City and Its Hinterland (London,
1985), 142.
30. Pedro Cieza de Leon, Cronica del Peru, Segunda
Parte ([1653] Lima, 1985), 7.
31. In Miguel Mujica Gallo, The Gold of Peru
(Recklinghausen, Germany, 1959), 288. See also
S. K. Lothrop, Inca Treasure as Depicted by Spanish
Historians (Los Angeles, 1938).
32. Lothrop, 1938, 52.
33. Pedro Sanchez, Relacion de lo Sucedido en la Conquista del Peru (Lima, 1917), 181.
34. Heather Lechtman, "Andean Value Systems and the
Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy," Technology
and Culture 25 (1984), 1-36.
35. Pedro Cieza de Leon, The Incas of Pedro Cieza de
Leon, tr. Harriet de Onis, ed. Victor von Hagen
(Norman, Okla., 1959), 3537.

36. Cieza de Leon 1959, 36.

37. Crete Mostny, "La momia del cerro El Plomo,"
Boletin del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 27
(Santiago, 1957).
38. Cieza de Leon, 1985,170.
39. Hyslop 1984, 285.
40. Jean-Pierre Protzen, "Inca Stonemasonry," Scientific
American 254, no. 2 (1980), 94-103.
41. Morris 1972.
42. Hyslop 1990, 251-269.
43. Craig Morris, "Architecture and the Structure of
Space at Huanuco Pampa," (ms. 1980) forthcoming
in Spanish, in Cuadernos del Institute Nacional de
Antropologia (Buenos Aires).
44. Hyslop 1990, 191.
45. Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies, Arquitectura Inka (Caracas, 1977), 266-269.
46. John H. Rowe, "An Introduction to the Archaeology
of Cuzco," Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 27, no. 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1944); John Hemming and Edward
Ranney, Monuments of the Inkas (Boston, 1982),

78-87.

47. Hyslop 1990, 106-108.

48. Maarten Van de Guchte, "Carving the World": Inca
Monumental Sculpture and Landscape (Urbana, 111.,
1990), i.
49. Van de Guchte 1990, 330-333.
50. J. Rowe 1944, 61.
51. J. Rowe 1944, 60-62; Brian S. Bauer and Charles
Stanish, "Killke and Killke-Related Pottery from
Cuzco, Peru, in the Field Museum of Natural History," Fieldiana Anthropology n.s. no. 15 (Chicago,
1990), 1-17.
52. Bauer and Stanish 1990, figs. 3, 4, 9,12.
53. J. Rowe 1946, 269; Murra 1980, 89-115.
54. Hyslop 1990, 77,107.

THE FALCON AND THE SERPENT:

LIFE IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES
AT THE TIME OF COLUMBUS
James A. Brown

-Z. A
JLfter the conquest of Mexico and Peru led

the Spanish to unexpected riches, their attention turned to what is now the southeastern
United States as the next land of opportunity.
Encouraged by his own success in the Andes,
Hernando de Soto led a heavily financed expedition in a serious attempt to reveal this new land
to European eyes. In so doing DeSoto and his
men found a family of complex cultures spread
over this enormous territory, land inhabited
by farmers as well as many compact fortified
towns led by exalted rulers. Political units of
considerable size were based upon single towns.
Advanced as these cultures were, the conquistadors were nevertheless disappointed by their
discoveries. Native Americans were not sitting
on the kind of liquid wealth the Spaniards had
found in Mesoamerica and South America and
which they had invested so heavily in locating.
By the end of the sixteenth century it was
evident that La Florida, as this land was known
to the Spanish, was too vast for easy domination. Many of its populous settlements were far
from the coast, making effective control of
some of the more promising areas all the more
tenuous, particularly in the face of fierce native
resistance. Both the problems and the opportunities were summed up in the Spanish account
of La Florida completed in 1592 by the Peruvian
historian Garcilaso de la Vega, known as "El
Inca" because his mother was an Inka princess:
In addition to the brave deeds performed and
the hardships suffered by the Christians both
individually and generally, and the notable
things discovered among the Indians, we
present in this history a description of the
many extensive provinces found throughout
the great kingdom of Florida by the Governor
and Adelantado Hernando de Soto
Our
purpose in offering this description has been
to encourage Spain to make an effort to
acquire and populate this kingdom (now that
its unsavory reputation for being sterile and
swampy, as it is along the coast, has been
erased) even if, without the principal idea of
augmenting the Holy Catholic Faith, she
should carry forward the project for the sole

purpose of establishing colonies to which she

might send her sons to reside just as the
ancient Romans did when there was no
longer space in their native land. For Florida
is fertile and abundant in all things necessary
to human life, and with the seed and livestock
that can be sent there from Spain and other
places, it can be made much more productive
than it is in its natural state.1
Despite El Inca's plea, the interior of La Florida
remained poorly known to the Europeans for
centuries. During the sixteenth century both
exploration and missionary activity were limited. Colonization proved a disaster. Spanish
penetration into the land was too expensive an
undertaking. Although the crown retained
nominal claim over the vast subcontinent,
actual Spanish control over the destinies of the
resident peoples extended only to small patches
on promising parts of the coast. The problem
was that distances were great and much of the
vast interior was unoccupied. Although populations were concentrated in certain regions,
these areas were not city-size, but towns of only
several thousand inhabitants. Without population of sufficient density, labor-intensive projects such as mineral exploitation were not
feasible. And without the political organization
entailed in city-scale organizations, there was
no potential for subjugation of native populations, as there had been in Mexico and Peru.
Thus the land was left on its own until the
end of the seventeenth century, when other
European powers quickened the tempo of exploration and enmeshed the area in the world
economy. Because of European neglect of this
area in earlier periods, however, we lack the variety of Spanish chronicles that describe the
culture of the contact period in Mesoamerica
and South America, and there is no parallel to
the encyclopedic texts detailing Mexican culture
that were produced by or under the supervision
of the early Franciscan missionaries. Moreover,
we cannot depend for our knowledge of the preColumbian southeast on the more specific
accounts that began to emerge later, for these
describe a very different land. By this time the

cultural landscape of the area had been modified

almost beyond recognition. Where direct European manipulation had been ineffective, Old
World diseases had thinned the population, displaced the people, and increased the militancy of
the surviving population.2 It was in this
dramatically different setting that the Europeans were able to undertake new initiatives in
political manipulation, economic subjugation,
and eventual colonization, initiatives that
defined subsequent periods of native American
history.
Archaeology and history combine to tell us
that the high cultures of the pre-Columbian
southeast were significantly different from the
cultural landscape that emerged centuries later.
At the end of the seventeenth century in the
Memphis region of the Mississippi River Valley,
where populations once were densest, few
people were to be found. Tribes mighty in
Soto's time had been reduced to small towns,
which were forced to merge with others to compensate for their loss of population. Compact
urban settlements were abandoned in favor of
dispersed settlement. Once-powerful rulers
were succeeded by chiefs holding largely empty
titles. This shift away from the social and political features associated with large populations
has led archaeologists to conclude that significant parts of the culture became simplified as
well, the net result being general depauperization of native life. After two centuries of
indirect European impact through disease, the
residents of the southeastern interior were very
different from their predecessors. New tribal
entities replaced the fallen, and formerly
powerful groups shrank to minor tribes. Native
Americans faced Europeans on very different
terms during the eighteenth century.
This background explains why the early culture of the native southeast does not have a
well-defined image today. Native accomplishments have been reduced to stories about
Powhatan and other major figures, bizarre practices, and conflicts with settlers on the expanding American frontier. These stories leave little
room in the imagination for the real triumphs
of pre-Columbian culture. During the early
THE A M E R I C A S

529

period of contact, when native traditions were

more or less intact, the obscurity of native
southeastern life deprived the European chroniclers, who were in a position to record it, of a
sense of native American lifeways. The evocative objects displayed in this exhibition offer a
hint of these traditions, which have all too often
been dismissed as derived from Mesoamerican
culture and as a consequence having no bearing
on North American achievements. However,
archaeologists have amassed data that create a
complicated and rich history of the southeast.
This is one in which the highly refined beliefs,
symbols, practices, and technology of supposedly Mexican derivation are actually the
result of developments in high culture that were
for the most part self-contained. Whatever connections had existed between Mexico and the
southeast in the past, they only reinforced a
preexisting southeastern cultural pattern.3
Contemporary expeditions were mounted by
Coronado in the southwest and the southern
Great Plains and by Cartier in the Saint Lawrence. Although, like Soto's, these helped bring
the main outlines of native culture to the attention of the Old World, detailed knowledge of
the interior of North America remained to be
learned in the future.4 Archaeology helps fill
the gap in providing a conception of the range
of North American cultural life in this period.
From a combination of sources it is clear that
530

CIRCA 1492

agriculturally based societies were confined

within climatic limits. This limitation meant
that a border zone of relatively complex cultures existed to the north of the southeast in the
Lower Great Lakes and northwest along the fingers of well-watered valleys stretching out into
the Great Plains. The other concentration
existed in the arid southwestern United States
where the pueblo towns were spotted along the
few dependable watercourses. Otherwise, most
of the population at 1492 was packed along the
Pacific Coast from California to Alaska. Seafood
provided the basis of settled life and complex
culture in this area. Elsewhere, populations
were sparse and scattered, and economic life was
dependent upon hunting and gathering.
La Florida of the conquering Spaniards
embraced the southeast broadly conceived. It
lay roughly in the Old South, which in the
nineteenth century was to realize an agricultural potential that had been established nine
centuries earlier. The route that Soto took
largely bracketed this territory.5 His quest for
wealth led his band to the main seats of political
life. Along the way he met minor groups and
traversed long stretches of wilderness. The
geography of settled life provided by his march,
coupled with our knowledge of the archaeology
of the early sixteenth century, gives us a rough
idea of the principal features of the cultural
landscape.
From south to north the following picture
emerges. The Gulf Coast proper contained few
people. The immediate interior held far more.
These were organized mainly into small chiefly
societies divided into nobles and commoners
and led by hereditary chiefs with limited
powers. At present day Tallahassee, Florida,
where he spent his first winter, Soto met the
fierce Apalachee, a people who eventually lent
their name to the mountain chain.6 To the
north, populations of similar political organization were clustered along a number of the major
rivers whose valleys held the soils essential for
farming. Within a broad, barren belt of southeastern pine woods these river valleys were the
focus of settled life.7 Not all valleys were occupied; there was a notable vacancy in the Savannah River Valley dividing present day Georgia
and South Carolina. In the Piedmont zone
many more named provinces (the Spanish term
for native tribal territories) were to be found.
Two among them stood out as particularly large,
and were probably even in the process of expansion at the time of the visit. The Cofitachequi
held sway in central South Carolina. At their
main town the Spanish looted a mortuary
shrine of its pearls, the first and only occasion
of their finding significant wealth in European
terms. The reports of silver that drew them to

this place turned out to be inspired by great

sheets of mica. This and the native copper that
were used to make precious objects conferring
high prestige were found to be the closest
things to reservoirs of value that were recognized by the native peoples. In what is now
northwest Georgia the powerful leader of the
Coosa held authority over subordinate chiefs in
a wide swath of the intermontane valley.
In the Mississippi River Valley the largest
and most compact of the towns were located
north of the mouth of the Arkansas up to what
is now the Missouri state line. Here the
explorers found the most populous area of their
journey. Territories were under the sway of
large fortified towns nestled together, with few
of the uninhabited zones that commonly separated settled provinces elsewhere. Settlements
south of this section of the river valley appear
to have been more dispersed, although two
major chieftaincies occupied the lower valley;
these were responsible for the expedition's final
harassment on its journey homeward. North of
the Memphis section settlement was sparse.
West of the Mississippi Valley, settlements were
dispersed with populations thinning out in east
Texas.8
Along the way the expedition discovered peoples speaking most of the major languages of
the historic southeast: Timucuan, Muskogean,
Iroquoisan (Cherokee), perhaps Siouan, and
Caddoan. In their wandering the Europeans
traversed the domains of major provinces or
chiefly polities. Although some of the peoples
the Europeans encountered survived to develop
into the major tribes of later times (Chickasaw),
others (Coosa, Cofitachequi) subsequently
dwindled in power and population to the point
that they were forced to coalesce, to become the
Creeks.
Soto found evidence of town life concentrated
within defensive walls as well as distributed
over scattered hamlets. He found rulers (albeit
with limited power) over both small and large
communities. The greatest potentate was the
paramount chief (or grand cacique) of the
Coosa, who commanded tributary relations over
a large area. Among all of the tribes, warfare
was entrenched. The importance of this fact of
life had its impact on which personages were
represented in art and the manner in which
images were presented.
Even though the knowledge that archaeology
has provided is incomplete, certain outlines
have emerged to help provide a context for the
Spanish narratives. This archaeological contribution makes it possible to define a cultural
world of native North America at the time of
initial European encounter that cannot be constructed from the Spanish narratives alone,

which are limited in their viewpoints toward

native cultures. Although they are rich in action
and adventure, missing are indications of religious life, town architecture, political organizations, crafts, trade, and the visual arts. With the
help of archaeology these and other features of
native life emerge to fill out our portrait of this
high culture.
This cultural landscape goes back to around
A.D. 1000, when a transformation took place in
the social, economic, and political realities of
native life. Broadly speaking, the scattered,
independent, single-village social communities
that formerly predominated were replaced by
interdependent multivillage communities. The
result was the development of the social and
political means of integrating larger groups of
people, which became the basis for cultural life
of southeastern tribes established from then on.
So marked was this change in many interdependent aspects of cultural life that archaeologists
have distinguished pre-Columbian history after
the year 1000 as the Mississippian period.
Although some of this shift in organization was
a consequence of local population growth, in
certain places the change was accomplished by
the political union of formerly autonomous villages. The result was a new institutional basis
on which variations and elaborations could take
place.
The principal architectural features of Mississippian towns were the platforms of earth
erected to support the houses of chiefs, the
shrines of the ancestors, and the sacred fires.
Some of these towns achieved considerable size.
As the period progressed many settlements
were walled for defense. A shift toward increasing reliance on corn agriculture likewise characterized this period. This development was
accompanied by the rise of distinct traditions in
artifacts that continued until the sixteenth
century.
From the perspective of material culture
archaeologists have identified broad groupings
of traditions. The more complex of these were
the South Appalachian Mississippian (represented by the Apalachee, Coosa, and Cofitachequi), the Middle Mississippian, the Caddoan
Mississippian, and the Plaquemine Mississippian (represented by the Natchez). Less complex social and cultural life to the north is
divided into the Oneota and Fort Ancient
cultures.
In place of a universal pantheon, each tribe
had its own deities who defined their origin and
social identity. Although there seemed to be
great similarity among southeasterners with
respect to worship and belief, the overwhelming
authority of local custom prevented any drive
toward syncretism. Therefore, one must look at

the organization of social life to understand

southeastern religion.
Settled village life centered around what has
been loosely called a temple, but was in reality a
shrine dedicated to the veneration of the town's
ancestor-founder. Closed to all except the chief
and his priests, the chosen few, this shrine occupied a conspicuous place in the center of the
town. It frequently stood on a platform mound
oriented in a ceremonially prescribed direction.
Within burned the sacred fire, carefully nurtured by ritual guardians. Important objects
kept there included the bones of the ancestors of
the elite family, tokens of wealth, and sometimes even armaments. In generalizing about
southeastern religion El Inca placed the temple
squarely in the center of indigenous religious
practice:
The Indians are a race of pagans and idolaters;
they worship the sun and the moon as their
principal deities, but, unlike the rest of heathendom, without any ceremony of images,
sacrifices, prayers, or other superstitions.
They do have temples but they use them as
sepulchres and not as houses of prayer. Moreover, because of the great size of these structures, they let them serve to hold the best
and richest of their possessions. Their
veneration for the temples and burial places,
therefore, is not profound. On the doors of
them they place the trophies of victories won
over their enemies.9
The most spectacular ancestor shrine known
was the temple of the Cofitachequi located in
the center of present-day South Carolina.10
According to the detailed description provided
by El Inca, who relied on the direct testimony of
members of Soto's expedition, carved wooden
giants were stationed at the doorway, each
brandishing different kinds of weapons. Inside
were masses of marine shells and strands of
pearl beads, headdresses of multicolored feathers and furs, and different kinds of armaments.
In the center were wooden chests filled with the
bones of the ruling family and carved images of
individual dead. Although this account may be
exaggerated or a fusion of separate instances,
the kinds of objects described are ones that are
known from archaeology and other historical
accounts to have been important in native life.
Pearls, marine shells, and copper beaten into
shape were items of value in the southeast.
Armaments were sometimes stored under the
same roof as wealth and ancestral bones. Thus
the essentials of this splendid example are
objects that can be attested to independently
from other sources. Furnishings that dominate
the shrine are caskets and images. Images of
this type have survived to provide a remarkable

fig. i. Funeral Procession for Tattooed Serpent in

1725. At rear is a mortuary shrine that stood on one
of the mounds at the Grand Village of the Natchez

testimony of native American craftsmanship

(cats. 428, 429).11
Clearly the ancestor shrine was the physical
center of religious life. Two centuries later the
Natchez espoused beliefs that once were probably more widely held in the southeast.
The chiefs were regarded as spirits descended
from a kind of idol which they have in their
temple and for which they have a great
respect. It is a stone statue enclosed in a
wooden box. They say that this is not properly the great spirit, but one of his relatives
which he formerly sent into this place to be
the master of the earth; that this chief
became so terrible that he made men die
merely by his look; that in order to prevent it
he had a cabin [shrine] made for himself into
which he entered and had himself changed
into a stone statue for fear that his flesh
would be corrupted in the earth.12
The Natchez called this deity "The/' He was the
bearer of arts and technology as well as the
tribal forefather. This founding deity gave
direction and coherence to society. So imbued
with life force were these stone (and wood) personifications that they were thought to be in
THE A M E R I C A S

531

some sense alive. The contemporary Tukabahchee Creek, who no longer maintained a sacred
shrine house, nevertheless brought their image
out into the town square to consecrate important public affairs.13 Although these images generally were of males, along the Mississippi River
female figures were reported and among the
South Appalachian cultures these images were
paired, one male and the other female.14
Differences in representation probably reflect
differing conceptions regarding descent from
the gods.
The ruling family held a preeminent social
status through its genealogical descent from the
town founder. As a consequence, the chief was
the principal if not the sole person having access
to the shrine's inner sanctum. From this privileged position he acted as mediator between
the deitythe sun and the general population. He held esoteric sacred knowledge shared
only among a small group of priestly officials.15
A group of "nobles" from second- and thirdranking families shared some of the prerogatives held by the ruling family. All of the elite
were distinguished from commoners in deport-

ment and dress, particularly in their use of large

and showy headdresses (cats. 438, 440). To signify their importance chiefs were sometimes
carried over the heads of ordinary people in
litter transports.16 These ordinary individuals
belonged to low-ranking families. Although
enormous differences in wealth and privilege
were associated with family rank, each society
was bound together into two complementary
family groups having reciprocal obligations to
each other.
A small minority of carefully selected and
trained individuals controlled the rites and paraphernalia belonging to the sanctified shrine.
Rites were entirely secret. Typically, transgressions such as allowing the sacred fire to become
profaned with ordinary fire were punished by
death an indication of the awful jeopardy into
which the entire community was believed to be
placed by this infraction. So bound up with the
health and well-being of the community were
these sacred flames that when calamity struck,
the custodians of the fire were expected to take
the blame.
The sacred fire was no ordinary fire since it
was conceived as being kindled by the sun. As a
representative of the sun on earth, for each
town it defined the center of the universe. The
four directions branched off this center, and a
fifth was created by the ascent of smoke to the
heavens of the upper world. The four directions
were commonly represented by four logs set
pointing to the center where the fire slowly
burned. In keeping with the importance of the
sacred fire as an embodiment of the life force,
each town maintained its own fire under the
care and protection of the highest ritual practitioners. The authority that the elite, as custodians of the town's power, took from this life

force presumably led to the frequent employment of solar disc and cross-rayed motifs as
shorthand symbols of chiefly power. The fire
was ritually renewed each year in order to
replace with pure fire the old one, which had
absorbed the pollution generated by the community over the preceding year.
The dead held such a potent place in the
affairs of the living that certain objects were
created to draw upon that power. Pottery versions of stone and wooden shrine figures, made
in the Arkansas area, appear to be embodiments
of the very dead whose remains were kept in
the town shrines. Ceramic pots were modeled to
resemble human heads, essentially those of dead
men (cat. 435). Marine shell masks with thunderbolt markings descending from the eyes likewise have mortuary associations. These masks
were widely employed in the sixteenth century,
and from later testimony we know that they
were the principal components of the sacred
bundle, a kind of portable shrine carried on the*
warpath.17
In this context the commentary of El Inca
describing the southeastern religions is quite
understandable. Since the gods were connected
with the most sacred forces relevant to social
life, religious rites could be kept simple and
guided entirely by the worship of the tribal
leaders. Because these deities were extensions
of tribal kinship, it was logical to expect the
senior representatives of the tribe to arrogate to
themselves the propitiation of their own ancestor gods.
The rites of the privileged minority were a
special refinement on generally espoused beliefs
about the powers of nature that impinge upon
everyday existence. The task of ritual, whether
under priestly control or not, was to maintain

fig. 3. Neck Ornament. Engraved shell, c. 14001500. The looped square frame is a transformation of
the litter in fig. 2

fig. 4. Mask of the Ancestor Spirit (?). Carved and

engraved in marine shell, c. 1500-1600. Lightning
bolts of the thunderers descend from the eyes

fig. 5. Gorget. Engraved marine shell, c. 1500-1600.

The motif is a rattlesnake's head within its coils. The
teeth in the jaws suggest the cougar

fig. 2. The Natchez Chief Great Sun Being Transported on a Litter

532

CIRCA 1492

order in the face of the contending forces of the

upper and lower worlds. These forces were conceived as opposites such as good/evil, order/
chaos, and life/death that are present to varying
degrees in all things and actions. They were
connected with what were (and to an extent
traditionally still are) regarded as polar forces in
constant contention and counteraction. The
middle ground, that of the earth, was the theater in which these cosmic forces played.18
The sacred fire was by origin and association
a representative of the upper world having considerable power for good on this earth as long as
it was properly tended. But proper care in a
perfect sense was offset by the frailties of
humankind. This is where management of the
countervailing powers aligned with each of the
worlds required dedicated ritual attention. The
upper world was associated with the sun, the
sacred fire, the thunderers, the falcon, and
other powers. The underworld was associated
with water from springs, the cougar, and the
rattlesnake. Although life was believed to be
conferred by powers from the upper world and
death was a property of the underworld, various
allied concepts of fertility were apportioned
more subtly.
The leaders of the Natchez appropriated into
their names the sun and the serpent as symbols
of primal power. The "Sun/' representing the
upper world, was the preeminent ruler who was
senior brother to the "Tattooed Serpent/' representing the lower. As principal and secondranking leaders of the tribe they encapsulated
the cosmos. Together they controlled the fate of
the society by representing these polar forces
on earth.
Leadership in war and the organization of
men into warrior societies drew upon the
powers of the upper and lower worlds. The
falcon constituted the symbol of elite control of
success in war. This animal had most of its connections with the elite. Hawks, and more specifically duck hawks or peregrine falcons, were the
epitome of the aggressive strike force, probably
out of regard for their spectacular aerial hunting
behavior.19 But other birds possessed warrior
qualities as well. The pileated woodpecker and
the turkey represented warriors because of very
different properties specific to each. The former
was conventionally associated with the war
hatchet that was shown in images with chiefly
identifications. In contrast to these upper-world
representatives, major warrior societies among
Natchez and certain Creek towns drew upon the
serpent. The cougar represented stealth in
combat. This use of one or the other resembles
the division of Creek towns into red and white
sides, one representing war and the other peace.

In other underworld associations the cougar (or

panther), sometimes as an aquatic monster, controlled the underworld. The snake had a connection with regeneration.20
The serpent was not always cast as the tutelary of the warriors or as a power controlled by
the war chief. At a somewhat earlier point in
time, the falcon had been the principal emblem
of war leadership. Chiefs dressed in nose, headdress, and cloak of hawks impersonated this
patron of stunning prowess in an effort to
mimic in dance and dress the effects they
sought to emulate in their deeds (cats. 437,
440).
Ideas about the place of individual animal
powers were given greater scope for expression
outside the ordered universe of the controlling
and rationalizing chiefs, priests, and healers.
These concepts are richly expressed in the many
stories and remedies handed down through oral
tradition. Most of these beliefs have to do with
ceremonies that were public rather than exclusive to the initiates of the shrine. All adult society took part; professional masters of ritual
were unnecessary. The principal cycle of public
ceremonies was the green corn dance, a communal ritual honoring the first crop of corn,
which was so essential to the local economy.
This great ceremony enlisted many of the
beliefs most fundamental to everyday existence.
Images chosen for subject matter in the
ceramic arts appear to be subject to the same
influences as public ritual. Most of the animals
incorporated into effigy pottery could have been
regarded as personal tutelaries accessible to
everyone. Modeling of humans must have had
another rationale, none of it having any particularly sacred aspect as far as we can tell (cats.
434, 439). Commonly held beliefs are thought
to include the primal importance of caves within
hills.21 The large earthwork platforms that supported the shrines and chiefs' houses are interpreted as having drawn from this power.
In the years after 1000 a distinctive imagery
became established, which lasted into historic
times. This imagery centered around objects
that were literal or metaphorical expressions of
certain powers. Conspicuous among them were
the animals connected with the ritual invocation
of cosmological forces. Many of these mammals,
birds, and insects, however, have less exalted,
even playful associations as well (cat. 433).
Images of man and animals were frequently
combined in ways suggesting particular myths
in which these creatures were central characters. Birds in particular represented specific
positions in society. In this sense the bird kingdom was thought of as a metaphor for human
society.22

fig. 6. Paired Figures Confronting a Forked Pole.

This motif is a serpent theme; the figures have woodpecker-headed hatchets in their belts. Drawing from
pieces of engraved marine-shell cup, c. 1300

Artistic expression separated the female

world from that of the male. In human images
women are confined to the earliest period of
artistic production and were the centers of
mythic tableaux revolving around the origin of
fertility and the gifts of the cult founder. They
feature such elements as generation of squash
plants from the body of magical cougarserpents.23 Males play an entirely different role
in imagery that centered around warfare, spirit
quest, divination, hunting, and the impersonation of magical forces.
Within this broad range of expression certain
themes stand out for their connection with the
chiefly ancestors, secular power, and warfare.
The honored ancestors can be depicted as heads
or mysterious figures. In more abstract fashion,
hand and eye in certain contexts signify the
gods (cat. 430). Litters become images of chiefly
office. Associated with this theme of secular
power are woodpeckers, specifically woodpecker-effigy war hatchets.
Warfare in general is a theme finding many
expressions. Images of fierce warriors represent
ideals of male prowess in battle and success in
raiding. The falcon, pileated woodpecker, and
turkey were employed to represent fierceness in
combat and the other traits of the successful
warrior. Serpents held a strong place in
imagery, although their meaning changed over
time (cat. 431). In later prehistory the imaginary piasa monster was the typical embodiment
of the dangerous ruler of the underworld. This
monster was depicted as a rattlesnake with
cougar head, avian wings, and animal legs with
talons.24 The mixture brought together elements
of certain creatures that played a role as tutelaries of warfare: cougar, serpent, and hawk.25 It

THE A M E R I C A S

533

6.

7.
8.

fig. 7. Piasa Monster. Drawing of side and front view of an image engraved on a pottery vessel

9
10.
11.
12.
13.

is primarily in this context that we have to

interpret this fearful monster.
Much of this animal imagery can be interpreted as an evocation of the creature's power.
Parts of animals are widely employed to these
ends, as in the figure of speech known as synecdoche, in which the part stands for the whole.26
The distinctive forked marking around the
falcon eye was regularly used to stand for the
bird. The crossed poles of the chiefly litter were
used to stand for the chief's office itself.
In all, the overwhelming theme of southeastern imagery at the time of Columbus can be
thought of as centering around men in their
capacity to manage the powerful and often
magical properties of both the upper and lower
worlds. Men were depicted as either gods or
captive foes. Animals were used for their symbolic value as representations of the most potent
forces of the upper and lower worlds. Humans
were more than ritual mediators with the
powers of these two worlds. For certain purposes humans were divided into social groups
that represented these worlds. Society was
organized by cosmic principles.
In this the land of the Old South, a country
so conducive to successful agriculture in a
preindustrial world of America, a high culture
arose around the year 1000 that produced a rich
art that is only now becoming recognized. Upon
this base a large population of interrelated communities arose that used this artistic expression
as a means of placing humankind in proper
order with potent cosmic forces. Both human
and animal forms were used interchangeably
with certain preferences being typical of particular periods. One enduring principle was the
identification of certain animals as representatives of either the upper or lower worlds. Birds

534

CIRCA 1492

were predominately aligned with the upper

world together with the sun and heavenly
sources of nurture. Serpents belonged to opposing, dangerous forces of the lower world. At the
period of contact with the Europeans, the
human form was used to represent overwhelmingly the gods, the ancestral dead, and possibly
the living representative of this line of ancestors. Otherwise Mississippian art, which has
contributed some remarkable images of human
life, made use of the underworld monsters in its
increasing preoccupation with the successful
pursuit of war and survival through defense.

14.
15.

16.
17.

18.

NOTES
-L. Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca. Translated by John and Jeannette Varner (Austin, 1951).,
xxxviii. El Inca was a pseudonym.
2. The aftermath is well covered by David Hurst
Thomas, ed., Columbian Consequences, Volume 2,
Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the
Spanish Borderlands East (Washington, 1990). See
also Peter Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M.
Thomas Hatley, eds., Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in
the Colonial Southeast (Lincoln, 1989).
3. Malcolm C. Webb, "Functional and Historical Parallelisms between Mesoamerican and Mississippian
Cultures" in Patricia Galloway, ed., The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis
(Lincoln, 1989), 279-293.
4. Carl Ortwin Sauer, Sixteenth-Century North
America (Berkeley, 1971).
5. The baseline work that covers this route is that of
the DeSoto Commission: John R. Swanton, Final
Report of the United States De Soto Expedition
Commission (1939, republished Washington, 1985,
with a new introduction). Since that publication,
archaeology has made great advances in identifying
the towns and villages of the period with the help of

19.
20.

21.
22.
23.
24.

25.

26.

a sharpened knowledge of the articles of the Soto

expedition. A handy guide to the contribution of
archaeology to the identification of the route is
Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath, eds., First
Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean
and the United States, 1492-1570 (Gainesville,
1989).
Close attention to documents provides details. See
Charles Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions (Washington, 1990); and John H. Hann, Apalachee, The
Land Between the Rivers (Gainesville, 1988).
Lewis H. Larson, Aboriginal Subsistence Technology
on the Southeastern Coastal Plain during the Late
Prehistoric Period (Gainesville, 1980).
David H. Dye and Cheryl Anne Cox, eds., Towns
and Temples Along the Mississippi (Tuscaloosa,
1990).
Garcilaso de la Vega 1951,13-14.
Garcilaso de la Vega 1951, 316-322.
Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians
[exh. cat. Detroit Institute of Arts] (Detroit, 1985),
pis. 95, 96, 139, 140, 141.
John R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Washington, 1911), 172.
James Adair, The History of the American Indians
(London, 1775), 22-23.
Guy Prentice, "An Analysis of the Symbolism
Expressed by the Birger Figurine," American Antiquity 51 (1986), 239-266.
Swanton 1911. A particularly rich body of information is available about the practices of the elite in the
chiefly society reported by John M. Goggin and
William C. Sturtevant, "The Calusa: A Stratified,
Nonagricultural Society (with Notes on Sibling
Marriage)" in Explorations in Cultural Anthropology, ed. Ward H. Goodenough (New York, 1964),
192.
Garcilaso de la Vega 1951, 15, 343.
Examples of pottery images and shell masks can be
found in David H. Dye and Camille Wharey, "Exhibition Catalog" in Patricia Galloway, ed., The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and
Analysis (Lincoln, 1989), 321-378.
Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (Knoxville, 1976).
Hudson 1976, 129.
These and other behavioral associations can be found
in Hudson 1976, 146, 257; Webb 1989, 282; and
Vernon James Knight, Jr., "The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion," American
Antiquity 51 (1986), 675-687.
Knight 1986, 675-687.
Hudson 1976.
Prentice 1986, 239-266.
Phillip Phillips and James A. Brown, Pre-Columbian
Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro,
Oklahoma, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University, part i (Cambridge,
Mass., 1978), 140-143.
The combination also plays on the snake's anomalous features: born from an egg but hated by birds;
adept at swimming in water, crawling on land, and
hanging from trees (Hudson 1976,144-145).
Robert L. Hall, "The Cultural Background of Mississippian Symbolism," in Patricia Galloway, ed., The
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and
Analysis (Lincoln, 1989), 239-278, and "Cahokia
Identity and Interaction Models of Cahokia Mississippian," in Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle
Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest, ed. Thomas
E. Emerson and R. Barry Lewis (Urbana, 1991), 334-

EMBLEMS OF POWER IN THE

CHIEFDOMS OF THE NEW WORLD
Warwick Bray

Ihe first European contacts with the New

World were not with Aztec Mexico or Inka
Peru, but with the lands in between (the old
"Spanish Main"), where the conquistadors
encountered simpler forms of society ruled by
local chiefs (caciques).1 Each cacique controlled
a group of villages. Most of these territories
were small, with populations of ten to forty
thousand subjects, nearly all of whom lived
within a day's journey of the principal town.
Since warfare was endemic, some of these towns
were fortified.
The chiefdoms of the Americas were hierarchic, nonegalitarian societies in which power,
status, and wealth were concentrated in the hands
of a ruling elite.2 At the top of the hierarchy was
the chief himself, supported in office by contributions in goods and services from his subjects.
The cacique was the ultimate political authority.
He declared war, made diplomatic alliances,
adjudicated quarrels and disputes, and controlled the production and distribution of
certain goods. He also sponsored feasts and
religious ceremonies at which he gave presents
to his supporters and handed out food and
drink to the populace at large. As possessor of
sacred knowledge and "owner" or patron of
essential rituals, the authority of the chief
became sanctified, identified with important
supernatural forces, and surrounded with
religious ceremonialism.
This power brought its rewards. Chiefs
received special titles and forms of obeisance,
insignia of rank, the finest craft products, a retinue of slaves and servants, and all the trappings
of influence and status. In death as in life these
distinctions were maintained. Paramount chiefs
were dressed for burial in gold from head to
foot, and into the tomb were put all that was
needed for the afterlife: food, serving vessels,
regalia and weapons, and sometimes also wives
and servants.
When we consider the products of the
American chiefdoms we must abandon European attitudes about art and artistic values. In
these societies, gold was not particularly valued
as bullion or as precious metal. The son of a
Panamanian chief pointed out to the Spaniards
that raw gold had no more value than a lump of

clay until it was transformed into something

useful or pleasing.3 In the pre-Hispanic New
World, gold objects served a purpose as symbols
of authority and prestige. Chiefs bedecked their
bodies with gold. They competed for it, used it
to bribe political allies, and with it paid ransoms
for sons captured in war. They stole it from
their rivals and, in times of danger, hoarded it
in secret places. Gold ornaments functioned as
insignia of rank and as amulets or talismans;
they defined tribal or lineage identities and,
indirectly, linked the real world with the supernatural. All these artifacts carried messages
whose different layers of meaning could be
decoded by all members of a particular society.
This area of lower Central America and
northern South America, stretching between
the Aztec and Inka empires, was the home of
many different ethnic groups, each with its own
culture. Notable works of art, in gold and other
materials, were produced by the inhabitants of
the Diquis and Chiriqui subregions of the
isthmus, in the Sinu and Tairona archaeological
zones of Caribbean Colombia, and also by the
Musicas of the Colombian highlands and the
Manteno of Ecuador.
The subregions of Diquis and Greater
Chiriqui included most of the frontier area

along the present-day boundary between Costa

Rica and Panama.4 On the Pacific side it incorporated the Diquis region of southwest Costa
Rica and the adjacent Panamanian provinces of
Chiriqui and much of Veraguas. Finds of similar
pottery and goldwork at the Caribbean end of
the frontier extend this culture area to the
coastal region visited by Columbus in 1502
during his fourth voyage.
In the sixteenth century the name Veragua
was applied to the whole of Caribbean Panama
from the Laguna de Chiriqui to Punta Rincon.
The diary of Fernando Columbus describes a
typical beach scene at Cerebaro, now known as
Almirante Bay. The Spaniards found twenty
canoes pulled onto the beach and "the people on
the shore naked as they were born, except for a
mirror of gold at the neck, and some with an
eagle of guanin [gold-copper alloy]."5 This is the
first mention of the discs and eagle pendants
found archaeologically throughout the isthmus.
The brief accounts by members of Columbus'
expedition can be supplemented by later documents from Diquis.6 Spanish chroniclers
reported that the population was organized
into a network of villages, the largest of which
served as the residences of paramount chiefs
who warred with each other for booty and

THE A M E R I C A S

535

fig. i. View of Lake Guatavita, Colombia

slaves. In 1562 Vazquez de Coronado noted that

war captives were brought back as slaves for
sacrifice, and these victims may have provided
the trophy heads depicted on Diquis sculpture
and gold work.
Archaeological sites in Diquis are of various
sizes. They are made up of residential sectors
surrounded by clusters of hilltop cemeteries,
some of them marked by stone statues or huge
spheres carved from granite. The difference
between rich and poor graves mirrors the social
hierarchy in life. Some tombs contain only a
few simple pots or a single gold item; others
(like the Huacal de los Reyes, discovered early in
this century) held several pounds of gold ornaments. A single tomb, opened in 1956 at Palmar
Sur,7 yielded eighty-eight metal objects: round
breastplates, human and animal pendants, bells,
536

CIRCA 1492

crescents, head bands, and sheet-metal cuffs,

precisely the kind of chiefly regalia listed in
early Spanish accounts. At Coctu, a major
Diquis town, one of the chief's sons was himself
a goldsmith.
The subject matter of Diquis goldwork is
mainly figurative: animals (especially the
so-called eagle pendants), human beings, and
mythological creatures, part human and part
animal. Within the natural world, Diquis
goldsmiths were selective. The most common
creatures depicted are those that are dangerous
or predatory, that sting, bite, or kill: jaguars,,
alligators, sharks, birds of prey, crabs, scorpions,
spiders, bats, supernatural monsters.
Some clues to the belief system that underlies this selection may be deduced from the
mythology of present-day Indian groups. In

historical times, for example, the Bribri and

Cabecar Indians of Costa Rica had a single principal deity, called Sibo or Sibu, who was the
creator of all things. It was Sibu who brought
the seeds from which humankind sprouted; he
taught people to dance and selected the clans
from which shamans were drawn. He took the
form of a kite or buzzard. In the words of a
Bribri song:
Sibu came in the form of a buzzard
dressed as a man,
collar on his neck.8
Collars or necklaces are a standard feature on
the eagle pendants of Diquis and Greater
Chiriqui, and there are other pendants with
human bodies and the wings and heads of birds
of prey. We can never be sure that the pre-His-

panic eagle pendants represent Sibu but, given

the importance of predatory birds in indigenous
beliefs, it is not too surprising that the last
cacique of Talamanca, who died as recently as
1910, wore as his regalia a necklace of six large
pendants of just this type.9
The Sinu archaeological zone, in the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia, is a land of savannas, great rivers, and lagoons: an aquatic
landscape, much of which is flooded during the
rainy season. In the sixteenth century it was
one of the richest and most populated areas of
Colombia, divided into chiefdoms ruled over
by three great lords. When Pedro de Heredia
visited the principal town in 1534 he found a
settlement of large houses, with a temple capable of holding more than a thousand people and
containing twenty-four wooden idols covered
with sheet gold. These images were arranged
in pairs, each pair supporting a hammock filled
with gold offerings. Around this temple were
the burial mounds of the chiefs, each mound
topped by a tree whose branches were hung
with golden bells.10
Another early chronicler, Juan de Castellanos,
noted in 1589 that Sinu goldsmiths made "figurines of various kinds, aquatic creatures, land
animals and birds, down to the most lowly and
unimportant/'11 His account is especially important as an eyewitness description of the types
of objects that were later to be recovered from
archaeological finds. Sinu goldwork falls into
two broad categories: personal jewelry (ear
ornaments, nose pieces, penis sheaths, belts,
helmets, and diadems) and representations of
the natural world (birds, animals, and recognizable human beings). These latter are always true
to life and depict the animals and birds of the
savannas and rivers. Sinu metalwork lacks the
obviously mythological and supernatural quality
that is so marked in works from the Diquis region.
On the other hand the political elements of
chiefdom society are well represented in Sinu
culture and are encapsulated in another passage
from Simon, who referred to three great lords,
each of whom governed one of the chiefdoms
(zenues) into which the region was divided.
Paramount among these chiefs was the ruler of
Zenufana, whose sister commanded in Finzenu.
When she died, the lord of Zenufana ordered
all the greatest lords of the other two Zenues
to be buried in the Zemi belonging to his
sister, with all the gold belonging to them at
the hour of their death... or at least that they
should have their tombs in the cemetery of
the great sanctuary and in the Bohio (dwelling) of the Devil that was in Finzenu
But
if they did not want to be buried there, but in
their own land, they should at least send half
of the gold in their possession at time of

death, so that the gold should be buried in

their place in the tomb mentioned above.
This law was so inviolable that nobody would
dare to break it.12
As an account of the role played by gold in
prehistoric politics, Simon's story is second
to none.
The Taironas of the Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta and the adjacent coastlands possessed
one of the most sophisticated cultures of Caribbean America. The largest towns served as the
capitals of mini-states, each one with its own
cacique supported by a class of noblemen and
specialist priests.13 One such town, Buritaca-ioo
(the "Lost City"), has well over a square mile of
stone-built house foundations residential and
agricultural terraces with spectacular retaining
walls interspersed with tombs, staircases,
roads, irrigation canals, and drains.
Tairona artifacts in all media are replete with
symbolism, but all distinctions between the
sacred and the profane are blurred; the real
world and the supernatural world merge into an
all-embracing philosophy. The gold (or gold
alloy) "cacique pendants" illustrate this point.
Some of them seem to represent individuals of
high rank, dressed in a full set of Tairona
jewelry. Other pendants, wearing identical regalia, are only part human, and have the heads

of jaguars or bats. These human-animal transformations probably reflect the world of hallucinatory drugs, which enable shamans to leave
their earthly bodies and to make journeys to the
spirit world.14
Gold and other precious or sacred substances
provide a link (with chiefs and shamans serving
as intermediaries) between earthly power and
the cosmic forces of life-giving energy. Among
the modern Kogui, direct descendants of the
Taironas, gold itself is charged with solar
energy.15 At certain times of year the Kogui
priests bring out Tairona heirlooms of gold and
gilded copper and place them on a special mat
under the full rays of the sun. This act is
believed to recharge the objects with their fertilizing cosmic energy, which is transmitted to
the priests and, through them, to all the participants in the ritual. The sun itself is personified
as a man in a golden mask, and the familiar
animals of Tairona art have their places in Kogui
mythology. The bat was a child of Mulkuxe, the
sun, from an incestuous relationship; the frog
or toad served as a seat when the sun received
visitors, and was for a time his spouse. The
Kogui regard themselves as jaguar people; their
land is the territory of the jaguar, and their
ancestors were jaguar men. This testimony
from the Taironas' descendants is a compelling

fig. 2. Raft. Muisca, cast gold. This votive offering, a raft with human figures, may represent the El
Dorado ceremonies. Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
THE A M E R I C A S

537

argument that Tairona goldwork is much more

than a decorative art.
The archaeological remains of the Muiscas are
unspectacular, but their society, like that of the
Taironas, can be classified as an advanced chiefdom or an incipient state.16
Rich individuals wore jewelry made of
imported gold or gold alloyed with locally available copper, manufactured by specialist craftsmen under the patronage of caciques.
Castellanos remarked that the goldsmiths of the
town of Guatavita were esteemed as specialists,
traveling through the neighboring provinces
and earning a living by their skills.17 It is said,
too, that anyone employing a Guatavita jeweler
had to send two of his own vassals to work
in Guatavita for the duration of the contract.
Other goldsmiths were attached to the principal shrines and were perhaps responsible for
making the tunjos, which are a uniquely Muisca
contribution to native American metallurgy.
These tunjos were not jewelry, but votive
offerings, roughly cast in the shape of human
figures, animals, snakes and dragons, weapons,
insignia, and household utensils. The aim seems
to have been to produce objects that were easily
recognizable (with plenty of diagnostic detail)
rather than merely beautiful, well finished, or
correctly proportioned. Tunjos may have served
much the same purpose as the ex votos offered
in today's churches.
Muisca shrines were located in inaccessible
places such as mountain peaks, caves, and
lagoons, and they continued in clandestine use
long after the Spanish conquest. They are
described as small dark huts made of wood and
straw, black with the smoke of incense. Inside

538

C I R C A 1492

were the idols and the offerings: uncut

emeralds, seashells brought from the Caribbean
coast, wooden items, and tunjos wrapped in
cotton cloth and stored in jars or packed in mantles. The offerings were eventually buried outside the temple.
The most famous Muisca ritual, which has
earned a permanent place in the legends of the
New World, is the ceremony of El Dorado (literally the "gilded man") carried out at Lake Guatavita.18 Each new ruler, when he took office,
went to the sacred lagoon where his skin was
annointed with a sticky earth onto which was
blown gold dust until he was covered from head
to foot. He was then placed on a raft, with piles
of gold items and emeralds to be offered to the
gods, and with him went four retainers, also
with their offerings. To the sound of music and
chanting the raft slowly moved to the center of
the lake, where the gilded man made his offerings and (in some versions of the story) plunged
into the lagoon to wash off his golden coating.
In the words of Juan Rodriguez Freyle (who
learned the details from the nephew of the last
cacique of Guatavita): "From this ceremony
came the celebrated name of El Dorado, which
has cost so many lives/'19 No European ever witnessed the ceremony, but many like to believe
that the raft of El Dorado is represented by the
finest of the tunjos in the collection of the
Museo del Oro in Bogota.
NOTES
1. Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966).
2. Robert A. Drennan and Carlos A. Uribe, eds., Chief doms of the Americas (Lanham, 1987); Mary W.

3.
4.

5.
6.
7.

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.

Helms, Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power

(Austin and London, 1979).
Helms 1979, 79.
Doris Stone, Pre-Columbian Man in Costa Rica
(Cambridge, 1977), 107-135; Elizabeth P. Benson,
ed., Between Continents/Between Seas: Precolumbian Art of Costa Rica [exh. cat. Detroit Institute of
Arts] (Detroit, 1981).
Sauer 1966, 131.
Luis Ferrero A., "Ethnohistory and Ethnography in
the Central HighlandsAtlantic Watershed and
Diquis," Detroit 1981, 93-103.
Samuel K. Lothrop, Archaeology of the Diquis
Delta, Costa Rica, Papers of the Peabody Museum
of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
51 (1963), 94.
Doris Stone, The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica,
Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University 43, no. 2 (1962), 64.
Ferrero in Detroit 1981, fig. 34.
Fray Pedro Simon, Noticias Historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales,
bk. 4 (Bogota, 1892), 32-34.
Juan de Castellanos, Elegias de Varones Ilustres de
Indias (Bogota, 1955), 3:74.
Simon 1892, 26.
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, Colombia (London,
1965), 142-158.
Gerardo Reichel-Dolamatoff, Orfebrena y Chamanismo: Un estudio iconogrdfico del Museo del Oro
(Medellfn, 1988).
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, "Things of Beauty
Replete with Meaning Metals and Crystals in Colombian Indian Cosmology/7 in Sweat of the Sun,
Tears of the Moon: Gold and Emerald Treasures of
Colombia [exh. cat. Natural History Museum of Los
Angeles County] (Los Angeles, 1981), 17-33.
Reichel-Dolmatoff 1965, 158-168.
Castellanos 1955, 4:142.
Warwick Bray, The Gold of El Dorado [exh. cat. The
Royal Academy] (London, 1978), 18-23.
Juan Rodriguez Freyle, El Carnero (Medellfn, n.d.),
66.

THE A M E R I C A S

539

THE AZTEC EMPIRE

By the late fifteenth century the Aztecs had
created one of the most glittering civilizations
of pre-Columbian America. Their achievement
was of relatively recent origin in the long chronology of Mesoamerican culture. About two
hundred years before, the tribe that called itself
Mexica had arrived in the Valley of Mexico
after a long migration from the north. The
Aztecs established their capital of Tenochtitlan
on the site of present-day Mexico City and,
excellent soldiers from the start, gradually
extended their control over a sizable empire. In
the course of their march to power, they assimilated the deities of the cultures they conquered,
and their religion attained a formidable complexity. A complicated system of tribute levied

356
CODEX FEJERVARY-MAYER
c. 1400-1521
Aztec or Mixtec
paint on animal skin overpainted with gesso
each page 17.5 x 17.5, total length 404
(67/s x 67/s x 159)

reference: Leon-Portilla 1985

The Board of Trustees of the National Museums
and Galleries on Mersey side, Liverpool Museum,
12014 Mayer
The Codex Fejervdry-Mayer, which received its
title from the names of two of its former owners,
is a pre-Hispanic book of forty-four pages made of
folded strips of animal hide. Aside from its beauty
and its excellent state of preservation, it is especially interesting because of its unique subject
matter. Whereas most of the small number of preHispanic codices that have come down to us
appear to have been prepared for the use of
priests, the Codex Fejervdry-Mayer reflects the
special concerns of the pochteca, the Nahua longdistance merchants.
Since at least the classic period in Mesoamerica
(the first to ninth centuries A.D.), wealthy merchants operated along permanent routes of trade.
Some of them went back and forth with their
goods from central Mexico to distant places in
Oaxaca, Guatemala, and the fringes of the Yucatan Peninsula. Others traveled in their boats along
the Caribbean shores. Their trade included both
raw materials and manufactured objects: precious
stones, amber, bundles of cacao, tiger skins, feathers, live birds and beasts, and also gold and silver
and jewels, fine clothes, embroideries, ceramics,
copper knives, other utensils, weapons, and
musical instruments. The name of these longdistance traders was derived from pochotl (ceiba
540

CIRCA 1492

on their vassal states assured a constant flow of

goods, including luxury items, into the capital.
Tenochtitlan itself, built on a series of islands in
a lake, was one of the world's greatest and most
populous cities in 1492. It suggested the marvels of Venice to the band of provincial Spaniards who arrived there, led by Herndn Cortes,
in 1519.
The city was demolished in the course of the
struggle with the Spanish forces, who were
joined by a number of the Aztecs' traditional
enemies. Countless works of art were destroyed
or buried forever beneath the modern Mexican
capital. Nevertheless, enough has survived to
provide us with a vivid picture of this extraordinary culture. As is the case in contemporary

Europe, much of Aztec art is religious: sculptures of various deities, priestly paraphernalia,
and pictographic manuscripts that can still be
read. The function of the remarkably naturalistic representations of plants and animals is
unclear; they may have been intended for
public monuments or for private collections.
Luxurious works in gold, exotic feathers, and
turquoise mosaic were created for the use of the
nobility and the royal house. In this very militaristic society an entire class of objects is associated with battle and with the cult of human
sacrifice; it was believed that the blood of
human victims who in practice were principally war captives was needed to nourish the
gods and ensure the continuation of human life.

tree), as they "used to have places designated for

their tiangues [markets], where they gather for
transactions, fairs and exchanges, and they have
there two, three or four ceiba trees to provide
shade; and in several plazas two, three, four ceibas
are sufficient to give shade to one or two thousand people" (Oviedo y Valdes 1851-1855,1:345).
Several indigenous sources provide information
about the pochteca, who operated in groups and
had their headquarters in important Aztec towns
such as Tlatelolco, Tochtepec in present-day
Oaxaca, and Xicalanco on the Gulf coast. The
Florentine Codex describes, in the Nahuatl
language, the special feasts and ceremonies
performed by the pochteca, both before they
departed on commercial enterprises and when
they returned.
Early texts also provide ample information
about the titular gods of the pochteca and the way
the merchants conducted their affairs, always consulting the special books they owned, known as
the tonalamatl ("books of the days and destinies"), which were arranged in accordance with
the z6o-day astrological count. Consulting these
books, the pochteca determined the most propitious days to depart on ventures, to celebrate and
thank their gods for the profits they made, or to
perform the funerary rites for their deceased colleagues, those who may have been attacked and
murdered on the road.
The present work is such a tonalamatl. Its first
page contains an image of the world. The four
cosmic regions are represented with the glyphs
denoting the east, north, west, and south. In the
center is the old god of fire presiding over the
whole imago mundi. Each of the cosmic regions
has its corresponding color red, yellow, greenish
blue, and bluish green and also its own gods,
trees, birds, and other related attributes. The

omnipresent Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror") is

also visible. His attributes head, one arm, one
foot, and bones are evident, associated with the
four cosmic directions.
Tezcatlipoca is lord of the everywhere and also
he who introduces motion, life, and time into the
world. From his head, arm, foot, and bones issue
four streams of blood, the source of life, converging toward the center of the image where the
old fire god, also lord of time, resides. The four
cosmic regions are the stage on which time, destinies, and life interact. The z6o-day count of destinies is twice registered, encompassing everything
that exists in the four cosmic regions. For the
pochteca, who marched to distant parts of Mesoamerica, here was a complex message. To arrange
one's affairs successfully, one had to learn the
meanings of the days in their relation to the
cosmic regions.

cat. 356, detail of p. 37: Yacatecuhtli Bearing Crossroads

He is recognized as the one

Who does as He wishes,
He determines, He amuses Himself.
As He wishes, so will it be.
In the palm of His hand
He has us.
At His will He shifts us around.
We shift around
like marbles we roll,
He rolls us around endlessly.
(Florentine Codex 1979, 2: book 6, fol. 43 v).

Several pages (35-40) include representations of

gods to be worshipped and of ceremonies to be
performed in accordance with divine manifestations, well known to the Nahua peoples of central
Mexico in Aztec times. Among them, six are
especially important. They are Yacatecuhtli, lord
of the nose; Chalmecacihuatl, lady of Chalma;
Acxomoculi, an avatar of Tezcatlipoca; Nacxit,
"four feet"; Cochimetl; and Yacapitzahua, associated with Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.
These six deities were the much-revered patron
gods of the pochteca.
On other pages (5-22) one sees, related to different dates (days-destinies), series of numbers:
bars meaning fives and dots for units. One might
have guessed that these would indicate astronomical computations or perhaps something as
mundane as profits and losses in transactions.
However, it is now known through accounts provided in Nahuatl by pochteca in the sixteenth century, after the fall of Aztec Mexico, that these
numbers, so carefully distributed, show how the
offerings to the gods were to be presented.
The book also refers to several dates that were
particularly meaningful to the merchants. One

such date is i Death (page 5), which was propitious for them. On it they performed rituals honoring Tezcatlipoca. Associated with a scene of a
dead body of a merchant who lost his life on the
road is the day-sign \ Water (page 17), which the
Florentine Codex describes as particularly adverse
to the merchants.
Many are the roads and crossroads depicted in
the book. They can be found in at least eleven
places in the codex; on one page (43) two crossroads are painted. In the upper one, several dates
are indicated, which we know from the Nahuatl
texts of the Florentine Codex are those on which
the pochteca should choose to embark in order to
ensure a propitious trading enterprise. The most
advisable of these dates was Ce coatl, melahuac
ohtli (i Serpent, "straightway").
The last page of the book is devoted fully to
Tezcatlipoca, the lord of everywhere and here also
of everywhen, as he appears surrounded by the
twenty day-signs with twelve dots added to each
sign. A complete tonalpohuallif the 26o-day
count, thus encompasses "the smoking mirror,"
the supreme Tezcatlipoca. He appears as well on
the first page and on several others of the codex.

Tezcatlipoca and Yacatecuhtli (lord of the nose)

were the supreme dual counterparts among the
patron deities of the pochteca. The merchants
knew this fact well. Their book, not surprisingly,
recalls it again and again.
Some specialists have claimed the style of this
book is Mixtec, that is from the Oaxaca region.
Comparisons with several extant Mixtec codices
seem convincing on this point. Nevertheless the
contents of the book correspond to the beliefs and
practices of the people of central Mexico, especially to the pochteca from the Nahua region. It
may well be that the wealthy pochteca for whom
the book was created commissioned Mixtec
scribes and painters to produce it. The pochteca
were in frequent contact with the Mixtecs living
in what are today the regions of Puebla and
Oaxaca, and it would have been easy for them to
turn to Mixtec artists for such work.
The splendid book they produced, relating the
beliefs and wisdom of the pochteca, has in this
century become familiar to scholars through facsimile editions produced in England, Germany,
Austria, and Mexico. Not even the finest of these,
however, can convey the beauty of the original,
which has survived almost unscathed the destruction of the world that created it.
M.L. -p.

THE A M E R I C A S

541

357
HEAD OF COYOLXAUHQUI
Aztec
green porphyry
8ox8$x 68 (iil/2 x 332/4 x 263/4)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
This colossal sculpture was discovered in 1830 in
the basement of the old convent of Santa Teresa,
which is located near the National Palace of
Mexico City. On learning of its discovery, a wellknown historian of the time, Don Carlos Maria de
Bustamente, convinced the nuns to give it to the
Museo Nacional, where it remains part of this
institution's collection. It was not until the turn
of the century, however, that it was correctly
identified by Eduard Seler as the head of the
moon goddess Coyolxauhqui, Coatlicue's malevo-

lent, matricidal daughter, who was slain and dismembered by her half-brother Huitzilopochtli,
the sun of war (Nicholson 1983, 49), in the
Aztecs' extraordinary myth explaining the birth
of the sun (see Coe essay in this catalogue).
In this masterpiece the Aztec artists concretized
the symbolism of the goddess in a dense greenish
stone, which when finished takes an exceptional

cat. 357, view of underside

polish. The deity's face occupies almost the whole

front of the piece. Her closed eyelids show that
she is dead. The bells on her cheeks, incised on
top with a cross-and-four-dots motif that was a
sign for gold among the Aztecs, are her principal
ornament and give meaning to her name Coyolxauhqui ("painted with bells"). Her enormous
earrings are circular disks with triangular pendants, which also adorn her nose and cover her
mouth. These symbolize rays of light and indicate
that she is the moon, the luminous star of the
night.
The feather headdress resembles an enormous
flower with an open corolla. A tuft of long feathers hanging to the side forms the characteristic
adornment for outstanding warriors. Small circular feathers over the whole head identify military
prisoners who would be sacrificed.
On the base of the sculpture, in fine relief, the
artists represented currents of water and fire,
which when mixed symbolized burnt water, the
life-giving blood of the universe, the precious
liquid that feeds the sun and the earth. Also on
the base is the calendar date, i Rabbit, that is
directly associated with the symbol of this goddess and other deities of darkness and the earth.
F.S. and M.D.C.

358

TONATIUH
Aztec
volcanic stone
30 (n3/4)
Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basel
This young god sits with crossed arms resting on
drawn-up knees; disks with raised central bosses
are found on the pillbox-like headgear and on
decorative bands around the lower legs. The identity of the youthful deity is given by the feathersurrounded device placed on his back: this is the
familiar sun disk with solar rays, marked by the
sign for the fifth sun, 4 Ollin.
It is thus virtually certain that this is Tonatiuh,
the vibrant, youthful solar deity worshipped in
central Mexico long before some of his functions
were usurped by the Aztec tutelary god Huitzilopochtli. A directly comparable image appears on
page 71 of the Codex Borgia: Tonatiuh, his face
and body painted red, with an identical headband
and with the solar disk on his back, is enthroned
with knees drawn up. He receives the blood from
a beheaded quail. To complete the identification
in the drawing, there is a 4 Ollin sign below
the throne.
This sculpture may be the only three-dimensional carving of Tonatiuh to have survived the
conquest; his cult may never have been a particularly popular one. On the other hand, statues of
542

CIRCA 1492

his solar rival, Huitzilopochtli, are nonexistent,

perhaps because the Spanish troops and missionaries made every effort to obliterate the image
of that deity wherever they found it.
M.D.C.

359
CODEX COSPI
c. 1430-1521
Aztec or Mixtec
screenfold manuscript
paint on animal skin overpainted with gesso
each page 18 x 18, total length 360 (jl/s x jVs
x
Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, MS 4093
The Codex Cospi is a ritual screenfold manuscript
of a kind that must have existed in every temple
and religious seminary within the Aztec empire.
Its exact origin remains unknown. Eduard Seler
(1902, 351), who made the first study of the manuscript, thought that it might have come from
Aztec territory bordering on the land of the

Maya, but there is little evidence for or against

this idea. There are strong iconographic ties
between the Cospi and other members of the
so-called "Borgia Group" of screenfolds, such
as the Codex Borgia and Codex Vaticanus B.
Seven of the twenty pages of the obverse of the
Codex Cospi were left blank, as were eight pages
of the reverse. Different hands are evident on the
two sides. The artist responsible for the obverse
worked with thin and extraordinarily uniform
black outlines, which he filled in with flat colors
in a rich but muted palette. The reverse is carried
out by a more hasty hand, with hesitant outlines
and bright and somewhat clashing colors. This
dichotomy extends to the completely different
iconographic content of the two sides.
There are three thematic sections on the
obverse. On pages 1-8, the tonalpohualli (the
sacred calendar of 260 days) is laid out in fiftytwo columns of five members each, each day
being accompanied by the head or symbol of the
ruling lord of the night, in a repeating succession
of nine lords. Next, on pages 9 to 11, is the Venus
calendar. Last, on pages 12-13, eacn f fur 8OC^S
stands, with a smoking, ladle-type incense burner,

before a temple; as Seler (1902, 344-345) recognized, the day-signs in a column to the left of
each picture assign each of the deities to one of
the four world-directions (the sun god Tonatiuh
to the east, for instance). Both pages can be
matched, in much fuller form, by pages 49-52
of the Codex Borgia. A comparison with pages
25-28 of the Dresden Codex, a fifteenth-century
Maya screenfold manuscript, suggests that both
the Cospi and Borgia sections represent New Year
rituals through a succession of four years: Reed,
Flint, House, and Rabbit.
There is yet no convincing explanation of pages
21 to 31 of the reverse of the Codex Cospi. Here
eleven deities, some of them clearly female, are
seated, each holding a shield with darts in the
right hand and an atlatl (spear thrower) with dart
in the left. Below each figure is a grouping of barand-dot numbers (6, 7, 8, 9, and n)arranged in an
/-shaped layout, which probably represents arrays
of offerings to be made to the god. At the sides
of each page are the figures of animals, insects,
scorpions, and animal-headed hearts, which have
not yet been interpreted.
The Venus pages are of the greatest iconoTHE A M E R I C A S

543

graphic interest in the Cospi. As morning star, the

planet was worshipped under the name of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (lord of dawn), and identified
with the god Quetzalcoatl. The Mesoamericans
knew that Venus rose heliacally (with the sun) on
the eastern horizon every 584 days following a
short period of disappearance during conjunction;
consequently the Venus tables in the Cospi,
Borgia, Vaticanus B, and Maya Dresden manuscripts are all based on the equation 5 x 584 =
8 x 365, relating the Venus cycle to the approximate length of the solar year, and upon the
fact that two Calendar Rounds or 104 approximate solar years are exactly equal to sixty-five
Venus cycles.
The rising of Venus in the east just ahead of the
sun was a decidedly baleful event to the Aztecs,
as a passage in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan makes
clear (Thompson 1971, 217):
They (the old men) knew when he [Quetzalcoatl as Venus] appears, on what number and
what particular signs he shines. He casts
his rays at them, and shows his displeasure
with them.
According to this source, on the day i Cipactli,
Quetzalcoatl spears the old men and women, on
i Acatl the great lords, on i Ollin the young men
and maidens; and on i Atl there is drought.
All of the Mesoamerican codices with Venus
tables reflect this belief, and all have five sections
corresponding to the five Venus cycles that make
up an eight-year period. In the Cospi, the morning star is fittingly depicted as a striding death
god with shield and spear, hurling his weapon (the
Venus ray) at a victim; in his headdress he wears
the typical squared-off eagle feathers associated
with the planet.
The Venus calendar in the Codex Cospi begins
in the lower half of page 9, with Venus spearing
Cinteotl, the maize god, who stands on a smoking
milpa (cultivated field): crop failure is obviously
the augury. This event takes place on i Cipactli
(crocodile), the official beginning of the Venus
calendar. Next, on the top of page 9, Chalchiuhtlicue, the water goddess, is speared 584 days later
on the day Coatl (snake), an event that will result
in drought. Since this day is given the coefficient
i, as are all the other heliacal rising days, the
five Venus pages are actually twenty-six cycles
apart, and the entire Cospi scheme covers 2 x 104
solar years.
The third cycle can be seen in the top half of
page 10, with the rising Venus spearing a mountain with snow-capped, twisted top, on the day
i Atl (water). Although the meaning here is
unclear, the water issuing from the base of the
mountain suggests that the victim is the city as a
whole, for in the Nahuatl language altepetl (water,
mountain) was a metaphor for city. Below it is the
start of the fourth cycle, on the day i Acatl (reed),
with the morning star spearing a throne with a
sun on it, surely a symbolic representation of the
544

CIRCA 1492

cat. 359, pages 9 and 10

rulers mentioned in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan;

that these kings are earthly and not divine is
underlined by the fact that the throne rests on a
segment of Tlaltecuhtli, the earth monster.
The final scene in the Cospi Venus calendar is
at the bottom of page 11. At heliacal rising on
i Ollin (motion), the victim is a jaguar holding a
bloody heart; all scholars agree that this creature
stands for the warrior orders and therefore the
young men mentioned in the passage from the
Anales de Cuauhtitlan.
Other day-signs appear in the columns of days
to the left of the pictures in the Cospi. These are
the rest of the first twenty days of the tonalpohualli beginning with i Cipactli; they are also
given in the Codex Borgia.
The Codex Cospi has one of the most venerable
provenances of any Mexican manuscript. Its history constitutes a fascinating chapter in the collecting of American ethnographic objects in Italy
and in the early history of museums. Nothing is

known of its whereabouts before 26 December

1665, when it was given by Count Valerio Zani
to Marquis Fernando Cospi (1606-1686), a Bolognese who on his father's side belonged to an
ancient senatorial family of that city and on his
mother's side was kin to the Medici. The cover,
in seventeenth-century parchment, is inscribed:
"Libro del Messico donato dal Sig. Co. Valerio
Zani al Sig. March. Cospi il di' xvi Die. re
MDCLXV" (book from Mexico given by Count
Valerio Zani to Marquis Cospi the i6th day of
December 1665). At the time he made the presentation Count Valerio Zani evidently thought the
book was Chinese, since the inscription read
"Libro della China/' and was subsequently corrected to read "del Messico," as is indicated by
the fact that the correction falls outside the lines
the scribe had drawn on the leather of the cover
as a guide to his lettering.
The codex then became part of the celebrated
collection of the Marquis Cospi, also known as the

Museo Cospiano, eight years after the collection

had been transferred from Palazzo Cospi to the
Palazzo Pubblico. It had been set up there in preparation for its formal donation to the city of
Bologna, which took place in 1672. On 24 June
1660 the Marquis Fernando, in a "request" to the
Bolognese senate, laid the foundation for the
donation and promised also to have a "printed
Inventory with identifying marks with many
illustrations and eruditions..." drawn up
(Laurencich-Minelli 1982). The two catalogues,
prepared in 1667 and 1677 following Marquis Fernando's request by Dr. Lorenzo Legati, professor
of Greek at the University of Bologna, give the
most detailed information on the codex.
Lorenzo Legati may have been the first scholar
to have recognized the American origin of the
codex. In the 1667 catalogue he listed it in the
chapter entitled "Miscellaneous" as "book...
from India,""India" meaning at that time both the
West Indies and the East Indies. In the more

definitive catalogue, compiled in 1677, he

described it precisely as a book from Mexico and
noted that it was kept in a square box with a
crystal cover that has since been lost.
Legati (1677, 191-192), furthermore, gave the
first accurate description of the codex and supplied measurements, in Bolognese feet, of the
codex when fully opened. However, he did not
seem to realize that leather had been used as a
ground for the writing: he called the support
"paper" and compared its thickness to the cardboard used by booksellers. He did affirm correctly
that the surface was covered with a chalky paint,
which, by making it smooth, rendered it suitable
for writing. With this observation he anticipated
by four centuries the results of the examination
of the surface of the codex with an electron
microscope (Gasparotto and Valdre in LaurencichMinelli 1991). Legati also described the writing
in the codex, relating it to other hieroglyphics
including those incised on the Mexican atlatl that

Count Zani himself had donated, after 1665 but

before 1677, to the adjacent sixteenth-century
museum left to the city of Bologna by the Bolognese protomedico Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605)
(see Laurencich-Minelli 1983 and LaurencichMinelli and Filipetti 1983).
In 1680 the codex was again listed simply as a
"book from Mexico" in the Inventario semplice
di tutte le materie descritte che si trovano nel
Museo Cospiano (Summary inventory of all the
described materials found in the Cospi Museum),
the slender anonymous inventory probably published to establish officially the number of objects
that the Marquis Fernando Cospi had donated to
the city of Bologna along with his museum (Bologna 1680). In 1742 the Aldrovandi and Cospi
collections were transferred from the Palazzo
Pubblico to the Istituto delle Scienze, and on 4
August of that year the Cospi museum was deposited temporarily in the house of a descendant of
Marquis Fernando, the Marquis Girolamo Cospi,
so that he could choose the materials to send to
the science institute (Bologna 1743; LaurencichMinelli 1983,190; Laurencich-Minelli and
Filipetti 1981).
On 6 June 1743 the book from Mexico, along
with other objects from the Museo Cospiano,
entered the Room of Antiquities of the Istituto
delle Scienze (Laurencich-Minelli 1982, 190). In
1803 the library and entire institute became a part
of the University of Bologna. The codex remained
in the library known today as the University
Library (Schiassi 1814).
One can speculate as to how it may have
come into the possession of Count Valerio Zani,
who was a man of considerable learning and a
collector who was a generous benefactor of public
museums. He gave to the Museo Cospiano a
series of medals with the effigies of characters
from the classical world as well as the Codex
Cospi, and at about the same time donated to the
Aldrovandi Museum the Aztec atlatl (Legati
1677,192) that is now in the Museo Etnografico
L. Pigorini in Rome (inv. no. 4212), as are all
among the best American pieces from the Aldrovandi and Cospi collections.
Count Zani was a member of the Accademia
Bolognese dei Gelati, of which he was prince
in 1670-1671, and of which Cospi too had been
prince. Zani was in contact with the great
travelers of his epoch, and under the pseudonym
of Aurelio degli Anzi wrote // Genio Vagante (the
wandering genius) (Parma, 1691-1693), a work
in four volumes on the voyages and voyagers of
the time. It may be that the Codex Cospi came
into the possession of Count Zani from one of the
many travelers with whom he came into contact in
the course of his writing. However, we should not
completely reject the idea that his uncle Costanzo
Zani, bishop of Imola, through the international
ties that the Church of Rome continued to protect
even after the Council of Trent, could have been
the intermediary.
L.L.-M. and M.D.C.
THE A M E R I C A S

545

representation of the patron of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli, comes from offering no. 20. The container has vertical sides. It is decorated with
unpatterned stripes on the base, the center of the
body, and the edge. The image of the deity, the
lord of the underworld, the living-dead who
directs the fate of the inhabitants of his kingdom,
Mictlan, is sculpted on the front of the vessel. He
stands, dressed in a long tunic decorated with a
string near the edge, while underneath the dangling strip of the maxlatl (breechcloth) is evident
(see cat. 362). His necklace has hanging spheres
that are probably stylized human hearts. His bent
arms cling to the walls of the vessel in such a
way that the palms of the hands face outward.
Eyes bulge from the skull, looking straight at
the spectator.
The headdress that identifies this representation as Mictlantecuhtli is an enormous semicircular feather, and the very large earrings made of
textile strips are typical of the deities of death and
the underworld. The color white identified the
underworld and its principal gods. The artist
chose the pale stone to highlight the symbolism of
this vessel dedicated to the deity who received
man in his final journey.
F. s.

360

VASE WITH THE EFFIGY OF

THE GOD OF DEATH
c. 1469
Aztec
travertine marble
16.6 x 11 (62/2 x 42/4J
CNCA INAH MEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
Travertine marble was a material the pre-Columbian lapidaries have worked since the period of
Teotihuacan. The Aztecs used this colorful rock
in shades of white, green, yellow, and pink to tile
the ceremonial floors of two lateral temples located
on the platform of the main temple of MexicoTenochtitlan, in the so-called 4-6 stage, which
would correspond to the Axayacatl government,
provisionally dated around A.D. 1469.
Many delicately worked masks and small sculptures of this same material have also been discovered; they were placed among the offerings
dedicated to the principal Aztec gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. This vase with an impressive
546

CIRCA 1492

361

TLALTECUHTLI
Aztec
basalt
93 x 57 x 34 (j65/s x 22^/2 x i^/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
During the construction of the first subway line
in Mexico City, the southern section of the old
Aztec capital was crossed in an east-west direction
by a huge excavation that unearthed numerous
constructions including temples and palaces. In
1967 a carved monolith weighing nearly a ton was
found near the corner of Isabel la Catolica and
Calle Izazaga in downtown Mexico City (Martin
Arana 1967). It represents a seated deity, Tlaltecuhtli (lord of the earth). It is one of the few
three-dimensional images of this Aztec god who is
better known from his images in codices and
stone reliefs.
Tlaltecuhtli here sits with clawed crossed feet.
The arms are bent and point upward as does the
mouth, forming a horizontal plane encompassing
the claws and the face in an altar-table. At first

the figure was mistaken for the goddess Coatlicue,

the female aspect of the earth. That goddess has a
necklace of cut-off hands and hearts as well as a
bracelet of dangling strips, which distinguish the
great sculpture of the goddess whose best-known
image was discovered in the Plaza Mayor of
Mexico City in 1790 (see Klein 1988 for a discussion of Tlaltecuhtli's relationship with other
deities).
In this sculpture, Tlaltecuhtli wears a kind of
short skirt trimmed with crossed femurs and
skulls in profile, which clearly allude to the earth
as the covering of the world of the dead. The
human skull pendant seen in the back has a similar meaning. Together with the cut-off hands and
the heart, they indicate that human sacrifice, the
death of an individual, will fertilize the gods and
nature with blood, thereby giving continuity to
life and death.
The face of the deity is decorated by a kind of
make-up in the lower part of the face and two
discs on the cheeks, which are directly related to
the underworld. They also recall the face located
in the central section of the famous "sun stone"
(more popularly known as the Calendar Stone)
that has been interpreted as the earth sun Tlalchitonatiuh, which is the moment of the day, at daybreak, when the king star emerges from a hole in
the east of the universe after a journey through
the inside of the earth.
In summary, Tlaltecuhtli is the male aspect of
the earth and the great monster that carries all of
creation on his back. In turn, he receives all
beings that have reached the end of their existence. He has the underworld within him.
F.S.

362
XlUHTECUHTLI AS AN OLD MAN
Aztec
volcanic stone

48.5 X 22 (1^/8 X 85/8)

CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Nacional'de

Antropologia, Mexico City
One of the characteristics of Aztec sculpture is
that most figures represent a youthful adult. The
Aztec people glorified youth, associating it with
physical strength, audacity, and impulse. These
qualities were fundamental to the success of a
warrior society at a time of territorial expansion,
when the Aztecs exercised dominion over many
peoples far from Mexico-Tenochtitlan. This statue
immediately draws attention because it has the
face of an old man with many wrinkles. However,
the seminude figure is well proportioned. His
only attire is the distinctively male maxlatl, a
piece of cloth covering the genitals that is knotted

in the front with hanging strips that form a kind

of apron. The man is barefoot and raises both
arms and hands forming a hollow for the placement of arms, insignia, or some other object. The
expression on the face has great vitality, and the
body is that of a vigorous person.
His physical strength contrasts with his old face
not only because of his wrinkles, but also because
he has only two side teeth. The wrinkles and the
two teeth identify this figure as one of the most
peculiar images of Xiuhtecuhtli, turquoise lord
and the old fire god, an ancestral Mesoamerican
divinity whose remotest origins are in the city
of Cuicuilco, in the southern area of the Valley
of Mexico. He was adopted as one of the most
important gods of Teotihuacan. Since the Aztecs
considered themselves the heirs of the cultures
that preceded them, it was natural that they
should adopt Xiuhtecuhtli yet give him their own
peculiar character: a combination of youth and old
age, the eternal and ancient fire that illuminated
this dynamic society.
In most of the images that the Aztecs made of
Xiuhtecuhtli, they eliminated the wrinkles and
only showed the characteristic two teeth. This
sculpture is therefore significant. The hollows of
the eyes indicate that these were probably inlaid
with shell, obsidian, or some other material,
which would have made the figure very realistic.
F.S.

363
QUETZALCOATL
Aztec
porphyry
44 x 25 x 23 (iy3/s x 9% x 9J
Musee de I'Homme, Palais de Chaillot, Paris
Quetzalcoatl was the god-king of the Toltecs, an
earlier society whose heirs the Aztecs considered
themselves to be. This great sculpture has become
the best known of all the representations of Quetzalcoatl, who was also the patron deity of the
Aztec priesthood. Preserving the irregular form
of the porphyry boulder from which he carved the
piece, the sculptor ingeniously combined the body
of a rattlesnake covered with quetzal plumes with
that of Quetzalcoatl as a human being. From the
gaping jaws of the composite animal appears the
face of the man-god, while his arms and right leg
emerge from the feathered coils. That the face is
that of "One Reed Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl" himselfruler of the great city of Tollan (Tula) and
culture hero of the Toltecs is shown by his
curved shell ear ornaments.
This is one of the supreme examples of the panMesoamerican concept of the nahualli: the animal
alter-ego into which powerful religious practitioners can transform themselves at will, and back
THE A M E R I C A S

547

again into their human form. This concept, which

can be traced to the ancient Olmec civilization
and perhaps beyond, recognizes that the boundary
between the human and the animal world is at
most a very tenuous one, entirely permeable at
times of religious ecstasy or, in some cases, under
the influence of psychotropic substances. The
spectator, in beholding this Aztec masterpiece, is
in some doubt whether he is confronted by a man
becoming a feathered serpent or a serpent turning
into a man.
Such ambiguity pervades the whole subject of
the god Quetzalcoatl as treated in Aztec sources
(and, in some cases, reworked after the conquest
by colonial historians anxious to recast Hernan
Cortes as a Quetzalcoatl returned from exile, or
Quetzalcoatl himself as a kind of Christlike figure). There is an ever-present contradiction
between a god known as the feathered serpent,
often wearing the wind-god mask, and a heroic
leader of a former political power in central
Mexico from whom the Aztec royal house drew
its legitimacy, compounded by the confusion
resulting from the cyclic nature of the Aztec
reckoning of time.
As Nicholson (1983,143) has shown, this sculpture has been known in Mexico since the midnineteenth century and arrived in Paris in 1883.
Since that time it has become the most typical of
all Quetzalcoatl images, and rightly so.
M.D.C.

364

MASK OF TEZCATLIPOCA
Aztec
stone
18.5 x 16.3 (7l/4 x 63/8)
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections,
Washington
Because the eyes are not perforated and the back is
flat, it is clear that this object was never actually
worn as a mask. Three holes drilled near the top
at back suggest that it might have been suspended
over the head of a funerary bundle as a kind of
stand-in for the deceased's face. Regardless of its
function, it is one of the most sensitively carved
depictions of the human countenance known in
Aztec art (see Nicholson 1983, 105-106).
The iconography and the date carved in relief
on the reverse make it certain that this is an idealized portrait of the great god Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror), depicted as the eternally youthful
warrior and patron of the telpochcalli, the military
academy for young men and boys. His insignia is
the stylized mirror above his left ear, edged with
eagle-down balls and pierced by a bone tube from
which smoke curls. The day- sign on the back is 2
Acatl (reed), the calendrical name of the deity in

548

CIRCA 1492

365

MIRROR
Aztec
obsidian with gilded wood frame
diam. 26 fio^A)
American Museum of Natural History, New York

the Codex Cospi (cat. 359) and Codex Nuttall and

given by the seventeenth-century source Jacinto
de la Serna, perhaps the day on which he was
born. Lothrop (in Lothrop, Foshag, and Mahler
1957, 243) thought that the year 2 Acatl, corresponding to 1507, was shown; however, missing
here is the square frame that usually surrounds
Aztec years.
If this was a mortuary mask it was for an
extremely important person, perhaps a member of
the royal family or even the tlatoani himself, for
Tezcatlipoca was patron of the royal line. M.D. c.

The reflecting surface of this object is a horizontal

section that has been struck off a very large obsidian core and carefully polished. This technique
apparently continued well into the colonial period
in Mexico, since a few examples of mirrors with
wooden frames are surely later than the conquest.
This mirror probably predates 1521, but its
function is unknown. On classic Maya pictorial
pottery, lords often gaze admiringly at themselves
in framed obsidian mirrors similar to this one,
with the assistance of court dwarfs or servants.
The obsidian mirror (tezcatl) was the supreme
emblem of the great god Tezcatlipoca, patron of
sorcerers, with whom mirrors were associated.
The frame has been simply carved with a repeated device that is perhaps a flower or conceivably a symbol representing the four directions
of the universe.
M.D.C.

366
EHECATL-QUETZALCOATL ATLANTID
Aztec
volcanic stone
58 X }0 X 30 (22%

X H3/4 X 113/4J

CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de

Antropologia, Mexico City
As the Aztecs exercised territorial control over
several areas of ancient Mexico, they added to
their worship deities of their* neighbors and of
peoples whom they had recently conquered.
Quetzalcoatl (the plumed serpent) was the most
venerated deity for many indigenous peoples,
since he symbolized one of the creative and regenerative elements of nature. Among other
manifestations he was considered the civilizing
god par excellence. In the later periods, however,
the Aztecs worshipped a different god as the
supreme deity, Huitzilopochtli (the young sun of
the war). For the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl had importance other than his ancestral preeminence. They
worshipped him as the patron of the wind, and
thus his complete name during the Aztec period is
Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl.
This deity was adored in temples with a special
form. They had a circular floor, curved walls,
and a cone-shaped ceiling, as we can see in sites
such as Calixtlahuaca in the State of Mexico and
in Cempoala, Veracruz.
The pioneering Mexican archaeologist Leopoldo
Batres found this sculpture on 16 October 1900
during his excavations in the Calle de las Escalerillas near the ruins of the Great Temple in downtown Mexico City; four years later the German
scholar Eduard Seler (1904) identified it and
another very similar one found next to it as
Atlantean representations of Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatl in his guise as wind god (see
cat. 363). Seler also related the two Atlantids to
the figure of Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl on page 51 of
the Codex Borgia. In the latter image, the god
bears the eastern heavens on his shoulders.
Nicholson (1983, 79) further related these two
figures (thus far the only Atlantids known in
Aztec art) to non-Aztec sculptures from elsewhere in Mesoamerica; they are particularly
prominent in the Toltec site of Tula, but have
antecedents as far back as the Olmec civilization.
The Escalerillas sculpture is simply attired,
with the familiar birdlike buccal mask of Ehecatl
and the loincloth with paddle-shaped hanging
ends typical of Quetzalcoatl. At the front of the
headdress is a quadruple stack of knots, which is
probably symbolic of blood sacrifice, in this case
the penitential bloodletting with maguey spines
practiced by the priesthood of which Quetzalcoatl
was the patron.
The ultimate meaning of this object and its
counterpart can be inferred from the Borgia
THE A M E R I C A S

549

representation. In the Aztec creation legend

preserved in the Histoyre du Mechique (de Jonghe
1905), floods had destroyed the universe at the
end of the penultimate age; the sky had fallen
upon the earth, and had to be raised for a new
universe to take form. Tezcatlipoca and Ehecatl
entered the earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli, the former
through her mouth, the latter through her navel,
and met in the heart of the goddess the middle
of the earth. The two gods then "made the sky
very strong" and summoned the other gods to
help them raise the heavens. This having been
done, the stage was set for the creation of our own
universe. The Escalerillas Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl is
the embodiment of this cosmic myth.
F.S. and M.D.C.

550

CIRCA 1492

367
CREATION STONE
Aztec
basalt
54.6

X 45.7

X 25.6

(2lV2 X l8 X loVs)

Peabody Museum of Natural History,

Yale University, New Haven
Purchased in 1887 by Professor O. C. Marsh of
Yale at a sheriff's sale in New Haven (MacCurdy
1910), this object has a close iconographical relationship to the famous Calendar Stone in Mexico
City. The central perforation with a brass tube

was added in post-conquest times, perhaps to

serve as a base for a flagpole.
The top surface (drawing, center panel) represents the ages into which the Aztec divided the
history of the universe, each successive age being
known as a "sun" symbolized by the day in the
z6o-day calendar (tonalpohualli) on which it
ended. Our present age or sun is represented by
the raised solar disk and will be destroyed by great
earthquakes on the day 4 Ollin (motion), indicated by the Ollin day sign in the center of the
disk. The four previous eras are indicated by the
day signs in the four corners, to be read in a counterclockwise direction. The cycle of creations and
destructions to which this representation refers

is fundamental to an understanding of the Aztecs'

complex view of the world.
The first world age is signified by 4 Ocelotl
(jaguar) in the upper left corner. In this age Tezcatlipoca ruled the universe but finally was hurled
by Quetzalcoatl into the sea, where he became a
jaguar and proceeded to destroy creation. Quetzalcoatl thus ruled the next era, 4 Ehecatl (wind),
the sign of which is in the lower left corner. At
the end of this sun, Tezcatlipoca, returning as a
jaguar, threw Quetzalcoatl from his throne; a
great wind arose and carried away Quetzalcoatl
and the people, who were turned into monkeys.
Tlaloc, the rain god, ruled in the third sun, 4
Quiahuitl (rain) seen in the lower right corner. At
the end of this age Xiuhtecuhtli, the old fire god,
descended to the earth and brought about a rain of
fire, apparently at the command of Quetzalcoatl.
In the fourth age, 4 Atl (water), shown in the
upper right corner, the reigning deity was Chalchiuhtlicue ("she of the jade skirt/7 the water
goddess, and Tlaloc's consort).
A great flood destroyed the fourth world and
the sky fell on the earth, leaving the world in
darkness. The gods met at midnight in Teotihuacan, the great city on the northeast side of the
Valley of Mexico, and built a huge fiery pit. The

lowliest among them, Nanahuatzin, leaped into

the flames to become the sun of the fifth age, 4
Ollin, followed by Tecuziztecatl, who rose up as
the moon. The midnight setting of this cosmic
drama may be depicted by the four edges of the
monument, which symbolize the night sky: beneath a band of stars are pendant sacrificial knives
alternating with symbolic wings of Itzpapalotl
("obsidian butterfly"), a dreaded star goddess who
descends to the earth during solar eclipses.

M.D.C.

368
TLALOC VASE
Aztec
earthenware
35X32.5 fo3/4X123/4)

CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Templo Mayor,

Mexico City
The Aztecs lived within a world of dualities. The
change from a rainy season, in which the vital
liquid made plants grow and have life, to a dry
season, in which everything died, was central to
their culture. The Mesoamerican calendar was
established in accordance with these cycles, in
which the gods of water and fertility prevailed in
the first season, and the warrior deities in the
second. These deities ruled the daily life of the
Aztecs. Tlaloc was the god of water and rain, and
he was frequently represented in the form of a
clay pot that contained water. Many pieces with
the face of this god were found in the excavations
of the Great Temple. As one of the two sanctuaries of the upper part was dedicated to Tlaloc,
and the other sanctuary to Huitzilopochtli, god
of war, the life-death duality was present in the
main Aztec temple.
E.M. M.

THE AMERICAS

55*

captors attired in jaguar and eagle costumes. The

victims were then flayed and their skins donned
by Xipe impersonators (xipime), who for the next
twenty days went through the streets as mendicants begging food and presents and blessing the
people and their children (Couch 1985, 41-48).
At the end of this time the reeking skins were
thrown into a ceremonial pit.
This sculpture is the standard representation of
the god, shown as one of the xipime: the impersonator's own face looks out from the skinned face
of the victim, tied in the back of the head with
cords, while the skin of the body, complete with
dangling hands but missing the feet, is similarly
tied up on the back. A realistic touch is the
sutures closing the horizontal cut through which
the heart had been extracted. The body of the
impersonator was painted red, and it is likely on
the basis of representations of Xipe in the codices
that the victim's skin was once painted yellow.
In the upper part of the body opening on the
back can be seen the calendrical sign 2 Reed, the
designation of the year in which the new fire
ceremony was held, the last one having taken
place in 1502. However, since the square or rec-

369

XIPE TOTEC
Aztec
volcanic stone
77.5

(302/2)

National Museum of the American Indian,

Smithsonian Institution
Xipe Totec was god of the springtime and of the
renewal of vegetation by the coming of the rains.
He was also patron of the gold workers. It was
Xipe who afflicted people with skin ailments and
diseases of the eyes and subsequently brought
relief from these ills when prayers and vows were
made in his honor.
Xipe's principal festival took place in April, at
the end of the dry season, in the "month" called
Tlacaxipehualiztli ("flaying of men"), and his own
name means "the flayed one, our lord." In this,
one of the most important celebrations in the
annual cycle, gladiatorial sacrifices were staged in
which the bravest of captives died, slain by their
552

CIRCA 1492

tangular frame is lacking, it is unlikely that this

was intended to represent a year. Though 2 Reed
was the calendrical name of Tezcatlipoca, there
is no clear connection with Xipe Totec. Therefore
the presence of this inscription on the statue
cannot be explained.
M.D.C.

37O

ClHUATEOTL

Aztec
volcanic stone
71 x 48 x 44 (28 x i87/s x i/3/sj
CNCAINAH MEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
In Aztec religious thought, the cihuateteo (sing.
cihuateotl, "goddess") were the deified spirits of
women who had died during their first childbirth:
they had nobly perished fighting the warrior who
struggled within them, and they dwelled, like the

warriors who had fallen on the field of battle, in

the heaven of the sun god. Their specific abode
was on the western horizon, and their duty was
to rise up at noontime from the west (called in
Nahuatl cihuatlampa, "place of women") to the
sun at zenith, and conduct the fiery orb toward
its setting and entry into the underworld.
The dhuateteo were terrifying beings, as is
evident in this sculptural representation. They
were also called tzitzimime, which can be translated as a ghostly being. According to Aztec tradition, dead women shed their flesh bit by bit until
the skeleton became visible. The left arm of a dead
woman was a powerful weapon in sorcery, as can
be seen in the depiction of page 44 of the Codex
Fejervdry-Mayer of the archsorcerer Tezcatlipoca
holding such an arm to his face.
Several sculpted figures representing these
fantastic beings were discovered in the nineteenth
century during the construction of a building in
the center of Mexico City. This was probably the
site of the Aztec sanctuary dedicated to these
women who died in childbirth, which is known
to have been located to the west of the sacred
enclosure.
This sculpture is part of a group of four similar
figures attired only in wraparound skirts (Nicholson 1983, 67-68). Instead of hands the sculptor
gave them impressive eagle or jaguar claws that
menace the spectator. Their breasts are displayed
as a sign of their frustrated future maternity.
F.S. and M.D.C.

3/1

STONE Box
Aztec
basalt or andesite
22 x 24 x 24 (85/s x 93/s x 93/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
Few archaeological remains relating to the rulers
of Tenochtitlan and of the neighboring peoples
have survived to our time. It seems that the royal
burials were sacked and destroyed by the conquerors. This stone vessel is of a type thought
by many scholars of Aztec culture (Seler 1904,
746-750) to have been a box for the ashes of one
of the tlatoanis of Mexico-Tenochtitlan or of an
allied kingdom.
The container, on which its original red and
blue color is still evident, is in the form of a quadrangular prism decorated on each of its four outer
surfaces with a pair of little squares with quincunxes. This symbol represents the cardinal
points of the universe, which correspond to the
number five represented by the five circles indi-

cating the north, south, east, west, and center.

Each side also has an even stripe finishing in the
lower section with a row of short feathers.
The cover of the box also has the stripe and
feathers motif. On the upper face is another
numeral, the number eleven in the form of a flint
knife, the sacred sacrificial instrument; because of
its ritual character it is depicted with a fantastic
face with eyes, eyebrows, and fangs. On the side
eleven circles represent the date.
On the inside, the numeral five in the form of
a rattlesnake can be found on the bottom of the
box, accompanied by five discs or chalchihuites
that depict the date. Inside the box also is the
most important glyph, which is a mark of the vessel's royal character. This is the outline of a head

of hair girdled with the copilli (royal crown) worn

by the Aztec tlatoanis. The earrings of these
noblemen are also present. Complementing the
whole is the glyph for tlatoa (king); thus the iconography of the box derives from imperial power,
the symbol of the tlatoani, leaders of discourse,
commanders or rulers, and the insignia that distinguish them.
The identity of the nobleman for whom this
vessel was made is uncertain. Some scholars associate it with Izcoatl (r. 1428-1440), and others
with either of the two Motecuhzomas (Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina [r. 1440-1469] or Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin [r. 1502-1520]). However, only
the latter two governors used the copilli specifically as a symbol of their name.
F.S.
THE A M E R I C A S

553

372
NEZAHUALCOYOTL
late 16early iyth century
colonial Mexican
fol 106 of Codex Ixtlilxochitl
ink and watercolor on paper
31 x 21 fi22/s x 8l/4)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
The Codex Ixtlilxochitl (see Durand-Forest 1976)
is a booklike manuscript on European paper,
apparently written by the native Texcocan historian Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (c. 15751658). There are three distinct parts to the manuscript, all of them in different hands: an illustrated account of the eighteen "months" of the
solar year, drawn from the same lost original as
the Codex Magliabecchiano; highly Europeanized
portraits of four Texcocan lords including the
present drawing, a schematic drawing of the Great
Temple of Tenochtitlan, and a detailed watercolor
554

CIRCA 1492

of the god Tlaloc; and an unillustrated calendar

again dealing with the festivals of the eighteen
"months."
The subject of this drawing is the remarkable
Nezahualcoyotl (or, to give him his honorific
name, Nezahualcoyotzin), who had a long and
distinguished career as tlatoani (ruler) of Texcoco.
He was born in the year i Rabbit (1402), succeeded his father Ixtlilxochitl to the throne in
1431 or 1432, and reigned until he died in 1472.
Among his many military triumphs, he defeated
the Tepanecs and personally sacrificed their tyrannical ruler. Nezahualcoyotl ("fasting coyote") was
also a famous lawgiver, student of the arts and
sciences, and poet. The verses attributed to him
(Davies 1980,126) have a distinct air of sadness
and pessimism, as can be seen in these lines:
Just as a painting
Our outlines will be dimmed,
Just as a flower
We shall become dessicated

Ponder on this,
Eagle and Jaguar Knights,
Though you were carved in jade,
Though you were made of gold,
You will also go thither
To the abode of the fleshless.
We must all vanish,
None may remain.
The artist who painted this section of the manuscript was probably a native who had been trained
in the European tradition of three-dimensional
illusion. The king is shown from the back as a
warrior in action, but the execution is decidedly
awkward. Nezahualcoyotl's feathered war costume
may represent a kind of horned owl; he carries on
his back a small huehuetl drum with drumstick to
indicate his high military rank. In his right hand
he wields a macuauhuitl, the terrible sword of
Aztec warfare a heavy flat club of wood with
the edges set with razor-sharp obsidian blades,
attached to the right wrist by a cord. On his left

arm he bears a feathered shield. Curiously, the

device in the middle of the shield is an oyohualli,
a stylized human vulva that symbolized the pleasure principle and is usually associated in Aztec
iconography with music and dance; perhaps this
indicates the tlatoani's preoccupation with poetry.
Just below Nezahualcoyotrs lip may be seen a
golden labret in the form of an eagle's head, virtually identical to the one in the Museo Civico,
Turin (cat. 376).
M.D.C.

373
NEZAHUALPILLI
fol. 108 of Codex Ixtlilxochitl
late i6th-early lyth century
colonial Mexican
ink and watercolor on paper
31 X 21 (l2l/8 X 8l/4)

Bibliotheque Rationale, Paris

When the aged Nezahualcoyotl died in 1472, he
was succeeded by his seven-year-old legitimate
son Nezahualpilli ("fasting prince"), who ruled
until his own death in 1515. The latter thus was a
contemporary and valued ally of every huei tlatoani of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, from Axayacatl to
Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin. The splendor of his
vast palace in Texcoco was almost legendary; apart
from his legitimate wives, he was said to have had
more than two thousand concubines.
His portrait in the Codex Ixtlilxochitl (see
Durand-Forest 1976) is, of course, imaginary, but
there can be little doubt that this particular artist
had actually looked upon a very high-ranking lord
or tecuhtli, perhaps even a tlatoani, and remembered exactly what he had seen. This image is
surely the most detailed and accurate representation in existence of the appearance and costume of
an Aztec tlatoani during a festival. Two plumed
tassels decorate his bound hank of hair, and he
wears golden ear spools through his ears and a
jade labret through the lower lip. Golden arm
bands and greaves can be seen on his limbs, and
a wide jade-bead collar is worn around the neck
and jade bracelets on the wrists.
His cloak and loincloth are of the utmost sumptuousness: blue-and-black, tie-dyed cotton cloth
edged with polychrome embroidery with repeated
xicalcoliuqui designs symbolizing clouds.
In his right hand the tlatoani carries a fanlike
bunch of tropical-bird feathers set in a tasseled
handle, while the other hand holds a similar
handle topped by what seems to be a circular
nosegay of flowers. Nezahualpilli may be shown
here as a participant in a dance, as identical objects
are brandished in many dance scenes in early
colonial illustrations, such as in the Codex Tovar
(cat. 404).
M.D.C.

374
SERPENT LABRET
Mixtec-Aztec
cast gold
6.6 (22/2j
Lent through the courtesy of the
Detroit Institute of Arts
Possibly made by Mixtec gold workers for an
Aztec patron, this is perhaps the finest and most
elaborate of the few golden lip plugs that escaped
being melted down by the Spaniards during the
conquest and in early colonial times.
The wearer of this object was certainly a local
lord or perhaps a member of a ruling family. The
bifid tongue of the serpent is actually movable;
when the object was fixed into the lower lip it
must have been a striking sight. Because of the
weight, shape, and length of the labret, it was
probably worn only on the most important
occasions.
This ornament is a triumph of the lost-wax process, in which Mixtec craftsmen excelled. The
gold objects found in Tomb 7, a Mixtec royal
burial site at Monte Alban, Oaxaca, demonstrate
that these artisans were capable of casting the
most complex objects all in one piece, including
even linked sections with bell dangles. A forked
serpent tongue that moves would not have taxed
their capabilities.
M.D.C.

375
SERPENT HEAD LABRET
Mixtec
cast gold
6.5X6.5 (21/2X21/2)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
A Mixtec work from Ejutla, Oaxaca, this serpent
labret is comparable to cat. 374, although not as
elaborate; it probably adorned the lip of a lesser
official. The iconography of gold labrets seems to
be restricted to snakes and birds, at least in the
examples that have survived.
In 1519 Cortes sent several Mexican Indians,
probably Totonacs from Veracruz, across the
Atlantic. The golden ornaments that these Indians
inserted through holes in their cheeks and below
their lips provoked astonishment and disgust in
the Europeans who saw them. However, throughout Mesoamerica such ornamentation was an
indication of high status among noble males, as
well as a symbol of elevated military rank.
M.D.C.

376

GOLD EAGLE LABRET

Mixtec-Aztec
cast gold
5.4 (2y8)
Museo Civico, Turin
This is an unusually large and magnificent example of a cuauhtenpilolli, the eagle-head lip plug
worn by only the very highest of state and military officials. Possibly made by Mixtec artisans,
it is nevertheless in the purest Aztec style and is
virtually identical to the eagle-head labret worn
by Nezahualcoyotl in the illustration in the Codex
Ixtlilxochitl (cat. 372). Its history is unknown
before it became part of the important collection
of Mesoamerican objects donated by Cav. Zaverio
Calpini to the Museo Civico in 1876 (see Hildesheim 1987, cat. 250).
M.D.C.
THE A M E R I C A S

555

377
TURQUOISE MOSAIC MASK
Mixtec
wood with turquoise, jadeite, shell mother-of-pearl

24 x 15 (93/s x 57/s)

Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi

Pigorini, Rome
In his meticulously researched study, Nicholson
(1983,171) suggested that this may be the mosaic
mask listed in the 1553 inventory of the Guardaroba of Cosimo i de' Medici, duke of Florence.
Its provenance, like that of most of the Mexican
mosaics in early European collections, remains
unknown; Juan de Grijalva collected mosaic masks
along the Gulf Coast as early as 1518, but this
object could have been obtained by the Spaniards
anywhere in or outside the Aztec empire.

While the provenance of the mask may forever

remain a mystery, the area of manufacture may be
ascertained through the iconography. Although it
has often been misidentified as a mask of the god
Quetzalcoatl, knowledgeable scholars have recognized that the deity represented must be female:
the snakes entwined in the hair or headdress are
found throughout post-classic Mesoamerica in
images of a number of goddesses, especially those
with lunar associations (such as Ix Chel, patroness
of childbirth and medicine among the Maya).
The stepped nose ornament of the goddess
allows the identification to be even more specific.
Following an original proposal by Beyer (1921),
Nicholson (1983, 172) has shown that this is a
goddess known by the calendrical name 9 Reed
who appears often in Mixtec screenfold manuscripts as well as on carved bones found in the
Mixtec royal Tomb 7 at Monte Alban, Oaxaca.
Another Mixtec element can be seen in the fire-

serpent snake heads, which have tridentlike

devices on the upturned snouts unlike the sevenstar motif of central Mexican iconography. It
seems reasonable to assume, therefore, that the
mask was made by a mosaic craftsman somewhere
in the Mixtec region of southeastern Mexico.
This does not preclude the possibility that the
mask was actually collected in Tenochtitlan by the
conquistadors, for many Mixtec luxury objects
of cast gold as well as turquoise mosaicwere
crafted for the royal palace and major Aztec temples. While Nicholson conceived of 9 Reed as the
Mixtec equivalent of the Aztec water goddess
Chalchiuhtlicue, "9 Reed" was in fact the calendrical name of Tlazolteotl, goddess of childbirth
and weaving (Caso 1967,196); she can be found
with this name on both page 47 of the Codex
Borgia and page 26 of the reverse of the Codex
Cospi (cat. 359) and is shown naked on page 17 of
the Codex Fejerv dry-Mayer (cat. 356). The chronicler Juan de Torquemada (1943-1944, 2:183)
stated that at least some of the priests in the great
temple in Tenochtitlan bore the name "9 Reed,"
presumably as impersonators of Tlazolteotl in her
role as lunar goddess. Thus the present mask
could well have been worn by one of these priests
(the back, although flat, is nevertheless pierced so
it can be worn).
What have not yet been explained are the reptilian or perhaps avian jaws between which the
face rests. In the Codex Borgia, the love goddess
Xochiquetzal (who as a young lunar deity is
closely related to Tlazolteotl) is often shown looking out from the beak of a quetzal bird; she also
has the fretted nose ornament, so that 9 Reed may
have more general implications of sexual desire
and fertility.
M.D.C.

378

WOODEN DRUM (TEPONAZTLI)

Aztec
wood with shell inlay
14 x 12 x 60 (53/2 x 45/s x 2j5/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Nacional de
Antropologia, Mexico City
There were several kinds of percussion instruments used by the Aztecs, but only two wooden
drums: the upright huehuetl covered on top with
a skin drumhead and played with the hands (cat.
379) and the teponaztli, the horizontal slit drum
beaten with rubber-tipped drumsticks. Teponaztlis, of which this is a fine example, were fashioned from a single small log and hollowed out on
the inside, with an H-shaped slit on top leaving
two tongues. These tongues were struck to pro556

CIRCA 1492

379
HUEHUETL
Aztec
wood
84 X 50 X 50 (33 Vs X 192/2 X 195/8J

CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de

Antropologia, Mexico City
The name of this type of vertical drum in the
Nahuatl language is huehuetl or tlapanhuehuetl.
Two surviving huehuetls in particular are notable
for the fine workmanship of their decoration. One
of them comes from Malinalco (Nicholson 1983,
144-147), and the other from the village of
Tenango (Castaneda and Mendoza 1933), both
located in the State of Mexico. The drum shown
here is the one from Tenango.
This drum was worked from a section of a tree
trunk that was hollowed out and shaped like a
cylinder; the upper part was covered with a skin
to be struck with hands or hammers. The Tenango
drum's three supports resemble the battlements
of pre-Hispanic buildings turned upside-down.

duce a harmonious sound. This type of drum was

the usual accompaniment for poetry recitals.
Of the many teponaztlis in the Museo
National's collection, this one, from Tlaxcallan,
is certainly the most important. It represents a
Tlaxcalteca warrior who, following the shape of
the instrument, reclines on one side, while his
head and arms are directed toward the front. He
displays the headdress insignia of the great warriors and carries a flower in one hand. His skill
in warfare is demonstrated by his handling of
different arms.
There had long been antagonism between the
Tlaxcaltecas and the Aztecs, and this became
intensified from the time of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina's government (1440-1469), during which
time both peoples agreed to the establishment of
the xochitlyaoyotl (flowery war); this was a kind
of military tournament, where the bravest warriors of the nations faced each other. Their purpose was neither territorial dominion nor plunder,
but rather to capture the enemy alive, tie his feet
and hands, and carry him to the victor's camp.
Later the captives would be taken to Tlaxcallan,
where they would be exhibited as war trophies.
Eventually the prisoners would be sacrificed in
honor of the gods.
F. s.

THE A M E R I C A S

557

A kind of rope circles the lower section of the

musical instrument, on top of which is the image
of two birds of prey: a vulture is on the left, and
facing it on the right is an eagle. Both birds have
their wings spread as if about to fly. The symbols
of fire and water mix as they flow out of their
beaks. The union of these two elements forms the
well-known symbol of atl-tlachinolli (water conflagration or flowery war). This was the supreme
military ritual in which select corps of the Aztec
army confronted their enemies to capture live
prisoners for the sacrificial stones of Tenochtitlan
or to achieve glorious death in battle.
From the decoration of this beautiful wooden
piece we can surmise that it was used in the
festivities associated with the wars of conquest
and the sacrifice of prisoners.
F. s.

380
XOCHIPILLI
Aztec
basalt
115 x 53 x 42 (452/4 x zoVs x i<52/2J
CNCAINAH MEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
Xochipilli means "prince of the flowers'7 in the
Nahuatl language, and this name clearly defines
him as the supreme patron of the greenness of the
fields, responsible for the opening of the flowers
that bring butterflies and birds. For this reason
nineteenth-century scholars called him the god of
spring. Xochipilli was also the god of dances, of
games (including the ball game), of gambling, and
of love. He was the supernatural patron of pleasures and voluptuousness and of the arts, such as
music, poetry, and song.
This celebrated sculpture is the most beautiful
and complete representation of the deity. It was
found in the final decades of the nineteenth century in the village of Tlalmanalco, situated within
the mountain range where the twin volcanoes
Popocatepetl (the smoking hill) and Iztaccihuatl
(the white woman) are located. These two sentinels have identified the landscape of the Valley
of Mexico for many centuries. This region was the
home of an extraordinary school of sculptors who
created this masterpiece and others that survive
attest to their skill.
The figure of the deity reposes on a splendid
platform. This throne is appropriate to the exalted
position of Xochipilli by virtue of its fine detailing
and iconography. The proportions of the figure
were life-size by the standard of the people of that
era, whose bodies were about seven times the
length of their heads. The deity's legs are crossed
and both arms are flexed. The fists have openings
558

CIRCA 1492

for the placement of banners or banderoles, bags

of resin, or natural flowers.
The dress of this god is the maxtlatl (loincloth)
and a striking chest protector made of the skin of
a feline head showing the hollows of the eyes,
eyebrows, and fangs. The headdress is unique. It
consists of a kind of short cloak covering the head
and reaching the shoulders and is decorated with
four circles combined with four vertical bars (tonalli and tlapapalli), which are associated with the
heat of the sun and the color red and represent the
spring climate. The headdress has a row of small
feathers like short plumes. The god's face is
covered by an impressive mask, which, in the
original ritual, was probably made of wood with
holes for the god's eyes to be seen. One scholar
(Seler 1904, 821-822) has interpreted it as an
attribute of Xochipilli in his role as the deity presiding over theatrical performances and dances
during which the performers were masked. The
mask with the line of the mouth curving down at
the corners gives a hardness to the god's expression. Unfortunately the nose is broken. The figure wears earrings whose circular shape was
probably intended to convey that they were made
of gold or jade. The bracelets are in the form of
knotted bands and jaguar skins with hanging
teeth, similar to the adornments on his ankles.
On one arm he wears cut shell jewelry.
The seat itself is a separate sculptural work. The
legs adopt the form of a fret and the upper section
of the throne is developed in the manner of a
flower corolla that borders the whole piece and
ends with a sequence of small discs that symbolize
the stamen and pistils of the flowers. On this part
of the seat there are also four circles like those of
the headdress. At the center of each of the four
faces of this almost cubic pedestal is a flower
worked in a naturalistic manner with extended
petals, and a butterfly drinks its nectar. The front
part of the throne can be identified by two butterflies at the two sides of the central flower, waiting
their turn to approach the plant.
The flowers and plant forms appearing in relief
on the base and on Xochipilli's body have been the
subject of a controversial analysis by the late R.
Gordon Wasson (1980, 57-58), who proposed that
the depictions include the powerful psychotropic
mushroom Psilocybe aztecorum, known to the
Aztecs as flesh of the gods, along with flowers of
tobacco and the hallucinogenic morning glory
Turbina corymbosa.
Despite the ravages of time the two separately
worked pieces of this sculpture conserve their
original red paint.
F.S. and M.D.C.

381

MONKEY WITH WIND-GOD MASK

Aztec
andesite
60 x 37 x 33 f23% x i42/2 x 13)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
This extraordinary and unique sculpture was
discovered in 1969 during excavations for the
Mexico City subway at the corner of Calles Izazaga and Pino Suarez; it had been broken up in
pre-Hispanic times and placed as a buried offering
in front of a circular temple to the wind god,
Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl (Gussinyer 1969).
The monkey was the main animal symbol of
Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, patron god of the wind. As
one of the most unpredictable animals, the monkey was naturally associated with the restless

wind. The connection between the monkey and

the wind god may also be related to the Aztec
creation myth. At the end of the second or third
age of mankind, depending on the source, the
world was destroyed by a hurricane, and all mankind, with the exception of a single couple,
became monkeys (see Nicholson 1983,127). The
direct association with the god Ehecatl is clear
because the monkey wears the characteristic halfmask in the form of a bird's beak that identifies
the wind god. What is extraordinary about this
piece is its lively contrapposto, one that clearly
indicates dance and probably reflects the association of a simian god with dancing and singing.
There are two serpents present, one coiled on the
base and ascending the right leg of the monkey,
and the other forming its tail.
The sculpture was once highly polychromed:
the body was painted black, with red used for
the mask, part of the face, ears, and hands, and
THE A M E R I C A S

559

wears a red band, which is adorned with two blue

crescents and a blue bird in the center. Her headdress takes the form of a diadem consisting of
nine large, ocher-colored plates that symbolize
feathers. She wears a nose ornament, in the form
of a horizontal polychromed bar with two round
blue plates, and large circular earrings. Her face is
painted black, her eyebrows are blue and adorned
with circles of different colors, and an ocher band
appears near her mouth. She wears a polychromed
quechquemitl with a border decorated with the
motif of hands. Two red and blue ribbons fall
from the garment's center, and from the rear
emerge two bands with black rhombuses, circles,
and tassels. Bird's claws spring from the figure's
knees, and she wears sandals with tassels on the
heels. Twenty-four triangular tassels adorn the
brazier's upper edge.
Censers of this type were used to burn copal
resin, the sacred incense of all the Mesoamerican
peoples. Copal smoke was considered to be the
medium through which humans communicated
with the gods.
E.M.M.

383

SHIELD
Mixtec-Aztec
wood, turquoise
diameter 31.8 fi22/2J
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
According to Saville (1922, 47), who was the first
to describe this shield, it was found somewhere in
the Mixteca region of Puebla in a deposit of ceremonial objects of wood, seventeen of which were

blue-green used for the wrists and eye cavities.

Although it was found in pieces, the statue had
been repaired at one time with a natural resin.
With one of his hands this monkey holds down
its tail, and in the other it holds some object that
unfortunately has broken off. The animal is a
pregnant female, which curiously appears to be
defecating. Pregnancy, childbirth, and excrement
(which also symbolized gold) were traditionally
associated with the wind that brings rain and
thereby fertility to the earth.
F.S. and M.D.C.

560

CIRCA 1492

382

ANTHROPOMORPHIC BRAZIER
Aztec
polychromed earthenware
91 x 76 x 57.5 (357/s x 29% x 225/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Templo Mayor,
Mexico City
This elaborate temple vessel is decorated with a
figure in relief representing a mysterious standing female, whose extended arms and fleshless
face emerge from the head of a bird. The figure

bought by the museum and brought to New York.

One presumes from its excellent state of preservation that the site was a dry cave.
The piece is a wooden disk faced on the obverse
with a finely made mosaic, by Saville's estimate
consisting of fourteen thousand turquoise tesserae, most of which are tiny circular bits. Within
and without the Aztec empire the art of turquoise
mosaic was mainly in the hands of the Mixtec
of Oaxaca and Puebla, although many of the surviving objects may have been made by order of
the Aztec state as is probably the case with this
shield. While the exact source of the turquoise has
not yet been determined, there were apparently
no pre-conquest mines in Mexico proper; it is
generally believed that the people of central
Mexico obtained their turquoise from the Pueblos
of Arizona and New Mexico, in return for parrot
and macaw feathers.
In inventories of Cortes' loot, 150 shields are
enumerated, mostly decorated with feathers, but
25 are specified as being ornamented with turquoise mosaic (Saville 1922, 69); and we know
from early colonial sources, for example Sahagun's, that images of specific gods carried such
shields. Karl Taube (personal information)
suggests that this piece might have been a back
shield, worn on the small of the back by warriors
and gods, and that the perforations were for
suspending feathers.
The turquoise disk recalls Aztec solar disks,
although the eight radial spokes in the outer band
suggest the eight cycles of the planet in the fiveyear Venus calendar. In the center is a scene of
great interest, since it alludes directly to the myth
of the tribal origin of the Aztec rather than the
Mixtec people. Below a celestial band with stars
and a solar disk, a female figure, clad only in skirt,
descends head down; she may be a Cihuateotl,
one of the dread warrior-goddesses of the west,
the souls of women who had died in childbirth,
who were thought to descend during eclipses
and at the end of the world ages (see cat. 370).
Directly comparable images can be seen on the
world-direction pages (49-52) of the Codex
Borgia. She is flanked by two male figures, perhaps two of the Ahuiteteo (pleasure gods) who are
found on the same Borgia pages.
Below is the "twisted mountain" place glyph of
Colhuacan, most likely not the Colhuacan (or Culhuacan) in the Valley of Mexico whose princess
was sacrificed and skinned by the Aztecs, but the
original mythical Colhuacan, the Mr-homeland
of the Aztec, which was in an island in a lagoon
in the land of Aztlan. This was a magic and
enchanted place, in which the mother-goddess
Coatlicue lived and which was reached by the
migrating Aztec tribes, according to the Codex
Boturini, in a year i Flint (A.D. 1168). The scene
on the shield, therefore, recalls an episode of the
Aztecs' great migration legend, perhaps an astronomical event of some sort.
M. D. c.

384

ATLATL
Mixtec-Aztec
wood and gold leaf
length 57.5 (225/s)
Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence
Aztec warriors held spear throwers, called atlatls
in the Nahuatl language, to launch their darts
with greater force, in effect lengthening the arm
to provide greater impetus to the projectile. This
weapon also has been documented in various
other parts of the world and is generally thought
to be an invention older than the bow and arrow.
In the case of the piece shown here, two darts
were placed in the pair of notches carved on the
working face of the atlatl, and were fixed against
the two hooked protuberances at one end. The
rich carving and gilding decorating this atlatl suggest that it was used for ceremonial purposes
rather than in actual warfare.
There are at least twelve Aztec ceremonial
atlatls known. The present object is a particularly
rare example, both because it allows two darts to
be launched at the same time and because the
carving on its back is so complex.
On the working surface, the two notches are
decorated with incised motifs, one in a fishtail
pattern and the other in a design recalling woven
mats or petlatl. The two hooks are carved in bas
relief with two standing warrior figures facing
each other.
The back of the atlatl, worked in high relief on
the first level and in bas relief in the second and
third, is divided into three areas, with the central
one occupying four-fifths of the entire carved
surface. In the first area, at the top, are two figures with all the signs of their status: nose ornament, earrings, and feathered headdresses. They
are seated on two ceremonial stools and stretch
their arms out to shake hands. A third male figure, also of high rank, can be seen between the
two with his hands on their outstretched arms, as
though ratifying an agreement. This probably
represents a pact between mythical ancestors, as is
indicated by the fact that they are separated from
the second area by the glyph for the rainy sky.
The second area, divided into six sections,
describes the adventures of the noble warrior
i Rabbit and his allies. This hero sits on the
symbol of a house and rests his foot on the outstretched hand of i Grass while the latter points
with his foot to a warrior seated on an alligator
crouching on the glyph for water and holding a
sacrificial knife. Behind the alligator is a warrior
whose hand is covered by what appears to be a
kind of knuckle-duster. This section evidently
narrates i Rabbit's conquest of i Grass and the
sacrifice, through the offices of the sacrificing
god and his assistant, of a noble warrior who had
THE A M E R I C A S

561

been defeated. The glyph for the place, which

geographically lay close to a body of water, and a
glyph for heaven with curls of flowers and reeds
separate the first from the second sections. In the
second section the bearded god 2 Wind, perhaps
Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl himself, dives from heaven
onto a priest with tusks, while i Grass (indicated
by his headdress shaped like the head of a macaw)
and 3 Lizard (whose head and arm are all that are
visible) make an offering to him. 3 Lizard and the
tusked priest are seated on the symbol of the rain
god, which separates the second section from the
third. The third section is dedicated to the year 9
Rain. The god is portrayed with reeds, flowers,
and feathers emerging from his hands and
streams of water from his mouth and with a
female head and right arm symbolizing the fertility of that year. This section is separated from the
following one by the glyph for water and two
symmetrical tufts of grass.
The fourth section is dedicated to the year
2 House and the noble 2 Grass seated on the glyph
for Tlaloc and two alligators, perhaps the toponyms of the place where 2 Grass settled. The
fifth section is dedicated to the year 2 Reed (?) as
well as the conversation between the tusked priest
shown above and an Aztec king or noble (as indicated by the classic xiuhuitzolli headdress) on the
predella of an altar. The sixth section shows the
rain god, who scatters his beneficial waters on a
house, alternating with the warm rays of the sun
placed at the base of the section. The roof of a
palace with its roof ornaments separates and protects i Rabbit; the latter, having shed his battle
clothes, sits on the glyph for the year 4 Rain and
receives an offering from a person of rank.
The stories recounted on the back of this atlatl
are, unlike those on other Aztec ceremonial
atlatls, more historical than ritual in nature. This
fact, along with the frequent symbols for the year
in distinct Mixtec style, the indication of the
characters by their calendar names, and the liveliness of the carving and the gilding, suggest that
this atlatl is the work of a Mixtec artist who was
familiar with Aztec taste.
Nothing is known of its history before 1902
when the founder of the Museo di Antropologia e
Etnologia of the University of Florence, Paolo
Mantegazza, bought it along with a second atlatl
from a Mr. Tosi, "merchant in artistic objects in
Florence/' for 500 lire, an enormous sum at that
time. The two atlatls were kept in a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century leather case
and had been in the possession of "an old family
resident in Florence for some time" whose name
the antiquarian refused to divulge (Florence ms.
n.d.). Research carried out by Sara Ciruzzi (1983)
in the state archives of Florence on the inventories
of the Medici Guardaroba and Armory yielded no
information, thus providing no support for the
Medici collection provenance proposed by D.
Bushnell (1905).
L.L.-M.

562

CIRCA 1492

385

EAGLE WARRIOR
Aztec
earthenware and plaster
lyo x 118 x 55 (667/s x 46^/2 x 2i5/s)
reference: Nicholson 1983, #5
CNCAINAH MEX, Museo Templo Mayor,
Mexico City
The eagle warriors and the jaguar warriors were
the elite soldiers of Aztec society. The former

were the warriors of Huitzilopochtli, the god of

the sun and of war. The eagle was a symbol of the
sun, whose enclosure was found in the excavations at the northern end of the Great Temple
in Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Two life-size sculptures
representing these warriors were found on
either side of the main door of this enclosure, on
benches decorated with serpents and warriors
in procession.
Each of the sculptures is formed of four sections. The first is the head, where, in the present

example, the face is enclosed in an enormous bird

mask. The neck has a spike that fits into the next
piece comprising part of the chest and the plumed
arms. It is possible that the hands once held a
wooden weapon. The third piece, forming the
belly and the thighs, in turn fits into the two legs,
each decorated with the claws of the bird and
showing the warrior's feet with sandals.
This piece shows the great skill of the Aztec
ceramists who gave an impressive appearance to
the figure. The sculpture symbolizes the importance of the warrior in a society that depended to
a great extent on military control over tributary
regions.
E.M.M.

386

COLOSSAL RATTLESNAKE HEAD

Aztec
basalt
103 x 108 x 157 (qoVz x 42^2 x 6i3A)
reference: Nicholson 1983, 131
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Nacional de
Antropologia, Mexico City

This enormous serpent head, which was discovered in the nineteenth century near the
cathedral in Mexico City, probably formed part of
the wall of the sacred enclosure at the very center
of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. When the Spaniards
arrived in the Valley of Mexico in the sixteenth
century, this enclosure had a quadrangular floor
like an enormous patio that probably measured
four hundred meters (1,300 feet) per side.
According to the descriptions of the conquistadors
ana early chroniclers, it was enclosed by a wall,
both defensive and symbolic in function, decorated with sculpted stone serpent heads, the coatepantli. This walled enclosure had three entrances
facing south, north, and west, which led to the
paved causeways joining the city with the mainland. The wall of serpents marked the boundaries
of the sacred land, where the Great Temple, representing the hill of the serpents in the Aztec creation myth, rose and where the sun was born.
These menacing stone reptiles were also intended
as the protectors and guardians of the deities.
The sculptors captured the power that emanates
from the rattlesnake. The poisonous snake not
only has a double pair of fangs at the sides, but
also a row of four more in front and a forked
tongue. The reptile has its nasal cavities marked,
its head covered with scales, and enormous eyebrows over the circular eyes.
F.S.

387

TLALOC

Mixtec
greenstone
39.5 x 11 x 10.5 (i52/2 x 42/4 x 42/8)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Templo Mayor,
Mexico City
This image of Tlaloc, god of rain, which was found
in the Great Temple of Mexico-Tenochtitlan,
comes from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. This
area was under Aztec military control, since it was
rich in greenstone, which was so valuable in the
pre-Hispanic world. It is therefore not surprising
to find objects made of that stone in the Great
Temple, where all the economic, political, and
religious power of the Aztecs lay.
E. M. M.
THE A M E R I C A S

563

more open trapezoids, the final one inverted and

showing only its spinelike apex. This trapezoidal
device is the well-known year sign, standing for
the solar year.
On almost all examples of the fire serpent there
are two or more horizontal paper strips, each with
a knot in the middle, arranged in a vertical stack
and placed between the body and the "year-sign"
tail. This device, which is also to be found on the
exterior of several stone cuauhxicallis (containers
for human hearts), has long puzzled Aztec specialists, but is now well known to Maya iconographers. It was David Joralemon (1974) who first
identified this device as the preeminent sign of
blood and blood sacrifice among the classic Maya,
found on ritual bloodletters and elsewhere; the
stack of knots symbol retained this function
through the Maya-Toltec period at Chichen and
in the late post-classic codices. It may well have
been that the stack of knots was transmitted to the
Aztecs from the Maya through the Toltecs, for it
is also very common at the Toltec capital, Tula.
This symbol raises the question of just what is
being portrayed on the present sculpture. The
Xiuhcoatl is undulating down a trapezoidal stone,
surely an unusual posture for a creature supposed
to be traveling upward with the sun. But the base
itself is surely intended to represent a sacrificial
stone, over which victims were stretched face-up
to have their chests opened by the obsidian or flint
knife: it virtually duplicates the sacrificial stone
found on the Huitzilopochtli side of the Great
Temple during the recent excavations. The stack of
knots symbol strongly suggests that the Xiuhcoatl
had a sanguinary function during human sacrifice,
namely to descend from the sky and receive the
offering of the warrior's heart and blood as a representative of Huitzilopochtli-Tonatiuh, the fifth
sun of our own creation.
M.D.C.

389-393

SACRIFICIAL KNIVES

Aztec
388

XlUHCOATL
Aztec
volcanic stone
75.5 X 60.5

X 56.5

(293/4 X 237/8 J 222/4J

T/ie Trustees of the British Museum, London

The Xiuhcoatl (fire serpent) was an avatar of
Xiuhtecuhtli, the old fire god, with the task of
conducting the sun on its daily journey from the
eastern horizon to the zenith. The coatl (snake)
designation in the name is somewhat misleading,
564

CIRCA

1492

for in stone monuments and in representations

in the codices the creature is more like a dragon,
usually having forelimbs. The root jdw/i-has many
meanings in Nahuatl; derived from the noun
xihuitl, it signifies fire, the year, grass, and comet.
As seen here, on the Calendar Stone, and in
codices like the Borgia, the Xiuhcoatl has gaping
jaws and an upturned snout lined with stars; since
the latter usually number between six and eight,
it is quite probable that these represent the
Pleiades, an extremely important star cluster in
Aztec astronomical thought. The body of the
creature is always segmented, ending with one or

389: silica, obsidian, copal

22 X 6 X 3.9 (85/8 X 23/8 X !2/2)

390: silica, obsidian

23.4 X 6.7 X 1.1 fpVfi Jt 2% X l/2)

391: silica, obsidian, copal

17.5

X 6.7 J 1.5 (67/8 X 25/8 X l/2)

392: silica, obsidian, copal

15 X 5-2 J 3.8 (5% X 2 J 12/2J

393: silica, obsidian, copal

19.5

7 X 3.6 (75/8 X 23/4 X 13/8J

CJVCAINAH MEX, Museo Temp/o Mayor,

Mexico City

Aztec ritual was the center of attention during the

month of Izcalli, when ritual impersonators of
the god were burned in fires and then subjected
to the knife.
M.D.C.

395
HUMAN SKULL WITH KNIVES
Aztec
bone, pyrite, flint
16.5 (6V2)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo Templo Mayor,
Mexico City

Such decorated sacrificial knives have been found

in many Aztec offerings. Sacrificial knives, called
tecpatl in the Nahuatl language, were embellished
with shell and obsidian simulating eyes and teeth.
The flint knife was very important in Aztec culture. It symbolized the northerly course of the
universe, and was associated with cold and death.
It was also the name of a year. In view of their use
in sacrificial rites, it is not surprising that such
knives have been found in several offerings at the
Great Temple.
E.M.M.

Several skulls were found among the offerings in

the Aztec Great Temple. This mask-skull from
offering 57, with small perforations in the forehead, has eyes of bone and pyrite that can still be
seen. The skull has stone knives inserted into the
nasal cavities and another into the mouth, which
we interpret as the representation of cutting off
the flow of life-giving air. It is, therefore, a most
poignant expression of death. In pre-Hispanic
Mexico, death and life were united in a constant
cycle that man observed in nature.
E.M.M.

394
SACRIFICIAL KNIFE
Aztec or Mixtec
wood and flint
*9 (7^)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
This knife has been restored by adding an old flint
blade to the wooden handle, but there can be little
doubt that the original instrument was used to
extract hearts from war captives. Unless, as seems
unlikely, the handle comes from an old European
collection, it was probably found in a dry cave,
which would suggest a provenance in Puebla,
Oaxaca, or Guerrero, which have many such
caves. The style is late post-classic, but the handle
could be of either Mixtec or Aztec manufacture.
The figure apparently represents a deity; the
beard along with the crooked fangs at the corners
of the mouth lead one to believe that it is Xiuhtecuhtli (see cat. 362), the aged fire god, who in
THE A M E R I C A S

565

plex culture. If they were commoners they would

attend the telpochcalli and learn the rudiments of
their fathers' trade. They were also taught to control their sexual impulses by self-sacrifice.
Knowing this, the unusual nature of this sculpture, of which type no more than ten exist,
becomes evident. The figure of a nude young man
with an erect penis, a state that would have been
considered antisocial in public, comes from the
city of Texcoco, where this type of figure was
probably placed in the interior of a temple and out
of the view of the general public. The phallic
imagery is associated with male puberty. The
awakening of male sexuality is associated with the
spring, bringing with it the heat of the sun and its
rays which, like the penis, generate fertility.
Texcoco was one of the settlements in the
Valley of Mexico that had a long cultural history.
Its origins date back to at least the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, when the group of hunters
and warriors known as the Chichimecas of Xolotl
entered the civilizing process. They intermarried
with the ancient agricultural cultures that existed
in this Mesoamerican region and founded a
metropolis that was to become famous for its cultural development, Texcoco. This city was known
for its libraries rich in codices, for the poet-king
Nezahualcoyotl (cat. 373) who ruled there, and for
its status as the center of activity for many craftsmen and artists.
The quality of this piece gives testimony to the
excellent workshops of sculptors in Texcoco. The
artist gave the figure a well-proportioned physique of great aesthetic quality. The youth has no
hair and has perforations on the ear lobes, which
indicate that human hair was placed on his head
and that he was adorned with real ear ornaments.
F.S.

397**
YOUNG WOMAN KNEELING
Aztec
stone

396

32 X 20 X 15 (l25/8 X f/8 X 5%J

NUDE YOUNG MAN

Aztec
stone
55 x 20 x 15 (2i5/s x y7/8 x 57/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
The physical characteristics of the Aztec people
can be recognized in their sculpture. Their skin
color ranged from light to dark brown. They had
straight black hair, little tendency to baldness, and
hairless faces, with dark fairly wide eyes, high
foreheads, broad noses, and very prominent
cheekbones. Their average height was about 160
566

CIRCA 1492

centimeters (5 feet 3 inches) for men and 148 centimeters (4 feet 10 inches) for women.
The Aztecs had a highly developed concept of
restraint in dress and social conduct. The evidence
collected by the sixteenth-century chroniclers
abounds with examples regarding the control that
each individual exerted over his acts, his dress,
and his language. Respect for and obedience to the
authorities, gods, elders, and traditions were especially exalted. At the age of puberty, it was compulsory for young men to attend public schools
where they became interns for five years and were
taught according to their social class. If they were
noble they would attend the elite school known as
the calmecac and learn about their deep and com-

CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de

Antropologia, Mexico City
Aztec sculptures give us an insight into the traditions, social structure, and world view of these
ancient peoples. This figure from the Valley of
Mexico portrays a young girl seated in public
on her legs, kneeling. It was the posture that
women had to adopt socially and the position in
which women carried out their work. The figure
evidently represents an adolescent since her
breasts have not grown.
She is dressed in the traditional skirt that
covers the lower section of the body and the
quechquemitl, a kind of rhomboidal blouse with

398

NUDE WOMAN
Aztec
stone
146 x 40 x 25 (572/2 x i$3/4 x 97/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
This figure is the best evidence of the great plastic
quality achieved by the art of Texcoco during the
Aztec era. Its proportions are almost perfect. The
thighs and the lower part of the legs, the curve
outlining the lower abdomen, and the marking of

the female genitaliavery rare in the artistic tradition of that time leave no doubt that this
sculpture is intended to exalt female sexuality. It
is one of the few Aztec sculptures that express
sensuality.
The artist shaped the woman's waist as a thin
line from which the torso builds to solid shoulders; although her arms are broken, we can imagine that they were flexed and directed toward the
front. The breasts are very small, like half spheres
that cling to the body. The quadrangular hollow
between them would originally have contained a
bead or a jade figure, the well-known "green
stone heart" that imaginatively gave life to these
images. The face has a stern expression. The hol-

a hole in the middle for the head. This piece of

clothing is still worn by some indigenous peoples
of Mexico, but today it is short and almost ornamental, and a blouse with sleeves introduced after
the Spanish conquest is worn underneath. In the
pre-Hispanic period it covered the entire upper
body. The garment on this figure, falling in a
triangle in the front and back, is notable for its
rich workmanship adorned by a fringe or border
of small spheres or cloth tassels.
The young woman's status as a member of the
elite is conveyed by her fine jewels: circular earrings possibly of precious metal and an elegant,
naturalistic necklace of three rows of jade beads
that is very similar to necklaces that have been
discovered in archaeological excavations. The
headdress is a band that girds the whole head. It
too has a row of spheres as an adornment on the
upper part and two large tassels hanging on both
sides of the face. Above these the artist depicted
earrings, which in reality were probably covered
by the cloth adornments.
Some scholars consider this headdress to be
characteristic of the goddess of food and water.
Accordingly, despite her naturalism, this figure is
probably a representation of the female power of
nature, the generative principle. In this sculpture,
this force is envisioned in the dry season of the
year waiting for growth, maturity, and fertility
through the action of heat and water. This is why
it is represented as a young girl of the nobility,
restrained and elegant.
Red color, which was characteristic of the
goddess of food, still covers the figure's face. F.S.
THE A M E R I C A S

567

lows of the mouth and eyes were evidently crafted

so that they could be inlaid with shell, bone, and
obsidian. The woman's hair is not represented; in
its place, there are grooves that were perhaps used
to insert real hair.
If one carefully observes the whole and then
each part individually, one can see that sculptural
work in Aztec Mexico was not the work of a single
artist but of collective participation. It is evident
that different hands worked on the legs, the torso,
and the face of this figure.
F.S.

399
GRASSHOPPER
Aztec
carneolite
16 x 46 x 19 (6l/4 x iSVs x 72/2J
CNCAINAH MEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
In the western part of the ancient Lake of Texcoco,
there is a hill called Chapultepec, which gave its
name to a beautiful forest. Chapultepec, now a
park, it is one of the few green areas that survive
in the modern city of Mexico.
The name of the mountain and the forest comes
from the grasshopper, called chapulin in the
Nahuatl language, which is the insect represented
in this sculpture in a reddish-colored stone. We
can see how the sculptor made use of the shape of
the stone to depict the animal. The chapulin
seems to be at the point of jumping, which is how
these creatures swarm through the fields during
the season when they are abundant. Other Aztec
stone sculptures of grasshoppers are known
(Nicholson 1983,117-118), but none as beautiful
as this masterpiece.
According to early legends, Chapultepec was a
sacred place that welcomed the Aztecs when they
reached the Valley of Mexico after having passed
through many places in quest of the land, promised by their god Huitzilopochtli, where they
would found Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The place was
delightful and very green with abundant trees and
vegetation, because in the eastern section of the
mountain there was a permanent spring. Years
after founding their capital, the victorious Aztecs
channeled the spring's valuable water by constructing an aqueduct from Chapultepec to
Tenochtitlan and also to Tlatelolco. For this purpose they constructed two parallel ducts, which
entered the Aztec capital from the west through
the paved road of Tlacopan. The two pipelines
allowed them to have one in operation while the
other was being cleaned.
According to tradition, Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, fifth lord of Tenochtitlan, ordered the
construction of reservoirs in Chapultepec. It is
believed that this sculpture comes from these
reservoirs.
F.S.
568

CIRCA 1492

4OO

TOAD
Aztec
stone
19 x 51 x 34 (jl/2 x 20 x ij3/s)
CNCAINAHMEX, Museo National de
Antropologia, Mexico City
Several pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico considered batrachians as the animals that announce
the rainy season, and these amphibians were
therefore associated with Tlaloc, the patron god
of this vital element. In the Great Temple of the
Aztec capital, on the platform in front of the
shrine of Tlaloc is a small altar whose insignia
sculptures are two gracious toads. Besides being
associated with water, toads were also related to
the earth and the underworld, probably because
they live underground.

cat. 400, view of underside

The figure of this toad was sculpted with great

realism. It is in a crouching position. The head
is pointed almost like a beak, giving it a birdlike
profile. On the upper part, two semispherical
protuberances identify the animal as one of the
species Bufo marinus, which is characterized by
the bags of poison on its head. According to the
Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century, this
substance was carefully extracted by the Aztecs
and used to prepare a hallucinogenic drink.
On the sides of the head are three circular holes
in sequence, probably used for placing ornaments
of real feathers or textile on the sculpture. On
the belly of the animal is the symbol of the center
of the universe, consisting of a large circle with a
feather border. There are also four small circles on
the edge of this circle placed in a crosslike design.
These are symbolic representations of chalchihuitl, the precious jade. Another Aztec sculpture
of a toad in the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin,
has an almost identical carving on its underside
(Nicholson 1983, 115-116).
Many images of Tlaltecuhtli, the lord of the
earth, have the same symbol on the belly. The
Aztecs imagined Tlaltecuhtli in the crouched position of a large batrachian under the earth who
held the universe on his shoulders. Therefore this
sacred toad is like the center of the earth that supports us on his shoulders.
F.S.

4O1
QUETZALCOATL
Aztec
gray stone

25, diameter 40 (9%, i53/4J

CNCAINAH MEX, Museo National de

Antropologia, Mexico City
The pre-Hispanic peoples venerated a deity representing the fertility of the earth and positive
changes in nature. This deity was given the form
of a serpent, usually a poisonous one such as the
rattlesnake, which was shown covered with feathers. The oldest known image of this type is on a
ceramic vessel from Tlatilco, dated 900 B.C.
The Aztecs called this god Quetzalcoatl, "the
feathered serpent/' one of the deities of creation
who, together with Tezcatlipoca, had participated
in the successive generation of the world ages or
"suns" (see further explanation in Coe essay in
this catalogue). The feathered serpent was
responsible for the second sun, the age of the
wind, which brought light into the world.
The Aztecs often represented Quetzalcoatl.
In general he is shown as a serpent whose body
is rolled in a spiral, forming a sort of truncated
cone; the animal is covered with feathers and generally has a large head. In some cases the calendar
date i Reed, the date when Quetzalcoatl was born,
is added in a small square.

This magnificent sculpture is one of the bestpreserved and best-known specimens. The reptile
is completely covered by the feathers, which
extend in different directions as if the wind were
moving them. The snake's head is striking: large
brows appear over eyes that appear to be made of
strips of interwoven textile. The nose is partially
covered by a sort of triangular upper lip. There
are more than the normal number of two fangs:
a full row runs from one corner of the mouth to
the other, exaggerating the serpent's ferocity. An
enormous forked tongue, in the form of a broad
band with a double tip that is curled up, falls
heavily covering part of the body.
Unfortunately, a relief found at the base of the
sculpture was erased intentionally when working
the stone. Nonetheless some details of the representation remain, suggesting that the base was a
figure of the god of earth, Tlaltecuhtli, whose
characteristic position was crouching. On the back
of the head it bears the date i Reed.
The significance of this sculpture of Quetzalcoatl on a base representing Tlaltecuhtli is that,
for the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl, based on the earth,
in turn held up the universe.
F.S.

4O2

RECLINING JAGUAR
Aztec
volcanic stone
12.5 x 14.5 x 28 (4% x $5/8 x 11 j
The Brooklyn Museum
The jaguar, the world's largest spotted cat, was
absent from the mountainous region of central
Mexico, the heart of the Aztec empire, except
in the royal zoo. But this fearsome creature of
the lowland forests played a vital role in Aztec
thought: along with the harpy eagle, it was the
symbol of war. In the Aztec creation myth the
first world age was the era of jaguars; the great
god Tezcatlipoca, who dominated the age, took the
form of a jaguar; and, finally, the jaguar warriors
were one of the two most powerful military
orders in the Aztec army.
This small sculpture is a sympathetic rendering
of the creature. The front paws are outstretched
and the tail curves across the hind legs in a posi-

THE A M E R I C A S

569

tion of repose. As is this case with many hfesoamerican sculptures beginning with the ancient
Olmec civilization, the underside of this piece
is fully carved: the pads of the paws, although
invisible to the beholder, are depicted in detail.
As with almost all Aztec carved representations
of naturalistic animals and plants, it is not known
why they were carved or for whom. They could
have been placed in temples, in palaces, or even in
the homes of well-off people. It is quite possible
that this jaguar graced a military academy where
jaguar warriors were trained.
M.D.C.

403 *
PUMPKIN
Aztec
porphyry with traces of feldspar
19.7 x 24.5 (73/4X95/8)
private collection
404

The Aztec interest in the naturalistic rendering of

plant and animal forms is well represented in this
vividly realistic sculpture of a pumpkin (Cucurbita
pepo)f a food plant first cultivated in Mexico
several millennia before the Christian era. Various species of squashes, including the pumpkin,
were grown in Aztec gardens; both their flesh and
the dried seeds were a part of Aztec cuisine.
It is not known what function this sculpture
may have played. Nicholson (1983,113) suggested
that it might have been on permanent display in a
temple dedicated to a fertility deity (perhaps Chicomecoatl, the maize goddess). But we know little
about Aztec connoisseurship, and it is also conceivable that the work formed part of a private
collection in a noble Aztec home or palace.
M.D.C.

570

C I R C A 1492

THE MEXICANS' MANNER OF DANCING

from the Codex Tovar
1583-1587
colonial Mexican
manuscript on paper
2i.2xi5.6(83/8x6y8)
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University,
Providence
According to Ignacio Bernal (in Duran 1964, xxixxxii), the late sixteenth century was "a golden
age of chronicles written on ancient Mexico." Still
alive in Mexico were native survivors of the conquest, and many native communities still carried
on their own way of life. In the wake of the early
pioneer missionary-ethnologists, including
Olmos, Motolinia, and Sahagun, there followed a
new generation of historians, some of them born
in Mexico. This band of scholars included Hernando Alvarado de Tezozomoc; the Dominican
Diego Duran; and two Jesuits, Jose de Acosta
and Juan de Tovar. With the exception of Acosta,
whose knowledge of ancient Mexico seems
entirely based on that of Tovar, most of them
drew their information from living informants as
well as from old, indigenous chronicles that have
been lost. They also drew freely on each other,
providing many problems of attribution for
modern scholars.
Juan de Tovar was born in Mexico (New Spain)
around 1543-1546, either in Mexico City or
Texcoco, and was by his own account a relative
of Duran (Kubler and Gibson 1951,11:12-13).

Ordained as a priest in 1570, he entered the Jesuit

order three years later and eventually gained
fame as a missionary preacher. He was fluent in
Nahuatl, Otomi, and Mazagua. Apparently basing
his studies on original sources, Tovar prepared
a history of pre-conquest Mexico that has since
disappeared. It is his second history that appears
in the Providence manuscript, along with other
material. His long life ended in 1626.
The Codex Tovar appeared in England in 1816
and came into the possession of Richard Heber.
On Heber's death in 1836 it entered the collection
of Sir Thomas Phillipps, remaining in the Phillipps library until 1946 when it was acquired by
the John Carter Brown Library. The volume, with
a modern leather binding, consists of three parts,
the first being an exchange of letters between
Acosta and Tovar that is important because it
describes the first lost history. The second part of
the manuscript is a version of the historical text
entitled "Relacion del origen de los Yndios,"
covering Aztec history and the great ceremonies
linked to the solar calendar. This is largely but not
entirely drawn from the historical part of Duran's
work; the Tovar version was copied in its entirety
as chapter 7 of Jose de Acosta's "Natural and
Moral History of the Indies/' while the so-called
Codex Ramirez, preserved in Mexico City, is
another copy of Tovar. This section of the Tovar
is illustrated by watercolors very similar to those
accompanying Duran's work, but in a style that
is less European than that of Duran's artist (see
Lafaye 1972). The third section is the Tovar calendar, a description of the rites and feasts of the

solar calendar including a correlation with the

Christian calendar, illustrated by a hand different
from the one in the second part. The entire manuscript is holograph, in the hand of Tovar.
Figure 17, one of thirty-two accompanying the
second part, is spread across two facing pages and
is captioned "The Mexicans' manner of dancing/'
It shows a large, counterclockwise dance of men,
with the music provided by a horizontal drum
(teponaztli) and a vertical drum (huehuetl) (cats.
378, 379). All the participants appear to be of very
high rank, including the musicians who wear the
headdress-insignia of the emperor on their shoulders. Each of the dancers is attired in a cloak
knotted at the shoulder and carries a bouquet in
one hand and a device topped with feathers in the
other. These are very similar to the objects carried
by Nezahualpilli in the Codex Ixtlilxochitl (see
cat. 373).
Lafaye has suggested that this is the dance that
took place in the month Toxcatl (1972, 273).
However, the presence among the dancers of a
jaguar knight and an eagle knight raises the possibility that this might be part of the rites for Tlacaxipehualiztli, held in honor of the god Xipe
Totec; during these festivities these warriors not
only engaged in gladiatorial sacrifices, but also
participated in such dances.
M.D.C.

405

Hans Burgkmair

Augsburg, 1473-1531

Two COSTUME STUDIES

c. 1519-1525
pen and ink with washes on paper
4O5A: BLACK YOUTH HOLDING A CLUB AND A
SHIELD
23 .5 X l6 (^/4 X 62/4J

4058: BLACK YOUTH HOLDING AN Ax

24 x 16.1 ($3/8 x 6l/4)
references: Halm 1962, 125-126, 161, figs. 62, 63
Honour in Cleveland 1975, 14, fig. $b; Feest 1984,
11; Rowlands 1988, 187-188, nos. i$8(a) and i^8(b)f
pi. xxiii; Colin 1988, 336-337, nos. M.6,
f i g . 14, and M.J, f i g . 15
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
Hans Burgkmair, like Diirer, never saw a native
American. In these two drawings Burgkmair
posed models with exotic artifacts. His "Indians'7
are blacks and one is even bearded, whereas
American natives did not tolerate hair on their
bodies.
The warrior of the first drawing is shown in
contrapposto, a typical classical pose in which the
weight of the body rests on one foot. The feather

headdress and necklace are probably Brazilian,

specifically Tupinamba. So is the strange ornament over the right shoulder, which seems to be a
Tupinamba headdress made of a cotton bonnet
with feathers hanging down at the back (Metraux
1928,130-136; Colin 1988, 336). The feather
skirt, which is open on one side, is an item of
clothing that does not seem to have existed in
America. Tupinambas, in fact, wore little except
for long feather cloaks at festivals (see cat. 408).
In this case, Burgkmair, probably relying to some
extent on the depictions of Indians found in
broadsheets and book illustrations, used either a
Tupinamba feather cloak or an Aztec feather headdress to cover the nudity of his "Indian/' The war
club is probably Mexican, although no extant
weapon provides an exact parallel. The mosaic
shield, with a leather border from which feathers
hang, is more clearly of Aztec origin. It can be
identified with the famous wooden shield now in
the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna (Feest
1984,11), which may be one of the shields given
by Motecuhzoma to Hernan Cortes and sent by
him to Charles v (Saville 1922, 71-75, pis. xxixxn; Nowotny 1960, 38-41, pis. 4-7). In the
sixteenth-century Vienna inventory these are
described as having "pieces of colored featherwork
hanging round the outside of them" (Cortes 1986,
43; see also Saville 1922,10). The Vienna shield
was recorded in the Kunstkammer in Schloss
Ambras in 1596. As late as 1730 it still had a
leather border to which the feathers must have
been attached. Although the shield has lost many
of its tesserae, the iconography can still be recon-

structed : in the upper half are the sun and five

zones of heaven, while below are the moon and
various figures.
For the second drawing Burgkmair dressed a
black bearded man with the same Indian artifacts.
This time, however, the weapon the man holds
is a battle ax with a hook at its end. Although no
specimen with a carved head is known today, the
"blade" is clearly an anchor-ax, a well-known
South American type (see Ryden 1937 for Brazilian anchor axes and, for clubs in early European
collections, Hochstetter 1885, 99-104, pi. v, and
Feest 1985, 241-242). The head cannot be, as is
sometimes claimed, a Jivaro shrunken-head
(tsanta); such heads were distinguished by long
white cotton threads hanging from the lips and
often by red and yellow toucan-breast feathers
hanging from the ears (Harner 1972, 187-193). In
addition, shrunken heads were worn round the
neck. In any case, Jivaro Indians came into contact
with the European invaders only in 1549, when
the Spaniard Hernan de Benavente came down
from the Andes and reached the confluence of the
Rio Upano and the Rio Paute.
J.M.M.

THE AMERICAS

571

406
Christoph Weiditz
Strasbourg, c. I5oo?-i559

AZTECS PLAYING TLACHTLI

1529

from the Trachtenbuch

manuscript
each fol. 19.8 x 15 (y3/4 x f/s)
references: Hampe 1927, esp. 79, pis. xm-xiv; Cline
1969, 75-76, ill. p. 74; Honour in Cleveland 1975,
59-61, fig. 48; Colin 1988, 340-344 (esp. 343~344J
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg,
Hs 22.494
Christoph Weiditz is best known as a medallist, in
which medium he portrayed both Charles v and
Hernan Cortes. He is known as well for the Trachtenbuch, his famous costume book. This manuscript includes eleven representations of Aztecs,
two of them on double pages. Weiditz was, in fact,
the first European to portray native Americans;
he sketched these Aztecs in Barcelona in 1529,
more precisely before March 22, the date the
Mexicans left for Seville. The Aztecs he saw had
been brought back by Cortes in 1528, when he
returned to Spain to justify himself before the
emperor. Weiditz carefully recorded their appearance, showing some of them juggling and playing
games like tlachtli and patolli. The ball game was
explained in an inscription by Weiditz: "In this
way the Indians play with the inflated ball, with
their buttocks without raising their hands from
the ground; they also have a hard leather over
their buttocks to receive the impact of the ball;
they are also wearing similar leather gloves/'
Because he was unfamiliar with rubber, Weiditz
assumed from the ball's elasticity that it was inflated; in fact, it would have been made of solid
rubber. The game of tlachtli, which the drawing
572

CIRCA 1492

illustrates, is known from accounts first published

by Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552 and by Juan
de Torquemada in 1615. Torquemada indicated
that this game was played by teams of two or
three players who hit the ball with their buttocks,
the aim being to bounce it through a stone ring on
a wall. In his History of the Conquest of Mexico
(1552) Lopez de Gomara gave an exhaustive
description, specifying the particular type of ball
used (ullamalixtli) and explaining that "the game
is not played for points, but only for the final victory, which goes to the side that knocks the ball
against the opponents' wall or over it." "Stones
resembling millstones are set into the side walls,
with holes cut through them, hardly big enough
to allow passage for the ball. The player who
shoots the ball through them (which rarely happens, because it would be a difficult thing to do
even if one threw the ball by hand) wins the game
and, by ancient law and custom of the players, also
wins the capes of all the spectators" (Lopez de
Gomara 1964, 145-146; for the ball game, see
also Duran 1971, 312-319, pi. 34).
J.M.M.

407

MAP OF TENOCHTITLAN AND

THE GULF OF MEXICO
from H. Cortes, Praeclara de Nova maris Oceani
Hyspania Narratio... (Nuremberg, 1524)
hand colored woodcut
31 X 46.5

(l22/8 X l8l/4)

references: Toussaint 1938, 93-105, fig. 13; Palm

1951, 59-66, fig. 9; Marquina 1960, 25-26, fig. i;
Nuremberg 1971, 360 no. 653, ///. p. 358; Budde
1982, 173182, fig. 262; Nebenzahl 1990, 74-76
Newberry Library, Chicago

This map of Tenochtitlan was included in a book

on the conquest of Mexico published by Friedrich
Peypus in Nuremberg in March 1524. The text
consists of a Latin translation, by Pietro Savorgnani, of Hernan Cortes' second and third letters
from Mexico together with the De rebus, et Insulis noviter repertis by Peter Martyr d'Anghiera;
the large woodcut of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city,
is based on a drawing supposedly made at Cortes'
behest. The conquistador was deeply impressed by
the Aztec capital, built on a lake and approached
by four artificial causeways. The main streets
were wide and straight and the town had many
squares "where trading is done, and markets are
held continuously...; each kind of merchandise
is sold in its own street without any mixture
whatsoever," something about which the Aztecs
were evidently very particular. Cortes described
the variety of produce at great length. At the
center of the city was the Great Temple, which he
described as being "so large that within the precincts, which are surrounded by a very high wall,
a town of some five hundred inhabitants could
easily be built." The anonymous woodcut recording the city shows the central square (Temixtitan
or Tenochtitlan) surrounded by the enclosure
known as the coatepantli (snake wall), with the
temples in which human sacrifices were held
(Templum ubi sacrificant), and even the tzompantli or skull-rack altar where the heads of the
sacrificed (capita sacrificatorum) were placed.
The architecture is largely fanciful and accommodated to familiar European conventions, but the
large pyramid and two towers probably represent
the two shrines atop the Great Temple dedicated
to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc on their giant pyramidal base. The headless idol (idol lapideum) is
more symbolic than real and alludes to Cortes'
destruction of the Aztec deities (for the Great
Temple, see Matos Moctezuma 1988). The Aztec
ruler had various residences in and around
Tenochtitlan. In some of his houses he kept birds
and animals (domus animalium) in cages made of
strong, well-joined timber: "in most of them
were large numbers of lions, tigers, wolves, foxes,
and cats of various kinds" (Cortes 1986, 102-111).
Built as an island and with an inner ceremonial
enclosure, Tenochtitlan was well defended. It has
indeed been proposed (Palm 1951) that the 1524
woodcut was used by Albrecht Diirer for his
scheme for an ideal city published in his treatise
on fortifications (Etliche underricht, zu Befestigung der stett, Schloss, und flecken [Nuremberg,
1527], fol. E.ir). This town plan is perhaps the
most original part of Diirer's treatise. The town
itself is built in the form of a square; it is also
fortified and clearly organized quarter by quarter.
The connections with Tenochtitlan, however, are
rather general, and no direct dependence can be
proved. In any case Diirer could have arrived at
his scheme simply by adapting the regular symmetrical layout of the Greek military camp, as
described by Polybius, to a centralized city plan.

The 1524 woodcut influenced later illustrations

of the Aztec city, including that by Benedetto
Bordone in his Libro, Nel qual si ragiana de tutte
I'lsole del mondo (Venice, 1528) and that in Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Delia Navigationi et
viaggi of 1565. Best known, probably, is Franz
Hogenberg's map of Mexico in the famous Civitates Orbis Terrarum of 1572.
The map of the Gulf of Mexico next to the plan
of Tenochtitlan in Cortes' work uses the place
name La Florida, which the Spanish gave to what
is now the southeastern United States, and shows,
for the first time ever on a map, the Mississippi
River (here called Rio del Spiritusancto).
J.M.M.

THE AMERICAS

573

THE TUPINAMBA
The ancestors of the Tupinamba migrated to the
coast of what is now Brazil from the interior.
By the sixteenth century they occupied a long
strip of coastline along the Atlantic. They were
a warlike people, and the cannibalism that
accompanied their victories was described in
sensational detail in the accounts of early European explorers.
The Tupinamba are best known for their
beautiful ceremonial capes made of tropical
birds' feathers, a number of which have survived in Kunstkammer collections. Their arti-

facts must have made a great impression when

they arrived in Europe in the years following
the f i r s t Portuguese landing in Brazil in 1500.
The earliest European depictions of native
Americans often show figures dressed in
feather garments and holding war clubs that
were clearly inspired by Tupinamba prototypes.

408

FEATHER CLOAK
i6th or lyth century
Tupinamba
cotton or plant fiber, feathers, bird skin
200 x 180 (j83/4 x yo7/s)
references: Hirtzel 1930, 649-651; Metraux 1932, 7;
Calberg 1939, 103-133; Feest 1985, 243; Hildesheim
1987, cat. 357

Musees royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels

On special occasions the usually naked Tupinamba
Indians in what is now Brazil adorned themselves
with feathers, which they glued directly onto
their bodies or wore as an ornament. An Indian
cape was recorded in the Kunstkammer of the
king of Denmark in an inventory of 1689, as was a
long Indian cloak of red feathers. These two items
are now in the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen
(see Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 27-28,
nos.EHC52 and 115931, ills). Several other Tupinamba cloaks are known: two in Florence and one
each in Basel, Berlin (destroyed during the Second
World War), Paris, and Brussels (Feest 1985, 242243). The oldest reference to the feather cloak in
Brussels is in an inventory (1781) of the collections in the royal arsenal made by Georges Gerard,
a member of the Academic des Sciences et BellesLettres of Brussels. There under no. 70 is
recorded "Une espece d'habillement ou manteau
compose de plumes rouges qu'on dit avoir appartenu a Montesuma (Empereur du Mexique)."
However, this cloak is not Aztec but Tupinamba.
Similar items of costume are well known from
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century descriptions,
the best illustrations being found in Hans Staden's
Warhaftige Historia... der wilden, nacketen,
grimmigen, Menschfresser Leuthen of 1557 and
in Theodor de Bry's engravings. The cloaks were
put on for ceremonies, including human sacrifices; according to Claude dAbbeville (1614), the
native Americans wore them not only as adornments, but also as encitements to bravery ("non
pour cacher seulement leur nudite mais pour se
parer et estre plus braves"), which implies a
magical function (Due 1979-1980, 257-261). The
mantle in Brussels is extremely wide as well as
long, which means that it must have swept the
ground. The backing of the cloak is a net made of
cotton or vegetable fibers into which the feathers
were very carefully fastened. The red feathers are
those of the guara or red ibis (Tantalus ruber L. or
Ibis rubra), the blue and the yellow feathers are
those of the Ara (Ara ararauna), while the
remainder come from Amazonian parrots. Both
technical details (discussed by Calberg 1939) and
the choice of feathers confirm a Brazilian and
more specifically Tupinamba origin.
J.M.M.

574

CIRCA 1492

THE TAINOS
When Columbus made his first landfall in the
Bahamian archipelago on 12 October 1492, he
was greeted by a group of people from the culture we now call Taino. Their ancestors had
migrated to the Antilles from the South American mainland. If Columbus was puzzled by how
little the relatively simple way of life of these
people, whom he called "Indians," corresponded
to Marco Polo's account of the splendors of
Cathay, he did not betray his surprise in the
journal of his first voyage. Instead, prompted
by the small gold ornaments he saw some of

409

WEEPING MALE FIGURE

Tamo
wood
100 (393/sj
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
This artifact was found in a cave in Jamaica, where
it may have been put to hide it from the Spaniards. The Tamos normally kept such statuettes in
their houses and worshiped them as deities

the Tainos wearing, he set about searching for

the abundance of gold that Marco Polo attributed to the Indies. He also noted the possibility
that the docile islanders could be easily converted to Christianity and turned into laborers.
Early exploitation of the Tainos, as well as
their assimilation into the Spanish population
of the West Indies, led to the disappearance of
their culture by the mid-sixteenth century.
Much of our knowledge of their religion and
customs comes from the report prepared for
Columbus around 1498 by Fray Ramon Pane.

We know they worshipped deities known as

zemis, whose characteristic features are
preserved in carved stone and wooden statuettes. The paraphernalia of their religious
ceremonies have also survived, as have carved
stone belts associated with their version of the
ball game popular in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Taino works of art were among the
earliest American artifacts to have entered
European Kunstkammer collections.

(zemis). They placed narcotic powder (cohoba) on

the upper platform and inhaled it through tubes
such as cat. 419. The resulting hallucinations
were thought to be messages from the deity.
The Tainos believed that a pair of zemis were
responsible for sunshine and rainfall respectively.
They sometimes depicted them as twins joined
together in a single piece of stone sculpture. In
other cases, as in this piece, they carved them
separately. This example portrays Boinayel the
rain giver (Arrom 1989, 37-45). His most important feature is the grooves running down from his
eyes, which symbolize the course of the magical
tears that created rainfall. An incised piece of
shell has been placed in his mouth to represent
his teeth. Few such inlays are still in place.
I.R. and J.J.A.

410

CROUCHING MALE FIGURE

Taino
guayacdn wood

61 (24)

Visual Equities, Inc., Atlanta

This piece is from the part of Hispaniola now in
the Dominican Republic. Its threatening expression gives reason to believe that it portrays
Baibrama, a zemi who embodied the Tamos'
knowledge about the planting, growth, processing, and consumption of cassava, their principal
crop. In that process they grated the tuberous root
of the plant, extracted its poisonous juice, and
converted its flesh into flour from which they
baked bread. Baibrama's expression may have
been intended to admonish people against drinking cassava juice before it had been boiled to
evaporate its poison. Both the Tainos and the
THE A M E R I C A S

575

The broad mouth and circular eyes of the figure

depicted on the three-pointer are typical. Other
examples clearly show bent arms and hands at
one end, as if digging the earth, and bent legs and
feet at the other end, as if pushing through the
ground. These features may be related to the
functions of the god. The bases of most specimens
are concave; their tops are conical and slightly
asymmetrical.
I.R. and J.J.A.

Spaniards prized cassava bread because it kept

well in the hot and humid tropical climate of the
West Indies (Arrom 1989, 67-73, P^ 4^/ Rouse,
forthcoming).

I.R. andj.j.A.

411

CHIEF'S STOOL (Duho)

Taino
wood
jS x 40 (jo5/8 x i$3/4)

4*3

Musee de I'Homme, Palais de Chaillot, Paris

HUMAN EFFIGY FIGURE

Chiefs, priests, and other important personages

sat and reclined on stools crafted from single
pieces of wood or, less commonly, stone. The
Tamos called these objects duhos. Columbus
likened them to the thrones he knew in Europe.
The Italian humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, as
well as the Spanish chroniclers Oviedo and Las
Casas, admired their beautiful designs and highly
polished surfaces. Most examples are in the shape
of hammocks, which the Tamos used in place of
beds. Geometric figures are engraved on the backs
of the more elaborate specimens, and heads of
zemis are sculptured on their fronts, as in this
example from Haiti (Arrom 1989, 107-108).
I.R. and J.J.A.

Tamo
ceramic
40.5 (i57/s)

576

CIRCA 1492

412

CARVED THREE-POINTER
Tamo
stone
17.5 (6%)
Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo
Three-pointers vary greatly in material, size, and
decoration. The smaller and plainer specimens are
said to have been buried in the fields in order to
improve the growth of crops. Because larger stone
pieces like this one from the Dominican Republic
are so beautifully carved and exquisitely finished,
they are thought to have been kept in their
owners' houses and worshiped as zemis. Arrom
(1989, 17-31) has shown that these objects represent the Tamos' supreme deity Yucahu Bagua
Maorocoti, god of agriculture, fishing, and
seafaring.

National Museum of the American Indian,

Smithsonian Institution
This piece, found in a cave in the Dominican
Republic in 1916, has been repeatedly described as
a "humpbacked clay idol/' It is in reality a beautiful, brooding human figure with a mythical turtle
on its back, which can be connected with the
creation story related by Fray Ramon Pane in
his account of Tamo mythology (Arrom 1988).
According to Father Pane, a male quadruplet
named Deminan asked his grandfather to teach

him the use of fire. The grandfather was so

incensed by this petition that he spit freshly made
cohoba, the narcotic powder used by the Tamos in
the worship of zemis, on Deminan's back, causing
a painful inflammation. His brothers cut the
inflammation open and out came a living turtle.
The four brothers built a house, cohabited with
the turtle, and thus created the Tamo people (Arrom
1989, 84-89).
Having seen his grandfather's use of fire,
Deminan could pass this knowledge on to his
descendants. With it, the Tamos were able to clear
the forests for agriculture, bake the bread they
made from the cassava plant, and smoke tobacco.
In this statuette, Deminan is portrayed with
extended ear lobes and wearing a belt, both of
which are typical Tamo features.
I.R. and J.J.A.

416-417

VOMITING SPATULAS
Taino
bone
416: 23.6 f92/4J
417- 23 (9)
Collection of Fundacion Garcia Arevalo, Inc.

414-415

CERAMIC BOTTLES
Tamo
414: 49.5 x 43.2 foVzx 17)
Brian and Florence Mahony

415: 18 x 20.4 (/ x 8)
Collection of Fundacion Garcia Arevalo, Inc.
Inhabitants of the tropical forests found it convenient to store their beverages in gourds and to
drink from them. The ancestors of the Tamos
began to supplement gourds with clay bottles
during the first centuries B.C. , shortly after their

Before worshiping their idols, the Tainos purified

themselves by tickling their throats with spatulas
of wood or bone in order to induce vomiting.
Some of the spatulas made during the Chican
time (around A.D. 1200-1500, in the Tamo heartland) were elaborately carved; Dominican
archaeologists have found examples of such pieces
in the burials of elite persons (Rouse, forthcoming). The first of these examples is decorated with
an anthropomorphic figure of a zemi and the
second with a zoomorphic carving of a bat.
I.R. and J.J.A.
arrival in the West Indies. This practice ended
around A.D. 600, but was revived by the so-called
Chican potters of Hispaniola A.D. 1200. The use of
pottery bottles spread through most of the Tamo
heartland during the following three centuries.
The two examples shown here are in the Boca
Chica style, which developed on the south coast of
the Dominican Republic (Rouse, forthcoming, fig.
12, a). The more elaborate bottles were undoubtedly used in ceremonies.
I.R. and J.J.A.

THE A M E R I C A S

577

418
SNUFF INHALER
Tamo
bone
8.6 (33/8)
Collection of Fundacion Garcia Arevalo, Inc.,
Tamo worshipers used tubes made of wood or
bone to inhale cohoba powder, often sniffing it
from platforms on the tops of figures of zemis
(cats. 409-410). The conquistadors observed plain

forked tubes being used for the purpose. This

unique example has been exquisitely sculpted
from a single piece of bone to represent a human
figure. The walls of the tubes form its legs and are
very thin, as can be seen in a fracture on its left
side. The legs frame the features of the face,
giving the appearance of a delicate cameo. The
figure portrays Maquetaurie Guayaba, the Tamo
lord of the underworld, who has also been identified in a number of other ritual objects (Arrom
1989,112-113).
I.R. and J.J.A.

419

ANTHROPOMORPHIC PESTLE
Tamo
stone
24 (9%)
Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo
A figure of a zemi is carved on this conical stone
pestle from the Dominican Republic. As early as
the first millennium B.C., the Tamos7 predecessors
used plain conical pestles to grind wild vegetable
foods. The practice of decorating them began in
the Tamo heartland during the Chican period,
between A.D. 1200 and 1500.
I.R. and J.J.A.

578

CIRCA 1492

with twenty-four incised teeth is solidly attached.

The eye orbits and the large ears of the idol show
traces of resin or vegetable glue; small discs of
shell, mother-of-pearl, tortoise, or even gold
plates may have been attached at one time.
The bent knees of the figure are common
among Tamo zemis. The cotton bands that the
Tamo used to decorate their arms and legs are
here represented by two deep symmetrical cuts
in the lower limbs.
Giglioli (1910) reported that this plate, like the
Tamo necklace (cat. 422), reached Florence from
Santo Domingo between the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries,
suggesting that it would have been exhibited in
the Medici collections. However, Ciruzzi (1983)
did not find it listed in the inventories of objects
belonging to the Medici. It is first found registered and described in the catalogues of 1820
and 1843 of the Regio Museo and the Museo
D.Z.
Antropologico.

420
STONE BELT
Tamo
black stone
47.3

X 3O.2 (l85/8 X H7/8)

references: Fewkes 1907; Ekholm 1961; Alegria 1982

Museum of History, Anthropology and Art of the

University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras
Decorated stone rings, often called "collars" in the
literature, are the most characteristic archaeological objects from Puerto Rico. For many years
their function among the Tamos was an enigma.
Today it is known that, like the stone "yokes"
from Mexico, they were used as belts and were
part of the paraphernalia of the players in the ball
game. They were never described in the early
chronicles and have rarely been found in situ,
although fragments have been found in the vicinity of Antillean ball courts (bateyes). It is possible
that belts like these were originally made of bent
branches, for in some cases the union of the
branch and its binding is carefully represented in
the stone carving. Stone belts are associated with
another characteristic Puerto Rican archaeological
object, the so-called elbow stone. These seem to
have been the most important part of a belt, the
rest of it being made of a branch tied to the ends
of the elbow stone.
Approximately two hundred Tamo stone belts
exist in collections in museums in Puerto Rico,
the Dominican Republic, the United States, and
Europe. Most are from Puerto Rico, as is this one,
though a few are from the Dominican Republic
and Saint Croix. These stone belts can be grouped
into two types: the massive type, which is generally undecorated and weighs around thirty-five
pounds, and the slender, which usually is highly
decorated and weighs about ten pounds.

The present example, which was found in Juana

Diaz, Puerto Rico, is one of the finest examples
of the slender type. It has a beautifully decorated
boss and side panels incised with an all-over chevron motif. It is skillfully carved and polished. The
principal motif, on the decorated panel border,
represents a humanoid head with batlike appendages. The piece is part of the museum's De Hostos
Collection.
R.E.A.

421

OVAL PLATE WITH

ANTHROPOMORPHIC HANDLE
Tamo
wood (Guayacum officinale?) and shell (Strombus
gigas)
51 (20); diam. 22.2 (83/4)
Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence
This beautiful wooden plate or tray shows traces
of a reddish color at its center. The concavity of its
internal surface was obtained by hollowing out a
single piece of wood, and the final sanding down
and polishing were executed with care. The plate
is shiny, smooth to the touch, and light and easy
to handle. The handle consists of an anthropomorphic idol; to its mouth, which is stretched out in
a curved rectangular shape, a curved shell plate
THE A M E R I C A S

579

422

NECKLACE WITH CENTRAL IDOL

Taino
shell (Tridalna gigas?)
length 24 ($3/8)
Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence
The care with which this necklace was made and
the appearance of the small idol at its center suggest that its use was ceremonial. Comparison
of the idol's features with other Taino amulets
reveals a common morphology, the face of a bat.
In Taino mythology bats were possibly associated
with the spirits of the dead (Garcia Arevalo 1988).
This necklace is one of a small number of Taino
pieces with an early provenance. According to
Giglioli (1910), this necklace is originally from
Santo Domingo and reached Florence and the
Medici family "at the end of the seventeenth
century or the beginning of the eighteenth century
" Sara Ciruzzi (1983) has noted that it
was mentioned for the first time in the Inventory
of the Medici Armory in 1696 (Guardaroba Medicea. 1091:229) and then in the Armory Inventory
of 1715. It appears also in the last inventory of
the Medici Armory from 1746-1747 (Guardaroba
Medicea. 60 appendix: 139), passing to the
Inventory of the Lorraine Armory of 1868 (MSS
97:115) and the Inventory of the Pieces in the
580

CIRCA 1492

Armory Kept on the Occasion of the 1775 Sale

and Existing in the Royal Gallery (MSS 103).
The necklace was subsequently described in the
1820 and 1843 catalogues of the Regio Museo di
Storia Naturale and then in the catalogues of the
museum that is its home today (see Zanin 1991).

D.Z.

423
BEADED BELT
c. 1525-1550
Taino
shell, seeds, cotton, convex mirrors, glass, brass
83.4 x 6.8 (323/4 x 25/8), height of
central figure 10.3 (4)
Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna
The vivid account given by Bartolome de Las
Casas has made it common knowledge that the
conquest of the New World began with the massive depopulation of the West Indies. Equally
affected by the destructive impact of European
contact were the products of the art and craftsmanship of the indigenous Tamos. Since images of
zemis, a class of supernatural beings revered by
the Tamos, were an integral part of many if not
most utilitarian artifacts, the destruction of thousands of these "idols" became a priority for zealous Christian missionaries.
Of those artifacts sent to Europe in the first
decades after 1492, only five have survived in
European collections. The oval plate (cat. 421) and
shell necklace (cat. 422), which the present author
believes is more likely to be a headband, are
thought to have been preserved in the Medici collections in Florence (Giglioli 1910), although only
the latter can actually be traced to the Medici

inventories. A very similar shell headband in Ulm

was first described in 1909 (Andree 1914) as part
of the seventeenth-century Weickmann collection
of Africana, but does not appear in any of the
Weickmann catalogues and may have an entirely
different history.
The beaded belt now in Vienna has equally
poor documentation. It first appeared in an 1877
inventory of the Ambras Collection and is identified as a transfer from the Vienna Schatzkammer,
but cannot be traced to any earlier list or inventory.
Before its identification as a Tamo work in 1952
(Schweeger-Hefel 1951/1952), it had been variously thought of as Malayan or Indonesian, and
later as a Kongo mirror fetish. Its obvious and
close relationship to the beaded zemi that has
been preserved in Rome in the Museo Pigorini
since 1878 (Laurencich-Minelli 1982) suggested a
common origin and quite probably some shared
history in European collections. Since the beaded
zemi was first mentioned in 1680 as an "idol from
the Indies" (not specifically from Santo Domingo
as is sometimes reported) in the collection of Fernando Cospi of Bologna, any shared history must
predate 1680 and may involve an Italian past of
the beaded belt.
Early accounts describe Tamo belts, some of
them with attached "masks," made of "fish bones,
white and in between some red in the manner of
seed beads," and cotton: they were four fingers

wide and so tightly woven that "an harquebus

would not have been able to pierce them, or only
with difficulty" (Vega 1973, 212-214; Alegria
1983,129-131). While this description fits the
beaded belt, and iconographically its zemi is
closely related to other pre-Columbian images of
these supernaturals, the presence of glass beads
and mirrors on the belt clearly proves its postconquest origin. In addition, the shells used for the
teeth of the zemi have been identified as a West
African species of Marginella. Similarly, the face
of the Roman beaded zemi has recently been
shown to be of rhinoceros horn (Vega 1989).
The kind of convex mirrors used as a substitute
for shells in the zemi's eyes and in the ear spools
of the Pigorini zemi date both pieces to no earlier
than the second quarter of the sixteenth century
(Schweeger-Hefel 1952, 226). At that time,
however, the destruction of Tamo religion and the
zemi cult may have been nearly complete. Peter
Martyr dAnghiera (1530, i. Dec., book ix), for
example, reported that "they are now all subject
to the Christians, all those who had stubbornly
resisted having been executed. Nor remains there
yet any memory of their zemes, for they have all
been brought to Spain, so that we may be certified of their illusions of evil spirits and idols."
Among other Tamo objects recorded in
sixteenth-century European collections but since
lost, another larger beaded zemi appears on a 1598

inventory of the Munich Kunstkammer and was

illustrated in Pignoria (1626, 563). Resembling in
shape a cotton zemi now in the Museo di Antropologia in Turin, but covered on the outside "with
small white and red interlocking rings, with big
eyes of blue glass" (Heikamp and Anders 1970,
210), it was obviously related to the Rome and
Vienna pieces. The Munich inventory reports that
it had come from Mexico and had been part of the
collection of Cardinal Francisco Ximenes Cisneros,
the archbishop of Toledo (Feest 1986,190-191).
Although the cardinal had died in 1517 (and a
Mexican origin would be precluded also for that
reason), the provenance is possible as soon as a
Tamo origin is recognized. Since the eyes were
made of glass other than convex mirrors, there is
no reason why it should not have dated from the
first quarter of the sixteenth century.
C.F.F.

THE A M E R I C A S

581

THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

Beginning around A.D. 1000 a transformation
took place in the area the Spanish were later to
call La Florida. Large multivillage communities
came to replace the simpler forms of social
organization that had formerly predominated.
Towns of considerable size developed, centered
around earthen platforms, sometimes of
immense size, that were erected to support the
houses of chiefs, ancestor shrines, and sacred
fires.
The cultures in the Southeast evolved a rich

424-427

WOODEN ANIMAL FIGURES

C. 1OOO

Glades Culture (Key Marco)

424: DEER FIGUREHEAD

20 x 18 x 17.2 (y7/s x 7 x 63/4J

425: WOLF FIGUREHEAD

37 x 24 x 15 fi42/2 x 93/s x 57/s)

426: PELICAN FIGUREHEAD

11 .2 x 6 x 8 (43/s x 23/s x 3 Vs)
The University Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, Philadelphia
427: CAT FIGURINE
15.2 X 7 X 4.4 (6 X 23/4 X 13/4J

Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian

Institution, Washington
These four wooden sculptures from Key Marco,
off the west coast of Florida, are part of an
extraordinary archaeological find made in submerged muck in the 18905 (Gilliland 1975). The
pieces were found together in the ruins of what is
believed to have been a community shrine. The
figureheads were probably part of a building.
Similar carved posts have been found in a collapsed mortuary structure and shrine in the Lake
Okeechobee basin to the east that dates from
around A.D. 200 (Sears 1982). Although the Key
Marco pieces are much more recent, they retain
similar constructional details and carving style.
While often described as fifteenth-century, their
date has been more recently estimated, on the
basis of carbon 14 tests, to about A.D. 1000 and
thus at the beginning of the Mississippian period
(Widmer 1988, 89-93). However, the subject
matter of these carvings, which focuses on locally
available animals (dolphin, marine turtle, crab,
pelican, wolf, alligator, and duck), is more in keeping with the imagery of the period before that
date. As the Mississippian period progressed,
animals of pan-regional mythic signficance (hawk,

582

CIRCA 1492

vocabulary of artistic expression, employing

human and animal imagery in which changing
meanings can be traced over time. Birds represented the upper world, associated with the sun
and heavenly sources of sustenance; the serpent stood for the opposing dangerous forces of
the underworld. At the end of this period, the
time of contact with Europe, the human form
could represent the gods, the ancestral dead,
and, possibly, the living representative of the
ancestral line.

Our knowledge of these high cultures

depends heavily on the results of archaeological
investigation. Contact between the Europeans
and the indigenous peoples of this area was
sporadic until the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, diseases introduced from Europe in the
sixteenth century soon decimated the native
populations and drastically changed their social
structure. The culture that had previously prevailed in this area is only now becoming understood and appreciated.

cougar, rattlesnake) became more important. The

change in animals receiving artistic attention,
from a broad range of animals having local prominence to a small set of regional ones, parallels the
shift from less stratified to more stratified societies. Thus the Key Marco artwork belongs to a
period much earlier than that of the historic
Calusa, who later occupied the area.
The deer figurehead, which was made with
detachable ears, was originally painted in blue,
black, and white (Gilliland 1975, 85, pi. 643). The
wolf figurehead was found disassembled, with
head and separate ear and shoulder attachments
wrapped with green palmetto strips (Gilliland

1975, 85, pi. 64A). The piece, which has faded,

was originally painted in white, black, and pink.
The pelican figurehead evidently was part of a
more complete bird carving, since fragments of
wings were discovered alongside it (Gilliland
1975, 85, pi. 67). Its original paint colors were
white, black, and a buff-gray.
The cat figurine (Gilliland 1975,116, pis. 69,
70), perhaps a piece of shrine furniture, is stylistically similar to upright crouching cats from a
site dated to A.D. 200 (Sears 1982). Those earlier
cats were the carved terminals of posts that were
found by archaeologists in similarly submerged
sites (Sears 1982).
J.A.B.

THE A M E R I C A S

583

428-429
PAIR OF MALE AND FEMALE
SHRINE FIGURES
1200-1350

South Appalachian Mississippian

culture (Wilbanks)
marble
each 61 (24)
Etowah Mounds State Historic Site Georgia
Department of Natural Resources, Atlanta
These two painted marble shrine figures were
discovered together in a tomb built into the side

584

CIRCA 1492

of a mound at the Etowah site in northwestern

Georgia (Larson 1971). Pairs of male and female
figures are a specialty of the South Appalachian
Mississippian culture. These material representations of the ancestor gods were probably kept in a
shrine building once located on the summit of the
mound. This building appears to have burned,
after which these figures were removed and
lowered into a large grave. The human bones and
miscellaneous objects also found in this grave
probably were removed from the shrine at the
same time. The male figure was broken when it
was placed originally in the grave; the female figure was found upright on the floor.
j. A. B.

430

ENGRAVED PALETTE

1080-1550

Middle Mississippian culture (Moundville)

stone
31.9 (i2V2)
Etowah Mounds State Historic Site Georgia
Department of Natural Resources, Atlanta
Palettes were used to grind pigments for paint;
they sometimes retain traces of color. The image
on the face of this palette seems to portray the
solar deity. The serpent border resembles the

crown of snakes sometimes referred to as a headdress of the cult-bringers, or emissaries of the

solar deity. These serpents, which combine the
rattlesnake with the horned cougar, have mythic
roots in common with the piasa, but without the
wings that are ever-present in later underworld
monsters. The eye in the hand is conceivably part
of the same theme. Since the eye is substituted for
a rayed solar disc in many instances, it is reasonable to conclude that the eye here is an affiliated
symbol with a meaning similar to the belief held
by historic Choctaw that the solar deity watched
them with a blazing eye (Hudson 1976,126).
The hand in this connection is presumably the
medium through which gifts are conferred on
humankind.
J.A.B.

43*

MONSTER EFFIGY BOWL

1440-1550

Middle Mississippian culture (Moundville m)

diorite
approx. 29 x 40 (n3/8 x i$3/4)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
This bowl was discovered, deliberately broken,
among the grave goods of an elite burial from a
cemetery at Moundville in central Alabama
(Moore 1905, 237-240, figs. 167-170). It was
interred with a piece of copper sheeting probably
belonging to a headdress, marine shell beads, a
cougar pipe of the late style, and a bottle in the
Moundville engraved, var. Wiggens type. This
burial can be dated between A.D. 1400-1550.
Although its discoverer identified the animal as a
male wood duck, certain details reveal that it is
actually a representation of the monstrous birdheaded serpent. Body cross-hatching, trilobate
body markings, and tear-drop eye markings are
properties of the double-ended knotted snake
monster found on engraved shell cups of the
Braden School style, complete with a similar crest
(Phillips and Brown 1978,156, pis. 24, 69, 70).
Since this monstrous form is more typical of
the period before A.D. 1300, the handsome bowl
may have been an heirloom at the time of its
interment.
J.A.B.
THE A M E R I C A S

585

432
KNEELING PRISONER EFFIGY PIPE
1400-1600

Palquemine Mississippian culture

stone
12.2 x 17 x #.5 (43/4 x 65/s x 33/sj

The Brooklyn Museum

The theme of the conquered warrior-chief is represented in this human effigy pipe. The figure's
dress indicates his status. He wears the warrior's
beaded hair forelock, which is swept to the right
side of the face. The hair is gathered into two
buns on top of the head, and a long braid trails
alongside the right shoulder in a manner reminiscent of the hair dressing of the figure on the
Big-Boy pipe (cat. 440). Many strands of beads
wrap the arms and legs, presumably marking
this person as a warrior of high status, possibly
a chief. This pipe is thought to have come from
the Emerald site near Natchez.
J.A.B.

433
DOG EFFIGY BOTTLE
1350-1550

Middle Mississippian culture

earthenware (Nodena red and white)
19.5 x 25.6 (j5/s x 10)
The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History
and Art, Tulsa
This vessel was found in southeastern Arkansas,
in the southern part of the area occupied by the
Middle Mississippian culture (Penney in Detroit
1985,209).
J.A.B.

586

CIRCA 1492

435
HUMAN HEAD EFFIGY JAR
1400-1650

Middle Mississippian culture (Nodena)

earthenware (Carson red on buff)
15.6 x 18.5 (61/2 x 7/14)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution

434
MALE HUMAN EFFIGY BOTTLE
1400-1550

Middle Mississippian culture (Walls)

pottery (Bell Plain)
approx. 24 x 18 x 18 (0^/2 x /Vs x jVs)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
The hunchback is a subject frequently incorporated into this type of bottle. This vessel was
found in Crittendon County, Arkansas, across the
river from Memphis (Moore 1911). Black polished
effigy vessels are a well-developed artform in the
culture of this archaeological phase.
j. A. B.

Undoubtedly made in Arkansas, this Nodena-style

head pot is reported to have been found near
Paducah, Kentucky. These vessels were a specialty
of the native Americans living in the Memphis
area during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The products of different cultural groups
can be recognized by distinctive treatments of the
head, the style of facial tattooing, and the manner
in which this facial decoration is implemented.
These vessels are depictions of the dead, in which
closed eyes and curled-back lips mimic dried skin.
They belong to a category of mortuary shrine
heads and figures that could be produced locally
without difficulty.
The rise of earthenware mortuary figures is
presumably of some social and historical significance. Earlier mortuary figures were made of
stone and wood and were carefully controlled in
their number and disposition. The rise of these
alternative pottery forms suggests a loosening of
the elite's monopoly on the number of mortuary
representations and access to them by a broader
spectrum of the society. Hence, these vessels
may have been used in inclusive, clan-based ritual
contexts rather than in ceremonies confined to
the elite.
J.A.B.

436

WATER BOTTLE
1400-1700

Middle Mississippian culture (Quapaw)

painted earthenware (Avenue polychrome)
24.1 (9y2)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
This bottle was found at the mouth of the Arkansas River in the eastern part of the state (Moore
1908, pi. 13). The vessel's color was applied with
the assistance of dye-resist technique; a trace of
the black, probably vegetable dye is visible (Ford
1961,179). This vessel dates to the late seventeenth century, but the design is a scalp-lock
motif that was developed at Moundville, Alabama,
in the fifteenth century. The five-pointed star
represents the solar disk painted on elite scalps.
The star form and the V-shaped lock of hair falling from the disk can be found on painted vessels.
They are also the subject of pendants made of
stone and of beaten copper at Moundville between
1400 and 1550 (Moore 1905).
J.A.B.

THE A M E R I C A S

587

438
PLATE WITH WARRIOR'S HEAD
1000-1200

Cahokia culture?
repousse copper
24 x 17.4 (y3/8 x 67/s)
Ohio Historical Society, Columbus
This fragment of a larger copper plate is one of
several that were found together, presumably
from the great mortuary at the base of the Craig
Mound at the Spiro site in eastern Oklahoma.
This piece and most of the contents of the deposit
were objects retrieved from old graves and placed
in a massive ossuary around A.D. 1400. The
present fragment was originally part of a large
geometric copper tablet that was mounted as a
frontlet in a headdress, a small version of which is
sculpted in cat. 440 (Brown 1976). A burial at the
Etowah site indicates that some of these copper
headdresses achieved a length of 35 centimeters
(i33/4 inches) (Larson 1971, 62). Sometime in its
history the central repousse image of this example
was cut free from its copper background, possibly
at the time of reburial in the great mortuary ossuary. The details of dress and style of presentation
of the warrior place this piece in the thirteenth
century or earlier.
j. A. B.

437
ENGRAVED CUP
C. 1}00

Caddo Mississippian culture

shell
approx. 13 x 30 x 18 ($l/s x ii2/4 x jVs)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
Plain sea shells found their way by trade to the
interior of the continent, where they were fabricated and decorated in the style of their owners
at the time. This cup was made by removing the
interior columella or whorl of the shell of the
lightning whelk (Busycon sinistrum). Two wellpreserved perforations, at the tip and at the back
of the spire, were made to attach a bail. It is one
of hundreds of shell cups that were found in Craig
Mound at the Spiro site in eastern Oklahoma
(Burnett 1945). The exterior has been smoothed

588

CIRCA 1492

and engraved with the figure of a bird-man. The

style of engraving, which is indigenous to the
Caddoan area of eastern Oklahoma and Texas,
dates the cup to around 1300 (Phillips and Brown
1984, pi. 203).
The human figure is costumed as an impersonator of the falcon or some other hawk. This ritual
role was important in the early centuries of the
Mississippian period (Detroit 1985). The spreadeagle stance of the figure has more to do with the
conventions of this artistic school than it has with
the actual appearance of the costume or the performance of any ritual. The figure's hawk parts
are mainly the beak, the stylized wing feathers,
and the large hawk tail. The human elements of
the costume include the gorget, columella pendant
necklace, ear spool, beaded forelock, plume headdress, and large heart-shaped apron. Brickwork
bead bands that adorn the headdress, neck, birdarms, and legs are standard marks of wealth and
indicate the elite status of the figure.
j. A. B.

439
NURSING MOTHER EFFIGY BOTTLE
1250-1350

Middle Mississippian culture (Sand Prairie?)

earthenware (Bell Plain)
14.9 x 9.7 ($7/8X33/4)
Saint Louis Science Center
In ceramics, female figures were infrequently represented. The origin of this figure may have been
a craft place in what is now Arkansas or Tennessee, and may have been brought by trade to Saint
Clair County, Illinois, where it was found (Blake
and Houser 1978, pi. 7).
J.A.B.

440

HUMAN EFFIGY PIPE

11OO-12OO

Cahokian culture (Stirling?)

stone (fireclay?)
27.5 x 23 (io3/4 x yVs)
University of Arkansas Museum, fayetteville
Because of its large size, this pipe has been dubbed
Big Boy (Brown 1976). Although it was discovered in a deposit at the Spiro site in eastern
Oklahoma dating around A.D. 1400, the piece was
probably crafted in the Cahokia, Illinois, area at
least a century earlier, when shrine figurines of
this style were made (Emerson 1982). The red
fireclay material was probably available nearby in
Missouri. Originally this piece was crafted as a
figurine and was later converted to use as a pipe.
The subject of this pipe, a falcon impersonator
in a trance, can be identified from the figure's
dress. A carved feather cloak, signifying the
falcon, is draped over the figure's back. The headdress is a copper plate fitted into a frame held in
place by a strap beneath the bun of hair. A long
braid and a rope of beads complete the outfit.
Another version of this theme can be seen in cat.
437. The "eye" in the headdress is probably a version of the eye in cat. 430. The ear ornaments are
long-nosed god maskettes that identify the figure
more precisely as the mythic Red Horn (Hall
1991, 30-33). Limitations of the material
prevented the sculptor from providing the highly
conventionalized face-mask ornaments with their

characteristic Pinocchio noses. Red Horn bears

the alternative name of "He-who-wears-humanheads-as-earrings" in historic Iowa and Winnebago mythology of the Oneota culture. An underlying theme of the Red Horn myth is the
conferral of ritual kinship upon strangers in a
function similar to that of the Calumet ceremony
of historic times (Hall 1991, 3.1).
j. A. B.
THE A M E R I C A S

589

THE INKAS AND THEIR EMPIRE

The empire created by the Inkas constituted one
of the most formidable political achievements
in the world of 1492. With a highly developed
government centered in Cuzco, the Inka rulers
had extended their control over a number of
diverse cultures during the preceding two centuries, bringing stability and prosperity to their
vast realm. They created an impressive system
of roads to unite their possessions and erected

imposing stone cities in lofty Andean settings.

The ruins of these monuments still attest to the
splendor of the empire at its height.
Sadly, many Inka works of art disappeared at
the time of the Spanish conquest or in its aftermath. What remain, for the most part, are
votive figurines miniature depictions of men,
women, and animals in gold and silverand
beautifully woven tunics of vicuna and alpaca

441

manuscript Guaman Poma pictures himself in

elegant Spanish dress.
The contrasts and contradictions between the
native and the European worlds are evident in
both the manuscript and its author. The Andean
viewpoint is presented with force and sensitivity,
but the medium of both writing and illustration
is essentially European. It is the Andean pictorial
source closest to the remarkable encounter
between the Old World and the New.
E. p. B.

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala

late i6th-early i/th century

INKA RULER SURROUNDED BY THE

ROYAL COUNCIL
fol. 364 of El Primer Nueva Coronica y Buen
Gobierno
before 1615
manuscript on paper
14.5 x 20.5 (55/s x 8)
The Royal Library, Copenhagen, MS Gl, Kgl
Sam/. 2232
The finding of this manuscript in 1908 among
materials in the Royal Library of Denmark has
been called "the most important discovery of the
century for the knowledge of the Andean world,
a contribution without equal among the primary
sources" (Murra in Guaman Poma 1980, xiii).
How it arrived in Copenhagen is not certain
(Adorno in Guaman Poma 1980, xliii). The
manuscript consists of 1,189 written pages, of
which 400 are full-page, annotated illustrations
of the conquest and Christianization of Peru and
of indigenous persons and customs of the Inka
period. A long letter to the Spanish king, it is
believed to have been written in the years before
1615. The Inka state had been conquered decades
before Guaman Poma completed his monumental
work, and European priorities influence some
of what he wrote. His intent was to convince
authorities in Spain of the need for improvements
in the ways the Andes were governed; to do that,
he wanted to increase European understanding of
the natives and their pre-Hispanic customs and
system of governance. Because of the basically
colonial intent, care must be used in interpreting
the document, but under its veneer of European
perceptions lies one of the strongest pictures of
the Andean world, written and drawn by a native
who had rich personal knowledge of local customs.
As one of the few early Andean sources and the
only one with rich visual material, the manuscript
is immensely valuable as an aid in interpreting
590

CIRCA

1492

wool. The Inkas introduced their highly

formalized artistic vocabulary to the peoples
they ruled as a means of proclaiming their
presence throughout the empire. Surviving
works of art from some of these cultures, such
as Chimu and Chancay, reveal the great cultural variety of the lands brought under Inka
control.

442-448

SEVEN HUMAN FIGURINES

Inka
442: hammered silver, wool, feathers
10(4)
Museo National de Historia Natural, Santiago
443: hammered silver, textiles, feathers
/.I (2%j

private collection
preconquest life and as a guide to Inka social
structure, administration, religious ritual, the
calendar, daily life, and dress. Some of the kinds
of objects in the Inka section of this exhibition are
illustrated in use in Guaman Poma's depictions
of Inka rulers and their officials and in scenes of
calendrical rituals, worship, and seasonal activities.
Nothing is known of the author except what can
be learned from this manuscript. The "Carta del
Padre del Autor," at the beginning of the manuscript, states that Guaman Poma's father was the
son of a Spaniard named Ayala and the grandson
of kings of the Inka past, a descendant of the
sovereigns of Chinchaysuyu, the northern part
of the Inka empire. Guaman (or waman) means
"falcon" in the Quechua language in which the
manuscript is mostly written, and poma (or
puma) is the mountain lion of the Andes. In the

444: hammered silver

15.75 (6Vs)
The American Museum of Natural History,
New York
445: hammered gold
14.6 x 3 ($3/4X iVsj
private collection
446: hammered gold

a w/4)

Museum Rietberg Zurich (Purchase funded by

Credit Suisse)
447: silver with shell inlays
19.5

(f/8)

Musee de I'Homme, Palais de Chaillot, Paris

448: hammered gold, wool, feathers
Museo Pachacamac, Peru

Inka metal figurines can be male or female, of

gold, silver, or copper. Some small examples are
solid and cast; the hollow ones are made of pieces
of sheet metal soldered together. The usual pose
is with hands at the chest. The female figurines
have long, center-parted hair, ending with some
sort of clasp in back near the bottom. The male
figures usually wear a band wound around the
head. Cat. 446 has an added cloth turban. Cat.
447 is shown wearing ear spools. The other
figurines lack ear ornaments, but the lobes are
elongated from having worn them; the figurines
may at one time have been furnished with them.
Throughout what is now Latin America, ear ornaments symbolized high status and often the ceremony in which the wearer was participating. In
an important Inka initiation rite, boys of royal
lineage were given their first breech cloths and
ear ornaments (J. Rowe 1946, 308).
Some figurines are dressed in miniature garments. There was a tradition, probably widespread throughout pre-Columbian America, of
dressing sculpted figures. A gold male figurine
(cat. 448), from the important central coast site
of Pachacamac, Lurin Valley, central coast of Peru,
is wrapped in a mantle tied with a sling-like belt.
Silver figurines without garments have also been
found at Pachacamac (McEwan and Silva I. 1989,
fig. 22).
The two female figurines here wear feather
headdresses. Cat. 442, from Cerro El Plomo,
Chile, wears parrot feathers, a silver chain around
the neck, and, over a wrapped garment, a mantle
of vicuna wool, fixed with a silver pin (tupu), a
type of object used to fasten full-size mantles
worn by Inka women. This figure was buried
near the mummy of an entombed boy of eight or
nine yearspossibly the son of a local official
preserved in central Chile at the cold altitude of
5,400 meters (17,700 feet) (Mostny 1957; see also
Besom 1991). A small shell figure, also wearing a
headdress, was found with him, along with other
offerings.
A child was a particularly precious sacrificial
offering in the Andes. Such victims might be
buried with oblations including small figures
humans and llamas of metal and of the highly
valued spondylus shell. Another child burial from
the southern end of the Inka empire, at about the
same altitude on a high mountain in Argentina,
was that of a seven-year-old boy, accompanied by
three small male figures: one of hammered gold,
one of a solid alloy, and one of spondylus shell, all
clothed and with plumed headdress, and three
llama figures, one of gold and two of spondylus
(Schobinger 1991). Perhaps there is an analogy
between these dressed figurines and the human
dead, who were also wrapped in layers of cloth
garments. The silver, gold, and shell figures
might be considered escorts to the other world.
The use of gold and silver was the prerogative
of the Inka rulers, and the distribution of spondylus shell was carefully controlled (Davidson 1981).
THE A M E R I C A S

591

Burials with these materials were particularly

sacred. These high-altitude burials may have been
offerings to mountain gods and to the sun, possibly a means of acquiring higher status for the
family making the offering.
Small gold or silver figures have been found in
many parts of the Inka empire, sometimes associated with human sacrifice and perhaps always in
sacred places (Bandelier 1910; Bray in Brussels
1990; Essen 1984, 384; McEwan and Silva I.
1989; Reinhard 1983, 50-54). There were also
apparent sacrifices to the sea. In 1892 an Inka
burial was discovered on Isla de La Plata, off the
coast of Ecuador, at the approximate northern end
of the Inka empire. Two skeletons were found
accompanied by three female figures of gold and
three others of silver, copper, and marine shell
(McEwan and Silva I. 1989). The lighthouse
keeper on the island at the time reported also
finding a pair of figures, one of silver and one
of gold.
In the highlands nearer the center of the Inka
empire, gold and silver figurines have been found
in and near Lake Titicaca, both with burials and as
apparent offerings (McEwan and Silva I. 1989;
Johan Reinhard, personal communication, 1991).
Cat. 444 comes from Koati, in Lake Titicaca, an
island dedicated to the moon (Bandelier 1910, pi.
LVII). A burial found near Pacariqtambo, the place
of origin of the Inka people, was accompanied by
marine shells, a gold figure, and other objects of
silver (McEwan and Silva I. 1989,170).
According to the Spanish chroniclers, such sacrifices/offerings were made at solstice celebrations, on the accession of a new ruler, and on the
death or the anniversary of the death of an Inka
ruler (Bray in Brussels 1990, McEwan and Silva I.
1989). Although the burial patterns are not completely consistent, they often involve upper-class
young people, gold and silver figures, and marine
shell, usually spondylus, in natural form or as a
figurine. The seeming consistency of the offerings may have been a means of confederating the
empire through the type standardization that is
evidenced in many Inka practices.
E . p. B .

449
TUNIC
Inka
cotton, wool, gold beads
96.5 x 80.5 (38 x 31%]
Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich
The tunic, called unquin the Quechua language
of the Andes, was a knee-length men's garment,
a sleeveless rectangle of cloth longer than it was
wide. The loom length of these tunics is usually
592

CIRCA 1492

the entire width of the shirtthat is, they were

woven sideways, with the warp in the short direction, and then folded over and bound up the sides,
leaving spaces for the armholes (A. Rowe 1978,
5; J. Rowe 1979, 239-241). A slot at the neck was
woven in with discontinuous warps. With the
tunic, men wore a breechcloth and a cloak. Garments were not tailored but were woven to the
form of the object desired.
Tunics with a checkerboard design were used by
Inka army officers as military garments. Guaman
Poma de Ayala illustrated these tunics on military
officers and royal escorts of the conquest period
(1980; see also J. Rowe 1979, 242-243; Zuidema,
forthcoming). A tunic with a checkerboard lower
half is worn in a September ritual (Guaman Poma
1980, 226 [ms 252]).
Checkerboard garments also appear in earlier
cultures, not in scenes of warfare but in connection with specific rites or myths. The significance
of the motif varied in different cultures. Tunics
with checkerboard patterns incorporating Spanish
colonial motifs remain from colonial times.
The checkerboard design was known in Quechua as qolqanpata ("hill of terraces with storehouses''); in an illustration in Guaman Poma's
manuscript, the composition of the stone storehouses (qolqas) belonging to the Inka state resembles a checkerboard pattern (1980, 309 [ms 335]).
Qolqanpata was also a name given to the hill
above Cuzco and below the impressive stone fortress of Sacsahuaman was located (Zuidema,

forthcoming). Sacsahuaman was a sun temple as

well as a military structure.
The V-shaped stepped yoke design, composed
of squares and woven into the tunic, is known by
the Quechua name awaqui (Zuidema, forthcoming). Like many other checkerboard tunics, this
one has a zigzag design sewn at the bottom, a
motif seen also in Guaman Poma's illustrations.
The gold beads at the neck slit of this example
may indicate that it was a royal garment.
Usually of interlocked tapestry, the checkerboard-patterned tunics have alpaca warps (see
A. Rowe 1978, 7; }. Rowe 1979, 239-243). Some
fifteen checkerboard-patterned tunics are known,
most of them from the south coast.
This garment was found at Los Majuelos, Rio
Grande de Nazca. Preservation conditions are
better on the dry coast than in the highlands, and
virtually all extant Inka textiles have come from
this region.
E.P.B.

450
TUNIC
Ink a
wool and cotton
92 x 79.2 (}6V4 x jiVs)
Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich

The key-checkerboard motif is the major design

on a number of Inka tunics (see A. Rowe 1978, 7;
J. Rowe 1979, 248-251); it is a motif on cat. 451.
Usually the key motif is repeated on the upper
two thirds of the garment, while the lower third is
plain or striped as is this one. Two examples are
miniatures, perhaps made for offerings or as garments for small figures (see cats. 442, 448). In
the Guaman Poma manuscript, only variant keycheckerboards appear (1980).
In the Andes special garments were worn on
ceremonial occasions. Royal rites involved frequent change of dress; the Inka ruler was said
never to wear the same garment twice (Garcilaso
de la Vega 1966, 314; Murra 1962, 719). Cloth,
woven into garments and accessories, was of
extraordinary value and prestige. It was wealth;
it was sacred; it was a major offering to the gods.
Some images of the sun were made of thick blankets; other images were of gold, dressed in clothing of wool and gold thread. The mummy bundles
of sacred ancestors were taken out on occasion
and given new garments and offerings. Cloth was
exchanged at royal wedding rites, and the royal
couple walked through streets covered with colorful cloth. Cloth was a royal gift to create or
reinforce bonds of loyalty, to reward those who
had distinguished themselves in battle, or to be
presented in diplomatic exchanges. Because tunics
were widely disseminated in this way, they are
unlikely to have been made in the area in which
they were found (A. Rowe 1978, 6; Morris 1988,
THE A M E R I C A S

593

237-247)- This tunic came from the same tomb as

cat. 449 at Los Majuelos, Rio Grande de Nazca,
but it is probable that neither was made on the
south coast.
The early Spanish conquerors were astonished
not only by the fineness of Inka cloth and the
value placed on it by the native Americans, but
also by the government warehouses throughout
the empire that were filled to the ceiling with
bundles of cloth (Cieza de Leon 1959,177; Murra
1962, 717). Weaving was as important to the state
as food production. The obligation to weave cloth
for state and religious needs went along with
the right to use community fibers for one's own
purposes. Both the kinds of fibers used and the
designs woven into the tunics were carefully controlled; the sizes are also very close, averaging
90-95 cm (35-37 in.) in height and 75-77 cm
(29V4-3O in.) in width (A. Rowe 1978, 7; J. Rowe
1979). The standardization of designs in all media
was a means of enforcing the coherence of the
Inka empire, as was the use of a standard, official
language, Quechua, throughout the empire, even
where local languages prevailed for everyday use.
E.P.B.

451

TUNIC
Inka
wool and cotton
91x76.5 (357/sx 30]
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections,
Washington
This man's garment, which is probably from the
south coast of Peru, is woven of interlocked tapestry. It is notable for its fine spinning, the excellent
preservation of its brilliant colors, and its complex
design. Such a design of small square or rectangular motifs is called, in the Quechua language of
the Inka, t'oqapu. The present garment is the
only known complete tunic with an allover design
of these motifs. In his 1615 manuscript Guaman
Poma illustrated similar allover designs on tunics
worn by a number of Inka rulers and their
descendants (1980). The motifs also appear in
three rows at the waist of several existing tunics
(J. Rowe 1979, 242, 257-259). In the Guaman
Poma manuscript three-band tunics are shown
being worn by rulers and members of the royal
family, including women, commonly in ritual
scenes. The motifs may appear also in one horizontal or two vertical stripes.
594

CIRCA 1492

This t'oqapu tunic has twenty or more motifs,

depending on how one defines an individual
motif. These have been examined as a form of
syllabic writing to be read as an incantation
(Barthel 1971; de la Jara 1975). Most scholars,
however, believe that the motifs are part of a symbolic language but not true writing, which early
Andean cultures lacked. Associations have been
found for some of the motifs. The four-part
motifs may refer to the Inka empire, Tawantinsuyu (world of the four parts). One motif is a
miniature checkerboard tunic (see cat. 449), and
another is the key motif seen on cat. 450. The
motifs on this and other surviving tunics are different from and more complex than those shown
in the Guaman Poma manuscript, where the
motifs are placed in a regular, diagonal repetition.
Some of the t'oqapu motifs appear on wooden
qeros, a form of tumbler used by the Inkas. Small

qeros made of gold were presented with tunics as

ritual gifts to leaders of peoples newly under Inka
rule or to successful captains of allies in conquest;
these were later used or displayed in ritual
(Cummins n.p.).
The warp of this tunic is Z-spun, S-doubled
cotton; the weft is Z-spun, S-doubled wool
(Lothrop, Foshag, and Mahler 1957, 284-285).
The sides are reinforced with five multiple warps;
the heading is all of interlocked loops. The striped
binding is accomplished with a cross-knit loop
stitch. This tunic may have been made shortly
E.P.B.
after the Spanish conquest.

452
TUNIC
early colonial Peruvian
cotton
92 x 81 (362/4 x 31%]
Museo de Amrica, Madrid
Tunics continued to be made in the early colonial
period, often by native craftsmen weaving tapestry on commission for the Spaniards, who greatly
admired the work of Inka weavers (see A. Rowe
1978, 6). This tunic, probably woven shortly after
the conquest, is no longer in a pure Inka style. It
retains the preconquest t'oqapu waistband and the
V-shape (awaqui) framing the neck area, but the
borders of the V section and the lower edge are of
a later style; some of the t'oqapu motifs are postconquest variants; and the plant that is the major
design is not an Inka motif. It has been identified
as datura or floripondio (Datura arbrea), a plant
with handsome flowers that grows in the Urubamba Valley near Cuzco, among other places,
and is widely used as a psychoactive ritual drug
(Cabello Carro 1989; Herrera 1941, 365).
This tunic was collected by Joseph Dombey at
Pachacamac, in the Lurin Valley, south of Lima,
in the course of a botanical expedition to Peru in
1777-1787. In pre-Inka times, Pachacamac had
been a sacred place and a pilgrimage center with
an important oracle. The Inka allowed the site to
continue as a sacred place and built a temple to
the sun there. Many Inka-style objects have been
found there, including a silver figure (cat. 448) in
this catalogue. Pachacamac was one of the most
powerful wacas (sacred places) in the Inka empire
(Cieza de Len 1959, 334-337; Patterson 1985).
Its oracle was consulted even by the Inka ruler
himself.
E.P.B.

453
TUNIC
Inka
wool and cotton
88x7i.8(345/8X28y4)
Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich
The word qompi was used for fine, soft tapestry
woven by cloistered women for religious purposesofferings and cult images and for the
Inka ruler; it was also woven by the wives of provincial administrative officials and by men who
specialized in weaving to meet their labor-tax
obligation to the government. The wefts of qompi
are invariably of two-ply alpaca; the warps are
usually three-ply dark brown or black alpaca, or
THE A M E R I C A S

595

tan or white cotton (A. Rowe 1978, 6-7; J. Rowe

*979/ 239-M)Qompi garments and blankets were silky soft,
often bright-colored, and decorated with feathers
or shells. Religious statues were screened most of
the time with qompi curtains (Murra 1962, 719).
No one was permitted to wear a qompi garment
unless it had been given by the ruler; the unauthorized wearing of such cloth was, apparently, a
capital offense. Vicua wool was carefully controlled and could be worn only by the royal family; llama wool was in common use. Ordinary
weaving, rather thick and rough, was called in
Quechua awasqa; it was woven on a different
loom from that used for qompi.
Pre-Columbian Andean weavers were some of
the finest in the preindustrial world. They used
a backstrap or body loom, which had one end
attached to a vertical object and the other end tied
to the body of the weaver. The looms are depicted
in the Guarnan Poma manuscript (1980, 191 [ms
215], 193 [ms 217], 535 [ms 564], 611 [ms 645],
612 [ms 647]); they are still used in the Andes.
Even today spinning and weaving are important
occupations in the highlands for people of both
sexes and all ages.
The motif of this tunic is unusual it is not a
standard design but the sides are closed with
typical Inka binding.
E. p. B.

454
ALPACA
Inka
silver
23.8 x 20.6 x 5.2 (y/4 x 8l/s x 2)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
The alpaca's fine long hair gives it great value as a
wool-producing animal. When allowed to grow,
alpaca hairs can reach 75 cm (2^/2 in.) in length;
the animals are usually sheared regularly,
however, producing shorter fibers. Alpacas are
more restricted to high altitudes than llamas are;
the ideal elevation for them is about 5,000 meters
(16,000 feet) (Flores Ochoa 1982, 64). The alpaca,
which is not used as a pack animal, has probably
been domesticated in the Andes for some 6,000
years. There are no wild alpacas or llamas; the
wild members of the family are the even finerhaired vicuas and the larger, coarse-haired
guanacos.
This silver piece and cat. 455 were found near
the sacred rock on the island of Titicaca among
offerings in a place that had been sacred to the
Colla people before their conquest by the Inka.
The place then became sacred to the Inka, who
built a temple to the sun there and a temple to the
596

CIRCA 1492

moon on a nearby island (Bandelier 1910, pi. LVIII).

Like small gold and silver human figures, camelids
of precious metal were used as offerings.
This object is fashioned of soldered sheet silver;
details are accentuated with repouss and chasing.
E.P.B.

455
LLAMA
Inka
cast silver with gold, cinnabar
22.9 X 21.6 X 4.4 (9 X 8l/2 X 13/4J

American Museum of Natural History, New York

The llama was the prime sacrificial animal in the
Andes. Early Spanish accounts describe the different quantities and colors of llamas sacrificed at

specific Inka calendrical rituals (Guarnan Poma

1980, 228 [ms 254], 826 [ms 880]; see also J.
Rowe 1946, 255, 308-311; Flores Ochoa 1982,
80).The heart, lungs, and entrails were used for
auguries about crops. The animals were associated
with rain and fertility. Their remains have been
found in Inka-period burials.
A white llama was a symbol of royal authority.
One was sacrificed every morning at the temple
of the sun in Cuzco. At the April calendrical ritual
in Cuzco, a pure white llama was dressed in a red
tunic and gold ear ornaments. Other llamas were
sacrificed in its name, and life-size camelids of
gold and silver, wearing blankets, were carried
in procession on litters. The white llama, representing the first llama on earth, had special
human attendants; it sometimes accompanied the
Inka ruler and it was allowed to die naturally (although its death may have been hastened by the

456-462
GROUP OF CARVED LLAMAS
AND ALPACAS
Inka
456: black stone with speckles
6 X 11 X 4.5 (23/8 X 43/8 X 13/4J

457: black stone

6 X 11 X 4 (23/8 X 43/8 X 12/2J

458: white alabaster

8 x 10 x 4.5 (32/s x 37/s x i3/4J

459:
5-5 * 13 X 5.5 (33/S * 52/S X 22/8J

460: wood
5 X 7 X 3.5 (2 X 23/4 X l3/8)

461: beige stone with black veining

.5 X 12 X 4.5 (33/S X 43/4 X 13/4J

462: fr/ac/e stone

7 X 10 X 3.5 (23/4 X 37/8 X !3/s)

The Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society

Purchase with funds from June and William Poplack
Stone vessels in the shape of camelids served as
offering vessels to contain llama fat and blood to
be presented to the gods. Placed in pastures, these
vessels ensured the fertility of a herd.
Llamas, probably originally domesticated some
6,000 years ago in southern Peru, are essentially
highland animals, associated with the sacred
mountains. The llama also adapts well to differing
altitudes and was used in interaltitude trade.
There is a long history of llamas on the coast of
Peru (Rostworowski 1981, 50-53; Shimada and
Shimada 1985). During the Inka era the range of
llama herding was widely and deliberately
expanded, from Ecuador to Chile (Murra 1962,
711). Today llamas are relatively rare in the
Andes, although they are becoming popular as
corn beer and coca leaves with which it was fed).
This silver llama may have represented the
royal llama; it was found near a temple of the sun
on the island of Titicaca, Bolivia, and wears the
garments described by the Spanish chroniclers.
Made by lost-wax casting, it has red color added
to form the blanket; there were once inlays of
chrysacola. The narrow zigzag line on the blanket
is made of gold, as are the toenails. A similar
zigzag motif appears on some tunics (see cat. 449).
A gold llama and one of spondylus (spiny
oyster shell) were found in the burial with which
cat. 442 was associated (Mostny 1957). Llamas of
metal and spondylus also have been found with
other sacrificial burials (Schobinger 1991).
Llama sacrifices are still performed in the
Andes on certain occasions, and llama fertility
rites are important festivals in many places in
the highlands.
E.P.B.
THE A M E R I C A S

597

pets and mountain pack animals in the United

States.
Herds of llamas were controlled by the Inka
state. State-owned herds were used for military
transport. Shrines and temples owned herds, as
did the mummies of dead kings. Llamas served as
royal gifts after successful military campaigns;
one Inka general is said to have owned fifteen
thousand llamas (Zarate in Flannery, Marcus, and
Reynolds 1989,114).
The llama was of critical importance to the
Inka. It was, aside from man, the only beast of
burden in the New World, carrying up to about
forty-five kg (100 Ibs.) on a short trip, less on a
longer one; pack trains of five hundred or more
animals transported goods on Inka roads (Flores
Ochoa 1982, 64; Garcilaso de la Vega 1966, 513;
J. Rowe 1946, 219, 239). The llama was also
a source of wool for clothing, accessories, and
weapons (the sling). Sandals, thongs, rope, and
drums were made from its hide, and sometimes
the dead were wrapped in hide for burial. Its
bones were used for tools and ornaments, and its
sinew for thread. Its meat was eaten fresh or
driedthe English word "jerky" derives from the
Quechua word charqui and the dried meat could
be traded for the foods of lower altitudes. Llama
fat was burned for light and for offerings, and
llama dung provided fuel. Pastoralism and agriculture developed together. The important highaltitude staple crop was the potato, which, like
llama meat, can be dried through a process of
alternately freezing and sundrying. Potato cultivation is dependent on llama-dung fertilizer.

598

CIRCA 1492

Llamas were identified by threads or cloth in

holes in their ears. Earmarking is still an important ritual in the highlands, and stone llama
fetishes are still used in a number of ceremonies,
especially fertility rites.
In this group the smaller, smooth-necked examples represent llamas, whereas the larger animals
with hair at the neck are alpacas.
E. p. B.

water, as shore birds do. Water birds are important motifs in coastal Peruvian art.
The birds are made of several pieces of gold
soldered together. The eyes have holes that were
perhaps once inlaid with another material. E.P.B.

464
463

SEVEN SEA BIRDS

Inka
cut and hammered gold
5 x 26 (2 x -Lol/4)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Several sets of such objects from the Ica-Nasca
region, on the south coast of Peru, exist, but their
use is unknown. They appear to have been fixed
in groups of six or seven on a base that was perhaps to be attached to some other object. One
example has a cord (Lapiner 1976, pi. 683). The
identification of these birds is not completely
clear. They have been called ibises and may well
be, although most of the birds have straight bills
whereas those of ibises are curved. The birds
appear to be searching for food in sand or shallow

HANGING OR MANTLE
c. 1470

Chimu
cotton, camelid fiber
222 x 346 (8y3/s x i}6V4)
The Textile Museum, Washington
As the Inka state was rising to power, the kingdom of Chimor, that of the Chimu people, ruled
the north coast of Peru from its capital at Chan
Chan, a city of some six square kilometers in the
Moche Valley. The kingdom of Chimor was the
largest and most powerful of the coastal states
and was also the richest polity taken over by the
Inka. Nine huge, high-walled enclosures of adobe
included, among other kinds of structures, burial
platforms with rich stores of grave goods, among
which were textiles and goldwork.
A seated spotted figure with a tail and an
angular-crescent headdress is depicted twelve
times on this mantle, each repetition being
slightly different. Nine of them are accompanied
by a small version of the creature. At the bottom
appear four versions of a possibly lacertilian
animal. The large figure has been called the moon
animal, a mythical creature that appears in many
variations in earlier Moche and Recuay art. This
piece may have been made under Inka influence,
for red and yellow were favorite colors of the Inka
period. Textiles of this bold type come from the
southernmost Chimu valleys on the north coast of
Peru (Kajitani 1982, pi. 97 and trans, p. 48).
This is a complete fabric of tapestry weave, with
cotton warps and camelid fiber wefts (A. Rowe
1984,112-113, pi. 15). The warps are partly Zplied and partly S-plied, but all are three-ply. An
unusually large piece, it was made with a loom
width of 78-79 cm fooVi in.); the side pieces were
sewn on. There are fringed bands on the sides
and tassels at the corners.
E. p. B.

465

MANTLE
before 1470
Chimu
painted cotton
180 x 191 (70% x 75Vsj
American Museum of Natural History, New York
On this mantle stylized felines alternate with a
geometric variant of the step-fret motif that is
common in art throughout the Andes. Each
repeat of the two motifs is varied. Sometimes an
apparent crescent moon is included in a corner of
the square; some cats are clawed, some are not.
The design presents a dynamic alternation of
curving shapes with angular ones.
Felines are generally prominent subjects in preColumbian art and myth. The puma (mountain
lion) was common in the Andes and the jaguar
inhabited the Amazon Basin beyond. The spots on
the feline on this textile from the central coast of
Peru indicate that a jaguar inspired the motif.
The cloth is plain weave with paired warps;
overcasting stitches join three loom products. E. p. B.
THE A M E R I C A S

599

467-468
Two EFFIGY VESSELS
Chimu
before 1470
467: DEER

hammered silver
12.7 x 19 x 8.2 (5 x 72/2 x 32/4J

468: PANPIPER
hammered silver with turquoise inlay
21X11X7 (8l/4 X 4l/4 X 23/4J

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The

Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of
Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969

466

TABARD
c. 1465

Chimu
cotton with applied feathers
98 x 68 (381/2 x 263/4)
The Textile Museum, Washington
Some of the finest extant American feather work
was that done by the Chimu people of the north
coast of Peru. After the Inka conquest of the kingdom of Chimor, some Chimu artists and craftsmen were taken to Cuzco, so impressed were
the Inka with Chimii workmanship. Later, preColumbian feather work sent back to Europe
inspired European craftsmen who admired and

600

CIRCA 1492

emulated it. The Chimu probably kept captive

birds such as macaws, parrots, and Muscovy ducks
(O'Neill in A. Rowe 1984,146-150). Many birds,
alive or dead, would have been brought from the
Amazon region to the coast. The feathers on this
garment are mainly from the blue and yellow
macaw. The fabric is plain-weave cotton with
paired warps.
Important persons were carried in litters in the
Andes, and, in art, supernaturals are often litterborne. The motif of large pelicans carried in litters
by small pelicans on this tabard is not uncommon
in Chimu weavings.
Tabard is the name given to tunics with open
sides. Tabards were usually smaller than the
closed tunics.
E.P.B.

These two vessels were reportedly part of a large

group of silver effigy vessels and other offerings
found in a tomb or tombs in a pyramid at
Hacienda Mocollope in the Chicama Valley on the
north coast of Peru. They are made of separate
pieces of hammered silver soldered together.
The panpiper wears pendant disk ear ornaments
and a garment with a wave design made by
engraving and pecking. A stepped motif on his
hand may represent tattooing. Toenails and fingernails are indicated by incising. Panpipes, usually made of reeds or pottery, were prevalent on
the coast and in other regions, but they do not
seem to have been an Inka instrument. Other
instruments included drums, flutes, trumpets,
whistles, and ocarinas. Panpipes were particularly
significant instruments; they are usually shown
played by figures of richer dress and higher status
than those playing other instruments.
The reclining deer vessel has a bowl on its back.
The deer was one of the most important motifs in
the art of the north coast of Peru in the preColumbian era. The ancestors of the peoples
living in this region had hunted deer as a primary
food. Later, when there were populations of
settled farmers, the deer became an agricultural
symbol. The stag's antlers grow in synchronization with the growing cycle of plants; the antlers
look like tree branches; deer eat vegetation,
including the farmer's crops; stags feeding from
trees may get leafage entwined in their woody
antlers. Deer-hunt scenes with vegetation are
one of the most common motifs of earlier northE.P.B
coast art.

469
BEADED NECKPIECE
probably after 1470
Chimu
spondylus, mussel, jet, mother-of-pearl,
cotton string
35 x 34.5 (ij3/4 x ijVz)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
This neckpiece, with a wavelike design, has two
pairs of ties for attachment. It is made without a
fabric backing (A. Rowe 1984,165-167, fig. 173).
The beads are strung in an alternating alignment:
two threads pass through each bead; the threads
are then separated and grouped with adjacent
threads to hold the next row of beads.
The Chimu people, living on the coast, used the
resources of the sea. Especially valuable was the
shell of Spondylus princeps, one of the materials
used here. The black bead material has been identified as jet.
This piece is said to have been found at Chan
Chan with a group of other shell-bead objects.
It was presented to the American Museum of
Natural History by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1896.
E.P.B.

THE A M E R I C A S

6oi

470
PAIR OF EAR ORNAMENTS
before 1470
Chimu
hammered and cut gold
diameter 13.5 (5^/4]
Jan Mitchell and Sons, New York
Large ear ornaments with thick tubes were
common adornments for the elite in the Andes as
well as in Central and Middle America. Ear piercing was usually a ritual event, and the ornaments
that were later worn bore symbolic motifs and
often had a particular shape and decoration that
identified the rank and ritual occupation of the
wearer. This spool form of ear ornament was worn
by prominent people on the north coast of Peru
for at least a millennium. The beaded frame is
typical.
In the scene on these ornaments, a central figure in an enormous, elaborate headdress with a
step motif holds a beaker in one hand and a fan

602

CIRCA 1492

in the other (Jones 1985, no. 78). He stands on a

snake-headed litter borne by two men in "sunrise" headdresses. All three figures wear ear
ornaments. Under the litter a small, bird-headed
figure holds a double-spouted vessel, a typical
Chimu pottery form. Pottery was itself sacred and
was used in rituals; it is often depicted in northcoast art.
Pre-Columbian peoples collected gold from
placer deposits, although there was also mining
from auriferous quartz veins (Lechtman 1980,
321). Silver was mined, but some may have been
taken from surface outcroppings. There is some
evidence for the smelting of silver ores or argentiferous lead ores.
E.P.B.

4/1

PAIR OF EAR ORNAMENTS

c. 1470
Chimu
wood and feathers
diameter 6.4 (2l/2)

American Museum of Natural History, New York

These figures, which seem to be swimming in
space, are abbreviated forms of the creatures seen
on the large painted hanging from the Textile
Museum (cat. 464). These ear-ornament figures
lack lower limbs but have the same tail. The
ornaments are probably fairly late in the Chimu
sequence, perhaps after the 14605 (A. Rowe
1984,171-172).
The wooden bases have been carved to make
the face project from the surface. Chopped feathers of parrot (green), macaw (yellow and red), and
tanager or honeycreeper (purple-blue) have been
glued on.
E.P.B.

4/2

FOOTED BOWL
c. 1470
Chimu
ceramic
15x23 (57/8X$)

Linden-Museum, Staatliches Museum fur

Volkerkunde, Stuttgart
Four large Atlantean figures, standing on a base,
support this large bowl. Beneath the center of the
bowl stands a medium-size figure with a cup who
is surrounded by a group of smaller figures. At
the side, a figure pours from a jug. The scene
seems to depict a water ritual or the offering of
liquid, perhaps corn beer or even blood. The
Atlantean figures suggest the four corners of the
world or the four world directions and the gods
that uphold them, a concept prevalent in preColumbian cosmology. All the figures have the
flattened head affected by most pre-Columbian
people of status; the peaked effect was a Chimu
trait during the Inka period. The bowl comes from
the north coast of Peru.
Chimu ceramics often have smoke-blackened,
polished surfaces.
E.P.B.

473-474
PAIR OF CERAMIC FIGURES
before 1470
Chancay
473: MALE FIGURE
50.5 x 24.5 (iy7/8 x 95/s)
474: FEMALE FIGURE
49.5 x 27 (1^/2 x io5/s)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
These figures, one male, one female, are simply
made with blocky bodies and legs and masklike
faces. The simplified body as well as the short,
outstretched arms are conventions of the Chancay
ceramic style, as is the unpolished ceramic surface
with simple painted designs (see de Lavalle and
Lang 1982). Genitalia are rendered in relief, then
clothing is painted around them.
Chancay ceramic figures, from the central coast
of what is now Peru, were apparently made as
grave goods. They were impressively large and
were not finely made. They served a need for
offerings but were not a major art form.
E. P. B.
THE A M E R I C A S

603

THE LANDS OF GOLD

Stretching between the Aztec and Inka empires
were a series of prosperous chief doms that are
best known today for the exquisite quality of
their craftsmanship in gold. The Diquis culture
flourished late in the period before European
contact in what is today Costa Rica, and in
present-day Colombia the principal gold-producing cultures included the Tairona, the Sinu,
the Popaydn, and the Muisca. Fortunately for
us much of their artistic production in gold was

DIQUIS
Diquis, a word deriving from an indigenous
language, is still used to denote the southwestern quarter of Costa Rica, including the western slopes of the Talamanca Mountains (the
highest of these in Costa Rica at 3,823 meters
[12,500 feet]), the agricultural General Valley,
and the dense lowland Pacific rain forests of the
Osa Peninsula. Modern political divisions are
differently named, and archaeologists usually
group the zone with northwestern Panama,
with which it shares many prehistoric and
ethnohistorical traits, calling it the Greater
Chiriqui Sub-Area. In general, Diquis has
witnessed less scientific archaeology than the
other zones of Costa Rica, although looting is
endemic.
Among the objects excavated or collected
scientifically by archaeologists in Diquis are
ground and chipped stone tools more than
seven thousand years old and, at the other
extreme of the indigenous cultural sequence,
quantities of glass beads of European manufacture found in tombs together with crude postHispanic local pottery (Quintanilla 1987).
While pottery dating to at least 2000 B.C. is
now known (Corrales 1985), most archaeological remains found date from c. 300 B.C. forward. Until around A.D. 500-800, the zoned
red-on-buff pottery found in the rest of Costa
Rica predominated, although with distinctive
shapes and motifs. Notably, the emphasis on
elite-oriented lapidary work in jade seen in the
rest of Costa Rica at that time was almost
absent, and there is good evidence that the tradition that produced the famous giant stone
spheres began in the first centuries after Christ
(Drolet and Markens 1981). Prehistoric settlement patterns of this time typically show
small villages of twenty to two hundred inhabitants following the smaller streams of the
uplands and foothills, always on agriculturally
viable land.
The succeeding transitional period also
echoed ceramic and stone sculptural traditions
seen in the rest of Costa Rica, especially in the
604

CIRCA 1492

entrusted to the earth soon after its creation,

either buried with the chiefs who had commissioned it or, in the case of the Muiscas, hidden
for the gods in secret offering caches.
Gold in these cultures was a material associated with temporal and religious power. While
some of the objects earrings, nose ornaments,
necklaces, and so forth clearly functioned as
jewelry, many works in gold embodied a complicated religious iconography. Ethnographers
working with the present-day descendants of
these cultures have come across legends and

myths that may shed light on the original

meaning of some of these objects. A recurring
theme is the ability of the priest or shaman to
transform himself into animal guise during
religious rituals, a popular belief in societies of
this type throughout the pre-Columbian
Americas. The Muiscas developed a special
category of gold objects, the so-called tunjos.
Somewhat like European ex-votos, these were
small representations of humans and animals
that were offered to the gods in the hope of
having favors granted.

emphasis on human trophy-head symbols on

carved stone metates (grindstones) and resist
(batik-technique) decoration on ceramics
almost identical to similar pottery from northern Colombia. As Diquis moved past A.D. 8001000, there was an interesting local reflection
of the polychrome pottery explosion in northwestern Costa Rica, the symbolism of which
was strongly Mesoamerican. Diquis, like the
Central Highland and Atlantic lowland traditions, produced pale imitations of the brilliant
Greater Nicoya polychrome pottery, probably
indicating coastwise trade networks.
Of the three major archaeological zones of
Costa Rica, Diquis is that most clearly "southern," as opposed to Mesoamerican, in terms of
cultural artifacts. The most obvious difference,
other than style, is the early emergence of
metallurgy in gold and gold-copper alloys (the
latter have a melting temperature lower than
that of gold or copper individually), a result of
the diffusion of metallurgical technology from
south to north, culminating in the adoption of,
especially, the lost-wax casting technique,
already developed in Colombia by 500-300 B.C.
The fascination with cast metals set the Diquis
region apart in Costa Rica, as did the production of caleros (containers for lime used in
the chewing of the coca leaf, a singularly
Andean tradition). Furthermore, effigies of
American camelids, not native to Costa Rica,
appear in ceramic types that continued into
historic times. The natural range of the American camelid (llama or guanaco) at best reached
southern Colombia, so the Costa Rican representations either show trade of clearly drawn
objects or personal contact between Diquis and
the Andes.
When the first Spaniards arrived in Diquis
(they had crossed the Central American
isthmus in Panama and come back up the
Pacific Coast), they observed what they called
palenques stockades or palisaded villages protected by walls of cactus or other spiny plants.
Juan Vazquez de Coronado (1964, 33-45)
described a palenque of the Coto people in

Diquis as oval in shape, built on a ridge with

small entrances at the eastern and western
extremes that could be raised or lowered from
the inside like drawbridges; two steeply banked
streams at the north and south provided protection. Two parallel walls surrounded the fort,
with holes and trenches between them. Inside
the walls were eighty-four circular houses,
raised about half a meter off the ground on
stilts and roofed with conical spires of thatch.
The houses were arranged in groups separated
by open streets, in such a way that an enemy
could not take more than one group without
exposing himself to mortal fire from the others.
Each house was normally occupied by twentyfive men with their women and children.
Such detailed descriptions were corroborated
in the 19705 (Snarskis 1978) and 19805 (Drolet
1984; Snarskis 1984) by controlled archaeological excavations that clearly revealed circular
house foundations of river cobbles, with stonepaved walkways running between and around
them, and many domestic activity areas defined
by grindstones, hearths, and large clusters of
broken pottery and stones. Both in Diquis and
the Atlantic zone of Costa Rica, strategically
located "city-states" or principal villages, the
power bases of local chiefs, were able to dominate areas several hundred square kilometers in
size. These polities seemed to be in a state of
constant warfare, in which prisoners were often
taken and later sacrificed. Warriors depicted in
stone sculpture and other media are frequently
shown holding an ax and a shrunken human
head; such "trophy heads" are also seen as
dominant motifs on elaborate ceremonial metates, suggesting that propitiation of agricultural
deities was part of the rituals performed.
Most native gold in Costa Rica is found in
Diquis, in the form of placer deposits, and prehistoric gold artifacts have been found with
much greater frequency in Diquis than in the
other archaeological zones of the country. This
fits with the generally "southern" cultural
affiliation of Diquis, as metallurgy originated
in the Andes many centuries before Christ,

THE A M E R I C A S

605

apparently reaching Costa Rica by diffusion

around A.D. 300-500.
By the 15005 there was a highly developed
social system, of the kind anthropologists call a
chiefdom or rank society. Unlike the highly
stratified political states or empires of the Inkas
or Aztecs, for example, chiefdoms in Costa
Rica, Panama, and Colombia did not have
monumental stone edifices or cities with tens of
thousands of inhabitants. This was probably
because of their smaller population base and
the ecology of slash and burn agriculture,
which requires the moving of sites with some
frequency. Instead the smaller chiefdoms
developed highly sophisticated crafts with ritual
significance, such as gold casting, stone and
wood sculpture, and feather work. Although
the Spaniards sometimes described groups of
native peoples as if all or most wore gold adornment, archaeology suggests that the distribution of gold artifacts among the general
population was much less democratic. Elite burials with fifty to one hundred gold objects of all
kinds have been found (see Bray, this volume);
such burials are often grouped together, as if in
a special funerary precinct. On the other hand,
archaeologists have excavated whole cemeteries
of more than 150 well-made stone cist tombs
and found only a single tiny gold avian pendant.

475
PEG-BASE FIGURE
Diquis
stone
35.5*12.7(14x5]
Alfonso Jimenez-Alvarado

The stone sculpture of the Diquis in protohistoric

times was markedly different from that of the
rest of pre-Columbian Costa Rica, sharing instead
clearly South American styles, especially the
sculptural tradition of San Agustfn, Colombia, and
that of Muisca gold work. Much Diquis statuary
is stiff and highly stylized, almost giving a twodimensional impression, with only a slight bow
to realism in the depiction of anatomical features.
The resulting formality recalls architectural
embellishment, which the peg-base figures may
have been, more than individual work.
This piece is carved in a more appealing fully
round style, but as is the rule in most pre-Columbian sculptures, every element, every posture had
sociopolitical or religious significance. Figures
such as this one, carrying an inverted humanhead trophy and, like many of the gold figurines,
wearing a serpent belt and what is probably a
feline mask, must represent warriors or shamans
606

CIRCA 1492

According to Spanish descriptions, those who

possessed access to sumptuary goods such as
gold were caciques, warriors, and shamans; an
individual could hold more than one of these
social positions. Bozzoli (1975) noted that historical native peoples still recalled that there
were three warrior classes: the jaguars, the red
monkeys, and the "two-headed" ones (bicephaly, and even twins, were historically regarded
as symbols of impending doom). It is also
remembered that the settlements of the jaguar
and monkey clans, the only clans from which
chiefs could be designated, were located systematically between the villages of other lesser
clans so as to better control them. Cobblepaved causeways or ''Indian roads" (now
buried) crisscrossed Diquis, and the Spanish
observed that some roads connected principal
settlements with gold-bearing rivers and
included vine suspension bridges over deep canyons. Each major chief had a symbol of his
reign, which he frequently caused to be tattooed on all his subjects.
Bray (this volume) has provided a synthesis
of Diquis mythology as known through historical indigenous peoples, especially as it
relates to the symbolism contained in gold artifacts. It may be added that the circular house
form (and general village layout) is a tradition

displaying their superiority over a vanquished

enemy. The trophy head cult (commented upon
by the first Spanish chroniclers) was reflected in
all sculptural media, frequently on metates, indicating that human sacrifice formed part of the
rituals used to propitiate agricultural deities.
The Spaniards also noted the presence of statuary around open plazas and elite residential or
ritual centers; archaeological excavations in
Diquis and the Atlantic zone have in fact revealed
the cobblestone mounts for such sculptures, some
with the broken bases of the sculptures still in
place. It is true also that the famous stone spheres
of Diquis were frequently arranged around an
open plaza. As some smaller stone spheres found
from Veracruz to Guatemala appear to be related
to the Mesoamerican ball game and associated
cosmological symbolism, it is possible that ritual
decapitation of the losers after the ball game
(or some other ceremony held in the zone surrounded by sculptures) is represented by figures
like the present example (Graham in Detroit
1981,127).
M.J.S.

shared with northern South America, suggesting a quite different cosmogony or ''world
view" than that of Mesoamerica, where squares
and references to the four cardinal points were
fundaments in the prevalent mythic structure.
Similarly, the shaft and chamber interment and
the stone cist tomb, a burial placed in an edifice
of stone or wood including floor, walls, and lid,
are also seen in many Colombian sites; the
ethnographic explanation is a taboo against
the deceased's body coming into contact with
the earth.
Our view of Diquis at the time of the first
European contact, then, is one of warring citystates, rising and falling over just a few generations; complicated, pantheistic religious systems that meshed with sociopolitical realities
and that were embodied in many sculptural
media, one of the most impressive being cast
gold; and an ingrained custom of human
sacrifice as part of the spoils of war, probably
viewed as necessary for the maintenance of
many deities and the viability of the ruling
social strata. Today we see no pyramids, no
evidence of a writing system or calendar: the
real complexity of these indigenous societies is
just beginning to be deciphered from an exuberant corpus of portable sculpture.
M.J.S.

476
FELINE
Diquis
stone
18 x 31 (f/s x i2V4j
Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, San Jose

This stone feline, which could represent any of

the six wild cats known from Central America,
has full, softly rounded contours that at first
glance give it a benign, almost cartoon-character
quality. Some other Diquis animal sculptures
share this particular style. However, it should
be recalled that the jaguar was one of the most
important and frequently used symbols in preColumbian America. For the historic native
peoples of southern Costa Rica, this feline was
"hunter, killer, warrior, clansman, uncle, brotherin-law; symbol of strength and power; equivalent
to eagles above, crocodiles in the water, and to the
Xanthosoma edible root (name) in the vegetable
world" (Bozzoli 1975,180). In this region, the
clan identified with the jaguar was one of only
two that could provide caciques (ruling chiefs).
This sculpture shows the N-shaped incisors or
fangs characteristic of most pre-Columbian feline
sculptures from South America.
M.J.S.

THE A M E R I C A S

607

477
CROCODILE
Diquis
cast gold
5.5xi5.8(2l/sx6l/8)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
This striking piece shows a crocodilian reptile
with a human in its mouth. Crocodiles, caymans,
and alligators are all found in Central America;
crocodile is used here as a generic term in describing Diquis artifacts. In this case the relative sizes
of man and beast indicate that this is a mythological crocodile. There was a basic pan-American
pre-Columbian belief in a giant saurian (sometimes a crocodile, sometimes a turtle) on whose
back the world rested. In the hierarchy of deities
in almost every major pre-Columbian culture, this
creature symbolized the basic foundation of the
universe. In Diquis and all of Costa Rica and
northern Panama, the crocodile motif was probably the most frequently depicted (the next two
being the jaguar and the eagle-vulture).
While the symbolism of this composition
cannot be known with certainty, it is notable that
another similarly proportioned gold figure from
Diquis (Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica,
San Jose, no. 297) shows a deer holding a maize
cob in its mouth. It may well be that the Diquis
thought that the deer, a major indigenous protein
source, was sustained in part by maize, a product
of man's farming activities, whereas the crocodile,
one of the principal deities, had to be propitiated
by man's body itself, presumably through human
sacrifice.
M.J.S.

478

MAN WITH CROCODILE COSTUME

Diquis
cast gold
12.3x7.5 (47/sx 3)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
Some of the most impressive gold figurines from
Diquis depict men costumed as crocodiles. They
may represent shamans or warrior-chiefs. The
spatulate hands and feet, recalling fins, accentuate
the reflective glitter of the gold. The dynamic yet
splendidly elaborate costume worn by this figure
appears to cover his entire upper torso, and the
triangular elements along each side of the body
symbolize the scaly plates of crocodiles, or possibly feathers recalling the tail element in almost
all avian pendants. The scrolls on the sides of the
head either represent ear spools or denote the
act of "hearing and understanding/ both human
traits. These scroll-shaped elements do not appear
on realistic effigies of animals. The tiny figures
608

CIRCA 1492

on top of this piece seem to be two humans costumed as birds (owls?) at either side and a person
with a bat or monkey mask in the center. The
principal figure holds a double-headed serpent in
his mouth; his posture and realistically attired
lower body, with ligature and penis sheath, reveal
him to be a man.
M.J.S.

479
HUMAN FIGURE WITH CROCODILE
COSTUME AND INSET STONE
Diquis
cast gold
15 x 10.8 (f/8 x 4l/4)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
Some of the features of this figure's crocodile costume echo those of cat. 478, among them the
spatulate extremities, flattened arms, ear spools,
and double serpent motif, this time circling the
waist in place of a realistic ligature. However, in
this piece a large curved flat element, using a
minimum of gold to create the maximum reflection, crowns the head. The significance of this
element is unknown; it could represent feathers.
Its lower parts at the sides of the ears are missing.
The most striking feature of this piece is the flat
black polished stone inlaid in the chest cavity.
Similar pieces from Diquis have been found with
inlays of emerald imported from Colombia, as
well as stones of other colors. Some stone and
pottery figures of the same date show empty
thoracic cavities, most probably representing the
opening of the chest to remove the heart in a
sacrificial ritual.
M.J.S.

480

MAN WITH CROCODILE COSTUME

Diquis
cast gold
3.9 x 4.85 (iVz x i7/s)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
The motif of the shaman or warrior-chief in
crocodile-god attire also appears in the elaborate
Diquis substyle called Changuinoia. Here the
small principal figure is almost obscured by a
baroque array of elements, including jutting pairs
of false filigree crocodile or bird heads to the side
of the head and legs, a double-headed serpent held
in the hands and mouth, a serpent belt, and stylized faces. These faces, possibly of birds, are composed of eye cavities on the chest, thighs, and
lower legs. The penis sheath represents the beak
element in one of these faces. This finely detailed
piece, including the false filigree elements and the
flattened arms, was produced in a single casting.
M.J.S.
THE A M E R I C A S

609

481

SHAMAN WITH DRUM AND SNAKE

Diquis
cast gold
10.8 x 8.2 (fa x^A)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San ]ose
Like cat. 478, this piece is large and dynamic, a
realistic portrayal of a shaman. His bodily proportions and anatomy are fairly naturalistic, and he
wears no mask. Surrounding him, however, is an
aura of deities that undoubtedly reflects his special powers. It must be kept in mind that psychotropic substances were an important part of
shamanistic ritual, and the visions experienced by
the participants in the rituals frequently achieve
plastic expression in artifacts. Here two false
filigree waves emerge from the shaman's head,
topped by crocodile-scale or feather symbols, and

610

CIRCA 1492

three pairs of crocodile heads the upper two

facing up, the lowest pair facing down surround
the body. Ligatures around the waist and ankles
and a snake-head penis sheath complete the attire.
The pose is of great interest. Many authors
have called such figures, especially smaller, more
stylized ones, musicians, interpreting the thin
element emerging from the mouth as a flute.
While there is no question that the personage is
playing a drum, this thin element is more likely
to be a snake. It is probable that the shaman is
shown holding a real snake in his mouth and
hand, the hand being near the snake's head much
like a similar ritual practiced by the Hopi of North
America. By dancing, playing a drum, and holding a venomous snake, the shaman demonstrates
his impunity to danger and his dominance of the
physical and supernatural worlds.
M.J.S.

482
MAN WITH JAGUAR MASK
AND CROCODILE MOTIFS
cast gold
y.yxSf^x^/s)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
This shaman has a jaguar-crocodile mask and a
human leg in his mouth. A tiny jaguar springs
around his neck, and the familiar serpent penis
sheath-belt, with scrolls symbolizing water
instead of serpent heads, encircles his waist. Pairs
of false filigree crocodile heads are at his head and
feet. This interesting piece is one of several pendants found in Diquis and Chiriqui that show
ornately costumed men placed between thin, usually curved plaques of sheet gold. The plaques
have the obvious function of anchoring the plethora of elements between them. Perhaps they are

also symbolic of the mythological world view of

some southern Costa Rican peoples, who conceived of a general "above/below" dichotomy that
was mediated or synthesized by shamans to allow
normal life on earth. Good and bad events could
take place either above or below, but is was critical
to know how the different forces, especially deities, interacted. Large birds, jaguars, bats, the
creation force (also a large buzzard or vulture),
and things male in general were above; snakes,
crocodiles, water, and things female were below
(Bozzolli 1975, 199-206). Shamans between the
gold plaques on these pendants may represent
powerful persons, fully aware of the complex dualities between the worlds above and below, who
were thought to be able to mediate between them.
M.J.S.

483

484

MAN WITH AVIAN COSTUME

DOUBLE HUMANS OR TWINS

Diquis
cast gold
10x9.9(4x^/8)

Diquis
cast gold
5-7 x 7-3 (2l/4 x

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Here a man, probably a shaman or warrior-chief,

is costumed as a rapacious bird. This creature
resembles a buzzard or a vulture, though the type
is commonly called "eagle/' The adornment
includes dual false filigree crocodile heads on top,
the ear spool or "understanding" scrolls along the
side of the head, the penis sheath belt in the form
of a serpent, and tiny bird heads on the feet. With
his avian wings outstretched, the figure perches
on a horizontal gold plaque.
M.J.S.

This complex Changuinoia-style pendant anchors

the principal elements between plaques of sheet
gold above and below them (see cat. 482); these
plaques, however, were part of a single cast for the
piece as we see it today.
For some indigenous peoples of southern Costa
Rica, twins and the concept of bicephaly were
considered an ill omen, a threat to the lives
of all. It is possible that the double-figure motif
increased the power of gold pendants to inspire
awe or fear, the purpose for which Diquis warriors
and shamans wore massive quantities of gold.
M.J.S.

2? 8

/)

THE A M E R I C A S

6ll

485

486

JAGUAR EFFIGY WITH BIFURCATED TAIL

AND OCCLUDING PLAQUES

WITH FlLIGRAM

Diquis
cast gold
9 x8.y (^/2X33/s)

Diquis
cast gold
11 x 9.6 (43/s x 33/4J

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

This piece portrays a fairly realistic jaguar, but its

bifurcated serpent-headed tail betrays its supernatural or mythological aspect. Crocodiles are also
occasionally shown with such tails, the meaning
of which is still unclear. At the central Costa
Rican site of Guayabo de Turrialba, a national
park, there is a large boulder petroglyph with a
jaguar on one side and a crocodile on the other,
both with bifurcated tails.
Of special interest in this piece are the four
large occluding plaques of hammered sheet gold,
which were attached to the piece after it was
removed from the mold. These pendants attracted
attention, tinkling like bells as well as glittering.
The plaques may have symbolized the shaman's or
chief's ability to assume animal shapes and attributes at will.
M.J.S.

The central figure in this composition shares

many traits with cat. 483, although it has the
typically flattened human arms holding a serpent
belt-penis sheath instead of wings. Four smaller
human-avian figures surround him within an
ornate square of false filigree. This piece, and very
probably cat. 484 as well, originally possessed the
occluding hammered plaques of gold still present
in cat. 485.
M.J.S.

MAN IN AVIAN COSTUME

487
ANTHROPOMORPHIC AVIAN EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
9.6 x 10.7 (33/4 x 4l/4)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
Whereas this and cats. 488-490 appear to be
"eagle" (really buzzard-vulture) pendants,
their anthropomorphic essence is betrayed by
human faces, however obscured by masks and
headdresses, and the ear-spool/ "hear and understand" spirals that can usually be seen at the sides
of the head. Other body features, either stylized
or fantastically elaborated, are more avian than
human.
Such variations on a bird with spread wings and
flared tail make up a large percentage of all Costa
Rican gold work. This motif represents an efficient use of the precious substance, creating a
large reflective surface with a relatively small
amount of metal (it should be remembered that
the wings and tail were part of a single cast for the
whole piece). Two reasons for the pervasiveness of
this motif are suggested by the observable world.
One is that, even today, large birds perch in the
treetops in just this posture, feathers outspread,
to dry themselves in the sun after a tropical rain.

612

CIRCA 1492

Another is that the king vulture, "upon its arrival

at a carcass, terrifies the other carrion-feeding
species with a foreboding expansion of its bicolored wings" (Cooke 1984). The large "eagle" or
vulture was significant in the world of belief as
part of the world above, and was the deity of creation among some native peoples.
M.J.S.

488 d*
ANTHROPOMORPHIC AVIAN EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
13.1x13.3 (jVsx s1/^
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
This primarily avian pendant, like other Diquis
pendants (see cats. 486, 487, 489, 490), is characterized by the flared wing and tail. Dual crocodile
heads in false filigree emerge from the head.
M.J.S.

THE A M E R I C A S

613

489

491

ANTHROPOMORPHIC AVIAN EFFIGY

SHARK

Diquis
cast gold

Diquis
cast gold

7.4X8.2 (27/8X 32/4J

2.8 X 4.9 X 10.45 (ll//8 X !7/8 X42/8)

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Another in the series of elaborate Diquis "eagle"

pendants, this piece, in addition to large crocodile
heads in false filigree emerging from the sides of
the head, has other smaller versions of this motif
facing forward, along with a more realistic human
face just barely visible beneath the mask. The
wings also seem to resemble the gaping mouths of
snakes or sharks. At the front of this pendant are
four hooks from which thin occluding plaques
of hammered gold originally hung.
M. j. s.

Although Diquis gold artifacts are pendants and

not freestanding figurines, a few are quite realistic. Here a nurse shark, a species that often
cruises near the shoreline, is depicted. The animal
species that the Diquis chose to portray in gold
and that had no important mythological roles in
their life frequently have the ability to sting, bite,
pinch, poison, or otherwise harm man.
M.J.S.

490

AVI AN-HUMAN EFFIGY WITH

CROCODILE AND JAGUAR HEADS
Diquis
cast gold
10.4 x 12.5 (41/s x 47/s)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
In this piece, only the forward-facing birdlike
eyes suggest that a human face might be hidden
under the elaborate mask. The hybrid creature
is undoubtedly fantastic: a jaguar head emerges
from the breast, the typical silhouetted crocodile
heads in false filigree adorn the headdress, and
the buzzard's carbuncles, true-to-life fleshy knots
near the base of the hooked beak, have been
pushed forward and made into tiny bells.
M.J.S.

614

CIRCA 1492

492
DOUBLE-BELL SPIDER EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
7.4 X 4.4 (27/8 X 13/4J

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Except for suspiciously human forward extremities, this spider in the center of a web seems very
realistic when compared to most Diquis gold artifacts. A bell hangs below the spider's body, which
is itself also a bell. Perhaps the composite piece
was inspired by a spider with its egg case on a web.
M.J.S.

493
LOBSTER WITH EFFIGY TAIL
Diquis
cast gold

10.7 x 8.3 (42/4 x 3*/4j

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

This beautiful and very realistic tropical lobster,

locally known as langostina, has been symbolically modified only at the tail, which has been
transformed into stylized crocodile or parrot heads.
M.J.S.
THE A M E R I C A S

615

494
FANTASTIC LOBSTER EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
i2.5xy.8(47/8X3)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
The basic form of this piece is recognizably a lobster, but other elements that transform it into
a mythological creature (or one seen in a druginduced hallucination) include the bifurcated
upturned tail, the humanlike forward extremities,
and the wavy lines and triangular motif emerging
from the mouth, which are definitely crocodilian
symbols. The meaning of the composition is
unknown.
M.J.S.

495
FANTASTIC FROG EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
j.2x 6.8 x 9.1 (iV4 x 25/8 x jVz)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
The typical pose in gold frog pendants is a naturalistic one, showing the animal sitting on its
haunches with hind legs flexed. The rear feet are
usually represented by oversize rectangular or
trapezoidal plaques cast integrally with the body,
for the same reasons economy in the use of
metal and maximum reflectivity that such techniques are used in avian pendants and other
pieces. Like the crocodile, the frog was associated
with the world below and with water. In the
mythology of some indigenous peoples of southern Costa Rica, the frog is viewed as a burial
helper, whose job it is to sit on a grave to prevent
the deceased from rising to trouble the living.
Thus the frog's ability to sit (the pose seen in all
frog pendants) is critical. In this pendant, false
filigree crocodile heads and attached spirals (water
symbols) emerge from the mouth, converting a
realistic effigy into a fantastic creature.
M. j. s.

616

CIRCA

1492

496
BAT BELL
Diquis
cast gold
/.I X 13 (23/4 X 52/8)

Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

What seems to be a realistic bat except for the earspool elements is mounted on a large bell representing the bat's body, forming a beautiful and
impressive composition.
M.J.S.

497
BUTTERFLY-BlRD EFFIGY
Diquis
cast gold
12.2x10.9 (43/4 x 42/4J
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose
Here a realistically portrayed butterfly or moth is
adapted to the classic form of the avian pendant,
and imaginary spreading tail feathers have been
added. Among some native cultures of southern
Costa Rica, butterflies, along with dragonflies and
all waterbirds (Bozzoli 1975), were seen as intermediaries between the forces of the upper and
lower worlds.
M.J.S.

THE A M E R I C A S

6I7

498
EMBOSSED DISK WITH
CROCODILE MOTIFS
Diquis
hammered gold
diameter 15,7 (oVa)
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

Unlike other gold objects from Diquis, which were

made by the lost-wax casting method, this disk
and cat. 499 were formed by hammering out thin
sheets of gold, which were then embossed and
perforated. For many pre-Columbian peoples,
including those of Diquis, there was a symbolic
link between the sun and such shiny gold objects.
It is not unlikely that the form of this and similar
pieces represents the shape of the sun as seen in
the sky. On this disk large embossed conical elements, perhaps intended as the cone-shaped roofs
characteristic of Diquis houses at this time, alternate with realistic crocodilian effigies. Such disks
were almost always perforated to hang as pendants or to be sewn onto a softer material such as
cloth or leather.
M. j. s.

499
DISK WITH FANTASTIC
CROCODILE MOTIF
Diquis
hammered gold
diameter 15.8 (62/4J
Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, San Jose

On this disk the open maw of a crocodile monster

confronts the observer. Other stylized crocodilian
motifs surround it. This unusual perspective may
have been utilized to create double-aspect motifs
as well, perhaps a humanoid face, on other such
objects. The design was embossed on hammered
gold, and the resulting piece was perforated to
hang as a pectoral.
M.J.S.

618

CIRCA 1492

TAIRONA
The Taironas, the ancient inhabitants of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern
Colombia, began their consolidation into a political and social entity at the beginning of the
modern era. The objects in metal that these
people produced during the formative period of
their culture, in the sixth and seventh centuries
A.D. (Bischof 1968; Oyuela 1985), have a
characteristically hybrid quality; some show
the influence of the metallurgical traditions of
the south, while others suggest subjects that
would later become common in classical
Tairona gold work. The advanced technology
that they demonstrate was probably not
developed locally; these techniques, most likely
reflecting outside influence, were adapted and
integrated in Tairona gold work, which was in
the process of gradually acquiring its strength
and coherence (Falchetti 1987).
The period of greatest development of
Tairona culture in the coastal region and on the
northern slopes of the Sierra Nevada is thought
to have begun around the tenth century A.D.

and to have continued until the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards reported numerous
densely populated urban nuclei (ReichelDolmatoff 1954; Bischof 1968). The remains of
more than two hundred dispersed settlements
have been found in the lowlands and in the
mountains at altitudes up to two thousand
meters (6500 f e e t ; see Cadavid y Turbay 1985).
This was the period of classical Tairona gold
work, a quite distinct phenomenon within the
panorama of pre-Hispanic Colombian metallurgy. Despite great variety in their decoration,
the thousands of preserved objects form a
coherent whole by virtue of their technology,
their elaborate style, and the homogeneity of
the themes and forms represented (Plazas 1987;
Falchetti 1987). The Taironas used the lost-wax
technique for casting their gold, in which the
object was f i r s t modeled in wax and then
encased in clay, forming a mold into which
molten metal was poured. Each mold was original and very elaborate. The pieces have considerable volume and were perfectly finished:
when extracted from the mold they were pol-

ished, gilded, and cleaned of residues. The

objects were designed for intensive use. The
diadems, nose ornaments, and necklaces show
signs of surface wear, and the rings have lost
some of their high relief.
In Tairona iconography, frogs, serpents, birds
of prey, and felines are frequently combined
into complex hybrid figures such as bat-men,
jaguar-men, and bird-men. These motifs are
closely related to the religion of the present-day
Ijka and Kogui, indigenous communities consisting of about ten thousand people who
inhabit the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The
iconography of the classical Tairona objects
conveys a specific system of beliefs and a
world-view that explains the use of these
adornments in the society. The highly elaborate
designs of the Tairona pieces indicate their
emblematic function. These variegated representations of human beings with animal attributes appear to have identified specific social
groups, mythically and ancestrally related to
certain animals.

cat. 501

500-501

Two HUMAN FIGURE PENDANTS

Tairona
cast, gilded gold-copper alloy
500: 15.8 (62/4J
501:7.8(3)
private collection
The so-called cacique pendants from Caribbean
Colombia are among the finest and most detailed
gold castings from pre-Columbian America. They
are hollow cast by the lost-wax method, and much
of the clay and charcoal core is left inside the
heads and bodies to give weight and strength to
the relatively thin metal. In their most typical
form these pendants depict Tairona noblemen or

cat. 500

chiefs (caciques) dressed in full regalia. These

figures wear enormous headdresses, each topped
by a pair of large-beaked birds, with elaborate side
pieces, a visor or diadem with two vertical projections, a set of tubes or a kidney-shaped ornament in the septum of the nose, a labret in the
lower lip, disc-headed bars and crescent-shaped
danglers through the ear lobes, necklaces, arm

bands, belt, and penis cover. These miniature gold

ornaments are shown with meticulous accuracy,
and are comparable to full-size examples found in
Tairona tombs. The larger of the two pendants
represents the cacique figure in its classic form.
The smaller version is an exquisite piece of casting. The loops on the extremities of the headdress
once held danglers.
W.B.
THE A M E R I C A S

619

502

BAT-MAN PENDANT
Tairona
gold
13-3 (52/4J
Jan Mitchell and Sons, New York

620

CIRCA 1492

In Tairona art there are two common versions of

the cacique pendant: one represents a normal
human figure; the other, though similar in most
of its details, has the head of a bat instead of a
human face. On small-scale figures, it is not
always clear whether the goldsmith depicted a
composite creature from the world of mythology
or a masked human being engaged in ritual or
ceremonial activities. On this large and splendid
pendant, the wrinkles that define the face of the
bat may also be meant to indicate the edges of a
mask, similar to the wooden ones in use today
among the Kogui Indians, the descendants of the
prehistoric Tairona tribes. In Kogui mythology the
bat is identified as the first animal in creation
and, because of the blood-sucking habits of certain
species, is linked with menstrual blood and female
fertility.
This pendant was collected before 1894 by an
engineer who worked in Colombia and was sold in
Geneva by his daughter sixty years later, making
it the earliest documented Tairona gold item to have
survived until the present.
w. B.

503

BAT-MAN PENDANT
Tairona
cast gilded gold-copper alloy
2.9 X 4.6 (iVsX

13/4J

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This figure also appears to be wearing a mask.
On his head are two representations of birds, and
the stylized representation of a serpent is distinguishable on his girdle, which he holds in his hands.
A.M.F.

54
CEREMONIAL STAFF
Tairona
gray stone
55.7

X 7.4 (217/8 X 27/8)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

According to the mythology of the present-day
Kogui, before the sun appeared, the universe was
made of stone. Stone staffs, hatchets, and beads
were consequently used to protect man in the
rituals in which he returned to that mythical past.
A.M.F.

505-506

Two PECTORALS
Tairona
505: hammered gold
diameter 14 (52/2J
506: bone
10.1 x 11.4 (4 x 42/2J

These two pectorals represent Serankua, the

humanized image of father sun (see ReichelDolmatoff 1988). According to the mythology of
the present-day Kogui, "The sun is a man with
a golden mask. The mask emits rays beneficial
to planting and growth. The sun moves in the
sky, two mamas (shamans) carry it on their
shoulders/'
A.M.F.

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

THE AMERICAS

621

507509

THREE BIRD PENDANTS

Tairona
507: BIRD OF PREY
cast gilded gold-copper alloy
12.3 x 9.3 (47/s x 35/sj
508: BIRD'S HEAD
cast gold-copper alloy
3.5 x 8.4 (i3/s x ^A)
509: BIRD'S HEAD
shell
8.5 x n.8 (^/4X45/8)
Museo del Oro, Banco de La Republica, Bogota
This iconography may be related to an idea
preserved in Ijka mythology that birds in human
form brought the seeds of the plants that society
needs for survival. The hummingbird brought
coca, the eagle brought yucca (manioc), the ani
brought the trees and the flowers, and the macaw
brought the first maize (see Tayler 1974).
A.M.F.

510

SNAIL PENDANT
Tairona
cast gold
20.4 x 4.9 (8 x i7/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
The snail is a symbol of male genitals and fertilization, as are the serpents that decorate this piece.
A.M.F.
622

CIRCA

1492

511 <3^>

512

513

TOAD PENDANT WITH HEADS OF

JAGUAR AND SERPENT

JAGUAR-MAN FINIAL

LIP PLUG WITH SERPENT'S HEAD

Tairona
bone

Tairona
cast gold

7.2 X 5.4 (23/4 X 22/8)

2.9 X 4.6 (iVs X !3/4)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This carved bone finial depicts a jaguar-man carrying another being on his back. A bird of prey
pecks at his skull.
A.M.F.

This type of adornment was made to be worn

through a hole below the lip. This example
is decorated with the head of a serpent with a
forked tongue.
A.M.F.

Tairona
cast gilded gold-copper alloy
2

$.6 X 5 (2 /8 X 2)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

For the inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta, this group of animals represents basic conflicts. The rising sun, the east side of the universe,
is dominated by the jaguar, which represents the
positive side of human existence. The serpent,
symbol of darkness, evil, and death, is master of
the west, the side of the setting sun. In the
middle, in the land of humanity, is a toad, the first
spouse of the sun and a symbol of female sexuality (see Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985).
A.M.F.

THE A M E R I C A S

623

5*4

LARGE CRESCENT-SHAPED EARRINGS

Tairona
cast gold
each 8.1 x 9.4 (3 Vs x 35/s]
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
Hollow half-moon earrings, cast in gold or the
gold-copper alloy known as tumbaga, are
common in Tairona gold work, although this pair
is unusually large.
A.M.F.

5*5

EARRINGS WITH SERPENTS

Tairona
cast gold
4.2 x 7.8 (i5/sx 3]
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
This pair of earrings is decorated with two serpents, facing in opposite directions, whose bodies
are stylized as circles of false filigree. The serpent,
in Kogui mythology an immortal animal associated with darkness and the west, is also a symbol
of the movement of time.
A.M.F.

624

CIRCA 1492

5i6-518 *
THREE NOSE ORNAMENTS
Tairona
cast gold

516: 5.7*5.9 (2*/4 x iVz)

517:

5.7 X 8.2 (2 2 /4 X 32/4J

5l8: 2-9 X 1.5 flVs J 2/2J

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Tairona nose ornaments usually extended to the

sides of the nose. They were cast in gold or in
tumbaga and were frequently decorated with false
filigree ornament or stylized serpents. These
adornments emphasized the central part of the
face and would have transformed the mouth
into a brilliant snoutlike shape. It may be that the
nose ornament identified the wearer with the
jaguar-man.
A.M.F.

519

NECKLACE
Tairona
cast gilded gold-copper alloy
each link 3.3 x 1.1 fi2/4 x l/2)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This necklace is composed of links that represent

stylized animals.
A.M.F.
THE A M E R I C A S

625

SINU
The gold work characterized as Sinu was
produced on the tropical Caribbean plains of
Colombia, which is traversed by the Sinn,
San Jorge, Cauca, and Nechi rivers (Perez de
Barradas 1966; Falchetti ^976). Gold was
already being worked here in the sixth to
tenth centuries A.D. This era was the zenith
of the culture of the Zenu, a people who
densely populated the low-lying plains of
the San Jorge that were prone to flooding.
There they constructed a complex network
of artificial canals covering an area of
193,000 square miles of marshy lands
(Plazas and Falchetti 1981). After the tenth
century these plains were gradually abandoned, and the population inhabited the
higher surrounding savannahs. According to
an indigenous tradition recorded by the
Spaniards in the sixteenth century, Finzenu
and Yapel, on the rivers Sinu and San Jorge,
were surviving chiefdoms of an older sociopolitical organization, when the Greater
Zenu territory was divided into three provincesFinzenu, Panzenu, and Zenufanagoverned by caciques of the same lineage
and fulfilling complementary economic and
social functions. Finzenu was a land of specialists. Even during the sixteenth century
there were communities of goldsmiths. Over
the course of many centuries these artisans
produced the gold objects that have since
been found in tombs spread throughout the
Greater Zenu territory.
The abundance of gold in this area is
attested to by the considerable number of
pieces made of fine gold hammered into
sheets and then embossed from both sides to
create designs. Zenu craftsmen also melted
gold and mixed it with copper to produce
works including decorated finials in
tumbaga, whose surfaces were then gilded.
They also used the ''false filigree" technique
to produce many earrings and to decorate
larger pieces. False filigree is a casting technique, using a model built up from wirelike
threads of wax. It has been given this name
to distinguish it from true filigree, in which
bits of coiled gold wire are soldered together
or to a support. Sinu iconography includes
the characteristic fauna of the savannahs
and marshlands: deer, caymans, jaguars,
and birds with beautiful plumage.
A large part of the production of the Zenu
goldsmiths must have been in the service of
the chieftains. Gold, of great emblematic
importance for objects of adornment and for
religious and funerary offerings, played a
fundamental role in the ceremonial activi626

CIRCA

1492

ties described by the early Spanish chroniclers, which were designed to enhance the
Greater Zenus social cohesion, reaffirming
the prestige of the caciques and priests.
These privileged individuals dominated the
union between the sacred and the social;
they had greater rights than did ordinary
men to possess gold and to take it with
them, in burial, to their tombs.
The influence of the Zenu was felt around
the Serrania de San Jacinto, the mountain
range that separates the plains from the
Caribbean coast. In the sixteenth century

this area had a dense indigenous population

that buried its dead in urns and produced
gold work that shows some relationship
with that of the earlier Zenu. Numerous
finials in gilded tumbaga were produced
there. Cast filigree was also used to decorate
the finials and for the various types of earrings. Filigree from the Serrania de San
Jacinto is different from that of the Zenu in
that the cast thread is finer and the designs
more varied (Falchetti 1976; Plazas and
Falchetti 1985).

52O

521

522

VESSEL WITH
ANTHROPOMORPHIC PEDESTAL

FINIAL WITH FIVE BIRDS

FINIAL WITH DOUBLE-HEADED BIRD

Sinu
cast gold
5.4 x 20.32 (2l/s x 8)

Sinu
cast gold
11.43 * 12.70 (42/2 x 5J

National Museum of the American Indian,

Smithsonian Institution

National Museum of the American Indian,

Smithsonian Institution

This is one of the largest lost-wax castings from

the Sinu archaeological zone. It demonstrates
the realistic manner in which Sinu goldsmiths
depicted creatures of the natural world. The ferrule is designed to slip over the end of a wooden
rod, which, because of the effect of climatic conditions in the Caribbean lowlands on organic materials, has disappeared from the archaeological
record. This rod would have been too thin to take
any serious weight. For this reason and because
the birds are seen at their best with the object held
horizontally, the finial may have served as the
finger grip, more ceremonial than practical, of a
wooden spear thrower.
W.B.

Like other Sinu finials, this double-headed bird

appears to have been attached to the end of a
wooden object that has not been preserved. The
ferrule has holes for pins, which held the metal
firmly in place. Although the birds' breast feathers and the crests on their heads are reduced to
stylized spirals, the modeling retains the realism
characteristic of Sinu art.
W.B.

Sinu
ceramic
34 x 20 (i}3/8 x 77/sj
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Repiiblica, Bogota

Various types of ceramic vessels were made to be

placed in the tombs of important persons. The
frequency with which women are represented
reflects their social and political importance in
this culture.
A.M.F.

THE A M E R I C A S

627

5^3
FINIAL WITH BIRD
Sinu
gold-copper alloy
16.2 (63/s)
George Ortiz Collection
The bird appears to be a toucan. He has slit eyes,
the head surmounted by a crest of spirals. Under
his long beak are small loops from which gold
pendants probably dangled. The bird perches on
a socket that may have been attached almost
horizontally to a ceremonial staff; it is possible,
though unlikely, that it served as the hook of a
ceremonial spear thrower.
This finial attests to the high degree of artistic
and technical development achieved by Sinu goldsmiths. It was part of the collection of tribal and
exotic art assembled by the sculptor Jacob Epstein.
G.O

5M-525

Two ANIMAL-EFFIGY FINIALS

Sinu
cast gold-copper alloy
524: 10.6 x 8.9 (42/s x 32/2J
525: 9.9 xy.8 (}7/8X3)
Museo del Oro. Banco de la Republica, Bogota

628

C I R C A 1492

Solid and heavy finials, which adorned the tops of

staffs, were produced in the plains of the Caribbean since early periods. They faithfully represent
various species from that area, especially the more
handsome animals such as the cuchara duck with
its peculiar flattened beak and the deer with its
attractive horns. These figures were most often
decorated with hanging plaques or adorned with
false filigree. Most are naturalistic, but occasionally they represent two-headed animals.
A.M.F.

526-528h
THREE NOSE ORNAMENTS
Sinn
526: hammered gold
50x3.7
527: cast gold
9.3 x 1.6 (3% x 5/s)
528: hammered gold
43.3X7.1

(l?X23/4)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Nose ornaments with lateral extensions, hammered or cast, are common in Sinu gold work of
the earlier periods.
A.M.F.

THE A M E R I C A S

629

5^9-533
FOUR PECTORALS AND
NOSE ORNAMENT
Sinu
hammered gold
529: NOSE ORNAMENT
8.89 x 15.88 (^/2x6V4)
530: CRESCENT PECTORAL WITH
GEOMETRIC MOTIFS

54.9 X 32.2 (2I5/8 X 125/8J

630

CIRCA 1492

531: CRESCENT PECTORAL WITH ANIMAL MOTIFS

53.5 X 32 (21 X 125/sj

532: ROUND PECTORAL WITH Two ALLIGATORS

diameter 27.8 fio'/sj
533: ROUND PECTORAL WITH FOUR ALLIGATORS
diameter 33 (13)
University Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, Philadelphia

These items were found in a burial mound excavated in 1919 in the region of Ayapel, Colombia,
where the capital town of one of the most powerful Sinu chiefs at the time of European contact
was located. The Ayapel tumulus yielded one of
Colombia's richest archaeological treasures, all in
gold: three crescent-shaped breastplates, five circular breastplates, six staff heads surmounted by
birds or animals, four pairs of ear ornaments,
twenty-six nose pieces, nine necklaces, a girdle

made of 138 solid gold bars, a golden helmet, six

sheet-gold plaques, twelve disks, eight bracelets,
an arm band, and a funnel-shaped object. All
these offerings, which include both cast and hammered pieces, are of prime quality and may have
been the property of a single lord. It is unusual
that the contents of the tomb have been kept
together, as in this case, rather than dispersed.
Both the crescent-shaped breastplates have two
holes for suspension. The repousse geometric

design is based on the conical bosses that are

characteristic of the Sinu style. The resemblance
to female breasts may be fortuitous. Many of the
finest Sinu hammered items have two (or more)
large conical bosses, but there is no evidence that
these objects were worn exclusively by women.
The second crescent-shaped pectoral is similar, but
with raised bosses and designs of jaguars attacking
huge snakes. The two circular pectorals are
smaller. They, too, have two holes for suspension

cords. The usual geometrical decoration is supplemented by repousse alligators.

The nose piece (or ear ornament) is an unusual
variant on the typical fan-shaped form from the
Sinu. Made by the false filigree technique, the
main body of the ornament was assembled from
wax threads and then cast in a single operation by
the lost-wax method. The design along the upper
edge consists of a row of stylized birds, each with
a spiral body and a straight beak.
w. B.
THE A M E R I C A S

631

534~53<5 **
FALSE-FILIGREE EARRINGS
Sinu
cast gold
534: pair, each 4.3 x 7.3 (i5/s x 27/s)
535: 6.6 X 6.3 (25/8 X 22/2J

536: pair, y x y (23A x 23A) and 7.2 x 7 (2% x 23A)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
Earrings decorated in false filigree were produced
in the Sinu region for many centuries. The technique shows the influence of textile designs,
which were of great importance in this area in
pre-Hispanic times. In early periods the earrings
were produced with thick cast threads; this was
gradually replaced by a finer filigree design. The
decoration includes geometric designs and stylized
birds. In later periods round earrings were
common, frequently with decoration that combines human beings and animals.
A.M.F.

632

CIRCA 1492

53
NECKLACE
Sinu
cast gold
each bead 2 (7/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This necklace is composed of barrel-shaped beads

worked in false filigree.
A.M.F.

THE A M E R I C A S

633

POPAYAN (CAUCA)
This area is best known for representations of
the bird-man, one of the most common images
in pre-Hispanic Colombian gold work. The
transformation of the shaman into a bird symbolizes his capacity to fly toward the supernatural world, the source of his knowledge
(Reichel-Dolmatoff 1988).
In the large pectorals of gilded tumbaga that
have been found in the region of the upper
Cauca River, south of the city ofPopaydn, the
man with a bird's beak occupies a central posi-

tion. His hair is transformed into feathers that

open above a pierced crescent recalling chullos,
the cloth caps that are still worn to protect
against Andean cold. The twisted nose ornament, necklace, belt, and ties under the knees
give a human quality to these figures, which
are nevertheless portrayed with the unfurled
tail of a bird. The central figure is accompanied
by two or more small bird-men and by auxiliary animals that assist him in his transformation (Reichel-Dolmatoff1988).
None of the pieces of this type has been
recovered from a controlled archaeological

excavation, but it is known that they are associated with large ceramic figures of highly
adorned personages seated on benches and
carrying shields with pierced decoration (see
cat. 540). The date of the pectorals is not
known; however, the technique of casting in
gilded tumbaga arrived late in the Colombian
southwest, at the same time that the use of the
twisted nose ornaments became common. These
nose ornaments are associated with the sonsoide ceramic tradition, which lasted from
approximately the tenth to the sixteenth centuries A.D.

538

HUMAN FIGURE PENDANT

WITH HEADDRESS

Pop ay an (Cauca)
cast, hammered, and gilded gold-copper alloy
29.8 (n3/4)
The Trustees of the British Museum, London
The Popayan or Cauca style of gold work has two
principal images: the human figure and a spreadwinged bird of prey, perhaps a falcon or an eagle.
These two icons merge into one another to produce intermediate forms (human-headed birds,
winged humans, eagles wearing necklaces). These
make clear reference to the themes of humananimal transformation, extracorporeal flights, and
drug-induced visions that lie at the heart of shamanistic practices everywhere in the New World.
This pendant is one of the finest of the Popayan
group. The central figure has a lizardlike body and
wears a nose disc of the kind common in burials
from the region. The main personage is accompanied by subsidiary creatures: two bird-headed
quadrupeds and four bird-headed humans. These
may represent the shaman's spirit helpers. The
pendant is part of a collection of objects found by
a treasure hunter in a cemetery of shaft and
chamber tombs at the Hacienda de la Marquesa,
Timbio, department of Cauca, Colombia. The
tombs also yielded a necklace of gold frogs, a gold
bird, two nose ornaments, and nine effigy pots
(see cat. 540).
W.B.

634

C I R C A 1492

53
PENDANT FIGURE WITH HEADDRESS
Popaydn (Cauca)
cast and hammered gold
16.5 x 12.1 (6l/2 x 43/4J
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
This is one of the few pieces of this type that
is cast in highly refined gold. It was worked
in two parts that were then joined under the
figure's legs.
c.p.

540

EFFIGY VESSEL
Popaydn (Cauca)
painted earthenware
38.i (i5)
Denver Art Museum
This object is from the same cemetery as the gold
pendant (cat. 538) and represents a warrior hold-

ing a shield and seated on a low stool. The headdress forms a removable lid, and the vessel may
have served as a burial urn. The geometrical,
triangular designs painted on the shield are repeated in the metalwork of the Popayan group and
are one of the defining characteristics of this style.
On the back of the human body is a strange creature with a coiled tail, an alter ego figure representing a shaman's animal soul or spirit-helper.
W.B.
THE A M E R I C A S

6}5

54*
BIRD-MAN PENDANT
Popaydn (Cauca)
cast and hammered gold or gold alloy
13.3 (51/*)
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution
This Popayan pendant is closely related to cat. 538
and represents the bird-man variant of the form.
The body and limbs are those of a lizard or crocodile; the wings and feathered crest belong to a
bird; the human face is provided with a nose disc.
This item is reported to have come from Manizales, in the department of Caldas, Colombia. If
the provenance is correct, the pendant was found
more than two hundred miles from its place of
manufacture.
W.B.

542

BIRD
Popaydn (Cauca)
cast and hammered gold
i3.*5(53/')
Jan Mitchell and Sons, New York
The crested bird is a recurrent image in Popayan
metalwork (compare the head of this piece with
those of the bird quadrupeds on cat. 538), but this
example is unique in its treatment of the theme.
The bird appears to be in motion, a falcon diving
toward its prey, and the wings and body are
reduced to an openwork plaque, which simultaneously gives the impression of feathers and
repeats the triangular motifs characteristic of
Popayan art. The whole effect is achieved with a
beautiful economy. Seen from an oblique angle
the object appears to be a three-dimensional bird,
but when it is held vertically the bird head merges
into an abstract geometrical pattern. The function
of this item is uncertain; it may have been a lime
spatula, a headdress ornament, or even the finial
of a wooden staff.
w. B .

636

CIRCA 1492

MUISCA
The Muiscas, the last of the pre-Hispanic
inhabitants of the central Colombian high plateau, created hundreds of works in gold and
copper, the earliest of which date from the
seventh century A.D., according to numerous
carbon 14 tests of clay and carbon core materials (Falchetti 1989).
In Muisca society many works in gold were
intimately linked to religious practices. Most of
the pieces found on the plateau are objects of a
type known as tunjos. These were not items of
jewelry but rather offerings to the gods, created
to be hidden away in sacred places. Most tunjos
do not represent deities but rather the animals,
people, and artifacts of the everyday world.
They are often depicted with absolute accuracy.
The groups of votive objects that have been
discovered consist of cast figurines, ranging in
number from five to thirty. These votive objects
were generally deposited in ceramic vessels that
have been found concealed under stone slabs in
open areas not associated with dwellings or
burial places. They have also been found in
caves or in settings of great natural beauty.

Most of the tunjos have a triangular or elongated form and were thus intended to be set
directly on the floor or placed within the elongated ceramic vessels (London 1986; Plazas 1987).
The offerings were made through the chiefs
or priests, who functioned as mediators
between those making the offerings and the
gods. When examined carefully, the tunjos
appear to represent, within certain specified
conventions, a sort of language for requesting
divine assistance or giving thanks for such aid.
The recognizable types include warriors, masculine figures in attire that probably identifies
their rank, women holding their children or the
objects associated with chewing coca, miniature
versions of their various adornments, scenes of
political and social life, and animals of religious
significance such as condors, serpents, and
jaguars. The specific type of figure was evidently connected with the benefit being
requested from the gods.
Soon after production these objects were
deposited in the place of offering and for this
reason were not given the surface gilding
common in other pre-Hispanic traditions of

gold work. The votive function of the tunjos

made the undisguised presence of copper in the
images acceptable. Most of the Muisca pieces
are f l a t and have no core. They were cast by the
lost-wax process in individual molds, a means
of production that was a consequence of the
evident popular demand (Plazas 1975).
The tunjos are a curious expression of man's
need to communicate. There is a tacit vocabulary of bodily adornment to which much preHispanic gold work belongs- the tunjos,
however, represent a different sort of language,
one that is explicit and immediate. On the
whole, the images follow an original and very
specific aesthetic formula. The figures' large
heads contrast with their minute extremities
and belongings. The marked changes in scale
that often differentiate participants in the same
scene and the exaggeration of some of the figures' physical characteristics go beyond a
merely descriptive function to express the
deeper spiritual meaning of the offering. Even
though the figures often seem naive and disproportionate, they achieve their objective very
effectively.

543
CACIQUE ON A LITTER
Muisca

cast gold

8.3X22.6(^/4X87/
8)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

The importance of the chief represented in this

piece can be measured by his size and his complex
headdress. This piece was found in a cave near
Pasca (Cundinamarca), fifty kilometers (thirtyone miles) south of Bogota, along with the
famous Muisca raft that represents the ceremony
of El Dorado.
C.P.

THE A M E R I C A S

637

544
MALE FIGURE WITH LARGE HEADDRESS
Muisca
cast gold
15 x 6 ($7/s x 23/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
This obviously important personage, who also
wears necklaces of gold beads crossed on his chest,
carries a spear-thrower, a scepter, and a vessel
adorned with two birds. The goldsmith has
specifically emphasized the figure's genitals.
C.P.

some of the scenes and their elaborate attire indicate their important position in Muisca society.
Muisca leaders inherited power through maternal
lineage and lived in the homes of their maternal
uncles.
In her left hand this figure carries a stick with a
bird at the end, a device used for extracting lime
from a lime flask, used in coca chewing.
C.P.

546

WOMAN HOLDING A SCEPTER

545
WOMAN WITH COMPLEX HEADDRESS
Muisca
cast gold
15.9x6.6 (6V4x25/8)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
Representations of the female figure are common
among Muisca votive offerings. Their size in
638

CIRCA 1492

Muisca
cast gold
19.2

X 6.5 (jl/2 X 22/2J

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This figure, found at the border between the
Muisca region and the eastern plains, holds a
scepter in her left hand and has tiny bundles on
her shoulders. Fringes are repeated in her headband and skirt.
C.P.

547
WOMAN HOLDING A CHILD
AND A SCEPTER
Muisca
cast gold
9.2 X 4.6 (35/8 X 13/4J

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This tunjo represents a squatting woman, carrying a child on her back and a scepter in her hands.
C.P.

548
BABY IN A CARRIER
Muisca
cast gold
5.5Xi.8(2y8x3/4)

549
LARGE FEMALE FIGURE
Muisca
cast gold
28.5 x 4.1 (iil/4 x i5/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Babies in baby carriers can appear alone, as in this
tunjo, or held by their mothers in their arms or
on their backs.
C.P.

This figure's bulging eyes give her a mysterious

appearance. She wears adornments on her neck
and has small bundles hanging from her left
shoulder.
C.P.
THE A M E R I C A S

639

550-553
FOUR WARRIOR FIGURES

553: SQUATTING WARRIOR

cast gold

Muisca

8X4.2

550: WARRIOR HOLDING A Bow AND ARROW

cast cold-copper alloy
11.9 X 3-2 (45/8 X l2/4)

551: WARRIOR WITH SPEAR THROWER

cast gold
13.2 x 2.4 (y/s x i)
552: WARRIOR WITH HEAD TROPHY
cast gold
6.6 x 2.4 (25/s x i)
640

CIRCA 1492

(^/8Xl5/8)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

The early Spanish chroniclers described the fierce
giiecha warriors who protected the Muiscas from
their hostile neighbors. According to Fray Pedro
Simon: "Because these Panche Indians are so bellicose and the enmity between them and the
Muiscas so inflamed, those of Bogota had some
Indians they called guechas in the villages bordering the Panches
These [warriors] were men

with strong bodies, brave, agile, determined and

valiant, who received wages and promotion for
being the best soldiers. They had cropped hair and
pierced ears and noses. Around the outer edges of
their ears there were holes with many small tubes
of the finest gold; the holes of the lips and nose
were intended for the same purpose, but here
they only placed small tubes when they killed
Panche Indians, thus for each Panche they killed
they wore a small tube of fine gold on their noses
and lips'' (Simon 1625).
These figures are characteristic of the giiecha.
They are generally portrayed with cropped hair
and a plaque in the mouth. According to the

chroniclers Juan de San Martin and Alonso de

Lebrija, "If the Panches capture Indians from
Bogota, they would kill and then eat them; and if
those from Bogota kill or capture any of them,
they would take their heads to their land and place
them in their places of worship'' (San Martin and
Lebrija 1539).
The squatting warrior is armed with a hatchet,
a truncheon, and a club. His wounded prey is
C.P.
depicted to his right.

554

555

STANDING WARRIOR

DEAD WARRIOR

Muisca
cast gold
12 x 3.9 (43/4 x il/2)

Muisca
cast gold
10.3x5.3 (4x2)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

The spear thrower and dart in the right hand of

this figure were the characteristic weapons of the
Muiscas. The skin around his lips is perforated
with gold wires. The figure's ferocity is also
represented by his teeth, which are filed into
triangles.
C.P.

This figure carries a spear thrower and darts in his

right hand. On his featureless face is a mask with
a headdress with two birds, whose flight symbolizes communion with the beyond.
c. P.

THE A M E R I C A S

64!

556
FIGURINE HOLDING OFFERINGS
Muisca
earthenware
37.5 x 26.5 (i43/4 x io3/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

The ceramic figure, broad and generous like

Mother Earth, probably comes from a secret
offering place. These were holes in the ground
that were thought of as entry points for fertilizing
the earth with gold offerings, as were lagoons
and caves.
C.P.
642 CIRCA 1492

55Z-558
Two CAST-GOLD OFFERINGS
Muisca

557: CUP
-9 x 3 (3/8 x

ll//8

558: SCEPTER
7.9 X O.p (jVs X 3/8)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

These tiny gold votive offerings are similar to the

cup and scepter held by the earthenware figure
(cat. 556).
C.P.

559560
Two JAGUARS
Muisca
cast gold

5.7 x 10 and 3.1 x 7.1 (22/4 x 4 and i:/4 x 23/4J

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

The Muisca made votive images of the jaguar, the
supreme golden animal whose power makes it
comparable to the sun, and thus to gold itself. Yet
Muisca jaguars are not aggressive in appearance.
On occasion, as in the case of one of the present
examples, their whiskers are exaggeratedly long,
giving them the appearance of dragons, a confusion that is compounded by the fact that the
excess metal remaining from the casting channel
looks like a serpent's tail.
C.P.

561
DEER
Muisca
cast gold
1.8 x 2.5 (3/4X i)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
Among the Muisca, eating venison was a privilege reserved for the chieftains, as was wearing
mantles hand-painted with designs similar to
those that decorate this tunjo.
C.P.

THE A M E R I C A S

643

562
TURTLE
Muisca
cast gold
8x3.9(^/8x1^/2)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
This creature is rarely represented in pre-Hispanic
art from this part of the Americas, even though it
was an essential part of man's diet in many regions,
such as the Caribbean coastal plain. It may be that
the turtle's flesh was reserved for the chieftains,
as we know was the case with that of deer and
birds of prey, a circumstance which would make
the animal all the more appropriate as a subject
for an offering.
C.P.

(beneficent female) emerged from a lake with her

infant son, whom she married when the child
came of age. The couple had many children. With
these Bachue populated the land; then, exhorting
them all to live in peace, she and her son-husband
reentered the lake in the form of snakes. In
Muisca religion serpents were associated with
sacred lakes, which were also places where offerings were deposited.
These two serpent tunjos are cast by the lostwax process. The button at the end of each tail is
the residue of metal left in the mold after pouring. The serpent with whiskers at the mouth has
ears and a twisted braid design along the body.
The underside is flat. The other snake tunjo has
front legs with tiny toes. The head has round
eyes, small ears, and whiskers. The lower jaw is
formed by a semicircular element attached below
the head, and the mouth is open.
W.B.

563-564

Two SNAKES
Muisca
cast gold
11.43 (41/2)

ana

a-a (43/s)

Jan Mitchell and Sons, New York

565

SNAKE
Muisca
cast gold
4 x 4.1 (il/2 x i5/s)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Unlike most tunjos, which depict their subjects

with absolute accuracy, snake tunjos often have
elements such as ears, limbs, or whiskers that are
never found on living serpents. The offerings
may therefore represent mythical creatures. One
Muisca myth tells how the goddess Bachue

644

CIRCA 1492

To the present-day Chibcha, the serpent rolled

up into a spiral is a symbol of life and movement.
In mythology, the snake was the first wife of the
sun, condemned to keep its serpentine shape for
having committed adultery.
C.P.

566-567
DIADEM AND EAR ORNAMENTS
Muisca
cast gold
566:

6.5 X 22.8

(2V2X87/8)

567: 11.1 x 12.2 and 11.2 x 13.2

(43/s x 43/4 and 43/s x jVs)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

Compared to the numerous tunjos that have been
found, few gold ornaments exist today that were

used by the elite of Muisca society for the display

of power. However, among these objects of
jewelry are a number of pectorals, nose ornaments, earrings, and headdresses of great beauty.
The large gold diadem with lateral projections
and the two earrings, which formed part of the
same funerary offering, were found in a tomb in
the vicinity of Sogamoso (department of Boyaca),
where the cacique of Tunja lived. These pieces
were cast using the lost-wax process, and the
anthropomorphic designs were imprinted with
molds that had been carved in stone. The pendant
plaques were hammered separately.
C.P.
THE A M E R I C A S

645

568
NOSE ORNAMENT
Muisca
cast gold
9.3 xiy.i (j5/8X 63A)
Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
The decoration of this cast piece consists of two
serpents with bird's heads at each end.
c. p.

569

PECTORAL
Muisca
cast gold-copper alloy
21X22.5

(8V4X87/8)

Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota

This extraordinary pectoral, found in Guatavita
(Cundinamarca), is composed of a stylized bird
with the tail spread. Above are six bird bodies
with six figures crouching on top and two others
on the wings, making a total of eight human figures. These may represent political chiefs.
It appears that this work is an allegory of political power. Similar pendants are known from the
Tairona area, where groups living today still speak
dialects of the Chibcha language, which was
spoken by the Muiscas and the Taironas. Like the
present-day U'wa, who live in the Sierra Nevada
del Cocuy, the Muiscas and Taironas conceived of
their political and social power in the form of a
single body, represented by the bird, headed by
the different clan chiefs.
c. p.

646

CIRCA 1492

A WORLD UNITED
].H. Elliott

n September 9,1522, eighteen gaunt

men, candles in hand, walked bare-footed to the
shrine of Santa Maria de la Victoria in Seville to
give thanks for their safe return. It was just
over three years since they had commended
themselves to the Virgin in that same shrine,
on the eve of their departure as members of
an expedition which was intended to reach the
spice islands by sailing west, rather than east,
and somehow finding a way around, or through,
the great landmass of America. During the
course of those three years they accomplished
their mission, but at a terrible cost. Mutinous
crews were struck down by cold, hunger and
scurvy; their commander, the Portuguese-born
Fernando Magellan, was killed by angry islanders on a Pacific beach; and, of the five ships
which formed part of the original expedition,
only one, the Victoria, limped home to Seville
with its much diminished crew. But these lone
survivors had done something that had never
before been accomplished. In their battered
little ship, under the command of a dour Basque
captain, Sebastian Elcano, they had circumnavigated the world.
Thirty years separated the departure of
Columbus from Palos, in Andalusia, and the
return of the Victoria to Seville's port of
San Lucar de Barrameda. At the start of those
thirty years, Europe was still largely confined
between the twin barriers of an impassable
Atlantic Ocean to the west, and of a remote and
alien Asian landmass to the east. By the end
of them, Europeans had rounded the coasts of
Africa to reach India and the Moluccas; they
had encountered lands and peoples, quite outside the realm of their preconceived ideas and
expectations, on the far side of the Atlantic; and
now, after navigating a storm-swept passage to
the south of Patagonia, they had crossed the
great expanse of the Pacific Ocean and found
their way back home.
The immediate effect of these three decades
of unprecedented achievement was to give those
Europeans who were interested in such matters
a new and overwhelming sense of the size of the
world. Columbus, it soon became apparent, had
grossly underestimated the distance between
Europe and Cathay; and Antonio Pigafetta, the
Italian Knight of Rhodes who had sailed aboard
the Victoria on its epic voyage, recorded with

awe that, after leaving the Strait of Magellan,

"if we had sailed always westward, we should
have gone without finding any island other
than the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins,
which is the cape of that strait at the Ocean
Sea."1 The Europeans, in other words, had
found space, and found it on an unimagined
scale. But, paradoxically, even as their world
expanded, it also began to shrink. A globe
encompassed became a globe reduced.
Indeed the very attempt to map the lands
and seas of the world through the device of the
globe may have helped to reduce unmanageable
space to manageable proportions. The first known
terrestrial globe was that of Martin Behaim of
Nuremburg, dating from 1492. The first globe
to record Magellan's route was made, also in
Nuremburg, around 1526, and appears in
Holbein's famous painting of The Ambassadors
(National Gallery, London) of 1533. In selecting
as his device a globe surmounted by an eagle,
the Emperor Charles v was paying unconscious
tribute to this new European conceptualization
of spacea conceptualization that became increasingly routine as the sixteenth century
progressed. To see the world in terms of a globe
was to hold it in one's hands. In 1566, when
St. Francis Borja sent his son the gift of a
sphere, the youth wrote back in his letter of
thanks to his father: "Before seeing it, I had
not realized how small the world is."2
A globe held in the hands is a globe controlled, and to be able to follow, with the twist
of a sphere, the voyages of fellow-Europeans
and see at a glance the lands they had settled
was to participate, however vicariously, in that
sensation of power already generated by the
voyages themselves and by the conquests of
peoples and territories. The arrogance of the
European as he contemplated the newly mapped
world was nicely caught in the engraved frontispiece to the Milicia y description de las Indias
published in 1599 by a Spanish captain, Bernardo
de Vargas Machuca, that portrayed him holding
a pair of compasses over a globe, while the
accompanying motto consisted of the immortal
words: A la espada y el compds/Mds y mas y
mas y mas ("To the compass and the sword,
more and more and more and more"). Domination and expansionthese were to be the leading themes of the post-Columbus generations

of Europeans as they moved to exploit the

legacy of 1492.
These Europeans who moved out across the
world during the course of the sixteenth century, trading, settling, evangelizing, andall
too oftenkilling, tended to see themselves as
superior beings, providentially enjoying, and,
where possible, diffusing, the supreme blessings of Christianity and civility. To the nonEuropean peoples, on the other hand, into
whose world they had trespassed, they naturally appeared in a very different light. Arriving in their curious high-prowed ships, they
looked, with their pointed beards, their bulbous
doublets and tall hats the "hat men" as they
were called in India3like strange, and often
sinister, intruders, unpleasantly prone to seize
what was not rightfully theirs. Although, in
the perspective of time, they can be seen as
pioneers of global unity, breaking down the

fig. i. Bernado de Vargas Machuca, frontispiece,

militia y description de las Indias (1599). The
New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations
647

barriers of separation and bringing all the peoples of the world into contact with each other,
they erupted into non-European space as if they
already owned it, bringing untold misery, death
and destruction in their train. Embarking all
unaware on a process that would lead to the
creation of one world, they gave every impression of wanting to mold that world in the image
of themselves. An early sixteenth-century Spanish humanist said as much when we wrote of
Columbus that he "sailed from Spain . . .to mix
the world together and give to those strange
lands the form of our own."4
Europeans were to prove less successful in
giving those "strange lands" the form of their
own in Asia than in the Americas, where the
great organized empires of the Aztecs and the
Inkas succumbed before their onslaught. However elaborate those empires, and however sophisticated many of their cultural and technical
achievements, their isolation from other centers of civilization left them dangerously vulnerable to attack by peoples whose attitudes,
behavior and technologies were a cause of mystification and astonishment. Europe and Asia,
on the other hand, had a long-standing, if
mutually wary, relationship, and the same
was true for North Africa. For a long time the
Portuguese, who were followed to Asia by the
Dutch and the English, were able to do little
more than establish coastal enclaves for themselves, from which they were forced to compete
on roughly equal terms with peoples whose
political, military and commercial skills matched
or excelled their own.
Everywhere these sixteenth-century Europeans went, however, they created lesser or greater
disturbances, setting up ripples that were liable
to grow into whirlpools. Only Australasia would
remain excluded, for the better part of three
centuries, from these ripples of disturbance that
marked the opening of a new and multiplying
range of connections among peoples dispersed
over wide portions of the globe. If, by 1600 or
even 1700, this was still very far from being a
European world, it was none the less a world in
which Europeans, both by design and by accident, were acting as the precipitants of change.
European overseas expansion meant, in the
first instance, a movement of peoples. During
the sixteenth century some 240,000 men and
women migrated from Spain to America, while
roughly the same number of Portuguese (largely
young men) migrated to Asia, the overwhelming majority never to return. 5 Europeans, however, even if still no more than a trickle of them,
were not the only peoples to be caught up in the
process of overseas migration. Africans, too,
were involuntarily to be swept up in a movement generated by the settlement of growing
648

CIRCA 1492

numbers of Europeans on the farther shores of

the Atlantic.
By the fifteenth century, Portuguese traders
along the coast of West Africa had become
aware of the profits to be made in purchasing
Africans and shipping them abroadeither to
Lisbon for domestic service in Spanish and
Portuguese households, or to the newly settled
Atlantic islands where sugar was being planted.
By a process of natural extension this lucrative
trade in African slaves spread across the Atlantic to those areas where, for one reason or
another, the indigenous peoples of America
proved unsuited to the kind of labor required by
European settlers eagerly exploiting the mineral and agricultural resources of their newly
occupied lands. As a result, during the sixteenth
century a network was woven of commerce in
human chattelsa network that bound together
in mutual complicity chieftains and traders in
the Kingdom of Kongo and the African interior
with merchants in Seville and Lisbon, settlers
in Mexico and Peru, and sugar growers in
Brazil. Already by 1600 some 275,000 black
slaves had been transported to Europe and
America, and five times as many would be
shipped in the century that followed.6
This great transoceanic movement of human
beings meant the development of new racial
mixtures as Europeans, Asians, Africans and
indigenous Americans cohabited and intermarried, producing offspring of such a wide variety
of colors that in eighteenth-century Spanish
America there was a vogue for series of paintings depicting different racial combinations,
each with its own particular name. The effect of
the contact of peoples in this dawning Oceanic
Age, however, was not confined to the transfer
of genes. There was another and more sinister
legacy, for the contact of peoples meant the
spread of disease.
Europe and Asia, united by land, had for
millennia shared each other's epidemics, and it
was the Europeans who succumbed to disease
when increasing numbers of them sought to
make a life for themselves in an unfamiliar
Asian climate and environment. In America,
however, it was a different story. Isolated from
the great pandemics that periodically swept the
Euro-Asian landmass, the native peoples of
America proved terrifyingly vulnerable to newly
imported European diseasessmallpox, measles, influenzato which Europeans had developed some degree of immunity. The consequence
was that, within a century of Columbus' landfall, the indigenous population of mainland
America had shrunk by about 90%, and the
Tafnos who populated the Antilles at the time of
his arrival had become extinct. The Europeans
may have carried back with them from the

Americas the scourge of syphilis, but in exchange they wiped out a world. 7
The union of peoples, therefore, meant a
union of germs, as death danced its macabre
dance around the globe. But death came in
many forms, and not least by war. In their
dealings with non-European peoples, Europeans
displayed from the beginning a marked predisposition to seize their territories, and to back up
their commercial ventures by force of arms. It
was to the sound of gunfire that European
merchants fanned out across the world. In the
words of the Malay Annals describing the Portuguese attack on Malacca in 1511, "the noise of
the cannon was as the noise of thunder in the
heavens and the flashes of fire of their guns
were like flashes of lightning in the sky: and the
noise of their matchlocks was like that of groundnuts popping in the frying-pan." 8
The superior military technology of the Europeans brought them immediate advantages,
especially in America, where the shock effect of
guns and horses played a significant psychological role in the early, and critical, stages of the
Spanish conquest. But Asia already belonged to
the gunpowder culture, and Europe's initial
superiority in military technology soon showed
itself to be a diminishing asset. The Ottoman
armies rapidly adopted and mastered European
hand guns and field guns; by the late sixteenth
century many soldiers in the armies of the
Mughals were armed with muskets; and, farther east, the Chinese possessed their own
indigenous firearms, while the Japanese imported
and successfully copied European cannon. 9 Guns,
no less than germs, were spreading across
the globe.
The aggressive behavior of these gun-carrying
Europeansdescribed as "white Bengalis" by
the astonished inhabitants of Malacca when the
first Portuguese vessel arrived in port10was a
source of bewilderment and consternation everywhere they went. "What is it," the King of
the Tartars is said to have asked a party of
Portuguese, "that you are looking for in those
other lands? Why do you expose yourself to
such great hardships?" After the Portuguese
spokesman had done his best to explain, the old
Tartar shook his head and remarked: "The fact
that these people journey so far from home to
conquer territory indicates clearly that there
must be very little justice and a great deal of
greed among them."11
The greed of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Europeans for gold, silver, spices, and subsequently for land, was indeed what had induced
them, in the sage words of the Tartar, to "fly all
over the waters in order to acquire possessions
that God did not give them." It was an impelling force, and one that enabled them, as they

mastered the world wind system,12 to develop

a series of trading routes that came to span the
globe.
One maritime route, pioneered by the Portuguese, ran around the coast of Africa and across
the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, to
compete directly, and with increasing success,
against the overland spice and silk routes that
had long linked Europe to the markets of the
East. Another, the monopoly of the Spaniards,
ran from Seville to the Caribbean and thence
to the ports of Vera Cruz in Mexico and of
Cartagena in present-day Colombia. This was
the route that supplied the American colonists
with European goods, and made possible the
return shipment, by way of exchange, of the
Mexican and Peruvian silver needed to replenish the coffers of European princes and merchants, and to pay for the deficit trade between
Europe and Asia. In the Indian Ocean as much
as in Europe or America the Spanish silver real,
minted in the mines of Zacatecas or Potosi,
became a coveted unit of exchange. To the
Spanish Atlantic, revolving around the regular
annual flow of American silver to Europe, was
joined a Portuguese Atlanticthe Atlantic of
sugar and slaves running from Lisbon to
West Africa and the Azores, and thence to
Brazil. Into this Iberian-dominated Atlantic the
English, the Dutch and the French, arriving first
as interlopers, would infiltrate with increasing
success.
In 1565 the last remaining section of what
was to be a global transoceanic trade was fitted
into place when the first Spanish galleon sailed
back across the Pacific from Manila to unload a
cargo of cinnamon on the coast of Mexico. This
voyage marked the beginning of the regular
sailing of the "Manila galleon" between Acapulco and Manila. Outward bound from Mexico it carried the silver needed for the purchase
of the products of China and the Eastsilks,
porcelains and spices, jade and mother-of-pearl
which were brought by fleets of junks to the
Philippines, and then shipped in the Spanish
galleon to Acapulco, from where they would be
dispatched to the luxury markets of America
and Europe.13 Saluting Acapulco in his poem of
1604 on the greatness of his native Mexico, the
poet Bernardo de Balbuena wrote: "In thee
Spain is joined with China, Italy with Japan,
and ultimately a whole world in disciplined
commerce."14
Balbuena's words vividly suggest how, with
the development of these long-distance trading
systems, all four continentsEurope, Asia,
Africa and Americawere moving into a
closer reciprocal relationship as suppliers and
recipients. Oriental luxuriesPersian carpets,
Chinese porcelains, Javanese pepper and cloves

fig. 2. Lorenzo Vaccaro, Allegorical Figure of America, 1692, silver, The

Cathedral, Toledo

found their way in growing quantity into the

homes of the European elite. African ivories,
carved in ways that reflected the presence and
the tastes of the Portuguese, who had penetrated far into the interior, and intermarried
with Africans to form Afro-Portuguese communities, were brought back to Europe as prized
curiosities (see cat. 63-71). European manufacturestextiles and firearmspenetrated the
markets of Asia, where Portuguese was becoming the language of international maritime
trade.15 But Asia's appetite for commodities
from Europe, other than silver, was much smaller
than the insatiable European appetite for the
products of the East. In spite of the arrival of
Portuguese merchants in the Persian Gulf, the
Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca, they
and their fellow-Europeans in the sixteenth
century were simply one more group of competitors, if outlandish ones, jostling in on longestablished local trading networks, and buying
and selling as best they could.
For all the dynamism and aggressiveness of
the "hat men," they were swallowed up in the
vastness of Asia, with its teeming populations

and its long-established ways. To the extent

that they were accepted there, they were accepted for their silver, and this silver would not
have been available to them in such quantities
without Spain's exploitation of the mines of
Mexico and Peru. To the extent that the sixteenth century saw the inauguration of a "world
economy," it was the Spanish conquest and
settlement of the silver-producing regions of
Central and South America that made possible
the beginnings of economic integration on a
global scale.
Cruelly wrenched from its isolation by the
arrival of the Spaniards, Americasymbolized
in the allegories of the four continents that
began to appear from the 15705, as a naked
woman with feather headdress, seated on an
armadillo, and sometimes surrounded by the
exotic flora and fauna of a strange new world16
was tied hand and foot to Europe in ways
that Asia could never be. Occupied, governed,
evangelized and exploited by Europeans, the
Antilles and the vast mainland regions of Central and South America were drawn inexorably
into the orbit of a European world determined
649

to remake them in its own "superior" image.

Native Americans were introduced to the technology of iron, and the wheel. New crops and
animals were imported from Europe. For the
settlers the absence of bread was tantamount to
starvation, and wheat was planted where maize
once grew. "The Indians," observed a Spanish
official, "should not be made to grow wheat, for
this causes them great hardship. They do not
understand how wheat is grown, and do not
have plows. "17 Little by little the Spaniards
"improved" on American nature, with their
sugar plantations, their vineyards, and their
olive grovesnostalgic reminders of the world
they had left. Similarly, they imported their
own animalshorses, sheep, cattle, pigs, hens
and goatsdrastically upsetting in the process
both the pattern of indigenous life and work,
and the ecological balance of the conquered
lands.18
The transfer, however, was not all one way.
In opening America to the imports of Europe,
Europe opened not only itself but the rest of the
world to those of Americanot merely precious metals, or emeralds from Colombia and
Venezuelan pearls, but plants and foodstuffs
which in the course of time would add enormously to the range, and nutritional value, of
the Europeanand Africandiet. None, except perhaps tobacco, had an immediately dramatic effect on the habits of the Europeans, but
beans, maize, andabove allthe potato made
the transatlantic crossing, with profound longterm consequences for the eating habits, and
the demography, of a Europe that stretched
from Ireland to the Urals.
By incorporating a hitherto isolated America
into the beginnings of a global economic and
ecological system, the Columbian voyages made
a contribution of overwhelming importance to
the creation of a single world. But if this was to
be a world united, was the unity to be imposed
on European terms ? The expansionary character of European civilization, its lust for wealth,
its desire to dominate and to convert, certainly
pointed in that direction. Yet from the beginning there was resistance, sometimes open and
sometimes concealed. Militant Christianity faced
a formidable rival in militant Islam, championed in North Africa and on the fringes of
Europe by an Ottoman empire which, in the
sixteenth century, was at the height of its
power. In the complicated religious world of the
Indian sub-continent Christian teaching made
only very limited headway, while China remained impervious and largely impenetrable to
the West. Among the twenty million inhabitants of Japan, the Jesuits had made some
300,000 converts by the early seventeenth
century, but the brief flirtation of the Japanese
650

CIRCA 1492

with the western world ended in 1639 when the

Portuguese were expelled and the country closed
itself to westerners and their pernicious offerings.
Even in Iberian America, where an intense
missionary effort was buttressed by the full
weight of the secular power, there was in many
regions a sullen resistance that took a thousand
forms. While the new faith gained enthusiastic
converts, especially in Mexico, the tendency
among the indigenous populations was to appropriate those elements of the conquerors'

fig. 3. "Maize" from John Gerard, The Herbal or

Generall Historic of Plantes (London, 1597).
Cleveland Medical Library Association

religion that suited their needs. Old deities and

old shrines still retained their sacred aura and
were assimilated into new and distinctively
American forms of Christianity with their own
syncretic rituals and systems of belief. Worship
of the Virgin Mary might replace that of Coatlicue, but this had always been a world that took
the metamorphosis of the gods in its stride.
It would take a vastly superior European
technology, and a capacity for the control of
space far beyond sixteenth-century logistical
possibilities, for a united world to become even
superficially a European world. In so far as this
was achieved at all, it would be achieved only in
the nineteenth century. Butirrespective of
the sheer technical difficulties in the way of
global domination, whether political, cultural or
economicsixteenth-century European civilization itself possessed certain characteristics

that impeded its best efforts to "give to those

strange lands the form of our own."
In the first place, this was a civilization that
had grown accustomed to the idea of diversity.
Divided into competing political unitsand
also, from the sixteenth century, into competing religious units Renaissance Europe was
a pluralist society, with none of the monolithic
central control that characterized the contemporary Ottoman and Chinese empires. While
having no doubt of the superiority of its own
religion and way of life, it was less dismissive of
the "barbarians" beyond its own borders than
was the Chinese world. Debates within the
medieval church had led to the conclusion that
non-Christian societies legitimately enjoyed
property and lordship, and that Christians could
therefore claim no automatic right to dispossess
non-believers of their lands.19 When the Spanish occupation of America reopened the debate,
the leading Spanish scholastic of the age, Francisco de Vitoria, reaffirmed this doctrine, and
argued that the indigenous Americans, by demonstrating their capacity for social life, had
proved themselves "citizens of the whole world,
which in a certain way constitutes a single
republic."20
Once it was accepted that these newly encountered peoples were entitled, at least in
theory, to space of their own, they were simply
added in the European mind to the wide variety
of peoples with whom the globe was shared.
The Italians, after all, were different from the
French, and the French from the English, and
they all spoke different languages. Therefore it
was taken for granted that these peoples, living
in different climes and conditions, would have
their own peculiar characteristics and ways of
life, however strange or repugnant they might
seem to European eyes. Their form of dress (or
undress), their sexual mores, their differing
styles of worship made them exotic specimens
to be added to the many already to be found in
that encyclopedic compilation by Johann Boemus,
Omnium gentium mores, first published in
1520 before the peoples of America had seriously impinged on the European consciousness.21
Given this acceptance of human diversity,
which was put down to climate and geography,
there were limits to the necessity, as well as the
feasibility, of imposing European norms on the
peoples of the world. Strenuous, and surprisingly successful, efforts might be made by
Spanish friars in Mexico to persuade the male
inhabitants to clothe themselves in trousers,
but this was because the loincloth offended
Christian ideas of decency22 In other areas of
behavior, less offensive to Christian views of a
proper way of life, there was less pressure to
conform. Here the characteristic European re-

sponse of disapproval was liable to be accompanied by curiosity.

The curiosity with which Europeans approached the non-European world was reflected
in the journals of voyagers like Pigafetta or
Verrazano, who described with fascination the
customs of the peoples whom they came across
in their travels. This curiosity suggests a degree
of openness in sixteenth-century European civilization. At times it showed itself willing to be
impressed, as Diirer was impressed by the beauty
of the objects brought back from Mexico in
Motecuhzoma's treasure, and by the skill of native craftsmen in working gold and silver. Such
reactions suggested that Europe would not remain immune to the cultural influences of the
non-European world, even if the principal reaction in the sixteenth century was more often
astonishment or wonder than the desire to
emulate.23
This responsiveness to certain aspects of nonEuropean culture was reinforced in some quarters by a growing sense of guilt. While the
arrogance that sprang from an innate sense of
superiority was liable to predominate in the
dealings of Europeans with non-Europeans,
there were some, both at home and overseas,
whose scruples of conscience made them question the behavior and motivations of their
fellow-Europeans. Above all it was a growing
realization of the fate that was overtaking the
inhabitants of the Indies at the hands of the
Spaniards that provoked the first stirrings of
conscience in European minds. These stirrings
will be forever associated with the name of
Bartolome de Las Casas, the Spanish friar who,
after witnessing in the Caribbean and mainland
America the sufferings of the Indians, devoted
the rest of his long life to denouncing the
behavior of his compatriots, and expatiating
on the social and cultural achievements of the
people who, even as he wrote, seemed set for
extinction.24
The combination of an awareness of diversity,
an intense curiosity, and the growing sense of
guilt that characterized sixteenth-century European thought at its best, was nowhere better
represented than in the essays of that sceptical
Frenchman, Michel de Montaigne, who was
prompted by his reading of Gomara's account of
the conquest of the Indies to reflect on Europe's
record in its encounter with the non-European
world: "So many goodly cities ransacked and
razed; so many nations destroyed and made
desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse peoples of all sexes, states and ages, massacred,
ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest,
the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and defaced for the traffick of
Pearles and Pepper. . . ,"25

fig. 4. John White, An Indian Painted for the Hunt, c. 1585, watercolor, Trustees of the British
Museum, London

65i

As the silver of the Indies and the luxuries of

the East flowed into a Europe which was growing accustomed to looking to worlds across the
seas to minister to its appetites and needs, there
could be no turning back to an earlier age of
more limited, and less exploitative, contacts
between European and non-European. For
both good and ill, the age of European maritime
expansion, so spectacularly inaugurated by the
voyage of Columbus, had brought the world
closer together in ways that would forever
change it.
Montaigne's contemporary and compatriot,
Henri de La Popeliniere, asked why it was that
the Europeans of his age should have chosen to
risk their lives, riches, honor and conscience to
"trouble the ease of those who, as our brethren
in this great house of the world, asked only to
live the rest of their days in peace and contentment/'26 La Popeliniere's question is one that
still haunts us today. Europeans would shake
the "great house of the world" to its foundations as they ransacked it in the pursuit of what
they perceived as their own best interests.
Greed, arrogance, dogmaall these played their
part. But there was a more generous spirit alive
also in that European civilization which, even as
it destroyed, began to build a new, and more
interdependent, world. That spirit was best
expressed in the declaration of Las Casas, which,
along with the question of La Popeliniere, reverberates down the centuries. "All the peoples
of the world," wrote Las Casas, "are men; and

6^2

CIRCA

1492

there is only one definition of each and every

man, and that is that he is rational."27 That,
too, was a legacy of 1492.
NOTES
1. Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's Voyage, trans, and
ed. R. A. Skelton, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1969), 1:58.
2. Francois de Dainville, La geographic des humanistes
(Paris, 1946), 92, n. 3.
3. Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe
(New York, 1982), cited James D. Tracy, The Rise of
Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1990), 4.
4. Hernan Perez de Oliva, Historia de la invencion de
las Yndias, ed. Jose Arrom (Bogota, 1965), 5354.
5. For Spanish America, see Woodrow Borah, "The
Mixing of Populations," and Magnus Morner,
"Spanish Migration to the New World prior to
1800," in Fredi Chiappelli, ed., First Images of
America, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1976), 2:707-722 and
737-782. For the Portuguese in Asia, see G. V.
Scammell, The World Encompassed (Berkeley, 1981),
292.
6. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without
History (Berkeley, 1982), 195.
7. A recent overview of the impact of Europeans on
the demography of the non-European world is to be
found in Alfred W Crosby, Ecological Imperialism.
The Biological Expansion of Europe, 9001900
(Cambridge, 1986), ch. 9. For syphilis, see the same
author's The Columbian Exchange (Westport, Ct.,
1972), ch. 4.
8. Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals, trans. C. C.
Brown (Oxford, 1970), 162.
9. See Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 4, for a valuable brief survey of
the military encounter between Europe and the
non-European world.

10. Malay Annals, 1970,151.

11. Fernao Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto,
ed. and trans. Rebecca C. Catz (Chicago, 1989),
2
5412. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World
History (Cambridge, 1984), 136.
13. See William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon
(1939; repr. New York, 1959).
14. Benardo de Balbuena, Grandeza Mexicana, cited in
El Galeon de Acapulco (Institute Nacional de
Antropologia e Historia, Museo Nacional de Historia,
Mexico City, 1988), 78.
15. Curtin, 1984,143.
16. See Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land (New
York, 1975), 85-91.
17. Alonso de Zorita, The Lords of New Spain, trans.
Benjamin Keen (Rutgers, 1963), 251.
18. See Crosby, 1972, ch. 3.
19. See James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels
(Philadelphia, 1979).
20. Cited by J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New,
1492-1650 (Cambridge, 1970), 45-46.
21. For Boemus, see Margaret T Hodgen, Early
Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964; repr. 1971), 134-143.
22. Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule
(Palo Alto, 1964), 336.
23. Nicole Dacos, "Presents Americains a la Renaissance. L'assimilation de 1'exotisme," Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, VIeperiode, Ixxiii (1969), 57-64.
24. For Las Casas and his writings see especially Lewis
Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the
Conquest of America (Philadelphia, 1949).
25. "Des Coches," in The Essayes of Michael Lord of
Montaigne, trans. John Florio (1603) (London,
1928), 31144.
26. Les Trois Mondes (Paris, 1582), 38.
27. Cited in Elliott 1970, 48.

NOTES TO THE READER

Dimensions are given in centimeters followed by

inches in parentheses. Unless otherwise specified,
height precedes width precedes depth.
Short references in the text will be cited in full
at the end of the catalogue.

TOWARD CATHAY:
Chinese is here transcribed according to the
piny in system; in quotations from texts using
another transcription, the Chinese has been
converted to piny in and set in square brackets.
Japanese is here transcribed according to the
Hepburn system.
Korean is here transcribed according to the
McCune-Reischauer system.
All East Asian personal names are cited in
traditional fashion, surname followed by given
name. Chinese monastic names are hyphenated.
Emperors of Ming China are commonly
referred to not by their personal names but by
an auspicious era-name chosen for each reign
the Yongle (Perpetual Happiness) emperor, the
Zhengde (True Virtue) emperor. The reign-era,
however, was never precisely synchronous with
the reign itself: it was usually proclaimed some
months after the enthronement and continued in
use until the succeeding emperor, some time after
his enthronement, proclaimed a new reign-era.
(Thus the Hongzhi emperor was enthroned in
1487 and died in 1505, but the Hongzhi reign-era
began in 1488 and ended in 1506.)
Buddhist temples are called Si in Chinese.
In Japanese they are -ji or -dera, with -in and -an
denoting a subtemple and -do an individual hall
within a temple compound. Shinto shrines are
-gu, jinja, and taisha, in ascending order of
importance.
Dates are given according to the solar calendar.
Left and right mean viewer's left and right
when referring to paintings, reliefs, and all objects
except figural sculptures, for which they mean
proper left and right.
With a few exceptions, the objects in this
exhibition date between about 1450 and about
1550. During this time the Ming dynasty ruled
China, under the reigns of emperors referred to
by their auspicious era-names:
Jingtai (1450-1456)
""I
Tianshun (1457-1464) J
Chenghua (1465-1487)
Hongzhi (1488-1505)

Jingtai and Tianshun

fall within the period
commonly called
"interregnum"

Zhengde (1506-1521)
Jiajing (1522-1566)
In Japan the century between 1450 and 1550
falls within the Muromachi (or Ashikaga) period,
the former name referring to the locale of the
shogunal palace in Kyoto, the latter being the surname of the shogunal family.
Korea during this century was ruled by the
Choson dynasty (sometimes referred to as the Yi
dynasty, after the surname of the ruling house).

THE AMERICAS:
Spellings of Aztec and Inka words are in the
modern orthography of their languages, Nahuatl
and Quechua respectively.
Dates of objects made in Central and South
America are approximately as follows: Aztec,
1450-1521; Tamo, I3th-i6th c.: Inka, c. 14001530; Diquis, 1430-1532; Tairona, 800-1600;
Sinu, 600-1600; Popayan, iooo(?)-i6oo; Muisca,
700-1600.
Since the titles for objects that appear
in this catalogue in the "Lands of
Gold" section are not necessarily those
used by the lending institutions, we
include, for the reader's convenience,
the following concordance of catalogue
numbers and inventory numbers
supplied by the lenders:
475 Jooi
476 14682
477 1245
478 1250
479 1253
480 1421
481 963
482 75i
483 1566
484 962
485 1273
486 456
487 428
488 1551
489 594
49 976
491 1289
492 1297
493 1246
494 423
495 *277

496 975
497 1287
498 811
499 612
503 16584
504 LT-697
55 16146
506 S.N.
507 23820
508 16387
509 ConT.388
510 21215
511 12563
512 HTi23
513 16388
5M 20278
5*4 20279
515 13693
5*5 13694
516 11683
5!7 22819

518
519
520
521
522
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
534
535
536
536
537
538
539
541
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
55
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
567
568
569

26128
20289
CSi2857
10/507
9/2106
6444
754
32791
28952
33035
SA 2735
SA 2702
SA 2703
SA 2704
SA 2705
25805
25804
20291
21358
21359
6
375
1938.7-6.1
6414
15/3168
^374
6266
78
1927
2022
11289
32867
2 6
9
2050
28695
6
755
6365
1861
CMi2799
28538
6918
11*5
28513
33078
1116
51,85129
5185153
32850
19535
19536
19537
124
125/3

653

REFERENCES

I. E U R O P E AND THE
M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD
Abiodun 1989
Abiodun, Rowland. "The Kingdom of Owo." In Yoruba
Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. By Henry
John Drewal and John Pemberton in. Edited by Allen
Wardwell. New York, 1989, 93-115.
Aguas 1987
Aguas, Neves. Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da
Gama. Lisbon, 1987.
Aguiar 1962
Aguiar, Antonio de. A Genealogia iluminada do Infante
Dom Fernando por Antonio de Holanda e Simao Bening:
estudo historico e critico. Lisbon, 1962.
Alexander and Kalus, forthcoming
Alexander, David, and Ludwik Kalus. Catalogue of the
Swords in the Topkapi Sarayi. Forthcoming.
Alexander 1977
Alexander, Jonathan J. G. Italian Renaissance Illuminations. London,1977.
Alldridge 1901
Alldridge, T. J. The Sherbro and Its Hinterland. London,
1901.
Almagia 1940
Almagia, Roberto. "I Mappamondi di Enrico Martello e
alcuni concetti geografici di Cristoforo Colombo." La
Bibliofilia 42 (1940), 288-311.
Alvarez de Almada 1946
Alvarez de Almada, Andre. Tratado Breve dos Rios de
Guine do Cabo Verde. Lisbon, 1946.
Alves1985
Alves, Ana Maria. Iconologie do Poder Real no Periodo
Manuelino. Lisbon, 1985.
Ameisenowa 1959
Ameisenowa, Zofia. The Globe of Martin Bylica of
Olkusz and Celestial Maps in the East and the West.
Translated by Andrzej Potocki. (Polska Akademia Nauk,
Komitet Historii Nauki, Monografie z dziejow nauki i
techniki 11). Wroclaw, Krakow, and Warsaw, 1959.
Andaloro 1980
Andaloro, Maria. "Costanzo da Ferrara. Gli anni a Costantinopoli alia corte di Maometto n." Storia dell'Art e 12
(1980), 185-212.
Angulo Iniguez 1954
Angulo Iniguez, Diego. "Pintura del Renacimiento."
Ars Hispaniae 12 (1954).
Anzelewsky 1971
Anzelewsky, Fedja. Albrecht Diirer. Das malerische
Werk. Berlin, 1971.
Anzelewsky and Mielke 1984
Anzelewsky, Fedja, and Hans Mielke. Albrecht Diirer:
Kritischer Katalog der Zeichnungen (Staatliche Museen
preussischerKulturbesitz). Berlin, 1984.
Ara Gil 1977
Ara Gil, Clementina Julia. Escultura gotica en Valladolid
y su provincia. Valladolid, 1977.
Aragao 1974
Aragao, A. C. Teixeira de. Descripgao Geral e Historia
des Moedas cunhadas em nome dos Reis, Regentes e
Governadores de Portugal Vol. i. Lisbon, 1974.
Arberry 1967
Arberry, Arthur A. The Koran Illuminated. A Handlist
ofKorans in the Chester Beatty Library. Dublin, 1967.
Arcangeli 1942
Arcangeli, Francesco. Tarsie. Rome, 1942.
Arnaez 1983
Arnaez, Esmeralda. Orfebrena religiosa en la provincia
de Segovia. 3 vols. Madrid, 1983.
Arnould 1991
Arnould, Alain. "An Art Historical Context for the
654

Library of Raphael de Mercatellis." Ph.D. dissertation.

Ghent, 1991 (forthcoming).
Asselberghs 1968
Asselberghs, J. P. La tapisserie tournaisienne au xvi
siecle. Exh. cat. Halle au ble. Tournai, 1968.
Aslanapa 1982
Aslanapa, Oktay. "Osmanh devri cilt sanati." Turkiyemiz
38 (1982), 12-17.
Atasoy and (gagman 1974
Atasoy, Nurhan, and Filiz (gagman. Turkish Miniature
Painting. Istanbul, 1974.
Atil 1973
Atil, Esin. "Ottoman Painting Under Mehmed n." Ars
Orientalis 9 (1973), 103-120.
Atil 1981
Atil, Esin. Renaissance of Islam. Art of the Mamluks.
Washington, 1981.
Attali 1982
Attali, Jacques. Histoire du Temps. Paris, 1982.
Avery 1986
Avery, Charles. "Donatello Celebrations: A Major
Exhibition at Detroit, Fort Worth and Florence." Apollo
123 (1986), 14-18.
Avril et al. 1982
Avril, Frangois, Jean-Pierre Aniel, Mireille Mentre, Alix
Saulnier, and Yolanta Zaluska. Bibliotheque nationale.
Manuscrits enlumines de la peninsule iberique. Paris,
1982.
Avrin 1979
Avrin, Leila. "The Spanish Passover Plate in the Israel
Museum." Sefarad^ (Madrid, 1979), 27-46.
Ayers 1985
Ayers, John. "The Early China Trade." In The Origins of
Museums. Edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur
MacGregor. Oxford, 1985, 259-266.
Azcarate 1958
Azcarate, Jose Maria. "Escultura del siglo xvi." Ars Hispaniae 13 (1958).
Babelon 1924
Babelon, E. Les antiques et les objets d'art. Paris, 1924.
Babinger 1951
Babinger, Fr. "Bajezid osman (Calixtus Ottomanus),
ein Vorlaufer und Gegenspieler Dschem-Sultans." La
Nouvelle Clio 3 (1951), 349-388.
Bacci 1976
Bacci, M. L'Opera completa di Piero di Cosimo. Milan,
1976.
Bagrow and Skelton 1964
Bagrow, Leo, and Raleigh Asblin Skelton. History of
Cartography. London, 1964.
Baiao and Azevedo 1905
Baiao, Antonio, and Pedro Azevedo. O Archivo da Torre
do Tombo. Sua Historia, Corpos que o compoem e organizagao. Lisbon, 1905.
Baldass 1959
Baldass, Ludwig von. Jheronimus Bosch. ViennaMunich, 1959.
Baldi 1724
Baldi, B. Memorie concernenti la citta di Urbino
(c. 1588). Urbino, 1724.
Baltimore 1952
The World Encompassed. An Exhibition of the History of
Maps. Exh. cat. Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore,
1952.
Baltimore 1989
Wiech, Roger S., and Eric M. Zafran. Splendor of the
Popes. Exh. cat. The Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore,
1989.
Baltimore Museum of Art 1949
Baltimore Museum of Art. Illuminated Books of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baltimore, 1949.
Bambach Cappel 1987

Bambach Cappel, Carmen. "Michelangelo's Cartoon for

the Crucifixion of St. Peter Reconsidered." Master
Drawings 25 (1987), 131-143.
Bambach Cappel 1990
Bambach Cappel, Carmen. "Review of Michael Hirst's
'Michelangelo and His Drawings.'" Art Bulletin 72
(1990), 493-498.
Barelli 1964
Condivi, Ascanio. Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1553). Edited by E. Spina Barelli. Milan, 1964.
Barga 1870
Barga, Teofilo. "Uma salva de prata cinzelada." Era Nova
(1870).
Barista 1981
Barista, Orciin. Osmanh Imperatorluk Donemi Turk
ilemelerinden ornekler. Ankara, 1981.
Barocchi 1962
Vasari, Giorgio. La Vita di Michelangelo (1550 and 1568).
Edited by P. Barocchi. 5 vols. Milan and Naples, 1962.
Barreto 1880
Barreto, J. A. da Grac.a. A Descoberta da India Ordenada
em Tapegaria por mandado de El-Rei D. Manuel, documento inedito do sec. xvipublicado em comemoragao do
3 centendrio de Camoes. Coimbra, 1880.
Barrett 1949
Barrett, Douglas. Islamic Metalwork in the British
Museum. London, 1949.
Basel 1974
Koepplin, Dieter, and Tilman Falk. Lucas Cranach:
Gemdlde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel. Basel, 1974.
Bassani 1975
Bassani, Ezio. "Antichi avori africani nelle collezioni
Medicee." Critica d'Arte 143,144 (1975), 69-80; 8-23.
Bassani 1981
Bassani, Ezio. "Due grandi artisti Yombe 11 M della
maternita Roselli- Lorenzini e il M della Maternita De
Briey." Critica d'Arte-Africana 178 (1981), 66-84.
Bassani and Fagg 1988
Bassani, Ezio, and William B. Fagg. Africa and the
Renaissance: Art in Ivory. New York, 1988.
Bassani and Tedeschi 1990
Bassani, Ezio, and Letizia Tedeschi. "The Image of the
Hottentot in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
An Iconographic Investigation." Journal of the History of
Collections 2 (1990), 157-186.
Battisti 1971
Battisti, Eugenio. Piero della Francesca. Milan, 1971.
Battisti and Ubans 1971
Battisti, Eugenio, and J. Ubans. "Note sulla prospettiva
rinascimentale." Art Lombarda 16 (1971), 106-107.
Bax 1979
Bax, Dirk. Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture-Writing
Deciphered (Translation of Ontcijfering van Jeroen
Bosch. The Hague, 1948). Rotterdam, 1979.
Bayramoglu 1983
Bayramoglu, Fuat. Had Mayram-i Veli. Yasam-Soyuvakfi. Vols. i, 2. Ankara, 1983.
Beckwith 1972
Beckwith, John. Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval
England. London, 1972.
Behling 1975
Behling, Lottlisa. "Eine 'Ampel'-artige Pflanze von
Albrecht Diirer. Cucurbita lagenaria L. auf dem Hieronymus-Stich von 1514." In Zur Morphologic und Sinndeutung kunstgeschichtlicher Phanomene. Cologne,
1975,122-127.
Behling 1989
Behling, Lottlisa. "Zur Ikonographie einiger Pflanzendarstellungen von Diirer." Albrecht Diirer und die Tierund Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance. Symposium
(Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien)

82/83,1986-1987 (i989)> 43~56Belard da Fonseca 1957-1967

Belard da Fonseca, A. O Misterio dos Paineis. 5 vols.
Lisbon, 1957-1967.
Belem 1750-1755
Belem, Frei Jeronimo de. Chronica da Ordem Serafica de
Santa Provincia dos Algarves. Lisbon, 1750-1755.
Ben-Amos 1976
Ben-Amos, Paula. "Men and Animals in Benin Art."
Man 2, 2 (1976), 243-252.
Ben-Amos 1980
Ben-Amos, Paula. The Art of Benin. London, 1980.
Bercham 1978
Bercham, Max van. "Notes 'd' archeologie arabe' m."
Opera Minora 2 (Geneva, 1978), 1814-1815.
Berenson 1938
Berenson, Bernard. The Drawings of the Florentine
Painters. 3 vols. London and Chicago, 1938.
Berg 1968
Berg, Judith F. "Un nuevo documento sobre Bartolome
Bermejo." Archivo Espanol de Arte 41 (1968), 61-62.
Bergasconi 1981
Bergasconi, John. "The Dating of the Cycle of the Miracles of the Cross from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista." Art Veneta 35 (i9Bi), 198-202.
Berlin 1989
Europa und der orient, 800-1900. Edited by Gereon
Sievernich and Hendrik Budde. Exh. cat. MartinGropius-Bau. Berlin, 1989.
Bernardi and de Grunne 1990
Bernardi, Bernardo, and Bernard de Grunne. Terra
d'Africa, Terra d'Archeologia La grande scultura in
terracotta del Mali-Djenne vmxvisec. Rome 1990.
Bertolotti 1889
Bertolotti, A. Le Arti minori alia corte di Manu
Milan, 1889.
Bialostocki 1986
Bialostocki, Jan. Durer and His Critics, 1500-1971.
Chapters in the History of Ideas Including a Collection
of Texts. Baden-Baden, 1986.
Bibliotheque Nationale 1955
Bibliotheque Nationale. Les manuscrits a peintures en
France du xme au xvie siecle. Paris, 1955.
Blackmun 1991
Blackmun, Barbara Winston. "Who Commissioned the
Queen Mother Tusks?" African Arts 24, 2 (1991), 55-91.
Blake 1940
Blake, John W. "The Organization of Portuguese Trade
with West Africa During the Sixteenth Century."
Congresso do Mundo Portugues 5, 3 (1940), 33-51.
Bober1948
Bober, Harry. "The Zodiacal Miniature of the 'Tres
Riches Heures' of the Duke of Berry. Its Sources and
Meaning." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), 1-34.
Bober and Rubenstein 1986
Bober, Phyllis Pray, and Ruth Rubenstein. Renaissance
Artists and Antique Sculpture. Oxford and New York,
1986.
Bock 1921
Bock, Elfried. Die deutschen Meister. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis samtlicher Zeichnungen. Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin. Die Zeichnungen alter Meister im Kupferstichkabinett. 2 vols. Berlin, 1921.
Bode 1923
Bode, W. von. Die italienischen Bronzestatuetten der
Renaissance. Berlin, 1923.
Boeheim 1888
Boeheim, Wendelin. "Urkunden und Regesten aus der
k.k. Hofbibliothek." Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen
Sammlungen des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses in Wien 7,
i (1888).
Boeheim 1889
Boeheim, Wendelin. Fuhrer durch die Waffensammlung. Vienna, 1889, 25, no. 66.
Boeheim 1890
Boeheim, Wendelin. Handbuch der Waffenkunde. Leipzig, 1890.
Boeheim 1894
Boeheim, Wendelin. Album herrvorragender Gegenstande aus der Waffensammlung des AH Kaiserhauses i
(1894).
Boeheim 1899
Boeheim, Wendelin. "Die Waffenschmiede Seusenhofer,

ihre Werke und ihre Beziehungen zu habsburgischen

und anderen Regenten." In Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des AH Kaiserhauses in Wien 20
(1899).
Boeheim 1899
Boeheim, Wendelin. Fuhrer durch die Waffensammlung. Vienna, 1899.
Bologna 1988
Bologna, Giulia. Illuminated Manuscripts. The Book
before Gutenberg. London, 1988.
Bonanni1709
Bonanni, Filippo. A. P. Philippo Bonanni Societatis Jesu
Musaeum Kircherianum sive a P. Athanasio Kirchero in
Collegio Romano Societatis Jesu Pridem inceptum Nuper
restitutum auctum descriptum et iconibus illustratum.
Rome, 1709.
Born 1936
Born, Wolfgang. "Some Eastern Objects from the
Hapsburg Collections." Burlington Magazine 69 (1936),
269-277.
Borsi 1989
Borsi, Franco. Bramante. Milan, 1989.
Botelho 1957
Botelho, Afonso. Estetica e Enigmdtica dos Paineis.
Lisbon, 1957.
Bottiger 1947
Bottiger, John. "Uma tape^aria de Vasco da Gama no
Museu Nacional de Estocolmo." Revista de Guimares 1-2
(1947)Boucher 1986
Boucher, Bruce. "Detroit and Fort Worth: Sculpture in
the Time of Donatello." Burlington Magazine 128
(1986), 65-68.
Boudreau 1978
Boudreau, Linda C. Hults. "Hans Baldung Grien and
Albrecht Durer: A Problem in Northern Mannerism."
Ph.D. dissertation. University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, 1978.
Brachert 1970
Brachert, Thomas. "A Distinctive Aspect in the Painting
Technique of 'Ginevra de' Benci' and of Leonardo's Other
Early Works." Report and Studies in the History of Art.
Washington, 1970, 84-101.
Brasio 1952
Brasio, Antonio D. Monumenta Missionaria Africana,
Africa Ocidental, 1471-1531. Vol. i. Lisbon, 1952.
British Museum 1882
British Museum. Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCLXXVIMDCCCLXXXI. London, 1882.
British Museum 1950
British Museum. Italian Drawings in the Department of
Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. 5 vols.
London,1950.
British Museum 1967
British Museum, Department of Printed Books. Grenville Library. Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the
Grenville Library. London, 1967.
Brown 1990
Unpublished report of a close examination of the picture,
made available to the author. National Gallery of Art.
Washington, 19 April 1990.
Brown 1985
Brown, David A. "Ginevra de' Benci." Leonardo. La
Pittura. Edited by P. Marani. Florence, 1985, 30-32.
Brown 1963
Brown, Jonathan. "Dos obras tempranas de Bermejo."
Archivo Espanol de Arte 26 (1963), 269-279.
Bruhn de Hoffmeyer 1982
Bruhn de Hoffmeyer, Ada. "Arms and Armour in Spain
II." Gladius, Instituto de Estudios sobre Armas Antiguas,
Tomo Especial. Madrid, 1982.
Brummer 1970
Brummer, H. The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere.
Stockholm, 1970.
Bull 1991
Bull, David. Unpublished report of a close examination
of the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an
Ermine). National Gallery of Art, Washington, 15 April
1991.
Burger 1950
Burger, D. "Old Tapestries Representing the Seven
Liberal Arts." Archives Internationales d'histoire des
sciences 3,13 (1950), 859-873.

Burgos 1496
Burgos Cathedral. Archivo Capitular. Registro 31, fol.
88r. Burgos, 1496.
Burgos 1500
Burgos Cathedral. Archivo Capitular, Cuadernos de
Contabilidad. Burgos, 1500.
Burgos 1501
Burgos Cathedral. Archivo Capitular, Cuadernos de
Contabilidad. Burgos, 1501.
Buser1974
Buser, Thomas A. "The Tieta' in Spain." Ph.D. dissertation. New York University, 1974.
Buttin 1960
Buttin, Francois. "Anciennes Armes Marocaines, I. Les
Adargues de Fes." In Hseperis-Tamuda. Vol. i, 3. Fasc.
Rabat, 1960.
gagman and Tanindi 1979
(gagman, Filiz, and Zeren Tamndi. Topkapi Sarayi
Muzesi Islam, minyaturleri. Istanbul, 1979.
Caiger-Smith 1973
Caiger-Smith, Alan. Tin-Glaze Pottery in Europe and
the Islamic World. London, 1973.
Caiger-Smith 1985
Caiger-Smith, Alan. Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World.
London,1985.
Cali 1967
Cali, Maria. "La 'Madonna della Scala' di Michelangelo,
il Savonarola e la crisi dell'umanismo." Bolletino d'arte
52 (1967).
Camon Aznar 1980
Camon Aznar, Jose. Alonso Berruguete. Madrid, 1980.
Campbell 1990
Campbell, Lome. Renaissance Portraits. New Haven and
London,1990.
Campbell 1983
Campbell, Marian. Medieval Enamels. London, 1983.
Campbell 1987
Campbell, Tony. The Earliest Printed Maps, 1472-1500.
London,1987.
Campos 1967
Campos, Ernesto de Sousa. Livro de Horas. Iluminuras.
Lisbon, 1967.
Cantipratensis 1973
Cantipratensis, Thomas. Liber de natura rerum. Berlin
and New York, 1973.
Capucci 1990
Capucci, Roberto. Roben wie Riistungen. Mode in Stahl
und Seide. Exh. cat. Vienna, 1990.
Carswell 1985
Carswell, John. "Blue-and-White in China, Asia and the
Islamic World." In Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain
and Its Impact on the Western World. Chicago, 1985,
2
7-35Castanheda 1924
Castanheda, Fern ao Lopes de. Historia do Descobrimento e Conquista da India pelos Portugueses. Bk. i.
Coimbra, 1924 (ist edition 1525).
Cavallo 1967
Cavallo, Adolph S. Tapestries of Europe and of Colonial
Peru in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2 vols. Boston,
1967.
Cavalucci and Molinier 1884
Cavalucci, J., and E. Molinier. Les Della Robbia. Leurvie
et leur oeuvre. Paris, 1884.
Chastel 1953
Chastel, Andre. "Marqueterie et perspective au xv
siecle." Revue des Arts 3 (1953), 141-154.
Chastel 1965
Chastel, Andre. "Marqueterie, geometric et perspective." In Renaissance meridionale. Italie 1460-1500.
Paris, 1965, 244-263.
Cheles 1986
Cheles, Luciano. The Studiolo of Urbino. An Iconographic Investigation. Wiesbaden, 1986.
Chumovsky 1960
Chumovsky, T. A. Tres Roteiros Desconhecidos de
Ahmed Ibn-Madjid. O piloto drabe de Vasco da Gama.
Lisbon, 1960.
Ciati 1980
Ciati, Bruna. "Cultura e societa nel secondo quattrocento attraversato 1'opera ad intarsio di Lorenzo e
Cristoforo Lendinara." In La Prospettiva rinascimentale.
Edited by Marisa Dalai Emiliani. Florence, 1980, 201-

655

gig 19/1

C^ig, Kemal. TurkKitab Kaplan. Istanbul, 1971.

Cinotti 1966
Cinotti, Mia. L'opera completa del Bosch. Milan, 1966.
Clark 1969
Clark, Kenneth. Piero della Francesca. zd ed. London,
1969.
Clark and Pedretti 1968-1969
Clark, Kenneth, and Carlo Pedretti. A Catalogue of the
Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci at Windsor Castle. 3
vols. London, 1968-1969.
Clarke 1986
Clarke, T. H. The Rhinoceros from Diirer to Stubbs.
1515-1799. London, 1986.
Clausse 1900-1902
Clausse, G. Les San Gallo. Architects, peintres, sculpteurs, medailleurs xve xvisiecles. 3 vols. Paris, 19001902.
Cogliati Arano 1966/1980
Cogliati Arano, Luisa. Disegni di Leonardo e della sua
cerchia alle Gallerie dell'Accademia. Venice, 1966,1980.
Cohen 1988
Cohen, Evelyn M. "The Decoration of Medieval Hebrew
Manuscripts/'In A Sign and a Witness: 2,000 Years of
Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts. Exh. cat.
New York Public Library. New York and Oxford, 1988,
47-60.
Cole 1989
Cole, Herbert M. Icons Ideals and Power in the Art of
Africa. Washington, 1989.
Collection Spitzer 1890-1892
La Collection Spitzer. 6 vols. Paris, 1890-1892.
Cologne 1978-1980
Die Parler und der Schone Stil, 1350-1400. Exh. cat.
Schniitgen-Museum. 4 vols. Cologne, 1978-1980.
Concilium Basiliense 1896-1936
Concilium Basiliense. 8 vols. Basel, 1896-1936.
Conway 1889
Conway, William Martin. Literary Remains of Albrecht
Diirer. Cambridge, 1889.
Coomans 1985
Coomans, Henry E. "Conchology Before Linnaeus."
In The Origins of Museums. Edited by Oliver Impey
and Arthur MacGregor. Oxford, 1985,188-192.
Correia 1953
Correia, Vergilio. Obras. Estudos de Historia de Arte.
Vol. 3. Coimbra, 1953.
Cortesao and Teixeira da Mota 1960
Cortesao, Armando, and Avelino Teixeira da Mota.
Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica. 6 vols.
Lisbon, 1960.
Cortesao 1925
Cortesao, Jaime. A Historia dos Paineis de S. Vicente.
Texto da conferencia no MNAA (2 May). Lisbon, 1925.
Cortesao 1944
Cortesao, Jaime. A carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha, Cabral
e as origens do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 1944.
Cortesao 1979
Cortesao, Jaime. "A historia nos paineis de S. Vicente."
Os Descobrimentos Portugueses. Vol. 2, chap. 3, part 4.
Lisbon, 1979.
Cortez 1968
Cortez, Russel. "Pedro Alvares Cabral e Viseu."
Panorama 4, 27 (1968), 49.
Couto and Conceives 1960
Couto, Joao, and Antonio M. Gongalves. A Ourivesaria
em Portugal. Lisbon, 1960.
Craven 1975
Craven, Stephanie. "Three Dates for Piero di Cosimo."
Burlington Magazine (1975), 574.
De la Cruz 1976
De la Cruz, Valentin. Arte Burgales: Quince mil anos de
expresion artistica. Burgos, 1976.
Cunha1642
Cunha, D.-Rodrigo da. Historia Ecclesidstica da Igreja de
Lisboa. Lisbon, 1642.
Curjel 1923
Curjel, Hans. Hans Baldung Grien. Munich, 1923.
Cuttler 1957
Cuttler, Charles D. "The Lisbon Temptation of St.
Anthony' by Jerome Bosch." Art Bulletin 39 (1957),
109-126.
Dalai Emiliani 1984
Dalai Emiliani, Marisa. "Figure Rinascimentali dei polie656

dri Platonici. Qualche problema di storia ed autografia."

Fra Rinascimento Manierismo e Realta. Scritti di storia
dell'arte in memoria de Anna Maria Brizio. Edited by
P. Marani. Florence, 1984, 71-116.
Dalton 1907
Dalton, O. M. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians
2 ser., 21 (1907), 376-378.
Daly Davis 1977
Daly Davis, Margaret. Piero della Francesca's Mathematical Treatises. The "Trattato d'abaco" and "libellus de
quinque corporibus regularibus." Ravenna, 1977.
Daly Davis 1980
Daly Davis, Margaret. "Carpaccio and the Perspective of
Regular Bodies." La Prospettiva rinascimentale. Edited
by Marisa Dalai Emiliani. Florence, 1980,183-200.
Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980
Dam-Mikkelsen, Bente, and Torben Lundbaek. Ethnographic Objects in the Royal Danish Kunstkammer
1650-1800. Copenhagen, 1980.
Dapper 1668
Dapper, Olfert. Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche gewesten, van Egypten, Barbaryen, Libyen,
Biledulgerid, Negroslant, Guinea, Ethiopian, Abyssinie Amsterdam, 1668.
Dapper 1686
Dapper, Olfert. Description de I'Afrique
Amsterdam,
1686.
Dark 1973
Dark, Philip J. C. An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology. Oxford, 1973.
Davanzati 1986
Davanzati, Lorenzo. "La Venezia di Carpaccio. La
ricostruzione computerizzata dello spazio pittorico."
Architettura 32 (1986), 65-70.
Davidovitch 1975
Davidovitch, David. "Ceramic Seder Plates from NonJewish Workshops." Journal of Jewish Art 2 (Jerusalem,
*975)/ 51-54Deissmann 1933
Deissmann, Adolph. Forschungen undFunde im Serai.
Mit einem Verzeichnis der nicht-islamischen Handschriften im Topkapu Serai zu Istanbul. Berlin-Leipzig,
1933Deluz 1988
Deluz, Christiane. Le Livre de Jehan de Mandeville: line
'geographie' au xive siecle. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1988.
Derolez 1979
Derolez, Albert. The Library of Raphael de Marcatellis,
Abbot of St. Bavon's, Ghent. 1437-1508. Ghent, 1979.
Destombes 1964
Destombes, Marcel. Mappemondes, A.D. 1200-1500.
Monumenta cartographica vetustioris aevi A.D. 1200
1500. Amsterdam, 1964.
Destree 1923
Destree, Joseph. Les Heures de Notre-Dame dites de
Hennessy: Etude sur un manuscrit de la Bibliotheque
royale de Belgique. Brussels, 1923.
Deswartes 1977
Deswartes, Silvie. Les enluminures de la Leitura Nova
15041552. Etude sur la culture artistique au temps de
rHumanisme. Paris, 1977.
Devisse and Mollat 1979
Devisse, Jean, and Michel Mollat. "Africans in the
Christian Ordinance of the World. Fourteenth to the
Sixteenth Century." Vol. 2.2 of The Image of the Black
in Western Art. Lausanne, 1979.
Dias 1982
Dias, Pedro. A importagdo de esculturas de Italia nos
seculos xve xvi. Porto, 1982 (2d edition, 1987).
Digby 1980
Digby, George Wingfield, assisted by Wendy Hefford.
Victoria & Albert Museum, The Tapestry Collection,
Medieval and Renaissance. London, 1980.
Dilke 1987
Dilke, Oswald Ashton Wentworth. "Cartography in the
Byzantine Empire." In John Brian Harley and David
Woodward. The History of Cartography, i. Chicago and
London, 1987, 258-275.
Dittmer 1967
Dittmer, Kunz. "Bedeutung, Datierung und Kulturhistorische Zusammenhange der 'prahistorischen' Steinfiguren aus Sierra Leone und Guine." Baessler Archiv N.F.
15 (1967), 183-238.
Dizionario biografico 1960-

Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. 36 vols. Rome,

1960-.
Dodgson 1922
Dodgson, Campbell. "Notes on Diirer in The Unique
Engraving at Amsterdam Attributed to Diirer." Burlington Magazine 40 (1922), 17-18.
Dorn 1830
Dorn, Bernhard. "Description of the Celestial Globe
Belonging to Major General Sir John Malcom... Deposited in the Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland." Transactions of the Royal
Asiatic Society 2 (1830).
Dornelas 1926
Dornelas, Afonso de. As Tapegarias de Arzila foram para
Castela por oferta deste Rei. Lisbon, 1926.
Dornelas 1931
Dornelas, Afonso de. Tratado Geral de Nobreza por
Antonio Rodrigues principal rei de Armas "Portugal" de
D. Manuel. Porto, 1931.
Drechsler 1873
Drechsler, Adolf. Der arabische Himmels-Globus
angefertigt 1279 zu Maragha von Muhammad b. Muwajid elardhi zugehorig dem koniglichen mathematischphysikalischen Salon zu Dresden. Dresden, 1873.
Duchateau 1990
Duchateau, Armand. Benin Tresor RoyalCollection
du Museum fiir Volkerkunde Vienne. Paris, 1990.
Dupre dal Poggetto 1983
Dupre dal Poggetto, Maria G. C. "La 'Citta Ideale' di
Urbino." Urbino e le Marche prima e dopo Raffello.
Urbino, 1983, 71-78.
Diirer 1528
Diirer, Albrecht. Hierin sind begriffen vier bucher von
menschlicher Proportion. Nuremberg, 1528.
Diirer 1918
Diirer, Albrecht. Albrecht Durers niederlandische Reise.
Edited by J. Veth and S. Miiller. Vol. i. Berlin and
Utrecht, 1918.
Eghareva 1953
Eghareva, Jacob A. A Short History of Benin. Ibadan,
*953Einhorn 1976
Einhorn, Jiirgen Werinhard. Spiritalis unicornis: Das
Einhorn als Bedeutungstrager in Literatur und Kunst des
Mittelalters. Munich, 1976.
Eisler 1977
Eisler, Colin. Complete Catalogue of the Samuel H.
Kress Collection. European Paintings Excluding Italian.
Oxford, 1977.
El Atlas Catalan 1975
El Atlas Catalan de Cresque Abraham. Primera edicion
coimpleta en el sexcentesimo anoversario de su realizacion 1375-1975. Barcelona, 1975.
Elam 1981
Elam, Caroline. "Mantegna and Mantua." In London
1981,15-27.
Elisofon and Fagg 1958
Elisofon, Eliot. The Sculpture of Africa. Text by William
Fagg. London, 1958.
Ellis 1988
Ellis, Charles Grant. Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 1988.
Emison 1990
Emison, Patricia. "The Word Made Naked in Pollaiuolo's
'Battle of the Nudes/" Art History (1990), 261-275.
Encyclopedia of Islam 1960Encyclopedia of Islam. 2d ed. Leiden and London,
1960-.
Enzo 1965
Enzo, Carli. // Duomo di Orvieto. Rome, 1965.
Erginsoy 1980
Erginsoy, Ulker. "Turkish Metalwork." In The Art and
Architecture of Turkey. Edited by Ekrem Akurgal. Fribourg, 1980, 208-221.
Estepa Diez 1984
Estepa Diez, Carlos. Burgos en la edad media. Burgos,
1984.
Ettinghausen 1967
Ettinghausen, R. Treasures of Turkey. Geneva, [1967].
Ettinghausen 1983
Ettinghausen, Richard. "Chinese Representations of
Central Asian Turks." In Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte
Asiens. In Memoriam Ernst Diez. Istanbul, 1983,
208-222.

Ettlinger 1972
Ettlinger, Leopold. "Hercules Florentinus." Mitteilungen
des kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 16 (1972),
119-142.
Ettlinger 1978
Ettlinger, Leopold. Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo.
Oxford, 1978.
Eyo and Willett 1980
Eyo, Ekpo, and Frank Willett. Treasures of Ancient
Nigeria. Detroit, 1980.
Ezra 1988
Ezra, Kate. Art of the Dogon Selection from the Lester
Wunderman Collection. New York, 1988.
Fabriczy 1903
Fabriczy, C. von. "Adriano Florentine." Jahrbuch der K.
Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 24 (1903), 73-75.
Fagg 1957
Fagg, William. "The Seligman Ivory Mask from Benin."
Man 57 (1957), 143.
Fagg 1959
Fagg, William. Afro Portuguese Ivories. London, 1959.
Fagg 1963
Fagg, William. Nigerian Images. New York, 1963.
Fagg 1968
Fagg, William. African Tribal Images. Cleveland, 1968.
Fagg 1981
Fagg, William. "Head (Mahen Yafe)." In For Spirits and
KingsArt from the Paul and Ruth Tishman Collection.
Edited by Susan Vogel. New York, 1981.
Fahy 1965
Fahy, Everett. "Some Later Works of Piero di Cosimo."
Gazette des Beaux Arts 54 (1965), 201-212.
Falke 1913
Falke, Otto von. Kunstgeschichte der Seidenweberei.
Berlin, 1913.
Faraday 1929
Faraday, Cornelia Bateman. European and American
Carpets and Rugs. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1929.
Faria y Sousa 1680
Faria y Sousa, Manuel. Europa Portuguesa. Vol. 2, part
3, chap. i. Lisbon, 1680.
Feest 1990
Feest, Christian F. "Vienna's Mexican Treasures." Archiv
fur Volkerkunde 44 (1990).
Fernandes 1951
Fernandes, Valentim. Description de la Cote Occidental
d'Afrique (Senegal au Cap de Monte, Archipels). Edited
and translated by T. Monod, A. Teixeira da Mota, and R.
Mauny. Bissau, 1951.
Fernandez y Gonzalez 1872,1875
Fernandez y Gonzalez, F. "Espadas hispano-arabes."
Museo Espanol de Antiguedades i (1872), 573-590; 5
(1875), 389-400.
Fernandez Vega 1934-1935
Fernandez Vega, P. "Dagas granadinas." Anuario del
Cuerpo Facultativo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y
Arqueologos 3 (1934-1935), 360, 364-367.
Ferrandis Torres 1943
Ferrandis Torres, J. "Espadas granadinas de la jineta."
Archivo Espanol de Arte 14 (1943), 142-166.
Ferrari 1939
Ferrari, Maria Cecilia. "La Geografia del Tolomeo fatta
miniare del Cardinale Bessarione." La Bibliofilia 40
(1939), 23-37.
Figueiredo 1910
Figueiredo, Jose de. O Pintor Nuno Gon^alves. Lisbon, 1910.
Figueiredo 1926
Figueiredo, Jose de. As Tapegarias de Arzila e as Relates
com os Paineis de S. Vicente. Lisbon, 1926.
Figueiredo 1935
Figueiredo, Jose de. "A Natividade. Iluminura de Gregorio Lopes (?) do Livro de Horas de D. Manuel." Lusitdma 8, 3 (1935).
Fiore-Herrmann 1972
Fiore-Herrmann, Kristina. "Das Problem der Datierung
bei Diirers Landschaftsaquarellen." Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums 1971-1972 (1972), 122-142.
Fischel I9i3~i94i/Oberhuber 1972
Fischel, Oskar. Raphaels Zeichnungen. Berlin, 19131941. Vol. 9 by Konrad Oberhuber. Berlin, 1972.
Fischer 1932
Fischer, Joseph. Tomus prodromus to Claudius Ptolemaeus "Geographiae Codex Urbinas Graecus 82." 3 vols.
Leiden-Leipzig, 1932.

Fischer and Wieser 1903

Fischer, Joseph, and Franz Ritter von Wieser. The Oldest
Map with the Name America of the Year 1507 and the
Carta Marina of the Year 1516 by M. Waldseemiiller
(Ilacomilus). Innsbruck, 1903.
Fischer and Wieser 1966
Waldeesmiiller. Cosmographiae introductio (1507). With
translation by Joseph Fischer and Franz von Wieser. Ann
Arbor, 1966.
Fite and Freeman 1969
Fite, Emerson David, and Archibald Freeman. A Book of
Old Maps Delineating American History from the Earliest Days down to the Close of the Revolutionary War.
First published in 1926. New York, 1969.
Fitzwilliam Museum 1967
Goodison, J. W, and G. H. Robertson. Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge. Catalogue of Paintings, i: Italian
Schools. Cambridge, 1967.
Flemming 1968
Flemming, Barbara. Verzeichnis der orientalischen
Handschriften in Deutschland xni/i. Turkische Handschriften i (1968), 36-40.
Fletcher 1989
Fletcher, Jennifer. "Bernardo Bembo and Leonardo's
Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci." Burlington Magazine 131
(1989), 811-816.
Florence 1978
Bellosi, Luciano, and Fiora Bellini. / Disegni antichi degli
Uffizi. I Tempi di Ghiberti. Exh. cat. Gabinetto Disegni e
Stampe degli Uffizi. Florence, 1978.
Florence 1980
Firenze e la Toscana del Medici nell'Europa del Cinquecento: La corte, il mare, i mercanti. La Rinascita
della Scienza. Editoria e Societa. Astrologia, magia e
alchimia. Florence, 1980.
Florence 1986
Darr, Alan P., and Giorgio Bonsanti. Donatello e i Suoi.
Exh. cat. Florence, 1986.
Fontes Ambrosiani 1956
Pacioli, Luca. De Divina proportione. Fontes Ambrosiani
21. facsimile edition. Milan, 1956.
Forman and Dark 1960
Forman, Werner, Bedrich Forman, and Philip Dark.
Benin Art. London, 1960.
Fortini Brown 1988
Fortini Brown, Patricia. Venetian Narrative Painting in
the Age of Carpaccio. New Haven and London, 1988.
Franca1960
Franca, Jose-Augusto. "Nuno Conceives 1957." Da Pintura Portuguesa. Lisbon, 1960.
Franger1946
Franger, Wilhelm. Mathias Grunewald in seinen
Werken. Berlin, 1946.
Frankfurt-am-Main 1985
Turkische Kunst und Kultur aus osmanischer Zeit. Exh.
cat. Museum fur Kunsthandwerk. Frankfurt am Main,
1985.
Fredericksen and Zeri 1972
Fredericksen, Burton, and Federico Zeri. Census of PreNineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972.
Freeman 1976
Freeman, Margaret Barss. The Unicorn Tapestries.
New York, 1976.
Freisleben 1977
Freisleben, H.-C. Der katalanische Weltatlas vom Jahre
1375. Stuttgart, 1977.
Freitas and Conceives 1987
Freitas, Paula, and M. de Jesus Conceives. Paineis de S.
Vicente de Fora, uma questao inutil. Lisbon, 1987.
Frey 1909
Frey, Karl. "Studien zu Michelangiolo Buonarroti und
zur Kunst seiner Zeit." Jahrbuch der koniglich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 30 (1909), 113-137.
Freyer 1987
Freyer, Bryna. Royal Benin Art in the Collection of the
National Museum of African Art. Washington, 1987.
Friedlander 1978
Friedlander, Max, and Jacob Rosenberg. The Paintings of
Lucas Cranach. London, 1978.
Fritz 1982
Fritz, Johann Michael. Goldschmiedekunst der Gotik in
Mitteleuropa. Munich, 1982.
Fritz 1983

Fritz, Rolf. Die Gefdsse aus Kokosnuss in Mitteleuropa,

12501800. Mainz am Rhein, 1983.
Frothingham 1951
Frothingham, Alice Wilson. Lustreware of Spain. New
York, 1951.
Fumi 1891
Fumi, Luigi. II Duomo di Orvieto e i suoi restauri. Rome,
1891.
Fusco 1971
Fusco, Laurie. "Antonio Pollaiuolo's Use of the Antique."
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42
(1971), 157-163.
Fusco 1973
Fusco, Laurie. In Early Italian Engravings from the
National Gallery of Art. J. Levenson, K. Oberhuber, and
J. Sheehan. Washington, 1973.
Fusi 1977
Fusi, Maurizio. Navi d'argento, Nefs, Silverships. Milan,
1977Gambin 1989
Gambin, Marie-Therese. "L'ile Trapobane: problemes
de cartographic dans 1'ocean Indien." In Geographic du
monde au Moyen Age et a la Renaissance. Edited by
Monique Pelletier. Paris, 1989,191-200.
Ganong 1964
Ganong. W F., with introduction and notes by Theodore
E. Layng. Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and
Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada.
Toronto, 1964.
Gasparini Leoporace 1956
Gasparini Leoporace, Tullia. // mappamondo di Fra
Mauro. Rome, 1956.
Gay 1887
Gay, Victor. Glossaire Archeologique, du Moyen Age et
de la Renaissance. Vol. i. Paris, 1887.
Gaya Nuno 1958
Gaya Nuno, Juan Antonio. "Sobre el retablo de Ciudad
Rodrigo, por Fernando Gallego y sus colaboradores."
Archivo Espanol de Arte (1958), 299-312.
Gerbi 1986
Gerbi, Antonello. Nature in the New WorldProm
Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo.
Translated by Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh, 1986.
Gibson 1973
Gibson, Walter S. Hieronymus Bosch. London, 1973.
Gibson 1983
Gibson, Walter S. Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated
Bibliography. Boston, 1983.
Globes 1968
Globes and Globe-Gores. The H. P. Kraus Private Collection. Ridgefield, Conn., [1968].
Godinho 1984
Godinho, Vitorino Magalhaes. Os Descobrimentos
e a Economia Mundial. Vols. i and 2. Lisbon, 1984
(ist edition, 1963-1971).
Gois 1566
Gois, Damiao de. Chronica de El-Rei D. Manuel (...).
Lisbon, 1566.
Gois 1619,1953
Gois, Damiao de. Cronica do Felicissimo Rei D. Manuel.
Lisbon 1619. Reprint Coimbra, 1953.
Gokyay 1976
Gokyay, Orhan Saik. "Tilsimli gomlekler." Turkfolkloru
aratirmalan yilhgi 3 (1976), 93-112.
Goldschmidt 1923-1924
Goldschmidt, A. "Friih-mittelalterliche illustrierte
Enzyklopadien." Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg. Hamburg, 1923-1924,217.
Gombrich 1960
Gombrich, Ernst Hans. Art and Illusion. A Study in the
Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London, 1960.
Gombrich 1984
Gombrich, E. H. The Sense of Order. Oxford, 1984.
Gomez-Moreno 1941
Gomez-Moreno, Manuel. Las Aguilas del Renacimiento
espanol. Madrid, 1941.
Goris 1925
Goris, Jan Albert. Etude sur les colonies marchandes
meridionales (Portugais, Espagnols, Italiens) a Anvers de
1488 a 1567. Louvain, 1925.
Goris and Marlier 1971
Goris, Jan Albert, and Georges Marlier. Albrecht Durer.
Diary of His Journey to the Netherlands. 15201521.
London,1971.

657

Gorle 1975
Claudii Ptolemaei Cosmographia. Edited by Lelio
Pagani. Gorle, 1975.
Gould 1966
Gould, Cecil. Michelangelo, Battle of Cascina. Newcastle upon Tyne, 1966.
Grayson 1972
Alberti, Leon Battista. 'On Painting' and 'On Sculpture'.
Translated by Cecil Grayson. Harmondsworth, 1972.
Greenhill 1982
The National Maritime Museum. Edited by Basil Greenhill. London, 1982.
Gronau 1905
Gronau, Georg. "Per la storia di un quadro attribuito a
Jacopo de' Barbari." Rassegna d'arte (1905), 28.
Grosjean 1977
Grosjean, G. Mappa mundi. Der katalanische Weltatlas
vom Jahre 1375. Zurich, 1977.
Grosz and Thomas 1936
Grosz, A., and B. Thomas. Katalog der Waffensammlung in der Neuen Burg. Vienna 1936, 42.
Grote 1961
Grote, Ludwig. Die Tucker. Bildnis einer Patrizierfamilie. Munich, 1961.
Grottanelli 1975
Grottanelli, V. L. "Discovery of a Masterpiece: A Sixteenth-Century Ivory Bowl from Sierra Leone/' African
Arts 8 (1975), 14-23.
Grottanelli 1976
Grottanelli, V. L. "Su un'antica scultura in avorio della
Sierra Leone." QuaderniPoro i (1976), 23-58.
Grube 1989
Grube, S. J. "Notes on the Decorative Arts of the
Timurid Period." Islamic Art 3 (1989), 175-208.
Grunne1980
Grunne, Bernard de. Terres Cuites Andennes de I'Ouest
Africain. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1980.
Guerlin 1914
Guerlin, Henri. Segovie, Avila et Salamanque. Paris,
1914.
Guiffray 1886
Guiffray, J. Histoire de la Tapisserie du Moyen Age
jusqu'a nos jours. Tours, 1886.
Gusmao 1951
Gusmao, Adriano de. "Iluminura Manuelina." Arte Portuguesa. Edited by Joao Barreira. Lisbon, [1951].
Gusmao 1956
Gusmao, Adriano de. O Nuno Gongalves de Phaidon.
Lisbon, 1956.
Gusmao 1957
Gusmao, Adriano de. Nuno Gongalves. Lisbon, 1957.
Guye and Michel 1970
Guye, Samuel, and Henri Michel. Mesures du Temps et
de I'Espace. Horloges, Montres, et Instruments Anciens.
Fribourg, 1970.
Hahnloser 1971
// Tesoro di San Marco, 2: II Tesoro e il Museo. Edited by
Hans Robert Hahnloser. Florence, 1971.
Haines 1983
Haines, Margaret. The 'Sacrestia delle Messe' of the
Florentine Cathedral. Florence, 1983.
Halm 1962
Halm, Peter. "Hans Burgkmair als Zeichner." Munchner
Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst Dritte Folge 13 (1962), 75162.
Hammer-Purgstall 1836-1838
Hammer-Purgstall, Josef von. Geschichte der Osmanischen Dichtkunst. Pest, 1836-1838.
Hannsmann and Kriss-Rettenbeck 1977
Hannsmann, Liselotte, and Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck.
Amulett und Talisman. Erscheinungsform und Geschichte. Munich, 1977.
Harris 1985
Harris, Elizabeth. "The Waldseemuller World Map: A
Typographic Appraisal." Imago Mundi 37 (1985), 30-53.
Harrisse 1892
Harrisse, Henry. The Discovery of North America.
London-Paris, 1892.
Hartlaub 1961
Hartlaub. Hans Baldung Grien. Hexenbilder. Stuttgart,
1961.
Hartmann 1978
Hartmann, Wolfgang. "Hans Baldungs 'Eve, Schlange
und Tod' in Ottawa." Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunst658

sammlungen in Baden-Wiirttemberg 15 (1978), 8.

Hartner 1939
Hartner, Willy. "The Principle and Use of the Astrolabe." In A Survey of Persian Art. Edited by Arthur
Upham Pope. Oxford, 1939. Reprinted in OriensOccidens. Ausgewahlte Schriften zur WissenschaftsundKulturgeschichte. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag.
Hildesheim, 1968.
Hartt 1968,1969
Hartt, Frederick. Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture. New York, 1968; London, 1969.
Hartt 1988
Hartt, Frederick. The Drawings of Michelangelo.
London,1971.
Heger1899
Heger, Franz. "Alte Elfenbeinarbeiten aus Afrika in den
Wiener Sammlungen." Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft Wien 29 (1899), 101-109.
Heikamp 1960
Heikamp, Detlef. "Diirers Entwiirfe fur Geweihleuchter." Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 23 (1960).
Hemming 1978
Hemming, John. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians. 1500-1760. Cambridge, 1978.
Herklots 1921
Herklots, G. A. Islam in India or the Qdnun-i Islam. The
Customs of the Musulmans of India ... by Jacfar Sharif.
Edited by William Crook. Oxford, 1921.
Hernmarck 1977
Hernmarck, Karl. The Art of the European Silversmith,
1430-1830. 2 vols. London and New York, 1977.
Hibbard 1985
Hibbard, Howard. Michelangelo. Harmondsworth and
New York, 1985.
Hieatt 1983
Hieatt, A. K. "Hans Baldung Grien's Ottawa Eve and Its
Context." Art Bulletin 65 (1983), 290-334.
Hildburgh 1941
Hildburgh, W L. "A Hispano-Arabic Silver-gilt and
Crystal Casket." The Antiquaries Journal 21 (1941),
211-231.
Hill 1926
Hill, George F. "Medals of Turkish Sultans." Numismatic
Chronicle 6 (1926), 287-298.
Hill 1930
Hill, George F. A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini. London, 1930.
Hill and Pollard 1967
Hill, George F., and Graham Pollard. Renaissance
Medals from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the
National Gallery of Art. London, 1967.
Himmelheber 1985
Himmelheber, Georg. "Eine Truhe von Baccio Pontelli."
Antologia di Belle Arti 27-28 (1985), 19-26.
Hind 1938
Hind, Arthur. Early Italian Engraving. Vol. i. London,
1938.
Hirsch 1976
Hirsch, Rudolf. "Printed Reports on the Early Discoveries and Their Reception." In First Images of
America. Edited by Fredi Chiappelli. Vol. 2. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, and London, 1976, 537-552.
Hirst 1986
Hirst, Michael. "I desegni de Michelangelo per la 'Battaglia de Cascina' (ca. 1504)." Tecnica e stile: esempi di
pittura murale del Rinasdmento italiano. Edited by Eve
Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi. Villa I Tatti/The
Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance
Studies 9. 2 vols. Milan, 1986.
Hirst 1988
Hirst, Michael. Michelangelo and His Drawings. New
Haven and London, 1988.
Hollstein 1949Hollstein, F. W. H. Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 14501700. 24 vols. Amsterdam,
1949-.
Holanda 1984
Holanda, Francisco de. Da Pintura Antiga. Introduction
and notes by Angel G. Garcia. Lisbon, 1984.
Honour 1976
Honour, Hugh. The New Golden Land. New York, 1976.
Horn and Born 1979
Horn, Walter, and Ernest Born. The Plan of St. Gall. A
Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a

Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery. 3 vols. Berkeley,

1979.
Home 1908
Home, Herbert. Alessandro Filipepi Commonly Called
Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence. London, 1908.
Huidobro Serna 1949
Huidobro Serna, Luciano. La Catedral de Burgos.
Madrid, 1949.
Humfrey 1991
Humfrey, Peter. Carpaccio. Catalogo completo. Florence,
1991.
Husband 1980
Husband, Timothy. The Wild Man. Medieval Myth and
Symbolism. New York, 1980.
Huyghe 1949
Huyghe, Rene. "Nuno Conceives dans la peinture europeene du xveme siecle." xvi Congres International d'Histoire de I'Art (Rapports et Communications). Vol. i.
Lisbon/Porto, 1949.
Hyman 1981
Hyman, Isabelle. "Examining a Fifteenth-Century Tribute' to Florence." In Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in
Honor of H. W. Janson. New York, 1981,105-126.
Iglesia 1659
Iglesia, Nicolas de la. Flores de Miraflores. Burgos, 1659.
Isemeyer 1964
Isemeyer, C. A. "Die Arbeiten Leonardos und Michelangelos fiir den grossen Ratsaal in Florence." Festschrift
fur L. H. Heydenreich. Munich, 1964, 84-120.
Istanbul 1983
The Anatolian Civilisations. Exh. cat. Topkapi Saray
Museum. Istanbul, 1983.
Ivanov 1977
Ivanov, A. A. "Istoriya izucheniya Maverannakhrskoi
(Sredneaziatskoi) shkoly miniatyury." In Srednyaya
Aziya v drevnosti srednevekov'ye. Edited by B. G.
Gafurov and B. A. Litvinsky. Moscow, 1977,144-159.
Jackson 1911
Jackson, Charles James. An Illustrated History of English
Plate. 2 vols. London, 1911.
James 1980
James, David. Qurans and Bindings from the Chester
Beatty Library. A Facsimile Exhibition. London, 1980.
James 1981
James, David. Islamic Masterpieces of the Chester Beatty
Library. Exh. cat. Leighton House. London, 1981.
Jane 1988
The Four Voyages of Columbus. Edited by Cecil Jane.
New York, 1988.
Janitsch 1883
Janitsch, J. "Diirer's Turkenzeichnung." Jahrbuch der
Koniglich-Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 4 (1883),
50-62.
Janson 1963
Janson, Horst. The Sculpture ofDonatello. Princeton,
1963.
Jirmounsky 1940
Jirmounsky, Myron Malkiel-. "Notes sur la composition
des panneaux dits de S. Vicent au Musee de 1'Art
Ancien." Boletim do MNAA 7 (1940).
Joannides1977,1981
Joannides, Paul. "Michelangelo's Lost Hercules." Burlington Magazine 119 (1977), 550-554; arid "A Supplement to Michelangelo's Lost Hercules." Burlington
Magazine 123 (1981), 20-23.
Joannides 1983
Joannides, Paul. The Drawings of Raphael. Oxford, 1983.
Jones 1984
Jones, Peter Murray. Medieval Medical Miniatures.
London,1984.
Joubert1987
Joubert, Fabienne. La tapisserie medievale au Musee du
Cluny. Paris, 1987.
Kaemmerer and Strohl [1903]
Kaemmerer, Ludwig Joachim Karl, and Strohl. Ahnenreihen aus dem Stammbaum des portugiesischen Konigshauses: Miniaturenfolge in der Bibliothek des British
Museum. 2 vols. Stuttgart, [1903].
Kahsnitz 1984
Kahsnitz, Rainer. "Veit Stoss in Niirnberg. Eine
Nachlese zum Katalog und zur Ausstellung." Anzeiger
des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1984), 39-70.
Kamal 1926-1953
Kamal, Youssouf. Monumenta Cartographica Africae et

Aegypti. 5 vols. Leiden, 1926-1953.

Kaplan 1985
Kaplan, Paul Henry Daniel. The Rise of the Black Magus
in Western Art. Ann Arbor, 1985.
Karabacek 1918
Karabacek, Josef von. Abendlandische Kiinstler zu Konstantinopel im 15. und 16. Jh. Vienna, 1918.
Karling 1970
Karling, Sten. "Riddaren doden och djavulen." Konsthistorisk Tidsskrift 39 (1970), 1-13.
Karlsruhe 1959
Hans Baldung Grien. Edited by Jan Lauts. Exh. cat.
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe, 1959.
Kassel 1990
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Porzellan aus China und
Japan. Die Porzellangalerie der Landgrafen von HessenKassel. Kassel, 1990.
Katz 1968
Katz, Karl. "Jewish Tradition in Art." From the Beginning. Jerusalem and London, 1968.
Kauffman 1935
Kauffman, H. Donatello. Berlin, 1935.
Keele and Pedretti 1979-1980
Keele, Kenneth and Carlo Pedretti. Leonardo da Vinci.
Corpus of Anatomical Studies at Windsor Castle.
London and New York, 1979-1980.
Keil 1919
Keil, Luis. Faiangas e Tapegarias. Elvas, 1919.
Keil 1985
Keil, Robert. "Zu Diirers friihen Proportionszeichnungen des menschlichen Korpers." Pantheon 43 (1985),
54-61.
Kemp 1984
Kemp, Martin. "The Taking and Use of Evidence; with a
Botticellian Case Study." Art Journal 44 (1984), 207-215.
Kemp 1985
Kemp, Martin. "Leonardo da Vinci: Science and the
Poetic Impulse." Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 133
(1985), 196-215.
Kemp 1989
Leonardo on Painting. Edited by Martin Kemp. Translated by Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker. London and
New Haven, 1989.
Kemp 19893
Kemp, Martin. Leonardo da Vinci. The Marvellous
Works of Nature and Man. London, 1989.
Kemp i989b
Kemp, Martin. "Geometrical Bodies as Exemplary Forms
in Renaissance Space." World Art. Themes of Unity in
Diversity. Edited by Irving Lavin. 3 vols. University Park
and London, 1989,1:237-242.
Kemp 1990
Kemp, Martin. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in
Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven
and London,1990.
Kemp 1991
Leon Battista Alberti On Painting. Edited by Martin
Kemp. Translated by Cecil Grayson. London, 1991.
Kemp and Massing 1991
Kemp, Martin, and Ann Massing. "Paolo Uccello's
'Hunt in the Forest/" Burlington Magazine 133 (1991),
164-178.
Kendrick 1924
Kendrick, A. F. Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Textiles. Catalogue of Muhammadan Textiles of
the Medieval Period. London, 1924.
Kerchache, Paudrat, and Stephan 1988
Kerchache, Jacques, Jean Louis Paudrat, and Lucien
Stephan. L'art Africain. Paris, 1988.
Kern 1915
Kern, J. G. "Der Mazzocchio des Paolo Uccello." Jahrbuch der Preuszichen Kunstsammlungen 36 (1915),
13-38.
Kimball 1927-1928
Kimball, Fisk. "Luciano Laurana and the 'High Renaissance/" Art Bulletin 10 (1927-1928), 125.
Kiparsky 1952
Kiparsky, Valentin. L'histoire du morse. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser.B.73,3. Helsinki, 1952.
Klemp 1968
Klemp, Egon. Africa on Maps Dating from the Twelfth to
the Eighteenth Century. Leipzig, 1968.
Klemp 1976
Klemp, Egon. America in Maps Dating from 1500 to

1856. New York and London, 1976.

Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl 1964
Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl.
Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of
Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. London, 1964.
Koch 1974
Koch, Robert. Hans Baldung Grien: Eve, the Serpent and
Death. Ottawa, 1974.
Kohlhaussen 1939
Kohlhaussen, Heinrich. "Ein Drachenleuchter von Veit
Stoss nach dem Entwurf Albrecht Diirers." Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Anzieger 1936-39 (1939),
135-141.
Kohlhaussen 1968
Kohlhaussen, Heinrich. Nurnberger Goldschmiedekunst
des Mittelalters und der Diirerzeit, 1240 bis 1540. Berlin,
1968.
Koloss 1982
Koloss, Hans-Joachim. "Afrika." In Feme Wolker
Friihe Zeiten, Kunstwerke aus dem Linden Museum
Stuttgart. Recklinghausen, 1982.
Koreny 1985
Koreny, Fritz. Albrecht Durer und die Tier-und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance. Munich, 1985.
Koreny 1988
Koreny, Fritz. Albrecht Durer and the Animal and Plant
Studies of the Renaissance. Boston, 1988.
Koreny 1991
Koreny, Fritz. "A Colored Flower Study by Martin
Schongauer and the Development of the Depiction of
Nature from Van der Weyden to Durer." Burlington
Magazine 133 (1991).
Koschatzky 1973
Koschatzky, Walter. Albrecht Durer. The Landscape
Water-Colours. London, 1973.
Koseoglu 1987
Koseoglu, Cengiz. The Topkapi Saray Museum. The
Treasury. Edited by J. M. Rogers. London, 1987.
Krahl and Erbahar 1986
Krahl, Regina, and Nurdan Erbahar. Chinese Ceramics in
the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul. A Complete Catalogue. 2: Yuan and Ming Dynasty Porcelains. Edited by
John Ayers. London, 1986.
Krasa 1983
Krasa, Josef. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. A Manuscript in the British Library. New York, 1983.
Krautheimer 1969
Krautheimer, Richard. "The Tragic and Comic Scenes of
the Renaissance: The Baltimore and Urbino Panels."
Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance
Art. Princeton, 1969.
Kress 1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection.
Washington, 1956.
Krieger 1969
Krieger, Kurt. Westafrikanische Plastik. Vol. 2. Berlin,
1969.
Kris 1932
Kris, Ernst. Goldschmiedearbieten des Mittelalters der
Renaissance und des Barock, I: Arbeiten in Gold und
Silber. Publikationen aus den kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 5. Vienna, 1932.
Kristeller 1902
Kristeller, Paul. Andrea Mantegna. Berlin and Leipzig,
1902.
Kristeller 1896
Kristeller, Paul. Engravings and Woodcuts by Jacopo
de'Barbari. Berlin, 1896.
Kiihnel 1950
Kiihnel, Ernst. "Der Mamlukische Kassettenstil." Kunst
des Orients i (1950), 55-68.
Kunsthistorisches Museum 1988
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Fiihrer durch die
Sammlungen. Vienna, 1988.
Kury 1974
Kury, G. "The Early Work of Luca Signorelli." Ph.D.
dissertation. Yale University, 1974.
Kurz 1937
Kurz, Otto. Master Drawings. 1937.
Kurz 1953
Kurz, Otto. "Huis nympha loci. A Pseudo Classical
Inscription and a Drawing by Durer." Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1953), 171-177.
Kwiatowski 1955

Kwiatowski, K. La Dame a I'hermine de Leonardo de

Vinci. Etude technologique. Warsaw, 1955.
Lach 1970-1977
Lach, Donald Frederick. Asia in the Making of Europe.
2 vols. Chicago and London, 1970-1977.
Lainez Alcala 1943
Lainez Alcala, Rafael. Pedro Berruguete, pintor de Castilla. Madrid, 1943.
Laking 1920-1921
Laking, O. F. A Record of European Armour and Arms
through Seven Centuries. 5 vols. London, 1920-1921.
Lambert 1951
Lambert, Emile. "Remarques sur le Polyptyque dit de
Saint Vincent au Musee de Lisbonne." Boletim do
MNAA 3,1(1951).
Lamp 1983
Lamp, Frederick. "House of Stones: Memorial Art of
Fifteenth-Century Sierra Leone." Art Bulletin 65, 2
(1983), 219-237.
Lane 1961
Lane, Arthur. "The Gaignieres-Fonthill Vase; A Chinese
Porcelain of about 1300." Burlington Magazine 103
(1961), 124-132.
Lane 1989
Lane, Barbara G. "'Requiem aeternam dona est': the
Beaune 'Last Judgement' and the Mass of the Dead."
Simiolus 19, 3 (1989), 166-180.
Laubenberger 1959
Laubenberger, Franz. "Ringmann oder Waldseemiiller?
Eine kritische Untersuchung liber den Urheber des
Namens Amerika." Erdkunde 13 (1959), 163-179.
Laurent c. 1577
Laurent, Jean. Archivo Ruiz Vernacci. c. 1577.
Laurenziana 1986
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Florence, 1986.
Lauts1962
Lauts, J. Carpaccio: Paintings and Drawings. London,
1962.
Leber1988
Leber, Hermann. Albrecht Diirers Landschaftsaquarelle.
Topographie und Genese. Hildesheim, 1988.
Leeman 1984
Leeman. "A Textual Source for Cranach's 'Venus with
Cupid the Honey-Thief/" Burlington Magazine 124
(1984), 274-275.
Legner1967
Legner, A. "Anticos Appollo vom Belvedere." Stddel
Jahrbuch N.F. i (1967), 103-118.
Le Gof f 1984
Le Goff, Jacques. "Calendario." Enciclopedia Einaudi.
Vol. i (Portuguese ed.). Lisbon, 1984.
Leguina 1898
Leguina, E. de. Espadas historicas. Madrid, 1898.
Levenson 1978
Levenson, Jay. "Jacopo de'Barbari and Northern Art of
the Early Sixteenth Century." Ph.D. dissertation. New
York University, 1978.
Levey 1961
Levey, Michael. "Minor Aspects of Diirer's Interest
in Venetian Art." Burlington Magazine 103 (1961),
511-513.
Liebman 1968
Liebman, M. "On the Iconography of the 'Nymph of the
Fountain' by Lucas Cranach the Elder." Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1968), 434-437.
Lightbown 1978
Lightbown, Ronald. Sandro Botticelli. Life and Work.
2 vols. London, 1978.
Lightbown 1986
Lightbown, Ronald. Andrea Mantegna. London, 1986.
Lightbown 1978
Lightbown, Ronald William. Secular Goldsmiths' Work
in Medieval France: A History. London, 1978.
Lisbon 1895
Ortigo, Ramalho. Exposigao de Arte Sacra Ornamental
promivida pela Comissao do Centendrio de Santo Antonio de Lisboa no ano de 1895. Exh. cat. Sala de Sua
Magestade. Lisbon, 1895.
Lisbon 1963
The Collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga. Lisbon, 1963.
Llorente 1961
Llorente, Maria Josefa. "El Convento de Santa Cruz."
Estudios Segovianos (1961).
659

Lomazzo 1584
Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo. Trattato dell'arte della pittura.
Milan, 1584.
Lomazzo 1974
Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo. Idea del tempio della pittura.
Edited by Robert Klein. 2 vols. First published 1590.
Florence, 1974.
London 1933
Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of the Renowned Collection
of Western Manuscipts, the Property of A. Chester
Beatty. The Second Portion. Sale 9th May. London, 1933.
London 1960
Prince Henry the Navigator and Portuguese Maritime
Enterprise. Exh. cat. British Museum. London, 1960.
London 1974
Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval England, 700-1200.
Exh. cat. Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1974.
London 1974
Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of African, Oceanic, Eskimo,
Pacific North-West Coast, American Indian and PreColumbian Art. Sale 8th July. London, 1974.
London 1976
The Arts of Islam. Exh. cat. Hayward Gallery. London,
1976.
London 1980
Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of a Collection of Benin
Works of Art. Sale i6th June. London, 1980.
London 1981
Splendours of the Gonzaga. Exh. cat. Victoria and
Albert Museum. London, 1981.
London 1982
Losty, Jeremiah. The Art of the Book in India. Exh. cat.
British Library. London, 1982.
London 1982
Raby, Julian. "Silver and Gold." Tulips, Arabesques and
Turbans. Edited by Yanni Petsopoulos. Exh. cat.
Leighton House. London, 1982,17-33.
London 1983
The Genius of Venice. Edited by Jane Martineau and
Charles Hope. Exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts. London,
1983.
London 1983
Islamic Art and Design, 1500-1700. Exh. cat. British
Museum. London, 1983.
London 1984
English Romanesque Art, 1066-1200. Exh. cat. Hayward
Gallery. London, 1984.
London 1988
Rogers, J. Michael, and Rachel Ward. Suleyman the
Magnificent. Exh. cat. British Museum. London, 1988.
London 1989
Leonardo da Vinci. Edited by Martin Kemp. Exh. cat.
Hayward Gallery. London, 1989.
Longhi1942
Longhi, Roberto. Piero della Francesca. 2d ed. Milan,
1942.
Lopes 1925
Lopes, David. Historia de Arzila durante o dominio portugues. Lisbon, 1925.
Lopez Martinez 1961
Lopez Martinez, Nicolas. "Don Luis de Acuna, el cabildo
de Burgos y la reforma (1456-95)." Burgense 2 (1961),
^309.
Lopez Mata 1946
Lopez Mata, Teofilo. El Barrio e iglesia de San Esteban
de Burgos. Burgos, 1946.
Lopez Mata 1950
Lopez Mata, Teofilo. La Catedral de Burgos. Burgos, 1950.
Lorch 1980
Lorch, Richard. "The 'Sphera solida' and Related Instruments." Centaurus 24 (1980), 153-161.
Ludovici 1958
Ludovici, Sergio Samek. // 'De Sphaera' estense e I'iconografia astrologica. Milan, 1958.
Luino 1974
Malazzani, G. Sacro e profano de Bernardino Luini. Exh.
cat. Civico istituto di cultura popolare. Luino, 1974.
Lunsingh Scheurleer 1980
Lunsingh Scheurleer, Daniel Frangois. Chinesisches und
japanisches Porzellan in europaischen Fassungen.
Braunschweig, 1980.
Luschan 1919
Luschan, Felix von. Die Altertiimer von Benin. 3 vols.
Berlin, 1919.
660

Lutz 1958
Lutz, Heinrich. Conrad Peutinger. Beitrdge zu einer
politischen Biographie. Augsburg, 1958.
MacDougall 1975
MacDougall, Elizabeth. "The Sleeping Nymph. Origins
of a Humanist Fountain Type." Art Bulletin 57 (1975),
357-365Macler 1928
Macler, Frederic. L'enluminure armenienne profane.
Paris, 1928.
Madrid 1893
Exposicion historico-europea. 1892 a 1893. Madrid, 1893.
Madrid 1898
Don Juan, Valencia de. Catdlogo Historico-descriptivo de
la RealArmeria de Madrid. Madrid, 1898.
Madrid 1986
Junquera de Vega, Paulina, and Concha Herrero Carretero. Catdlogo de tapices del Patrimonio Nacional.
Vol. i: Siglo xvi. Madrid, 1986.
Mancini 1979
Mancini, Fausto. "L'Opera di Leonardo sulla Pianta di
Imola di Danesio Maineri." Notizario Vinciano 9 (1979),
37~52Mann 1933
Mann, J. G. "Notes on the Armour Worn in Spain from
the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century." Archaeologia 83
(1933), 301-302.
Mannowsky [1931]-193 8
Mannowsky, Walter. Der Danziger Paramentenschatz.
Kirchliche Gewdnder und Stickereien aus der Marienkirche. Berlin and Leipzig, [19311-1938.
Marani 1984
Marani, Pietro. L'Architettura fortificata negli studi di
Leonardo da Vinci con il catalogo completo dei disegni.
Florence, 1984, no. 126.
Marani 1985
Marani, Pietro. "La Mappa di Imola di Leonardo." Leonardo: il Codice Hammer e la mappa di Imola presentati
da Carlo Pedretti. Florence, 1985,140-141.
Marchesi 1849
Marchesi, Jose Maria. Catalogo de la Real Armeria.
Madrid, 1849.
Marinoni 1988
Marinoni, Augusto. "Leonardo in Romagna." Torricelliana (Faenza) 39 (1988), 53-62.
Markl 1983
Markl, Dagoberto. Livro de Horas de D. Manuel. Estudo
introdutorio. Lisbon, 1983.
Markl 1988
Markl, Dagoberto. O Retdbulo de S. Vicente da Se de
Lisboa e os Documentos. Lisbon, 1988.
Markl and Pereira 1986
Markl, Dagoberto, and Fernando A. B. Pereira. "O
Renascimento." Historia da Arte em Portugal. Vol. 6.
Lisbon, 1986.
Marques 1940
Marques, J. M. Silva. "Armas e Tapegarias reais num
inventario de 1505." Congresso do Mundo Portugues.
Vol. 5, book 3. Lisbon, 1940, 555-603.
Martin 1912
Martin, Frederic R. The Miniature Painting and Painters
of Persia, India and Turkey. London, 1912.
Martindale 1961
Martindale, Andrew. "Luca Signorelli and the Drawings
Connected with the Orvieto Frescoes." Burlington
Magazine (1961), 216-220.
Martin Gonzalez 1985
Martin Gonzalez, Juan Jose. Catdlogo monumental de la
provincia de Valladolid (xiv. part i. Monumentos religiosos de la ciudad de Valladolid). Valladolid, 1985.
Martinez Sanz 1866
Martinez Sanz, Manuel. Historia del tempio catedral de
Burgos. Burgos, 1866.
Massing 1984
Massing, Jean Michel. "Schongauer's 'Tribulations of St.
Anthony.' Its Iconography and Influence on German
Art." Print Quarterly i (1984), 220-236.
Mateo Gomez 1979
Mateo Gomez, Isabel. Temas profanos en la escultura
gotica espanola. Las sillerias de coro. Madrid, 1979.
Matos 1955
Matos, Luis de. "A proposito do 'Triptico de Santa
Auta.'" Boletim do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga 3, i

Matoso 1983
Matoso, Jose. Introduce ai Catdlogo da Exposigao Os
Descobrimentos Portugueses e a Europa do Renascimento. Lisbon, 1983.
Maximilian 1959
Maximilian i. Exh. cat. Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek. Vienna, 1959, 230, no. 622.
Mayer 1956
Mayer, L. A. Islamic Astrolabists and Their Works.
Geneva, 1956.
Mayer-Thurman 1975
Mayer-Thurman, Christa C. Raiment for the Lord's
Service. Chicago, 1975.
Mazerolle 1897
Mazerolle, Fernand. "Un vase oriental en porcelaine
orne d'une monture d'orfevrerie du xive siecle." Gazette
des Beaux-Arts 36 ser. 17 (1897), 53-58.
McClintock 1950
McClintock, Henry Foster. Old Irish and Highland
Dress. Dundalk, 1950.
McClintock 1958
McClintock, Henry Foster. Handbook on the Traditional
Old Irish Dress. Dundalk, 1958.
McCown 1922
Testamentum Salomonis. Edited by Charles Ch.
McCown. Leipzig, 1922.
McGurk 1966
McGurk, Patrick. Astrological Manuscripts in Italian
Libraries Other than Rome. Catalogue of Astrological
and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin
Middle Ages 4. London, 1966.
Mclntosh 1988
Mclntosh, Roderick J. "Middle Niger Terracottas before
the Symplegades Gateway." African Arts 22, 2 (1988).
McLeod 1980
McLeod, Malcolm. Treasures of African Art. New York,
1980.
Meder 1932
Meder, Josef. Diirer-Katalog. Ein Handbuch iiber
Albrecht Diirers Stiche, Radierungen, Holzschnitte.
Vienna, 1932.
Medley 1985
Medley, Margaret. "Chinese Porcelain in the Istanbul
Album Paintings." Between China and Iran. Paintings
from Four Istanbul Albums. Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor
Sims. London, 1985,157-159.
Meiss 1968
Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de
Berry: The Boucicaut Master. London, 1968.
Meiss 1970
Meiss, Millard. The Great Age of Fresco. London, 1970.
Meiss 1976
Meiss, Millard. "Ovum struthionis: Symbol and Allusion in Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece."
In The Painter's Choice: Problems in the Interpretation
of Renaissance Art. New York, 1976,105-129.
Melbourne 1990
The Age of Suleyman the Magnificent. Exh. cat.
Melbourne, 1990.
Melikian-Chirvani 1987
Melikian-Chirvani, A. S. "The Lights of Sufi Shrines."
Islamic Art 2 (1987), 126-131.
Melikian-Chirvani 1969
Melikian-Chirvani, Asadallah S. "Oeuvres inedites de
1'epoque de Qa'itbay." Kunst des Orients 4, 2 (1969).
Melikian-Chirvani 1973
Melikian-Chirvani, Asadallah S. Propylaen Kunstgeschichte, Islam. Edited by Bertold Spuler and Janine
Sourdel-Thomine. Berlin, 1973.
Melikian-Chirvani 1976
Melikian-Chirvani, Asadallah S. "Four Pieces of Islamic
Metalwork: Some Notes on a Previously Unknown
School." Art and Archaeology Research Papers 10
(December 1976), 24-30.
Meltzoff 1988
Meltzoff, Stanley. Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola.
Theologia Poetica and Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano. Florence, 1988.
Menavino 1551
Menavino, G. A. La vita, et i costumi de' Turchi etc.
Florence, 1551.
Mendes Pinto 1983
Mendes Pinto, Maria Elena. Os descobrimentos portugueses e a Europa do RenascimentoA arte na rota do

Oriente. Lisbon, 1983.

Mendonc.a 1949
Mendonga, Maria Jose de. "Affinites du polyptyque de
Nuno Gongalves avec des tapisseries et fresques du duche
de Bourgogne." xviCongres International d'Histoire de
I'Art. Rapports et Communications 2. Lisbon, 1949.
Merchante 1923
Merchante, E. Garcia. Los Tapices de Alfonso V. Toledo,
1923.
Meric, 1957
Meric., Rifki Melul. "Bayazid camii mimarisi." Ankara
Universitesi Ildhiyat Fakilltesi Yilhk Aratirmalar Dergisi 2 (1957), 7-76.
Meri^ 1963
Meric,, Rifki Melul. "Bayramlarda Padiahlara hediye
edilen san'at eserleri ve karihklan." Turk Sanati Tarihi
Aratirma ve Incemeleri i (1963), 764-786.
Meyer 1978
Meyer, Ursula. "Political Implications of Diirer's
'Knight, Death and Devil/" Print Collector's Newsletter
9 (1978), 35-39Migeon 1903
Migeon, Gaston. Exposition des arts musulmans au
Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Paris, 1903.
Milanesi 1878-1885,1905-1915
Vasari, Giorgio. Le Vite de' piii eccellenti pittori, scultori
ed architettori (1568). Edited by G. Milanesi. Florence,
1878-1885. Reprint 1905-1915.
Miller 1895-1898
Miller, Konrad. Mappaemundi. Die dltesten Weltkarten.
6 vols. Stuttgart, 1895-1898.
Miner 1967
Miner, Dorothy. "More About Mediaeval Pouncing." In
Homage to a Bookman. Festschrift H. P. Kraus. Berlin,
1967, 87-108.
Minorsky 1958
Minorsky, Vladimir. The Chester Beatty Library. A
Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts and Miniatures.
Dublin, 1958.
Moreira 1921
Moreira, Francisco de Almeida. Museu Regional de Grdo
Vasco. Catdlogo e guia sumdrio. 1921.
Morgan 1960
Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by
Morris H. Morgan. New York, 1960.
Morison 1942
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A
Life of Christopher Columbus. 2 vols. Boston, 1942.
Morison 1974
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of
America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492-1616. New
York, 1974.
Mota 1975
Mota, A. Teixeira. "Gli Avori africani nella documentazione portoghese dei secoli xv-xvn." Africa 30, 4
(1975)Motta Alves 1936
Motta Alves, Artur. Os Paineis de S. Vicente, num.
Codice da Biblioteca Nacionale do Rio de Janiero. Lisbon,
1936.
Moule and Pelliot 1938
Polo, Marco. The Description of the World. Edited by
Arthur Christopher Moule and Paul Pelliot. 2 vols.
London,1938.
Mullin Vogel 1985
Mullin Vogel, Susan. African Aesthetics The Carlo
Monzino Collection. Milan, 1985.
Munich 1910
Sarre, Friederich P. T. Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerke
Muhammedanischer Kunst in Munchen. Exh. cat.
Munich, 1910.
Miintz 1888
Miintz, E. Les Collections des Medicis au xve siecle.
Paris, 1888.
Muraro 1977
Muraro, Michelangelo. / Disegni di Vittore Carpaccio.
Florence, 1977.
Murray 1962
Murray, Peter. "Bramante milanese: the Paintings and
Engravings." Arte lombarda 7 (1962), 25-42.
Nagy 1975
Nagy, Zoltan. "Ricerche cosmologiche nella corte umanistica di Giovanni Vitez." In Rapporti veneto-iungheresi
dell'epoca del Rinascimento. Budapest, 1975, 65-93.

Narkiss 1969
Narkiss, Bezalel. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts. New
York, 1969.
Narkiss 1971
The Golden Haggadah. A Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript in the British Museum. Introduction by Bezalel Narkiss. London, 1971.
Narkiss 1982
Narkiss, Bezalel, Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, and Anat
Tcherikover. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the
British Isles. Vol. i: The Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts. Jerusalem and London, 1982.
Naples and Rome 1983
"Ritratto di Luca Pacioli con Guidobaldo da Montfeltro."
In Leonardo e il leonardismo a Napoli e a Roma. Edited
by A. Vezzosi. Exh. cat. Museo nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, and Palazzo Venezia, Rome. Florence,
1983.
National Gallery of Art 1941
National Gallery of Art. Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. Washington, 1941.
National Gallery of Art 1973
Levenson, Jay A., Konrad Oberhuber, and Jacquelyn L.
Sheehan. Early Italian Engravings from the National
Gallery of Art. Washington, 1973.
Nebenzahl 1990
Nebenzahl, Kenneth. Atlas of Columbus and the Great
Discoveries. Chicago, 1990.
Nepi Scire and Valcanover 1985
Nepi Scire, Giovanna, and Francesco Valcanover. Gallerie
dell'Accademia di Venezia. Milan, 1985.
Neuss 1931
Neuss, W Die Apocalypse des Hi. Johannes in der altspanischen Bibelillustration. Miinster-in-Westphalen,
1931.
Nevadomsky 1986
Nevadomsky, Joseph. "The Benin Bronze Horseman as
the Ata of Idah." African Arts 19, 4 (1986), 40-85.
New York 1956
Treasures of the Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Institut de
France. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New York, 1956.
New York 1974
Souchal, Genevieve. Masterpieces of Tapestry from the
fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. Exh. cat. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1974.
New York 1980
Watt, James C. Y. Chinese Jades from Han to Ch'ing.
Exh. cat. The Asia Society. New York, 1980.
New York 1984
The Treasury of San Marco, Venice. Exh. cat. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Milan, 1984.
New York 1985
Ministerio de Cultura. Tesoros de Lspana: Ten Centuries
of Spanish Books. Exh. cat. New York Public Library.
New York, 1985.
New York and Nuremberg 1986
Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1300-1550.
Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
Munich, 1986.
New York Public Library 1990
Portugal-Brazil: The Age of Atlantic Discoveries. Exh.
cat. New York Public Library. Lisbon, Milan, and New
York, 1990.
Nicco-Fasola 1942
Piero della Francesca. De Prospectiva pingendi. Edited by
Giustina Nicco-Fasola. Florence, 1942. Reprinted with
notes by E. Battisti, F. Ghione, and R. Paccani. Florence,
1984.
Nickel 1958
Nickel, Helmut. "Der mittelalterliche Reiterschild des
Abendlandes." Ph.D. dissertation, Freie Universitat.
Berlin, 1958.
Nicolle 1981
Nicolle, David. Islamische Waffen. Graz, 1981.
Nuremberg 1958
Aus dem Danziger Paramentenschatz und dem Schatz
der Schwarzhaupter zu Riga. Exh. cat. Germanisches
Nationalmuseum. Nuremberg, 1958.
Nuremberg 1971
Albrecht Durer. 1471-1971. Exh. cat. Germanisches
Nationalmuseum. Nuremberg, 1971.
Nuremberg 1983

Veit Stoss in Nurnberg: VJerke des Meisters und seiner

Schule in Nurnberg und Umgebung. Exh. cat. Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Nuremberg, 1983.
Oakley 1975
Oakley, Kenneth P. Decorative and Symbolic Uses of
Vertebrate Fossils. Oxford, 1975.
Oakley 1985
Oakley, Kenneth P. Decorative and Symbolic Uses of
Fossils. Selected Groups, Mainly Invertebrate. Oxford,
1985.
Oman 1963
Oman, Charles. Medieval Silver Nefs. London, 1963.
Oman 1968
Oman, Charles. The Golden Age of Hispanic Silver,
1400-1655. London,1968.
Oman 1979
Oman, Charles. "The College Plate." In New College,
Oxford. 1379-1979. Edited by John Buxton and Penry
Williams. Oxford, 1979, 293-305.
Omont 1895-1896
Omont, Henri. Bibliotheque nationale. Catalogue generale des manuscritsfrangais. 3 vols. Paris, 1895-1896.
Omont 1907
Omont, Henri. Bibliotheque Nationale. Departement
des Manuscrits. Livre des Merveilles. 2 vols. Paris,
[1907].
Orlandini 1914
Orlandini, Umberto. // manoscritto estense "De
Sphaera." Modena, 1914.
Osorio de Castro 1988
Osorio de Castro, Antonio. Os Paineis do Museu de
Lisboa e D. Carlos da Catalunha. Barcelos, 1988.
Osten 1983
Osten, Gert van der. Hans Baldung Grien. Gemalde und
Dokumente. Berlin, 1983.
Ottawa 1987
Catalogue of the National Gallery, Ottawa. European
and American Painting and Sculpture and Decorative
Arts 1. Edited by M. Laskin Jr." and M. Pantazzi. Ottawa,
1987.
Ottino della Chiesa 1956
Ottino della Chiesa, A. Bernardino Luini. Milan, 1956.
Oudenburg 1984
Sint-Arnoldus en de Sint-Pietersabdij te Oudenburg.
1084-1984. Oudenburg, 1984.
Ozi953
Oz, Tahsin. Topkapi Sarayinda Fatih Sultan Mehmed II'e
ait eserler. Ankara, 1953.
Pacheco Pereira 1905
Pacheco Pereira, Duarte. Esmeraldo de situ orbis. Edited
and annotated by A. Epifanio de Silva Dias. Lisbon,
1905.
Pacioli 1494
Pacioli, Luca. Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportionality. Venice, 1494.
Pacioli 1509
Pacioli, Luca. De Divina proportione. Florence, 1509.
Pais da Silva 1986
Pais da Silva, J. H. "A arquitectura no retabulo de Santa
Auta." Pdginas de Historia da Arte 2 (1986).
Pallucchini 1966
Boschini, Marco. La Carta del Navegar Pittoresco. 1660.
Edited by Anna Pallucchini. Civilta Veneziana. Fonti e
Testi 7. Venice, 1966.
Palomo Iglesias 1979
Palomo Iglesias, Crescendo. "El Padre Claudio Sancho de
Contreras. Dominico Exclaustrado." Estudios Segovianos
(1970), 89.
Panofsky 1915
Panofsky, Erwin. Durers Kunsttheorie, vornehmlich in
ihrem Verhdltnis zur Kunsttheorie der Italiener. Berlin,
1915.
Panofsky 1940
Panofsky, Erwin. The. Codex Huygens and Leonardo da
Vinci's Art Theory. The Pierpont Morgan Library Codex
M.A. 1139. London, 1940.
Panofsky 1943
Panofsky, Erwin. Albrecht Diirer. 2 vols. Princeton,
1943Panofsky 1948
Panofsky, Erwin. The Life and Art of Albrecht Diirer. 3d
ed., 2 vols. Princeton, 1948.
Panofsky 1957
Panofsky, Erwin. "The History of Human Proportions as
66l

a Reflection of Style." Meaning in the Visual Arts (1957),

55-107.
Panofsky 1967
Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology. Oxford, 1967
(Portuguese ed. 1986).
Panofsky 1972
Panofsky, Erwin. "The Early History of Man in Two
Cycles by Piero de Cosimo." Studies in Iconology. New
York, 1972.
Paris 1971
Les arts de I'lslam des origines a 1700. Exh. cat.
Orangerie des Tuileries. Paris, 1971.
Paris 1973-1974
Chefs-d'oeuvre de la tapisserie du xive au xvie siecle.
Exh. cat. Grand Palais. Paris, 1973-1974.
Paris 1977
Ulslam dans les collections nationales. Exh. cat. Grand
Palais. Paris, 1977.
Paris 1990
Adle, Chahriyar. "Entre Timurides, Mongols et Safavides. Notes sur un Chahname de 1'atelier-bibliotheque
royal d'Ologh Beg II a Caboul (873-9077 1469-1502)."
Etude Daussy-Ricques Art Islamique et orientalisme.
Sale catalogue Drouot-Richelieu. Paris, 15 June 1990,
136-142, lot 183.
Parker 1956/Macandrew 1981
Parker, K. T. Catalogue of the Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol. 3, Italian Schools. Oxford, 1956.
Supplement by Hugh Macandrew. Oxford, 1981.
Parronchi 1964
Parronchi, Alessandro. "Paolo o Piero?" Studi sulla dolce
prospettiva. Milan, 1964, 533-548.
Parry 1963
Parry, John Horace. The Age of Reconnaissance. London,
1963.
Parshall 1971
Parshall, Peter W. "Albrecht Diirer's 'St. Jerome in His
Study': A Philological Reference." Art Bulletin 53
(1971), 303-305.
Pass 1989
Pass, Giinther. "Diirer und die wissenschaftliche Tierdarstellung der Renaissance." Albrecht Diirer und die
Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance. Symposium
(Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien
82/82,1986-1987 (1989), 57-67.
Pastor 1959
Pastor, Ludwig von. Storia deiPapi. Vol. 3, rev. ed.
Rome, 1959.
Pattie 1980
Pattie, Thomas Smith. Astrology, as Illustrated in the
Collections of the British Library and the British
Museum. London, 1980.
Pedretti 1975
Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua scuola alia
Biblioteca Reale di Torino. Edited by Carlo Pedretti.
Florence, 1975.
Pedretti 1982
Pedretti, Carlo. Landscapes, Plants and Water Studies in
the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor
Castle. New York, 1982.
Pedretti 1987
Pedretti, Carlo. Horses and Other Animals, Drawings by
Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the
Queen at Windsor Castle. New York, 1987.
Pellegrin 1955
Pellegrin, Elisabeth. La Bibliotheque des Visconti et des
Sforza, dues de Milan, au xve siecle. Paris, 1955.
Pelliot 1959-1973
Pelliot, Paul. Notes on Marco Polo. 3 vols. Paris, 19591973Peres 1988
Peres, Damiao. Viagens de Luis de Cadamosto e de Pedro
de Sintra. Academia Portuguesa de Historia. Lisbon,
1988. Reimpresso da ed. de 1948, com notas de D. Peres.
Phyrr and Alexander 1984
Phyrr, Stuart W., and David G. Alexander. "Parade
Helmet (of 'Boabdil')." In The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Notable Acquisitions 1983-1984. New York, 1984,
21-22.
Pignatti 1964
Pignatti, Teresio. "La Pianta di Venezia de Jacopo
de'Barberi." Bollettino del Musei Civici Veneziani 9
(1964), 9-49.
Pignatti 1967
662

Pignatti, Teresio. Mobili italiani del Rinascimento.

Milan, 1967.
Pignatti 1981
Pignatti, Teresio. Le Scuole de Venezia. Milan, 1981.
Pigouchet1497
Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis. Philippe Pigouchet for
Simon Vostre. Paris, 1497.
Pilz 1977
Pilz, Kurt. 600 Jahre Astronomie in Nurnberg. Nuremberg, 1977.
Pina 1792
Pina, Rui de. "Cronica d'El Rey D. Joao II." In Colecgao
de Livros ineditos da Historia de Portugal. Vol. 2.
Lisbon, 1792.
Pinacoteca di Brera 1988
Pinacoteca di Brera. Scuole lombarda e piemontese,
1300-1535. Milan, 1988.
Pinder-Wilson 1976
Pinder-Wilson, R. H. "The Malcolm Celestial Globe."
The Classical Tradition: British Museum Yearbook i
(1976), 83-101.
Pogatscher 1898
Pogatscher, Heinrich. "Von Schlangenhornern und
Schlangenzungen vornehmlich im 14. Jahrhunderte."
Romische Quartalschrift fur christliche Alterthumskunde und fur Kirchengeschichte 12 (1898), 162-215.
Pollitt 1965
Pollitt, J. J. The Art of Greece, 140031 B.C. Sources and
Documents in the History of Art. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey, 1965.
Pope-Hennessy 1965
Pope-Hennessy, John. Renaissance Bronzes from the
Samuel Kress Collection: Reliefs, Plaquettes, Statuettes,
Utensils and Mortars. London, 1965.
Pope-Hennessy 1969
Pope-Hennessy, John. Paolo Uccello. London and New
York, 1969.
Pope-Hennessy 1970
Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian High Renaissance and
Baroque Sculpture. London and New York, 1970.
Pope-Hennessy 1971
Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Renaissance Sculpture.
London and New York, 1971.
Pope-Hennessy 1980
Pope-Hennessy, John. Luca della Robbia. Oxford, 1980.
Pope-Hennessy 1980
Pope-Hennessy, John. The Study and Criticism of Italian
Renaissance Sculpture. Princeton, 1980.
Pope-Hennessy 1989
Pope-Hennessy, John. "The Study of Italian Plaquettes."
Italian Plaquettes. Studies in the History of Art 22.
Washington, 1989,19-32.
Popham1946
Popham, Arthur E. The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
London,1946.
Post 1947
Post, Chandler Rathfon. A History of Spanish Painting,
Vol. 9, part i, The Beginning of the Renaissance in Castile and Leon. Cambridge, Mass., 1947.
Poulle 1983
Poulle, Emmanuel. Les Instruments astronomiques du
moyen age. Societe internationale de 1'Astrolabe, AstroIabica3. Paris, 1983.
Primisser 1819
Primisser, A. Die Kaiserlich-Konigliche AmbraserSammlung. Vienna, 1819.
Pudelko 1934
Pudelko, G. "Studien iiber Domenico Veneziano." Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz^
(1934), 145.
Quarcoopone 1983
Quarcoopone, E. Nii. "Pendant Plaques." The Art of
Power, The Power of Art: Studies in Benin Iconography.
Edited by Paula Ben Amos and Arnold Rubin. Exh. cat.
Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Los Angeles, 1983.
Quinn 1961
Quinn, R. M. Fernando Gallego and the Retablo of the
CiudadRodrigo. Tuscon, 1961.
Raby 1982
Raby, Julian. Venice, Diirer and the Oriental Mode. The
Hans Huth Memorial Studies I. London, 1982.
Raby 1985
Raby, Julian. "Mehmed II Fatih and the Fatih Album." In
Between China and Iran. Paintings from Four Istanbul

Albums. Edited by Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims.

London,1985, 42-49.
Raby 1987
Raby, Julian. "Pride and Prejudice: Mehmed the Conqueror and the Italian Portrait Medal." Italian Medals.
Edited by J. Graham Pollard. Studies in the History of
Art 21. Washington, 1987,171-194.
Raby and Atasoy 1989
Raby, Julian, and Nurhan Atasoy. Iznik. The Pottery of
Ottoman Turkey. London, 1989.
Raczynski 1846
Raczynski, Athanasius. Les Arts au Portugal. Lettres
Adressees a la Societe Artistique et Scientifique de Berlin
et accompagnees de documents. Paris, 1846.
Rada y Delgado 1874
Rada y Delgado, Juan de Dios de la. "Sepulcro de Don
Juan II en la Cartuja de Miraflores de Burgos." Museo
espanol de antiguedades 3 (1874), 322.
Rapp and Stucky-Schiirer 1990
Rapp, Bury, and Monica Stucky-Schiirer. Zahm und
wild. Easier und Strassburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts. Mainz, 1990.
Repertoire chronologique 1941
Repertoire chronologique d'epigraphie arabe 9 (1941).
Resende1596
Resende, Garcia de. Chronica que trata da vida e grandissimas virtudes ( . . . ) Dom Joao ho Segundo. Lisbon, 1596.
Revuelta Tubino 1987
Revuelta Tubino, Matilde. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo.
2 vols. Ciudad Real, 1987.
Ricci 1935-1940
Ricci, Seymour de. Census of Medieval and Renaissance
Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. 3 vols.
New York, 1935-1940.
Richard 1989
Richard, Francis. "Divani ou ta c liq: un calligraphic au
service du Mehmet II, Sayyidi Muhammed moni." In
Les manuscrits du Moyen Orient. Essais de codicologie et
de paleographie. Edited by Francois Desroche. Istanbul,
1989,89-93.
Richards 1968
Richards, Louise. "Antonio Pollaiuolo. Battle of the
Naked Men." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art
55 (1968), 63-70.
Richter 1970/1977
The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. 3d ed. Edited
by Jean Paul Richter. 2 vols. London and New York,
1970; Oxford, 1977.
Rico Santamaria 1985
Rico Santamaria, Marcos. La Catedral de Burgos.
Burgos, 1985.
Ringling Museum 1949
William E. Suida. A Catalogue of Paintings. John and
Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Sarasota, Fla., 1949.
Robbins and Nooter 1989
Robbins, Warren M., and Nancy Ingram Nooter. African
Art in American Collections Survey 1989. Washington, 1989.
Roberts 1959
Roberts, Helen. "St. Augustine in 'St. Jerome's Study':
Carpaccio's Painting and Its Legendary Source." Art
Bulletin 12 (1959), 283-297.
Rodriguez Lorente 1964
Rodriguez Lorente, J. J. "The xvth Century Ear Dagger,
its Hispano-Moresque Origin." Gladius 3 (1964), 68-70.
Rogers 1988
Rogers, J. Michael. "Two Masterpieces from 'Suleyman
the Magnificent/ a Loan Exhibition from Turkey to the
British Museum." Orientations (August 1988), 12-18.
Rohde 1923
Rohde, Alfred. Die Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen
Instrumente vom Beginn der Renaissance bis zum
Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Monographien des
Kunstgewerbes 16. Leipzig, 1923.
Rome 1959
Bacou, R., and J. Bean. Disegni fiorentini del Museo del
Louvre dalla collezione di Filippo Baldinucci. Exh. cat.
Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe. Rome, 1959.
Romer 1917
Romer, E. "Materialien zur Diirerforschung." Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft 40 (1917), 219-224.
Rose 1975
Rose, Paul. The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics.
Geneva, 1975.

Rosenberg 1918
Rosenberg, Marc. Geschichte der Goldschmiedekunst auf
technischer Grundlage. Abteilung: Granulation. Frankfurt am Main, 1918.
Rosi'nska 1974
Rosi'nska, Gra-zyna. Instrument^ astronomiczne na
Uniwersytecie Krakowskim w xvwieku. Polska Akademia Nauk, Zaklad Historii Nauki i Techniki, Studia
Copernicana 11. Wroclaw, Warsaw, Cracow, and Gdansk,
1974Ross 1963
Ross, David John A. Alexander historiatus. A Guide to
Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature. London, 1963.
Ross 1971
Ross, David John A. Illustrated Medieval AlexanderBooks in Germany and the Netherlands. A Study in
Comparative Iconography. Cambridge, 1971.
Rossacher 1962
Rossacherr Kurt. "Der verschollene Schatz der Erzbischofe von Salzburg. Neue Entdeckungen in den Sammlungen des Palazzo Pitti in Florenz." Alte und moderne
Kunst 58/59, 62/63, 64/65 (1962), 2-9.
Rossacher 1966
Rossacher, Kurt. Der Schatz des Erzstiftes Salzburg.
Salzburg, 1966.
Rossi 1888
Rossi, F. "I Medaglisti del Rinascimento alia Corte di
Mantova." Rivista italiana di numismatica (1888).
Rossi and others 1986
Rossi, Paolo, Celeste Soddu, and Carlo Ragghianti. "11
chalice di Paolo Uccello uno e senza limite." Critica d'arte
51 (1986), 85-92.
Roth 1964
Roth, Cecil. "Majolica Passover Plates of the xvi-xvm
Centuries." Eretz-Israel 7 (Jerusalem, 1964), 106-111.
Rotondi 1969
Rotondi, Pasquale. The Ducal Palace of Urbino. London,
1969.
Roukema 1963
Roukema, Edzer. "Brazil in the Cantino Map." Imago
Mundi 17 (1963), 7-26.
Rowlands 1988
Rowlands, John. The Age of Durer and Holbein. German
Drawings, 1400-1550. Exh. cat. British Museum.
London, 1988.
Riicker 1973
Riicker, Elisabeth. Die Schedelsche Weltchronik. Das
grosste Buchunternehmen der Durer-Zeit. Munich, 1973.
Riickert 1965
Riickert, Rainer. "Das Nachlassinventar der bayerischen
Herzogin Jacobaa." Munchner Jahrbuch der bildenden
Kunst 14 (1965), 121-148.
Rudwick 1976
Rudwick, Martin J. S. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes
in the History of Palaeontology. New York, 1976.
Ruhmer 1958
Ruhmer, E. Griinewald. The Paintings. London, 1958.
Rupprich 1956-1969
Rupprich, Hans. Durers schriftlicher Nachlass. 3 vols.
Berlin, 1956-1969.
Ryder 1964
Ryder, Alan F. C. "A Note on the Afro-Portuguese
Ivories." Journal of African History 5 (1964), 363-365.
Rykwert and others 1988
Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten
Books. Translated by J. Rykwert, N. Leach, and R. Tavenor. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988.
Rzepinska 1985
Rzepinska, Maria. "La Dama dell'ermellino." Leonardo.
La Pittura. Edited by Pietro Mariani. Florence, 1985.
Saalman 1968
Saalman, Howard. "The Baltimore and Urbino Panels:
Cosimo Rosselli." Burlington Magazine no (1968),
376-383.
Sacken 1855
Sacken, E. von. Die Ambraser Sammlung. Vienna, 1855,
115.
Sacken 1859
Sacken, E. von. Die Vorziiglichsten Rustungen und
Waff en derK.K. Ambraser- Sammlung. Vol. i. Vienna,
1859.
Salzburg 1967
Salzburgs Alte Schatzkammer. Exh. cat. Salzburg
Cathedral. Salzburg, 1967.

Sampaio 1971
Sampaio, Luis de Melo Vaz de. "Subsidies para uma
Biografia de Pedro Alvares Cabral." Revista da Universidade de Coimbra 24 (1971).
Sanchez Canton 1930
Sanchez Canton, F. J. "El retablo de la Reina Catolica."
Archive Espanol de Arte y Arqueologia (1930), 97-133.
Sandrart 1675
Sandrart, Joachim von. Die teusche Akademie. (1675).
Edited by A. R. Peltzer. Munich, 1925.
Sangiorgi 1976
Sangiorgi, F. Raffaello e i duchi di Urbino. Urbino, 1976.
Santos 1946
Santos, Luis Reis. Vasco Fernandes e os pintores de Viseu
do sec xvi. Lisbon, 1946.
Santos 1962
Santos, Luis Reis. Vasco Fernandes. Lisbon, 1962.
Santos 1925
Santos, Reynoldo dos. As tapegarias da tomada de
Arzila. Lisbon, 1925.
Santos 1932
Santos, Reynaldo dos. "Les principaux manuscrits a
peintures conserves au Portugal." Bulletin de laSociete
Frangaise de Reproductions de Manuscrits a Peinture
U932).
Santos 1950
Santos, Reynaldo dos. "Un Exemplaire de Vasari annote
par Francisco de Olanda." Studi Vasariani (1950), 91-92.
Santos 1955
Santos, Reynaldo dos. Nuno Gongalves. London, 1955.
Santos 1964
Santos, Reynaldo dos. "As iluminuras da 'Cronica de D.
Joao T de Fernao Lopes em Madrid." Coloquio 24 (1964).
Santos 1970
Santos, Reynoldo dos. Oito Seculos de Arte Portuguesa.
3 vols. Lisbon, 1970.
Santos and Quilho 1974
Santos, Reynaldo dos, and Irene Quilho. Ourivesaria
Portuguesa em Colecgoes Particulares. Lisbon, 1974.
Saraiva 1925
Saraiva, Jose. Os Paineis do Infante Santo. Leiria, 1925.
Sauvaget1945-1946
Sauvaget, J. "Une ancienne Representation de Damas au
Musee du Louvre." Bulletin d'etudes orientales, Institut
Frangais de Damas 11 (1945-1946), 5-12.
Savage-Smith 1985
Savage-Smith, Emilie. "Islamicate Celestial Globes:
Their History, Construction and Use." Smithsonian
Studies in History and Technology 46 (Washington, 1985).
Saxl1927
Saxl, Fritz. Die Handschritften der National-Bibliothek
in Wien. Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer
illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters
2. Heidelberg, 1927.
Saxl1954
Saxl, Fritz. English Sculptures of the Twelfth Century.
London,1954.
Scalini 1984
Scalini, Mario. "II 'Reuther' di Albrecht Diirer, Tipologia e Simbologia di un Armamento." Antichita 23 (1984),
15-18.
Scarpellini 1964
Scarpellini, P. Luca Signorelli. Florence, 1964.
Schiedlausky 1989
Schiedlausky, Gtinther. "Natterzungen: Ein Leitfossil in
der Geschichte mittelalterliche Giftfurcht." Kunst und
Antiquitaten (1989, no. 6), 25-31.
Schmidberger 1990
Schmidberger, Ekkehard. "Porzellan aus China und
Japan in Kassel. Zur Geschiche der ehemals Landgraflichen Sammlung." In Porzellan aus China und
Japan.
Die Porzellangalerie der Landgrafen von Hessen-Kassel.
Berlin, 1990,10-40.
Schonberger1922
Schonberger, Guido. "Mathias Griinewalds 'Klein Crucifix/" Stddel Jahrbuch 2 (1922), 35-52.
Schonberger 1935-1936
Schonberger, Guido. "Narwal-Einhorn. Studien iiber
einen seltenen Werkstoff." Stadel-Jahrbuch 9 (19351936), 167-247.
Schulz 1978
Schulz, Juergen. "Jacopo de'Barbari's View of Venice:
Map Making, City Views and Moralized Geography

before the Year 1500." Art Bulletin 60 (1978).

Scillia 1975
Scillia, Diane Grabowski. "Gerard David and Manuscript
Illumination in the Low Countries, 1480-1509." Ph.D.
dissertation. Case Western Reserve University, 1975.
Scotoni1982
Scotoni, Lando. "Prime piante rilevate con le coordinate
polari." Scritti geografici in honore di Aldo Sestini 2
(Florence, 1982), 985-999.
Sed-Rajna 1970
Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle. Manuscrits Hebreux de Lisbonne.
Paris, 1970.
Sed-Rajna 1988
Lisbon Bible 1482, British Library Or. 2626. Introduction
by Gabrielle Sed-Rajna. Tel-Aviv, 1988.
Segurado 1970
Segurado, Jorge. Francisco d'Ollanda. Lisbon, 1970.
Seitz 1965
Seitz, H. Blankwaffen. Vol. i. Brunswick, 1965.
Servolini 1944
Servolini, L. Jacopo de' Barbari. Padua, 1944.
Shapley 1968
Shapley, Fern R. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection. Italian Schools, xv-xvi Century. Washington, 1968.
Shapley 1979
Shapley, Fern R. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings.
National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington,
1979.
Shearman 1975
Shearman, John. "The Collections of the Younger
Branch of the Medici Family." Burlington Magazine 118
U975)/ l8 Shell 1991
Shell, Janice, and Grazioso Sironi. "Salai and Leonardo's
Legacy." Burlington Magazine 133 (Feb. 1991).
Shestack, Talbot, and Hults 1981
Shestack, Alan, Charles Talbot, and Linda Hults. Hans
Baldung Grien. Prints and Drawings. Exh. cat. Washington, 1981.
Shirley 1983
Shirley, Rodney W. The Mapping of the World Early
Printed World Maps 1472-1700. London, 1983.
Simoes 1882
Simoes, A. Filipe. A Exposigdo Retrospectiva de Arte
Ornamental Portuguesa a Hesoanhola em Lisboa. Notas
do Redactor do "Correio da Noite." Lisbon, 1882.
Smith 1983
Smith, Jeffrey Chipps. Nuremberg. A Renaissance City,
15001618. Austin, 1983.
Smith 1974
Smith, R. "Natural versus Scientific Vision: The Foreshortened Figure in the Renaissance." Gazette des Beaux
Arts ser. 6, 84 (1974), 239-248.
Smith 1968
Smith, Robert. The Art of Portugal, 1500-1800. London,
1968.
Snyder 1973
Bosch in Perspective. Edited by James Snyder. Englewood Cliffs, 1973.
Sousa1860
Castro e Sousa, A. D. de . Noticia de alguns Livros iluminados que se guardam no Archivo Real, ou cartorio
de todo o Reino, de iluminadores ate ao sec. 18 e do
estabelecimento em Portugal da Torre do Tombo.
Lisbon, 1860.
Sousa1868
Castro e Sousa, Abbade de . "Baixos-Relevos em Barro
cozido e colorido do secolo xiv." Archivo Pittoresco 9
(1868).
Sousa 1739
Sousa, Antonio Caetano de. Historia Genealogica da
Casa Real Portuguesa. Provas. Vol. 2. Lisbon, 1739.
Sousa1960
Sousa, J. M. Cordeiro de. "Os Medalhoes Delia Robbia
no Museu das Janelas Verdes." Boletim do Museu
Nacional de Arte Antiga 4, 2 (1960).
Spallanzani 1978
Spallanzani, Marco. Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel
Rinascimento. Florence, 1978.
Spitzer and Wiener 1875
Spitzer, Frederic, and Ch. Wiener. Portulan de CharlesQuint, donne a Philippe II, accompagne d'une notice
explicative. Paris, 1875.
663

Sterling 1968
Sterling, Charles. "Les Panneaux de Saint Vincent et
leurs 'Enigmes.'" L'Oeil, Revue de I'Art 158 (1968).
Stevenson 1921
Stevenson, Edward Luther. Terrestrial and Celestial
Globes. Their History and Construction Including a
Consideration of Their Value as Aids in the Study of
Geography and Astronomy. 2 vols. New Haven, 1921.
Stevenson 1932
Geography of Claudius Ptolemy. Edited by Edward
Luther Stevenson. New York, 1932.
Strauss 1972
Strauss, Walter L. The Complete Engravings, Etchings
and Drypoints of Albrecht Dtirer. New York, 1972.
Strauss 1974
Strauss, Walter. The Complete Drawings of Albrecht
Durer. 6 vols. New York, 1974.
Strauss 1976
Strauss, Walter L. The Intaglio Prints of Albrecht Durer.
Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints. New York, 1976.
Strauss 1980
Strauss, Walter L. Albrecht Durer. Woodcuts and Wood
Blocks. New York, 1980.
Strieder 1982
Strieder, Peter. Albrecht Durer, Paintings, Prints, Drawings. Translated by Nancy M. Gordon and Walter L.
Strauss. New York, 1982.
Strika 1978
Strika, Vincenzo. "La Cattedra di S. Pietro a Venezia."
Annali del'lstituto Orientale di Napoli^S (1978), Supplemento n.i5Stromberg 1965
Stromberg, Elisabeth. " Astonomie,' en fransk medeltidsgobelang." Rohsska Konstslojdmuseets Arsbok
1963-1964 (1965), 14-28, 46-47.
Tagliaferri 1989
Tagliaferri, Aldo. Stili delpotereAntiche sculture in
pietra della Sierra Leone e della Guinea. Milan, 1989.
Tagliaferri and Hammacher 1974
Tagliaferri, Aldo, and Arno Hammacher. fabulous
Ancestors: Stone Carvings from Sierra Leone and
Guinea. New York, 1974.
Tanmdi 1985
Tanindi, Zeren. "Cilt Sanatinda Kumas,." Sanat
Diinyamiz 11, 32 (1985), 27-34.
Tarin y Juaneda 1896
Tarin y Juaneda, Francisco. La Cartuja de Miraflores
(Burgos), su historia y descripcion. Burgos, 1896.
Taviani 1986
Taviani, Paolo Emilio. / viaggi di Colombo: la grande
scoperta. Novara, 1986.
Teixeira da Mota 1975
Teixeira da Mota, Avelino. "Gli avori africani nella documentazione portoghese dei secoli xv-xvn." Africa 30, 4
(1975), 580-589.
Tescione 1965
Tescione, Giovanni. // corallo nella storia e nell'arte.
Naples, 1965.
Thieme and Becker 1907-1950
Thieme, U, and F. Becker. Allgemeines Lexikon der
bildenden Kiinstler. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950.
Thomas 1949
Thomas, B. "Konrad Seusenhofer StudienZu seinen
Spatwerken 1511 und 1517." Konsthistorisk Tidsskrift 18
(Stockholm, 1949).
Thomas 1963/1964
Thomas, Bruno. "Orientalische Kostbarkeiten aus der
Waffensammlung zu Wein." Bustan. 4-5. Vienna,
1963/1964.
Thomas and Camber 1954
Thomas, B., and O. Camber. Die Innsbrucker Plattnerkunst. Exh. cat. Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum.
Innsbruck, 1954.
Thomas, Camber, and Schedelmann 1963
Thomas, B., O. Camber, and H. Schedelmann. Die
schonsten Waff en undRustungen. Heidelberg-Munich,
1963.
Thomas, Camber, and Schedelmann 1974
Thomas, Bruno, Ortwin Camber, and Hans Schedelmann. Armi e Armature Europee. Milan, 1974.
Thomas and Camber 1976
Thomas, Bruno, and Ortwin Camber. Katalog der Leibrustkammer. Part i: Der Zeitraum von 500 bis 1530.
Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna, 1976.
664

Thompson 1980
Thompson, F. Paul. Tapestry. Mirror of History. Newton
Albot, 1980.
Thompson 1854
Thompson, G. Thompson in Africa. New York, 1854.
Tietze and Tietze-Conrat 1935
Tietze, Hans, and E. Tietze-Conrat. "The Sultan and
His Mistress' by Albrecht Durer." Print Collector's
Quarterly 22 (1935), 213-223.
Tietze and Tietze-Conrat 1937-1938
Tietze, Hans, and Erika Tietze-Conrat. Kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke Albrecht Durers. 3 vols. Basel,
1937-1938.
Toledo 1958
Carlos vy su ambiente. Exposicion homenaje en el iv
Centenario de su muerte (1558-1958). Toledo, 1958.
Tolnay 1943-1960
Tolnay, Charles de. Michelangelo. 5 vols. Princeton,
1943-1960.
Tolnay 1975-1980
Tolnay, Charles de. Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo.
4 vols. Novara, 1975-1980.
Tosti et al. 1982
Tosti and others. "Due interventi di Conservazione."
Istituto Statale d'Arte di Gubbio. Perugia, 1982.
Trionfi 1983
Trionfi, Honorati M. "Prospettive architettoniche a
tarsia: le porte del Palazzo Ducale di Urbino." Notizie di
Palazzo Albani 12 (1983), 38-50.
Trizna 1976
Trizna, Jazeps. Michel Sittow: Peinture revalais de I'ecole
bourgeoise (1468-1525/1526). Brussels, 1976.
Turner 1987
Turner, Anthony. Early Scientific Instruments. Europe
1400-1800. London, 1987.
Ulucay 1960
Ulugay, M. agatay. Osmanh Sultanlanna ak
mekluplan. Istanbul, 1960.
Unal 1969
Unal, Ismail. "ini cami Kandilleri." Turk sanati tarihi.
Ara$tirma ve incemeleri. Vol. 3. Istanbul, 1969, 74-111.
Underwood 1949
Underwood, Leo. Bronzes of West Africa. London, 1949.
Unver 1958
Unver, Ahmed Siiheyl. Fatih devri saray nakkahanesi
ve Baba Nakka gahmalan. Istanbul, 1958.
Unverfehert 1980
Unverfehert, Gerd. Hieronymus Bosch. Die Rezeption
seiner Kunst im fruhen 16. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1980.
Urbino 1978
Bernini, Dante, and Grazia Pezzini Bernini. // Restauro
della Citta Ideale di Urbino. Exh. cat. Urbino, 1978.
Urrea Fernandez 1982
Urrea Fernandez, Jesus. La Catedral de Burgos. Leon,
1982.
Uzunc.ars.ih 1986
Uzunc,arili, I. H. "Osmanh Sarayinda ehl-i hiref 'sanatkarlar' defterleri." Belgeler 15 (Ankara, 1986), 23-76.
Vadillo
Vadillo, Alfonso. Archivo Municipal de Burgos. Sec.
fotografica, 927-951.
Valladolid 1988
Las edades del hombre. El arte en la iglesia de Castilla y
Leon. Exh. cat. Cathedral of Valladolid. Salamanca, 1988.
Vandenbroeck 1987
Vandenbroeck, Paul. Jheronimus Boschf tussen volksleven en stadscultuur. Berchem, 1987.
Vandenbroeck 1987
Vandenbroeck, Paul. Over wilden en narren, boeren en
bedelaars. Beeld van de andere, vertoog over het zelf.
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Antwerp,
1987. ^
Vandevivere 1967
Vandevivere, Ignace. La Cathedrale de Palencia et I'eglise paroissale de Cervera de Pisuerga. Brussels, 1967.
Vascano 1892
Vascano, Antonio. Ensayo Biogrdphico del Celebre
Navegante y Consumado Cosmografo Juan de la Cosa.
Madrid, 1892.
Vasconcelos 1882
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. Ensaio Historico sobre a
Ourivesaria Portuguesa, Sees xiv-xvi. Porto, 1882.
Vasconcelos 1895
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. "Taboas da pintura portuguesa

no seculo xv Retrato Inedito do Infante D. Henrique."

O Comercio do Porto (27-28 July 1895).
Vasconcelos 1896
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. "A Pintura Portuguesa nos
seculos xv e xvi." Arte, Revista Internacional i, 3 (1896),
151-162.
Vasconcelos 1904
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. Arte Religiosa em Portugal.
fasc. 13. Porto, 1904.
Vasconcelos 1929
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. Albrecht Durer e a sua influencia na Peninsula. Coimbra, 1929.
Vasconcelos 1951
Vasconcelos, Joaquim de. A Ourivesaria Portuguesa nos
seculos xv e xvi. Porto, 1951.
Venice 1968
Cento codici Bessarionei. Exh. cat. Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana. Venice, 1968.
Veth and Muller 1918
Veth, Jan, and Samuel Muller. Albrecht Durers Niederlandische Reise. 2 vols. Berlin and Utrecht, 1918.
Vieira Santos 1959
Vieira Santos, Armando. Os Paineis de Sao Vicente de
Fora. Lisbon, 1959.
Vienna 1936
Grosz, August, and Bruno Thomas. Katalog der Waffensammlung in der Neuen Burg, Schausammlung. Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna, 1936.
Vienna 1964
Katalog der Sammlung fur Plastik und Kunstgewerbe.
Mittelalter. Vienna, 1964.
Vienna 1976
See Thomas and Camber 1976.
Vienna 1982
Matthias Corvinus und die Renaissance in Ungarn 14581541. Exh. cat. Schloss Schallaburg. Vienna, 1982.
Villacampa 1928
Villacampa, Carlos G. "La Capilla del Condestable, de la
Catedral de Burgos." Archivo Espanol de Arte y Arqueologia 4 (1928), 25-44.
Villain-Gandossi 1985
Villain-Gandossi, Christiane. Le navire medieval a
travers les miniatures. Paris, 1985.
Viterbo 1882
Viterbo, Sousa. "A Exposicjio de Arte Ornamental.
Notas ao Catalogo." Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia
de Lisboa (1882).
Viterbo 1899
Viterbo, Sousa. Diciondrio Historico e Documental dos
Arquitectos, Engenheiros e Construtores Portugueses.
Lisbon, 1899.
Viterbo 1920
Viterbo, Sousa. Aries e Artistas em Portugal. Lisbon,
1920 (ist edition 1892).
Voss 1943
Voss, Wilhelm. "Eine Himmelskarte vom Jahre 1503
mit den Wahrzeichen des Wiener Poetenkollegiums als
Vorlage Albrecht Durers." Jahrbuch der preussischen
Kunstsammlungen 64 (1943), 89-150.
Wagner 1985
Wagner, Franz. "Beschlagene Straussen-Ayer. Ungewohnliche Trinkgeschirre des Spatmittelalters und der
fruhen Neuzeit." Kunst und Antiquitaten (1985), no. 2,
32-42.
Wagner 1986
Wagner, Franz. "'Halt veste uns komen Geste':
Greifenklauen als festliche Trinkgeschirre." Kunst und
Antiquitaten (1986), no. 3, 64-70.
Wagner 1931
Wagner, Henry Raup. "The Manuscript Atlases of Battista Agnese." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of
America 25 (1931), 1-110.
Wagner 1947
Wagner, Henry Raup. "Additions to the Manuscript
Atlases of Battista Agnese." Imago Mundi 4 (1947),
28-30.
Waldseemiiller 1507
Waldseemiiller, Martin. Cosmographiae introductio.
Saint-Die, 1507.
Walker 1967
Walker, John. "Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci."
Report and Studies in the History of Art. Washington,
1967,1-38.
Walker 1975

Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Washington, 1975.
Ward 1883-1910
Ward, Henry Leigh Douglas. Catalogue of Romances in
the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum.
3 vols. London, 1883-1910.
Wardwell 1988-1989
Wardwell, Anne. "Panni tartarici: Eastern Islamic Silks
Woven with Gold and Silver (i3th and 14th Centuries)."
Islamic Art 3 (1988-1989), 95-173.
Warner 1889
Warner, George Frederick. The Buke of John Mandevill,
being the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. London, 1889.
Warner and Gilson 1921
Warner, George, and Julius P. Gilson. British Museum.
Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and
King's Collections. 4 vols. London, 1921.
Washington 1966
Art Treasures of Turkey. Exh. cat. Smithsonian Institution. Washington, 1966.
Washington 1971
Durer in America: His Graphic Work. Edited by Charles
W. Talbot. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1971.
Washington 1986
Leithe-Jasper, Manfred. Renaissance Master Bronzes
from the Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art. Washington,
1986.
Washington 1988
Hirst, Michael. Michelangelo Draftsman. Exh. cat.
National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1988.
Wattenberg 1980
Wattenberg, Diedrich. "Johannes Regiomontanus und
die astronomischen Instrumente seiner Zeit." In Regiomontanus-Studien. Edited by Gunther Hamann.
Vienna, 1980, 343-362.
Watts 1924
Watts, William Walter. Old English Silver. London, 1924.
Weil-Garris Posner 1970
Weil-Garris Posner, Kathleen. "Notes on S. Maria
deirAnima." Storia dell'art e 6 (1970).
Weise 1925
Weise, George. Spanische Plastik aus sieben Jahrhunderten. 4 vols. Reutlingen, 1925.
Welliver 1973
Welliver, W. "The Symbolic Architecture of Domenico
Veneziano and Piero della Francesca." Art Quarterly 26
(1973), 1-30.
Welsh 1904
Welsh, James. "A journey to Benin beyond the countrey
of Guinea made by Master James Welsh, who set forth
in the yeere 1588." The Principal Navigations Voyages
Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Edited
by R. Hackluyt. London, 1904.
Wethey 1936
Wethey, Harold E. Gil de Siloe and His School. Cambridge, Mass., 1936.
White 1973
White, Christopher. "An Oriental Ruler on His Throne'
and The Entombment': Two New Drawings by Albrecht
Diirer." Master Drawings 11 (1973), 365-374.
Whitehouse 1973
Whitehouse, David. "Chinese Porcelain in Medieval
Europe." Medieval Archaeology 16 (1973), 63-78.
Wickhoff 1882
Wickhoff, F. "Die Antike im Bildungsgange Michelangelos." Mitteilungen des Instituts fur Oesterreichische
Geschichtsforschung 2 (1882), 408-435.
Wieser 1876
Wieser, Franz. "Der Portulan des Infanten und nachmaligen Konigs Philipp II von Spanien." Sitzungsberichte
der philosophisch-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften 82 (1876), 541-561.
Wilde 1944
Wilde, Johannes. "The Hall of the Great Council of Florence." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7
(1944), 65-81.
Willett 1971
Willett, Frank. African Art. London, 1971.
Willett 1986
Willett, Frank. "A Missing Millennium? From Nok to Ife
and Beyond." Arte in Africa Realta e prospettive nello
studio delle arti africane. Edited by Ezio Bassani. Flor-

ence, 1986, 87-100.

Wilson 1976
Wilson, Adrian. The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Amsterdam, 1976.
Winkler 1925
Winkler, Friedrich. Die Flamische Buchmalerei des xv.
und xvi. Jahrunderts. Leipzig, 1925.
Winkler 1932
Winkler, Friedrich. "Diirerstudien in Verschollene
Meisterzeichnungen Diirers. Einige berufssmassige
Kopisten (Meister der i52oer Jahre, Hans Hoffmann
usw)." Berliner Jahrbuch 35 (1932), 68-89.
Winkler 1936-1939
Winkler, Friedrich. Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Diirers. 4
vols. Berlin, 1936-1939.
Winter 1981
Winter, Patrick M. de. "A Book of Hours of Queen Isabel
la Catolica." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art bj,
10 (1981), 342-421.
Winterberg 1899
Winterberg, C. Pictor Burgensis de Prospectiva
pingendi. Strassburg, 1899.
Wirth 1979
Wirth, J. La Jeunne fille et la mort. Geneva, 1979.
Wittkower 1942
Wittkower, Rudolf. "Marvels of the East: A Study in the
History of Monsters." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159-197.
Wittkower 1977
Wittkower, Rudolf. "Marvels of the East: A Study in the
History of Monsters," "Marco Polo and the Pictorial
Tradition of the Marvels of the East," and "Roc: An Eastern Prodigy in a Dutch Engraving." In Allegory and the
Migration of Symbols. London, 1977, 45-74; 76-92;
93-96.
Wohl 1980
Wohl, Helmut. The Paintings of Domenico Veneziano.
New York and London, 1980.
Wohl 1976
Condivi, Ascanio. The Life of Michelangelo. Edited by
H. Wohl. Translated by A. Sedgwick Wohl. Baton
Rouge, La., 1976.
Wolf 1960
Wolf, Siegfried. "Afrikanische Elfenbeinloffel des 16.
Jahrhunderts im Museum fur Volkerkunde Dresden."
Ethnologica 2 (1960), 410-425.
Wolfe 1962
Wolfe, Philippe. Le Temps et sa Mesure au Moyen-Age.
Paris, 1962.
Wolff-Metternich 1967-1968
Wolff-Metternich, Franz Graf. "Der Kupferstich Bernardos de Prevedari aus Mailand von 1481. Gedanken zu
den Anfangen der Kunst Bramantes." Romisches Jahrbuch fur Kunstgeschichte 11 (1967-1968), 7-108.
Woodward 1987
Woodward, David. "Medieval Mappaemundi." In The
History of Cartography I. Edited by J. B. Harvey and
David Woodward. Chicago and London, 1987, 286-370.
Yorukan 1965
Yorukan, Beyhan. "Topkapi Sarayi Miizesindeki
albiimlerde bulunan bazi rulo parc,alari." Sanat
Tarihi Yilligi 1964-1965. Istanbul, 1965,188-199.
Young 1975
Young, Eric. Bartolome Bermejo: The Great HispanoFlemish Master. London, 1975.
Yiicel 1988
Yiicel, Unsal. Al-suyuf al-isldmiyya. Translated by
Tahsin Amratoglu. Kuwait, 1988.
Yiiksel 1983
Yiiksel, I. Aydin. Osmanh mimarisinde II. Bdyezid
Yavuz Selim devri (886-926/1482-1520). Istanbul, 1983.
Yule 1875
Yule, Henry. The Book of Ser Marco Polo. 2 vols.
London,1875.
Zammit-Maempel 1975
Zammit-Maempel, George. "Fossil Sharks' Teeth: A
Medieval Safeguard against Poisoning." Melita Historica
6,4 (*975)/ 39i-4*oZeiler 1659
Zeiler, Martin. Exoticophylacium Weickmannianum.
Ulm, 1659.
Zeri 1976
Zeri, Federigo. Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gal-'
lery. Baltimore, 1976.

Zink 1968
Zink, Fritz. Die Handzeichnungen bis zur Mitte des 16.
Jahrhunderts. Kataloge des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Niirnberg. Die deutschen Handzeichnungen i.
Nuremberg, 1968.
Zollner 1987
Zollner, F. Vitruvs Proportionsfigur. Quellenkritische
Studien zur Kunstliteratur im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert.
Worms, 1987.
Zorzi 1988
Zorzi, Marino. Biblioteca Marciana, Venezia. Florence,
1988.
Ziilch 1938
Ziilch, W. K. Der historische Grunewald: Mathis
Gorthart-Neithardt. Munich, 1938.
Zurla 1806
Zurla, Placido. // mappamondo di Fra Mauro Camaldolese. Venice, 1806.
Zygulski 1969
Zygulski, Zdzislaw Jr. Contribution aux etudes sur la
Dame a I'hermine. Le style du vetement et les noeuds
de Leonardo.

II. TOWARD CATHAY

Acker 1954
Acker, William R. Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on
Chinese Painting. Leiden, 1954.
Ann Arbor 1976
Edwards, Richard. The Art of Wen Cheng-ming. Exh.
cat. University of Michigan Museum of Art. Ann Arbor,
1976.
Barnhart in Bush and Murck 1983
Barnhart, Richard. "The 'Wild and Heterodox School' of
Ming Painting." In Bush and Murck 1983.
Beijing 1983
A Selection of Ming Dynasty Court Paintings and Zhe
School Paintings. Exh. cat. Palace Museum. Beijing, 1983.
Beijing and Hong Kong 1990
The Wumen Paintings of the Ming Dynasty. Exh. cat.
Palace Museum. Beijing and Hong Kong, 1990. With
English suppl.
Born 1936
Born, Wolfgang. "Some Eastern Objects from the
Hapsburg Collections." Burlington Magazine 69 (1936),
269-277.
Boston 1970
Fontein, Jan, and Money Hickman. Zen Painting and
Calligraphy. Exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Brankston 1938,1970
Brankston, A^ D. Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen.
Peking, 1938, reprint Hong Kong, 1970.
Brewitt-Taylor 1925
Brewitt-Taylor, C. H., translator. Lo Kuanchung's
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Shanghai, 1925.
Bush and Murck 1983
Theories of Art in China. Edited by Susan Bush and
Christian Murck. Princeton, 1983.
Bush and Shih 1985
Bush, Susan, and Hsiao-yen Shih. Early Chinese Texts
on Painting. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1985.
Cahill 1978
Cahill, James. Parting at the Shore. New York and
Tokyo, 1978.
Cambridge 1988
Cambridge History of China. Edited by Frederick W.
Mote and Denis Twitchett. Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty,
1368-1644: Part One.
Castile 1971
Castile, Rand. The Way of Tea. New York, 1971.
Ch'en 1966
Ch'en Chih-mei. Chinese Calligraphers and Their Art.
Adelaide, 1966.
Chan 1982
Chan, Albert. The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty.
Norman, Okla., 1982.
Chapman 1982
Chapman, Jan. "The Use of Manipulation in Chinese
Rhinoceros Horn Cups." Arts of Asia 12 (July-August
1982), 101-105.
665

Chiang 1954,1973
Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy. London, 1954, reprint
Cambridge, Mass., 1973.
Chicago 1985
Carswell, John. Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and
Its Impact on the Western World. Exh. cat. Smart Gallery, University of Chicago. Chicago, 1985.
Cleveland 1977
Japanese Screens from the Museum and Cleveland Collections. Exh. cat. Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland,
*977Cleveland 1980
Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and
Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting.
Exh. cat. Cleveland Museum of Art and Nelson- Atkins
Museum of Art, Kansas City. Cleveland, 1980.
Cleveland 1983
Lee, Sherman E., and others. Reflections of Reality in
Japanese Art. Exh. cat. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Cleveland, 1983.
Cleveland 1990
Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Exh. cat. Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1990.
Cort 1979, 1981
Cort, Louise A. Shigaraki: Potters Valley. Tokyo and
New York, 1979, 1981.
Covell 1941, 1974
Covell, Jon C. Under the Seal of Sesshu. New York,
1941, reprint New York, 1974.
Covell and Yamada 1974
Covell, Jon, and Sobin Yamada. Zen at Daitoku-ji. Tokyo,
New York, and San Francisco, 1974.
David 1971
David, Sir Percival. Chinese Connoisseur ship : The Ko Ku
Yao Lun. London, 1971.
DeWoskin in Bush and Murck 1983
DeWoskin, Kenneth. "Early Chinese Music and the
Origins of Aesthetic Terminology/' In Bush, and Murck
1983
Driscoll and Toda 1935, 1964
Driscoll, Lucy, and Kenji Toda. Chinese Calligraphy.
Chicago, 1935, reprint New York, 1964.
Edwards 1962
Edwards, Richard. The Field of Stones: A Study of the
Art of Shen Chou. Washington, 1962.
Edwards 1976
Edwards, Richard. "Shen Chou." In Dictionary of Ming
Biography. Edited by L. Carrington Goodrich and
Chaoying Fang. New York, 1986, 2:1173-1177.
Ellsworth 1971
Ellsworth, Robert H. Chinese Furniture. New York,
1971.
Faulkner and Impey 1981
Faulkner, R. F. J., and Oliver R. Impey. Shino and Oribe
Kiln Sites. Oxford, 1981.
Feddersen 1961
Feddersen, Martin. Chinese Decorative Art. New York,
1961.
Fong 1958
Fong, Wen. The Lohans and a Bridge to Heaven.
Washington, 1958.
Fukuyama 1976
Fukuyama, Toshio. Heian Temples: Byodo-in and
Chuson-ji. New York and Tokyo, 1976.
Garner 1962
Garner, Sir Harry. Chinese and Japanese Cloisonne
Enamels. London, 1962.
Garner 1979
Garner, Sir Harry. Chinese Lacquer. London, 1979.
Gompertz 1968
Gompertz, G. St. G. M. Korean Pottery and Porcelain of
the Yi Period. London, 1968.
Goodrich and Fang 1976
Goodrich, L. Carrington, and Chaoying Fang, editors.
Dictionary of Ming Biography. New York, 1976, 2 vols.
Gordon 1959
Gordon, Antoinette. The Iconography of Tibetan Lamaism. Rutland, Vt., 1959.
Goswamy 1988
Goswamy, B. N. A Jainesque Sultanate Shahnama and
the Context of Pre-Mughal Painting in India. Zurich, 1988.
Hall and Toyoda 1977
Hall, John W, and Takeshi Toyoda, editors. Japan in the
Muromachi Age. Berkeley, 1977.

666

Harada 1937
Harada, Jiro. A Glimpse of Japanese Ideals. Tokyo, 1937.
Hayashiya, Nakamura, and Hayashiya 1974
Hayashiya Tatsusaburo, Nakamura Masao, and Hayashiya Seizo. Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony. Tokyo
and New York, 1974.
Hetherington 1948
Hetherington, A. L. Chinese Ceramic Glazes. South
Pasadena, Cal., 1948.
Hong Kong 1988
Paintings of the Ming Dynasty from the Palace
Museum. Exh. cat. Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, 1988.
Huai'an 1988
Huai'an County Museum. The Wang Zen [sic] Tomb of
the Ming Dynasty at Huai'an. Huai'an, 1988. With
English summary.
Huntington 1990
Huntington, Susan L., and John C. Huntington. Leaves
from the Bodhi Tree. Seattle and London, 1990.
lenaga 1973
lenaga, Saburo. Painting in the Yamato Style. New York
and Tokyo, 1973.
Jenyns 1953
Jenyns, Soame. Ming Pottery and Porcelain. London,
1953Jenyns 1971
Jenyns, Soame. Japanese Pottery. London, 1971.
Jenyns and Watson 1980
Jenyns, Soame, and William Watson. Chinese Art: The
Minor Arts n. New York, 1980.
Kanazawa 1979
Kanazawa, Hiroshi. Japanese Ink Paintings: Early Zen
Masterpieces. Tokyo and New York, 1979.
Kates 1948,1962
Kates, George N. Chinese Household Furniture. New
York, 1948, reprint, New York 1962.
Keene 1971
Keene, Donald. Landscapes and Portraits. Tokyo, 1971.
Kim 1990-1991
Kim, Kumja Paik. "The Introduction of the Southern
School Painting Tradition to Korea." Oriental Art 36, no.
4 (Winter 1990-1991), 186-195.
Kim and Gompertz 1961
Kim, Chewon, and G. St. G. M. Gompertz. The Ceramic
Art of Korea. London, 1961.
Kim and Lee 1974
Kim, Chewon, and Lena Kim Lee. Arts of Korea, Tokyo,
New York, and San Francisco, 1974.
Lach 1970
Lach, Donald F. Asia in the Making of Europe. Vol. 2:
A Century of Wonder. Chicago, 1970.
Lee 1963
Lee, Sherman E. Tea Taste in Japanese Art. New York,
1963.
Lin in Bush and Murck 1983
Lin, Shuen-fu. "Chiang K'uei's Treatises on Poetry and
Calligraphy." In Bush and Murck 1983.
Little 1985
Little, Stephen. "The Demon Queller and the Art of Qiu
Ying." Artibus Asiae 46,1/2 (1985).
Loehr1980
Loehr, Max. The Great Painters of China. New York, 1980.
London 1958
Oriental Ceramic Society. The Arts of the Ming
Dynasty. Exh. cat. Arts Council of Great Britain.
London,1958.
London 1982
Losty, Jeremiah P. The Art of the Book in India. London,
1982.
London 1984
Goepper, Roger, and Roderick Whitfield, editors.
Treasures from Korea: Art Through 5000 Years. Exh.
cat. The British Museum. London, 1984.
Los Angeles 1977
Pal, Pratapaditya. The Sensuous Immortals: A Selection
of Sculptures from the Pan Asian Collection. Exh. cat.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1977.
Los Angeles 1984
Light of Asia. Exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. Los Angeles, 1984.
Los Angeles 1985
Miyajima, Shin'ichi, and Yasuhiro Sato. Japanese Ink
Painting. Edited by George Kuwayama. Exh. cat. Los

Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1985.

Los Angeles 1989
Kotz, Suzanne, editor. Imperial Taste: Chinese Ceramics
from the Percival David Foundation. Exh. cat. Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1989.
Matsushita 1961
Matsushita Takaaki. Suiboku Painting of the Muromachi
Period. Tokyo, 1961.
Matsushita 1974
Matsushita Takaaki. Ink Painting. Translated by Martin
Collcutt. Tokyo and New York, 1974.
McCune 1962
McCune, Evelyn. The Arts of Korea, an Illustrated
History. Tokyo, 962.
Medley 1962-1963
Medley, Margaret. "Re-grouping 15th Century Blue and
White." Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 34
(1962-1963).
Medley 1963
Medley, Margaret. Illustrated Catalogue of Porcelains
Decorated in Underglaze Blue and Copper Red. London:
Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1963.
Medley 1966
Medley, Margaret. Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Polychrome Wares. London, Percival David Foundation of
Chinese Art, 1966.
Medley 1976
Medley, Margaret. The Chinese Potter. Ithaca, N. Y,
1976, rev. ed.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 1983
Schimmel, Annemarie. In Notable Acquisitions
1981-1982. New York, 1983.
Mikami 1983
Mikami, Tsugio. The Art of Japanese Ceramics. 5th
printing, New York and Tokyo, 1983.
Munakata 1974
Munakata, Kiyohiko. Ching Hao's Pi-fa-chi: A Note on
the Art of the Brush. Ascona, 1974.
Murck 1976
Murck, Christian, editor. Artists and Traditions. Princeton, 1976, esp. Wai-kam Ho, "Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's New
Orthodoxy and Southern School Theory," 113-129.
Nara 1973
Korean Paintings of the Koryo and Yi Dynasties, Exh.
cat. Yamato Bunkakan. Nara, 1973.
Nara 1979
The Arts of the Lotus Sutra. Exh. cat. Nara National
Museum. Nara, 1979.
Nara 1985
Arts Treasures of Mountain Religion. Exh. cat. Nara
National Museum. Nara, 1985.
New Delhi 1964
Manuscripts from Indian Collections. Exh. cat. National
Museum of India. New Delhi, 1964.
New Haven 1977
Fu, Shen C. Y. Traces of the Brush: Studies in Chinese
Calligraphy. Exh. cat. Yale University Art Gallery.
New Haven, 1977.
New York 1968
Griffing, Robert P., Jr. The Art of the Korean Potter.
Exh. cat. The Asia Society. New York, 1968.
New York 1980
Watt, James. Chinese Jades from Han to Ch'ing. Exh.
cat. The Asia Society. New York, 1980.
New York 1981
Lee, Sherman E., and others. One Thousand Years of
Japanese Art. Exh. cat. Japan Society. New York, 1981.
New York 1982-1983
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions
1981-1982. New York, 1983.
New York 1983
Murase, Miyeko. Emaki: Narrative Scrolls from Japan.
Exh. cat. The Asia Society. New York, 1983.
New York 1985
Welch, Stuart Cary. India: Art and Culture 13001900.
Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York,
1985.
New York 1989
Brinker, Helmut, and A. Lutz. Chinese Cloisonne: The
Pierre Uldry Collection. Exh. cat. The Asia Society.
New York, 1989.
New York 1991
Kim, Hongnam. The Story of a Painting. Exh. cat. The
Asia Society. New York, 1991, esp. 22-23.

Okazaki 1977
Okazaki, Joji. Pure Land Buddhist Painting. Tokyo,
New York, and San Francisco, 1977.
Okudaira 1962
Okudaira, Hideo. Emaki: Japanese Picture Scrolls.
Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo, 1962.
Pal 1984
Pal, Pratapaditya. Tibetan Paintings. Vaduz and Basel,
1984.
Pal 1988
Pal, Pratapaditya. Indian Sculpture. Vol. 2: 700-1800.
Los Angeles, 1988.
Pal and Tseng 1975
Pal, Pratapaditya, and Hsien-ch'i Tseng. Lamaist Art:
The Aesthetics of Harmony. Boston, 1975.
Paris 1977
Dieux et Demons de I'Himalaya. Exh. cat. Musees
Nationaux. Paris, 1977.
Philadelphia 1971
Ecke, Tseng Yu-ho. Chinese Calligraphy. Exh. cat.
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 1971.
Princeton 1976
Shimizu, Yoshiaki, and Carolyn Wheelwright, editors.
Japanese Ink Paintings from American Collections. Exh.
cat. The Art Museum, Princeton University. Princeton,
1976.
Princeton 1984
Fong, Wen. Images of the Mind. Exh. cat. The Art
Museum, Princeton University. Princeton, 1984.
Rhee 1978
Rhee, Byung-chang, editor, and Ikutaro Itoh, managing
editor. Masterpieces of Korean Art. Vol. 3: Yi Ceramics.
Tokyo, 1978.
Rhodes 1970
Rhodes, Daniel. Tamba Pottery. Tokyo, New York, and
San Francisco, 1970.
Riddell 1979
Riddell, Sheila. Dated Chinese Antiquities, 600-1650.
London,1979.
Rogers 1988
Rogers, Howard. Masterworks of Ming and Qing Painting from the Forbidden City. Exh. cat.International Arts
Council. Lansdale, Pa., 1989.
Rosenfield in Hall and Toyoda 1977
Rosenfield, John M. "The Unity of the Three Creeds."
In Hall and Toyoda, 1977.
Sadler 1962
Sadler, Arthur L. Cha-no-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony. Reprint, Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo, 1962.
San Francisco 1979
Five Thousand Years of Korean Art. Exh. cat. Asian Art
Museum of San Francisco. San Francisco, 1979.
Sanford 1981
Sanford, James H. Zen-Man Ikkyu. Boston, 1981.
Sansom 1958
Sansom, Sir George. A History of Japan. Vol. i: To 1334.
Vol. 2: 1334-1615. Stanford, 1958,1961.
Saunders 1960
Saunders, E. Dale. Mudrd: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture. New York, 1960.
Sawa 1972
Sawa Takaaki. Art in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. New
York and Tokyo, 1972.
Sayer1951
Sayer, Geoffrey R. Ching-Te-Chen T'ao-Lu or The Potteries of China. London, 1951.
Schafer 1963
Schafer, Edward H. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand.
Berkeley, 1963.
Schafer 1969
Schafer, Edward H. Shore of Pearls. Berkeley, 1969.
Seattle 1972
Ceramic Art of Japan. Exh. cat. Seattle Museum of Art.
Seattle, 1972.
Seoul 1972
Ancient Arts of Korea. Exh. cat. National Museum of
Korea. Seoul, 1972.
Siren 1958
Siren, Osvald. Chinese Painters: Leading Masters and
Principles. London, 1958.
Siren 1963
Siren, Osvald. The Chinese on the Art of Painting.
New York, 1963.
Snellgrove 1987

Snellgrove, David. Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. 2 vols.

Boston, 1987.
Soper1958
Soper, Alexander C, translator. "T'ang Chao Ming Hua
Lu" [Celebrated Painters of the T'ang Dynasty], by Zhu
Jingxuan [9th century]. In Artibus Asiae 31 (1958),
204-230.
Speiser, n.d.
Speiser, Werner. Meisterwerke Chinesischen Malerei aus
der Sammlung der Japanischen Reichsmarschalle Yoshimitsu und Yoshimasa. Berlin, n.d.
Sullivan 1974
Sullivan, Michael. The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy. London, 1974.
Taipei 1974
An Exhibition of Works by Ch'iu Ying. Exh. cat.
National Palace Museum. Taipei, 1974.
Taipei 1975
Ninety Years of Wu School Painting. Exh. cat. National
Palace Museum. Taipei, 1975.
Tanaka 1972
Tanaka Ichimatsu. Japanese Ink Painting: Shubun to
Sesshu. New York and Tokyo, 1972.
Tanaka 1978
Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei. Ichimatsu Tanaka, editor. Vol. 6:
Josetsu, Shubun, and the Three Ami. Tokyo, 1978.
Tanaka and Nakamura 1973
Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei. Vol. 7: Sesshu, Sesson, by Ichimatsu Tanaka and Tanio Nakamura. Tokyo, 1973.
Tate 1989-1990
Tate, John. "The Sixteen Arhats in Tibetan Painting/'
Oriental Art 35 (Winter 1989-1990).
Tokyo 1977
Commemorative Catalogue of the Special Exhibition,
Oriental Lacquer Arts. Exh. cat. Tokyo National
Museum. Tokyo, 1977.
Tokyo 1985
Japanese Ceramics. Exh. cat. Tokyo National Museum.
Tokyo, 1985.
Tseng 1954
Tseng Yu-ho. " 'The Seven Junipers' of Wen Chengming." Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 8
(1954)Valenstein 1989
Valenstein, Suzanne. A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics.
New York, 1989.
Vanderstappen 1956,1957
Vanderstappen, Harrie. "Painters at the Early Ming
Court (1368-1435) and the Problem of a Ming Academy." Monumenta Serica 15, no. 2 (1956) and 16, nos. 1-2
(*957)Von Schroeder 1981
Von Schroeder, Ulrich. Indo-Tibetan Bronzes. Hong
Kong, 1981.
Wang 1986
Wang Shixiang. Classic Chinese Furniture. Bangkok,
1986.
Willetts 1958
Willetts, William. Chinese Art. Vol. i: jade, lacquer, and
silk. Vol. 2: ceramics. Baltimore, 1958.
Xu 1987
Xu Bangda. "Huai'an Ming mu Chu-tu shu-hua jian xi."
Wenwu 1987, no. 3.
Yamada 1964
Yamada, Chisaburoh, editor. Decorative Arts of Japan.
Tokyo, 1964.
Yashiro 1960
Yashiro Yukio, editor. Art Treasures of Japan. 2 vols.
Tokyo, 1960.
Yonezawa 1956
Yonezawa Yoshio. Painting in the Ming Dynasty. Tokyo,
1956.

III. THE AMERICAS

Alegria 1983
Alegria, Ricardo. "Aspectos de la cultura de las indios
tamos de las Antillas Mayores en la documentation etnohistorico." La Cultura Taina. Madrid, 1983,123-140.

Andree 1914
Andree, Richard. "Seltene Ethnographica des stadtoschen Gewerbe-Museums zu Ulm." Baessler-Archiv 4
(1914), 29-38.
Anghiera 1530
Anghiera, Petrus Martyr d'. De Orbe Novo. Alcala,
1530.
Arrom 1988
Arrom, Jose Juan. Fray Ramon Pane, Relation acerca de
las antiguedades de los indios: El primer tratado escrito
en America. 8th edition. Mexico City, 1988.
Arrom 1989
Arrom, Jose Juan. Mitologia y artes prehispdnicas de las
Antillas. id edition. Mexico City, 1989.
Bandelier 1910
Bandelier, Adolf F. The Islands of Titicaca and Koati.
New York, 1910.
Barthel 1971
Barthel, Thomas S. "Viracochas Prunkgewand (TocapuStudien i)." Tribus 20 (1971), 63-124.
Besom 1991
Besom, Thomas. "Another Mummy." Natural History
(April 1991), 66-67.
Beyer 1921
Beyer, Hermann. El llamado "Calendario Azteca."
Mexico City, 1921.
Bischof 1968
Bischof, Henning. "Contribution a la Cronologia de la
Cultura Tairona (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia)/' Verdhandlungen des xxxvm Internationalen
Amerkanistencongresses. Munich, 1968.
Blake and Hauser 1978
Blake, Leonard W, and James G. Hauser. "The Whelpley
Collection of Indian Artifacts/' Academy of Science of
St. Louis, Transactions 32, i (1978).
Bologna 1660
Supplica del senatore Marchese Fernando Cospi al
Senato di Bologna. Fondo del Senato, series F, Bologna,
Archivio di Stato, 24 June 1660.
Bologna 1680
Inventario semplice di tutte le materie descritte che si
trovano nel Museo Cospiano. Non solo le notate nel libro
gia stampato e composto dal Sig. Dottore Lorenzo Legati
ma ancora le aggiuntevi dopo la Fabrica. Bologna, 1680.
Bologna 1743
Inventario delle Cose del Museo Cospiano spettanti alia
Stanza delle Antichita. MS 273, Fondazione dell'Istituto
delle Scienze di Bologna, fasc. 5. University Library,
Bologna, 6 June 1743.
Bozzoli de Wille 1975
Bozzoli de Wille, Maria Eugenia. "Birth and Death in
the Belief System of the Bribri Indians of Costa Rica."
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, Athens, 1975.
Bray 1990
Bray, Warwick. "Le travail du metal dans le Peru prehispanique." Brussels in 1990, 292-315.
Brown 1976
Brown, James A. Spiro Studies Volume 4: The Artifacts.
Norman, Okla., 1976.
Brussels 1990
Inca Peru: 3000 ans d'histoire. Edited by Sergio Purin.
Exh. cat. Musees royaux d'Art et d'Histoire. Brussels, 1990.
Budde 1982
Budde, Hendrik. "Gross Venedig, die Residenz Vitslipitsli. Graphische Visionen der aztekischen Hauptstadt
Tenochtitla." Mythen der Neuen Welt. Zur Entdeckungsgeschichte Lateinamerikas. Exh. cat. Martin-GropiusBau. Berlin, 1982,173-182.
Burnett 1945
Burnett, E. K. The Spiro Mound Collection in the
Museum. Contributions from the Museum of the
American Indian Heye Foundation, vol. 14. New York,
*945Bushnell 1905
Bushnell, D. I. "Two Ancient Mexican Atlatls." American Anthropologist 7 (1905), 218-221.
Cabello Carro 1989
Cabello Carro, Paz. Coleccionismo americano indigena
en la Espana del siglo xvni. Madrid, 1989.
Cadavid and Turbay 1985
Cadavid, Gilberto, and Luisa Fernanda Herrera de
Turbay. "Manifestaciones Culturales en el Area Tairona." Informes Antropologicos, no. i. Institute Colombiano de Antropologia. Bogota, 1985.

667

Calberg 1939
Calberg, M. "Le Manteau de plumes dit 'de Montezuma.'" Bulletin de la Societe des americanistes de Belgique 30 (1939), 103-133.
Caso 1967
Caso, Alfonso. Los calendarios prehispdnicos. Mexico
City, 1967.
Castaneda and Mendoza 1933
Castaneda, Daniel, and Vicente T. Mendoza. "Los huehuetls en las civilizaciones precortesianas." Andes del
Museo National de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia
(Mexico City) 43, epoca, t.8 (1933), 287-310.
Cieza de Leon 1959
Cieza de Leon, Pedro de. The Incas. Translated by Harriet de Onis. Edited by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen.
Norman, Okla., 1959.
Ciruzzi 1983
Ciruzzi, Sara. "Gli antichi oggetti americani nelle collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia di
Firenze." Archivo per I'Antropologia e la Etnologia 113
(1983), 151-165.
Cleveland 1975
Honour, Hugh. The European Vision of America. Exh.
cat. Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1975.
Cline 1969
Cline, Howard F. "Hernan Cortes and the Aztec Indians
in Spain." The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 27 (1969), 70-90.
Cobo 1979
Cobo, Bernabe. History of the Inca Empire. Translated
and edited by Roland Hamilton. Austin, 1979.
Colin 1988
Colin, Susi. Das Bild des Indianers im 16. Jahrhundert.
Idstein, 1988.
Cooke1984
Cooke, Richard G. "Archaeological Research in Central
and Eastern Panama: A Review of Some Problems." The
Archaeology of Lower Central America. Edited by F. W.
Lange and D. Z. Stone. Albuquerque, 1984, 263-302.
Corrales 1985
Corrales, Francisco. "Prospeccion y Excavaciones
Estrategraficas en el Sitio Curre (p-62-CE), Valle del
Diquis, Costa Rica/' Vinculos 11 (1985), 1-17.
Cortes 1986
Cortes, Hernan. Letters from Mexico. Translated by
Anthony Pagden. New Haven and London, 1986.
Cortes Hernandez 1982
Cortes Hernandez, Susana. Dos series de tapices flamencos en el Museo de Santa Cruz de Toledo. Madrid, 1982.
Couch 1985
Couch, N. C. Christopher. The Festival Cycle of the
Aztec Codex Borbonicus. Oxford, 1985.
Cummins, n.p.
Cummins, Tom. "Representation and the i6th Century:
The Image of the Inca/' Manuscript.
Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980
Dam-Mikkelsen, Bente, and Torben Lundbaek. Ethnographic Objects in the Royal Danish Kunstkammer
16501800. Copenhagen, 1980.
Davidson 1981
Davidson, Judith. "El 'Spondylus' en la cosmologia
chimu." Revista del Museo NationalLima 45 (1981),
75-87.
Davies 1980
Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs. Norman, Okla., 1980.
Detroit 1981
Between Continents/Between Seas: Precolumbian Art of
Costa Rica. Exh. cat. Detroit Institute of Arts. New
York, 1981.
Detroit 1985
Brose, David S., James A. Brown, and David W. Penney.
Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians. Exh.
cat. Detroit Institute of Arts. New York, 1985.
Drolet 1984
Drolet, Robert. "A Note on Southwestern Costa Rica/'
The Archaeology of Lower Central America. Edited by
F. W. Lange and D. Z. Stone. Albuquerque, 1984.
Drolet and Markens 1981
Drolet, Robert, and Robert Markens. "Informe final,
rescate arqueologico, Proyecto Bornca." Manuscript.
Museo Nacional de Costa Rica y el Institute Costarricense de Electricidad. San Jose, Costa Rica, 1981.
Due 1979-1989
Due, Berete. "A Shaman's Cloak." Folk. Dansk Eth-

668

nografisk Tidsskrift 21-22 (1979-1980), 257-261.

Duran 1964
Duran, Fray Diego. The History of the Indies of New
Spain. Introduction by Ignacio Bernal. New York, 1964.
Duran 1971
Duran, Fray Diego. Book of the Gods and Rites and the
Ancient Calendar. Translated and edited by F. Horcasitas
and D. Heyden. Norman, Okla., 1971.
Durand-Forest 1976
Durand-Forest, Jacqueline. Codex Ixtlilxochitl. Graz,
1976.
Easby and Scott 1970
Easby, Elizabeth K., and John F. Scott. Before Cortes:
Sculpture of Middle America. New York, 1970.
Emerson 1982
Emerson, Thomas E. Mississippian Stone Images in
Illinois. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Circular 6.
Urbana, 1982.
Essen 1984
Peru durch die Jahrtausende. Exh. cat. Villa Hiigel,
Essen. Recklinghausen, 1984.
Falchetti 1976
Falchetti, Ana Maria. "The Goldwork of the Sinu
Region, Northern Columbia." Ph.D. dissertation.
Institute of Archaeology, University of London, 1976.
Falchetti 1987
Falchetti, Ana Maria. "Desarrollo de la Orfebreria
Tairona en la Provincia Metalurgica del Norte Colombiano." Boletin Museo del Oro 19 (1987).
Falchetti 1989
Falchetti, Ana Maria. "Orfebreria Prehispanica en el
Altiplano Central Colombiano." Boletin Museo del Oro
25 (1989).
Feest 1984
Feest, Christian F. "Review of Susi Colin, 'Das Bild des
Indianers....'" American Indian Workshop Newsletter
19(1984), 11.
Feest 1985
Feest, Christian F. "Mexico and South America in the
European Wunderkammer." The Origins of Museums.
Edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor. Oxford,
1985.
Feest 1986
Feest, Christian F. "Zemes Idolum Diabolicum." Archiv
fur Volkerkunde 40 (1986), 181-198.
Fernandez 1959
Fernandez, Justino. "Una aproximacion a Xochipilli."
Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl i (1959), 31-42.
Ferrero 1981
Ferrero A., Luis. "Ethnohistory and Ethnography in the
Central Highlands Atlantic Watershed and Diquis."
In Detroit 1981.
Flannery, Marcus, and Reynolds 1989
Flannery, Kent V, Joyce Marcus, and Robert G. Reynolds. The Flocks of the Waimai. New York, 1989.
Florence ms.
"Catalogo delle collezioni etnografiche." Manuscript,
vol. 3. Museo di Antropologia e di Etnologia dell'Universita di Firenze. Florence.
Florentine Codex 1979
Codice Florentino. Manuscrito de la Coleccion Palatina,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. 3 vols.,
facsimile. Mexico City, 1979.
Flores Ochoa 1982
Flores Ochoa, Jorge A. "Causas que Originaron la Actual
Distribucion Espacial de las Alpacas y Llamas." El
Hombre y su Ambiente en los Andes Centrales. Edited
by Luis Millones and Hiroyasu Tomoeda. Osaka, 1982,
63-92.
Ford 1961
Ford, James A. "Menard Site: The Quapaw Village of
Osotouy on the Arkansas River." Anthropological Papers
of the American Museum of Natural History 48, 2 (1961).
Garcia Arevalo 1988
Garcia Arevalo, Manuel A. "El murcielago en la mitologia y el arte Tafnas." In El Murcielago y la Lechuza en la
Cultura Taina. By Jose Juan Arrom and Manuel A.
Garcia Arevalo. Ediciones Fundacion Garcia Arevalo Inc.,
Serie Monografica. Santo Domingo, 1988, 24:29-56.
Garcilaso de la Vega 1966
Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca. Royal Commentaries of the
Incas and General History of Peru. Translated by Harold
V Livermore. Austin, 1966.
Giglioli 1910

Giglioli, E. H. Intorno a due rari cimeli precolombiani

molto probabilmente de Santo Domingo, conservati nel
Museo Etnografico di Firenze. Atti del xvi Congresso
Internazionale degli Americanisti, Vienna, 1910.
Gilliland 1975
Gilliland, Marion Spjut. The Material Culture of Key
Marco, Florida. Gainesville, 1975.
Guaman Poma 1980
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. El Primer Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno. Translated by Jorge L. Urioste.
Edited by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno. Mexico
City, 1980.
Gussinyer 1969
Gussinyer, Jorge. "Una escultura de Ehecatl-Ozomatli."
Boletin del Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia
37(19695,27-31.
Hall 1991
Hall, Robert L. "Cahokia Identity and Interaction
Models of Cahokia Mississippian." Cahokia and the
Hinterlands: Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest. Edited by Thomas E. Emerson and R. Barry Lewis.
Urbana, 1991, 3-34.
Halm 1962
Halm, Peter. "Hans Burgkmair als Zeichner." Miinchner
Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst. Dritte Folge 13 (1962),
75-162.
Hampe 1927
Hampe, Theodor. Das Trachtenbuch des Christoph Weiditz von seinen Reisen nach Spanien (1529) und den
Niederlanden (1531/32). Berlin and Leipzig, 1927.
Harner1972
Harner, Michael J. The Jivaro, People of the Sacred
Waterfalls. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972.
Heikamp and Anders 1970
Heikamp, Detlef, and Ferdinand Anders. "Mexikanische
Altertiimer aus siiddeutschen Kunstkammern." Pantheon 23, 3 (1970), 205-220.
Hernandez Rodriguez 1952
Hernandez Rodriguez, Rosaura. El Valle de Toluca.
Mexico City, 1952.
Herrera 1941
Herrera, Fortunate L. Sinopsis de la Flora de Cuzco.
Vol. i. Lima, 1941.
Hildesheim 1987
Glanz und Untergang des Alien Mexiko. Exh. cat.
Roemer-und Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim. Mainz am
Rhein, 1987.
Hirtzel 1930
Hirtzel, J.-S. Harry. "Le manteau de plumes dit de
'Montezuma' des Musees Royaux du Cinquantenaire de
Bruxelles." Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual
Congress of Americanists. New York, 1930.
Hochstetter 1885
Hochstetter, Ferdinand von. "Uber mexikanische
Reliquien aus der Zeit Montezumas in der K.K.
Ambraser Sammlung." Denkschriften der kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische
Klasse 35 (1885), 83-104.
Hudson 1976
Hudson, Charles. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville, 1976.
de la Jara 1975
Jara, Victoria de la. Introduction al estudio de la escritura
de los inkas. Lima, 1975.
Jones 1985
The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection. Edited by Julie Jones. London, 1985.
de Jonghe 1905
Jonghe, E. de. "Histoyre du Mechique: manuscrit francais inedit du xvie siecle." Journal de la Societe des
Americanistes n.s. 2 (1905), 1-41.
Kajitani 1982
Kajitani, Nobuko. "The Textiles of the Andes." Senshoku
no Bi (Textile Arts) 20 (1982), 9-99.
Klein 1988
Klein, Cecilia F. "Rethinking Cihuacoatl: Aztec Political
Imagery of the Conquered Woman." Smoke and Mist:
Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan. Edited by J. K. Josserand and K. Dakin. Oxford,
1988, 237-277.
Klor de Alva, Nicholson, and Quinones 1988
The Work of Bernardino de Sahagun. Edited by J. Jorge
Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quinones.
Institute of Mesoamerican Studies, Studies on Culture
and Society, vol. 2. Albany, 1988.

Kubler and Gibson 1951

Kubler, George, and Charles Gibson. "The Tovar Calendar." Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and
Sciences 11 (1951), 12-13.
Lafaye 1972
Lafaye, Jacques. Manuscrit Tovar. Graz, 1972.
Lapiner 1976
Lapiner, Alan. Pre-Columbian Art of South America.
New York, 1976.
Larson 1971
Larson, Lewis H., Jr. "Archaeological Implications of
Social Stratification at the Etowah Site, Georgia."
Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices. Edited by James A. Brown. Memoir of the Society
for American Archaeology, vol. 25,1971, 58-67.
Laurencich-Minelli 1982
Laurencich-Minelli, Laura. "Dispersione e recupero
della collezione Cospi." Deputazione di Storia Patria
della Provincia di Romagna 32 (1982), 185-202.
Laurencich-Minelli 1983
Laurencich-Minelli, Laura. "Oggetti americani studiati
da Ulisse Aldrovandi." Archive per I'Antrapologia e la
Etnologia 113. Florence, 1983. 187-206.
Laurencich-Minelli, forthcoming
// Codice Cospi. Edited by Laura Laurencich-Minelli.
Milan, forthcoming.
Laurencich-Minelli and Filipetti 1981
Laurencich-Minelli, Laura, and Alessandra Filipetti.
"II Museo Cospiano. Alcuni oggetti americani ancora a
Bologna." // Carrobbio 7(Bologna, 1981), 220-229.
Laurencich-Minelli and Filipetti 1983
Laurencich-Minelli, Laura, and Alessandra Filipetti.
"Per le collezioni americaniste del Museo Cospiano e
dell'Istituto delle Scienze. Alcuni oggetti ritrovati a
Bologna." Archivio per I'Antropologia e la Etnologia 113
(Florence, 1983), 207-226.
de Lavalle and Lang 1977
Lavalle, Jose Antonio de, and Werner Lang. Arte precolumbino. Introduction by Luis G. Lumbreras. Arte y
tesoros del Peru. Lima, 1977.
de Lavalle and Lang 1982
Lavalle, Jose Antonio de, and Werner Lang. Culturas
precolumbinas: Chancay. Arte y tesoros del Peru. Lima,
1982.
Lechtman 1980
Lechtman, Heather. "The Central Andes: Metallurgy
without Iron." The Coming of the Age of Iron. Edited by
Theodore A. Bertime and James D. Muhly. New Haven
and London,1980, 267-334.
Legati 1667
Legati, Lorenzo. Breve descrizione del Museo de F. Cospi.
Bologna, 1667.
Legati 1677
Legati, Lorenzo. Museo Cospiano annesso a quello
dell'Illustra Ulisse Aldovrandi. Bologna, 1677.
Leon-Portilla 1958
Sahagun, Bernardino de. Ritos, Sacerdotes y Atavios de
los Dioses. Edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla. Mexico City,
1958.
Leon-Portilla 1985
Leon-Portilla, Miguel. Tonalamatl de los Pochtecas,
Codice Fejervdry-Mayer. Mexico City, 1985.
Lopez de Gomara 1552
Lopez de Gomara, Francisco. La istoria de las Indias y
conquista de Mexico. 2 vols. Saragoza, 1552.
Lothrop, Foshag, and Mahler 1957
Lothrop, S. K., W. F. Foshag, and Joy Mahler. Robert
Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. New York,
1957.
MacCurdy 1910
MacCurdy, George Grant. "An Aztec 'calendar stone' in
Yale University Museum." American Anthropologist
n.s., 18 (1910), 481-496.
Madrid 1893
Las joyas de la Exposicion historico-Europea de Madrid
1892. Madrid, 1893.
Marquina 1960
Marquina, Ignacio. El templo mayor de Mexico. Mexico,
1960.
Martin Arana 1967
Martin Arana, Raul. "Hallazgo de un monolito en las
obras del S.T.C. (Metro)." Boletm del Institute Nacional
de Antropologia e Historia 30 (1967), 19-23.
Matos Moctezuma 1988

Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo. The Great Temple of the

Aztecs. Treasures ofTenochtitlan. London, 1988.
McEwan and Silva 11989
McEwan, Colin, and Maria Isabel Silva I. "Que fueron a
hacer los Incas en la costa central del Ecuador?" Proceedings, ^6th International Congress of Americanists,
Amsterdam, Netherlands 1988: Relaciones interculturales en el area ecuatorial del Pdcifico durante la epoca
precolombina. Edited by J. F. Bouchard and M. Guinea.
Oxford, 1989,163-185.
Menzel 1959
Menzel, Dorothy. "The Inca Occupation of the South
Coast of Peru." Southwest Journal of Anthropology 15
(1959), 125-142.
Menzel 1977
Menzel, Dorothy. The Archaeology of Ancient Peru and
the Work of Max Uhle. Berkeley, 1977.
Metraux 1928
Metraux, Alfred. La civilisation materielle des tribus
Tupi-Guarani. Paris, 1928.
Metraux 1932
Metraux, Alfred. "A propos de deux objets Tupinamba
du Musee d'ethnographie du Trocadero." Bulletin du
Musee d'ethnographie du Trocadero 3 (1932), 3-18.
Moore 1905
Moore, Clarence B. Certain Aboriginal Remains of the
Black Warrior River. Philadelphia, 1905.
Moore 1907
Moore, Clarence B. Moundville Revisited. Philadelphia,
1907.
Moore 1908
Moore,'Clarence B. Certain Mounds of Arkansas and
Mississippi. Philadelphia, 1908.
Moore 1911
Moore, Clarence B. Some Aboriginal Sites on Mississippi
River. Philadelphia, 1911.
Morris 1988
Morris, Craig. "Progress and Prospect in the Archaeology of the Inca." Peruvian Prehistory. Edited by Richard
W. Keatinge. Cambridge, England, and New York, 1988,
233-256.
Mostny 1957
Mostny, Crete. "La Momia del Cerro el Plomo." Boletm
del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (Santiago de
Chile) 27, i (1957).
Murra 1962
Murra, John V. "Cloth and Its Functions in the Inca
State." American Anthropologist 64 (1962), 710-728.
Nebenzahl1990
Nebenzahl, Kenneth. Atlas of Columbus and the Great
Discoveries. Chicago, 1990.
Nicholson 1971
Nicholson, Henry B. "Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central
Mexico." Handbook of Middle American Indians 10
(1971), 396-451.
Nicholson 1983
Nicholson, Henry B. Art of Aztec Mexico. Exh. cat.
National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1983.
Nowotny 1960
Nowotny, Karl A. Mexikanische Kostbarkeiten aus
Kunstkammern der Renaissance im Museum fur Volkerkunde Wien und in der Nationalbibliothek Wien.
Vienna, 1960.
Oviedo y Valdes 1851-1855
Oviedo y Valdes, Gonzalo Fernandez. Historia general y
natural de las Indias. 4 vols. Madrid, 1851-1855.
Oyuela 1985
Oyuela, Augusto. "Las Fases Arqueologicas de las Ensenadas de Nahuanje y Cinto." Thesis. University of the
Andes, Bogota, 1985.
Palm 1951
Palm, Erwin Walter. "Tenochtitlan y la cuidad ideal de
Diirer." Journal de la Societe des Americanistes n.s. 40
(1951)' 59~66Patterson 1985
Patterson, Thomas C. "Pachacamac An Andean Oracle
Under Inca Rule." Recent Studies in Andean Prehistory
and Protohistory. Edited by Peter Kvietok and Daniel
Sandweiss. Ithaca, 1985.
Perez de Barradas 1966
Perez de Barradas, Jose. Orfebrena Prehispdnica de Colombia Estilos Quimbaya y otros. Madrid, 1966.
Phillips and Brown 1978
Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown. Pre-Columbian

Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma. Part i, Cambridge, Mass., 1978.
Phillips and Brown 1984
Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown. Pre-Columbian
Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro,
Oklahoma. Part 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1984.
Pignoria 1626
Pignoria, Lorenza. "Seconda parte delle Imagini de gli
dei Indiani." In Vicenzo Cartari, Seconda Novissima
Editione delle Imagini de gli dei delli Antichi. Padua, 1626.
Plazas 19873
Plazas, Clemencia. "Funcion Rogativa del Oro Muisca."
Maguare 5, 5 (1987).
Plazas i987b
Plazas, Clemencia. "Forma y Funcion en el Oro Tairona."
Boletin Museo del Oro (1987).
Plazas and Falchetti 1981
Plazas, Clemencia, and Ana Maria Falchetti. Asentamientos Prehispdnicos en el Bajo rio San Jorge. Fundacion
de Investigaciones Arqueologicas Nacionales, Banco de la
Republica. Bogota, 1981.
Plazas and Falchetti 1985
Plazas, Clemencia, and Ana Maria Falchetti. "Cultural
Patterns in the Prehispanic Goldwork of Colombia."
In Jones 1985.
Quintanilla 1987
Quintanilla, Ifigenia. "Paso Real: Un Sitio Into-Hispanico en el Valle del Diquis." Vinculos 12,1-2 (1987), 121134.
Reichel-Dolmatoff 1954
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. "Investigaciones
Arqueologicas en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, parts
i, 2, 3." Revista Colombiana de Antropologia 2, 3 (1954).
Reichel-Dolmatoff 1988
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. Orfebreria y Chamanismo.
Medellin, 1988.
Reinhardi983
Reinhard, Johan. "Las montanas sagradas: Un estudio
etno-arqueologico de ruinas en las altas cumbres andinas." Cuadernos de Historia 3, Departamento de Ciencias Historicas, Universidad de Chile (July 1983), 27-62.
Romero Quiroz 1963
Romero Quiroz, Javier. Teotenanco y Matlazinco.
Toluca, 1963.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco 1981
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Maria. Recur-sos
naturales renovables y pesca, siglos xviy xvn. Lima, 1981.
Rouse, forthcoming
Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Fall of the People
Who Greeted Columbus. New Haven, forthcoming.
A. Rowe 1978
Rowe, Ann Pollard. "Technical Features of Inca Tapestry
Tunics." Textile Museum Journal 17 (1978), 5-28.
A. Rowe 1984
Rowe, Ann Pollard. Costumes & Featherwork of the
Lords of Chimor: Textiles from Peru's North Coast.
Washington, 1984.
J. Rowe 1946
Rowe, John Howland. "Inca Culture at the Time of the
Spanish Conquest." Handbook of South American
Indians 2, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 143 (1946), 183-330.
J. Rowe 1979
Rowe, John Howland. "Standardization in Inca Tapestry
Tunics." The Junius B. Bird Pre-Columbian Textile
Conference. Edited by Ann Pollard Rowe, Elizabeth P.
Benson, and Anne-Louise Schaffer. Washington, 1979,
239-264.
Rowlands 1988
Rowlands, John. The Age of Diirer and Holbein. German
Drawings, 1400-1550. Exh. cat. British Museum.
London, 1988.
Ryden 1937
Ryden, Stig. "Brazilian Anchor Axes." Ethnologiska
studier 4 (1937), 50-83.
Sahagun 1950-1982
Sahagun, Fray Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General
History of the Things of New Spain. Salt Lake City,
1950-1982.
San Martin and Lebrija 1539
San Martin, Juan de, and Alonso de Lebrija. "Relacion
del descubrimiento y conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada." Relaciones historicas de America (1539). Modern
publication, Madrid, 1916.
669

Saville 1922
Saville, Marshall H. Turquoise Mosaic Art in Ancient
Mexico. New York, 1922.
Schiassi 1814
Schiassi, Filippo. Guida del Forestiere al Museo delle
Antichita della Regia Universita di Bologna. Bologna, 1814.
Schobinger 1991
Schobinger, Juan. "Sacrifices of the High Andes."
Natural History (April 1991), 62-69.
Schweeger-Hefel 1951/1952
Schweeger-Hefel, Annemarie. "Ein ratselhaftes Stuck
aus deralten Ambraser Sammlung." Archiv fur Volkerkunde 6, 7 (1951/1952), 209-228.
Sears 1982
Sears, William H. Fort Center, An Archaeological Site in
the Lake Okeechobee Basin. Gainesville, 1982.
Seler 1902
Seler, Eduard. "Codex Cospi. Die mexikanische Bilderhandschrift von Bologna/' Gesammelte Abhandlungen
zur Amerikanischen Sprach-und Altertumskund 2
(1902), 341-351.
Seler 1904
Seler, Eduard. "Quauhxicalli. Die Opferflutschale der
Mexikaner; Uber Steinkisten, Tepetlacalli, mit Opferdarstellungen und andere ahnliche Monumente; Die
Ausgrabungen am Orte des Haupttempels in Mexico."
Gesammelte Abhandlungen der Amerikanischer Sprachund Alter'thumskunde 2 (1904), 704-904.
Shimada and Shimada 1985
Shimada, Izumi, and Melody Shimada. "Prehistoric
Llama Breeding and Herding on the North Coast of

670

Peru." American Antiquity 50 (1985), 3-26.

Simon 1625
Simon, Fray Pedro. Noticias historiales de las conquistas
de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales (1625).
Modern publication, Bogota, 1981, vol. 3.
Snarskis 1978
Snarskis, Michael J. "The Archaeology of the Central
Atlantic Watershed of Costa Rica." Ph.D. dissertation.
Columbia University, 1978.
Snarskis 1984
Snarskis, Michael J. "Central America: The Lower
Caribbean." The Archaeology of Lower Central America.
Edited by F. W Lange and D. Z. Stone. Albuquerque,
1984.
Soustelle 1961
Soustelle, Jacques. Daily Life of the Aztecs. London, 1961.
Tayler 1974
Tayler, D. B. "The Ika and Their System of Beliefs."
Ph.D. dissertation. Oxford University, 1974.
Thompson 1971
Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing.
An Introduction. 3d edition. Norman, Okla., 1971.
Torquemada 1943-1944
Torquemada, Juan de. Los veynte y un libros rituales y
monarchia yndiana. 3 vols. 3d ed. Mexico City, 19431944.
Toussaint et al. 1938
Toussaint, Manuel, Federico Gomez de Orozco, and
Justino Fernandez. Pianos de la cuidad de Mexico: siglos
xvi y xvn. Estudio historico, urbanistico y bibliogrdfico.
Mexico, 1938.

Vazquez de Coronado 1964

Vazquez de Coronado, Juan. Cartas de Juan Vazquez de
Coronado, conquistador de Costa Rica. Edited by Ricardo
Fernandez-Guardia. Academia de Geografia e Historia de
Costa Rica, San Jose, 1964.
Vega 1973
Vega, Bernardo. "Un cinturon tejido y una careta de
madera de Santo Domingo, del periodo de transculturacion taino-espanol." Boletin del Museo del
Hombre Dominicano 3 (1973), 199-226.
Vega 1989
Vega, Bernardo. "Nuevas revelaciones sobre el zemi
tamo del Museo Pigorini de Roma." Isla abierta/Hoy
(9 December 1989), 8-9.
Wasson 1980
Wasson, R. Gordon. The Wondrous Mushroom. New
York, 1980.
Widmer 1988
Widmer, Randolph J. The Evolution of the Calusa.
Tuscaloosa, 1988.
Zanin 1991
Zanin, Daniela. "Due oggetti Taino conservati nel
Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia di
Firenze." Museologia Scientifica 7 (1991), 111.
Zuidema, forthcoming
Zuidema, R. Tom. "Guaman Poma and the Art of
Empire: Towards an Iconography of Inca Royal Dress."
Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans
in the Sixteenth Century. Edited by R. Adorno and K.
Andrien. Berkeley, forthcoming.

Picture Credits
Photographic materials have kindly been supplied
by lenders or owners of works of art except
as noted.
Alinari/Art Resource, NY: Raby fig. 2; Kemp

fig- *7
Amplicaciones y Reproducciones "MAS":
Jonathan Brown figs. 1-5, 7-10; cat. 20
Antoine S. Le Page Du Pratz, Histoire de la
Louisiane, 3 vols. (Paris, 1758), 2:368: James A.
Brown figs, i, 2

Mark Fiennes: Rogers fig. 2

Edward Ranney: Morris figs. 1-4

Photographic Giraudon: Kemp fig. 11

PHOTO Reunion des musees nationaux:

Massing "Dlirer and the Exotic..." fig. 2

1978 and 1984 President and Fellows of Harvard

College, Courtesy Peabody Museum Press. Philip
Phillips and James A. Brown, Pre-Columbian
Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro,
Oklahoma, part 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984):
James A. Brown figs. 3, 4
courtesy Felica Hecker: Mote fig. 4

Dirk Bakker: Bassani fig. 2; Bray fig. 2; cats. 59,

61, 64, 65, 428-430, 432, 435, 438-439. 503-520,
524-528, 534-537. 539. 543-5^2, 565-569

William H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of the Ancient

Americans," 2nd Annual Report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology (Washington, 1883), 185305: James A. Brown figs. 5-7

Dean Beasom: cats. 5, 132

Martin Kemp: Kemp figs. 3, 5

Marcello Bertoni: cat. 145

Justin Kerr: cats. 451, 470, 502, 542, 563, 564

Dennis Brack, Black Star: cats. 80, 81, 84-85,

88, too

Salvador Lutteroth Lomeli: cats. 396, 401

Photo Bulloz: cat. 180

Pedro de Medina, Regimiento de navegacion

(Seville, 1563), fols. 16, 36: Maddison figs. 2, 4

Mario Carrieri: Bassani fig. i; cats. 13, 377, 382

Andrea Medri: drawing cat. 384

Francesc Catala Roca: Kagan figs. 2, 3; cats. 20,

33. 35. 38-42, 44. 4^, 47. 49~5*. m
Martin Collcutt: Collcutt figs. 2, 3

J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart. Erich Pllaschek,

"Ptolemaios als Geograph," Paulys Realencyclopddie die der classischen Altertumswissenshaft,
ed. August Pauly, Beorg Wissowa, and others
(1894 ), suppl. 10 (1965): Woodward, fig. 2

Lorene Emerson: cats. 415-418

Kim Nielson: cat. 58

Valentim Fernandez, Reportorio dos Tempos

(Lisbon, 1563), 140: Maddison fig. i

Olivetti, Direzione Relazioni Culturali, photo

Antonio Quattrone: Kemp fig. 8

Philip A. Charles: cat. 340

Robert D.Rubic, NYC: Massing "Early European

Images..." fig. 3
Scala/Art Resource, NY: Raby fig. i; Argan fig.
i; cats. 150,168,170,175
Shin Hada: cat. 239
Selamet Taskin: cats. 83, 85, 90-92, 95, 97-99,
101
John Bigelow Taylor: cats. 79, 357, 360-362, 365,
366, 370-37L 378-382, 385-387. 389-395. 397400, 414. 444. 445. 454. 455. 4^3. 4^5. 4^9. 471/
473. 474. 477-499
1987 by The University of Chicago Press.
History of Cartography: Cartography in
Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and
the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David
Woodward, 1:187,188: Woodward figs. 2, 3
Fernando Urbina: Bray fig. i

Gabriel Ferrand, Introduction a I'Astronomie

Nautique Arabe (Paris, 1928), 26: Maddison fig. 3

67i

This book is a coproduction of the editors office, National Gallery of Art, and Yale
University Press, New Haven and London.

The editing of this book was

supervised by the editors office, National Gallery of Art. Editor-in-chief, Frances

Smyth. "Europe and the Mediterranean World'' edited by Mary Yakush, with
assistance from Julie Warnement. "Toward Cathay" edited by Naomi Noble
Richard. "The Americas" edited by Jane Sweeney. Copy editors, editorial consultants, and editorial support staff for this project include Stephen Alee, Margaret
Alexander, Nazan Armenian, Kathleen Emerson-Dell, Lee Johnson, Elizabeth
McGrath, Deborah Del Gais Muller, Clea Ramea, Lys Ann Shore, Maria
Tsoumis, Abigail Walker, and Janet Wilson. Translators include Dorothy Alexander, Susan Scott Cesaritti, Charles Roberts, Kyoko Selden, Stephanos Stephanides, and Robert Erich Wolf, and the Columbia University Tutoring and
Translation Agency.

The production of this book was supervised by John

Nicoll, managing director, Yale University Press, London, with assistance from
Gillian Malpass and Marina Cianfanelli.

Composed in Aldus, a typeface

based on Renaissance forms, by Paul Baker Typography, Evanston, Illinois, with

assistance from U.S. Lithograph, New York. It was printed and bound by Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore, Verona, Italy, with color separations by Evergreen, Hong
Kong. Mechanicals prepared by BG Composition, Baltimore, and Bruce Campbell
Design, Stonington, Connecticut. Computer drawing of the Vitruvian
Man and title page display type prepared by James Campbell.
Designed by Bruce Campbell with assistance
from Lisa Tremaine.