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Abstract
This paper examines the set of fifteen prints included in the seventeenth-century Chinese text Song nianzhu guicheng. This catechism was translated by Portuguese Jesuits serving in the China mission and consists of instructions for spiritual meditation on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. The processes of visual acculturation of Christian art will be examined in the context of the transmission of doctrine and instructions for spiritual meditation. The paper discusses the Chinese visual experience and the particular circumstances of the Catholic missions in China during and after the Nanjing persecutions. This paper demonstrates that although the illustrations of the Song nianzhu guicheng were executed and adapted by Chinese artists, the ontological principles of European Renaissance art and the precepts of Christian iconography are still a structural component in the Jesuit methods of teaching and preaching.
Notes
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2 Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola ed. Charles Seager. (London: Charles Dolman, 1847), 27–28; Nicolas Standaert, “The Composition of Place: Creating Space for an Encounter.” The Way 46, no. 1 (2007): 7–20.
3 Robert John Clines, By Virtue of the Senses : Ignatian Aestheticism and the Origins of Sense Application in the First Decades of the Gesù in Rome. (master’s thesis, Miami University, 2009), 29–32.
4 Nicolas Standaert, “The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola in the China Mission of the 17th and 18th Centuries,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 81 (2012): 73–124; Nicolas Standaert, “Ignatian Visual Meditation in Seventeenth-Century China,” in Meditation and Culture: The Interplay of Practice and Context, ed. Halvor Eifring (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 24–35.
5 Matteo Ricci, Opere Storiche Del P. Matteo Ricci, S.I. ed. Pietro Tacchi Venturi. (Macerata: Premiato stab. tip. F. Giorgetti, 1913), 284; Pasquale Maria D’Elia, Le Origine Dell’arte Cristiana Cinese (1583-1640). (Rome: Reale Accademia d’Italia, 1939), 82.
6 John W. O’Malley, “To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation.” Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits 16, no. 2 (1984): 1–20; Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Reception of Evangelicae Historiae Imagines in Late Ming China: Visualizing Holy Topography in Jesuit Spirituality and Pure Land Buddhism.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 40, no. 2 (2009): 303–33; Rui Oliveira Lopes, “Arte e Alteridade: Confluências Da Arte Cristã Na Índia, Na China e No Japão, Séc. XVI a XVIII.” (Universidade de Lisboa, 2011), 254, 304, 331–342.
7 Paul Pelliot, “La Peinture et La Gravure Européennes En Chine Au Temps de Mathieu Ricci.” T’oung Pao 20 (1921): 8–9; Edward Maclagan, The Jesuits & the Great Mogul. (Gurgaon, Haryana: Vintage Books, 1990), 226; David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West. (Lenham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 28; Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art in the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America (1542-1773). (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1999), 124; Alexandra Curvelo, “Nagasaki: an European Artistic City in Early Modern Japan.” Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies, no. 2 (2001): 23–35.
8 Paul Pelliot, “La Peinture et La Gravure Européennes En Chine Au Temps de Mathieu Ricci.” T’oung Pao 20 (1921): 10–11; Michael Sullivan, “Some Possible Sources of European Influence on Late Ming and Early Ch’ing Painting,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Chinese Painting (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1972), 595–625; Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (New York, NY: Graphic Society, 1973), 57; Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 175–6; David Mungello The Great Encounter of China and the West. (Lenham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 42; César Guillen-Nuñez, Macau’s Church of Saint Paul: A Glimmer of the Baroque in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 114–15; César Guillen-Nuñez, “The Portrait of Matteo Ricci.” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 3 (2014): 443–64.
9 Berthold Laufer, “Christian Art in China.” Ostasiatische Studien 13 (1910): 7; Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (New York: Graphic Society, 1973), 52–3; Ta Hsiang, “European Influences on Chinese Art in the Later Ming and Early Ch’ing Period.” Renditions 6 (1976): 152–178; Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 59–64; Harrie Vanderstappen, “Chinese Art and the Jesuits in Peking,” in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773, edited by Charles Ronan and Bonnie Oh (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 103–26; Carmen Guarino, “Images of Jesus in Chengshi Moyuan,” in The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Vol. 2, edited by Roman Malek (Sankt Augustin Institut Monumenta Serica, 2003), 417–36.
10 Li-Chiang Lin, “The Proliferation of Images: The Ink-Stick Designs and the Printing of the ‘Fang-Shih Mo-P’u’ and the ‘Ch’Eng-Shih Mo-Yuan’.” (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1998), 202–4; Rui Oliveira Lopes, “Words for Images and Images for Words: An Iconological and Scriptural Study of the Christian Prints in the Chengshi Moyuan.” Word and Image 33, no. 1 (2017): 87–107.
11 The authorship of the Song nianzhu guicheng is complex although most scholars attribute it to João da Rocha. However, other Portuguese Jesuits were also involved in the production of this and another catechism entitled Tianzhu Shengjiao Qimeng (Instructions of the Holy religion of the Lord of Heaven). These two texts were bound together in one volume. Gaspar Ferreira (1571–1649), Manuel Dias, the Younger (1574–1659) and Francisco Furtado (1589–1653) are some of the Portuguese Jesuits involved in the production of these catechisms (Paola Demattè and Marcia Reed, China on Paper. European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 167–9. Paul Rheinbay, “Nadal’s Religious Iconography Reinterpreted by Aleni for China,” in Scholar from the West: Giulio Aleni S.J. (1582-1649) and the Dialogue between Christianity and China, ed. Tiziana Lippiello and Roman Malek (Brescia: Fondazione civiltà bresciana/Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, 1997); Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Reception of Evangelicae Historiae Imagines in Late Ming China: Visualizing Holy Topography in Jesuit Spirituality and Pure Land Buddhism,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 40, no. 2 (2009): 303–33; José Eugenio Borao Mateo, “La Versión China de La Obra Ilustrada de Jerónimo Nadal Evangelicae Historiae Imagines,” Goya: Revista de Arte, no. 330 (2010): 16–33; Junhyoung Michael Shin, “Jesuit Mnemonics and Topographic Narrative: Evangelicae Historiae Imagines in Late Ming China (Fuzhou, 1637),” Archiv Für Reformationsgeschichte, no. 103 (2012): 237–71.
12 Catalogus Patrum Societas Jesu, Qui Post Obitum S. Francisci Xaverii Primo Saeculo, Sive Ab Anno 1581. Usque Ad 1681, in Imperio Sinarum Jesu-Christi Fidem Propagarunt 1686, 8–9; Diogo Barbosa Machado, Bibliotheca Lusitana Historica, Critica, e Cronologica. Na Qual Se Comprehende a Noticia Dos Authores Portuguezes, e Das Obras, Que Compuseraõ Desde o Tempo Da Promulgação Da Ley Da Graça Até o Tempo Prezente. Tomo II (Lisboa: Officina de Ignacio Rodrigues, 1741), 736.
13 Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: Jesuit Mission to China 1579-1724 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 58–9.
14 David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West (Lenham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 43–4; Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: Jesuit Mission to China 1579-1724 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 68.
15 Álvaro Semedo, The History of That Great and Renowned Monarchy of China. Wherein All the Particular Provinces Are Accurately Described: As Also the Dispositions, Manners, Learning, Lawes, Militia, Government, and Religion of the People. Together with the Traffick and Co (London: Printed by E. Tyler for I. Crook, 1655).
16 Francisco Furtado, China’s Annual Letter for 1624, BA 49-V-6, fl. 180r).
17 This text is traditionally attributed to Xu Guangqi and an anonymous Jesuit, eventually, João da Rocha, Pedro Ribeiro, and Domingos Mendes, mentioned in 1619 editions (Ad Dudink “The Image of Xu Guangqi as Author of Christian Texts: a Biographical Appraisal),” in Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in the Late Ming: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633), edited by Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 99–152.
18 Manuel Cadafaz de Matos, “A Entrada Do Pe. João Da Rocha Na China Em 1597-1598 e a Contribuição Deste Jesuíta Para a História Da Imprensa Cristã,” Revista Portuguesa de História Do Livro, no. 2 (1997): 69–88.
19 Paola Demattè and Marcia Reed, China on Paper. European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 167–9.
20 Catalogus Patrum Societas Jesu, Qui Post Obitum S. Francisci Xaverii Primo Saeculo, Sive Ab Anno 1581. Usque Ad 1681, in Imperio Sinarum Jesu-Christi Fidem Propagarunt 1686, 9–11.
21 Jorge Marcos and Ignacio Martins, Doctrina Christam Ordenada a Maneira de Dialogo, Pera Ensinar Os Meninos, ed. Marti[m] Ferna[n]dez (Lisboa: Manoel de Lyra, 1592). Marcos Jorge’s famous Doctrina christam [orde]nada a maneira de [dialogo], pera ensinar os meninos was originally published in 1566. Inácio Martins’s additions may have been prepared around 1586/1587, but the earliest copy that is known, dated 1592, is found in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Fondo Antiguo BH FLL 19646). See José Adriano de Freitas Carvalho Poesia e Hagiografia. Porto: Centro Inter-Universitario de Historia da Espiritualidade (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2007), 82.
22 Nathan Mitchell, The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotion and the Reinvention of Catholicism (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 3.
23 Joao Rocha, Song nianzhu guicheng (China, 1619).
24 David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West (Lenham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 31.
25 Berthold Laufer, “Christian Art in China.” Ostasiatische Studien 13 (1910): 100–18; Arthur Waley, “Ricci and Tung Chʻi-Chʻang.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 2, no. 02 (February 24, 1922): 342–343; James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth‐century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 59–68.
26 Richard Barnhart, “Dong Qichang and Western Learning: A Hypothesis in Honour of James Cahill.” Archives of Asian Art 50 (1998): 7–16.
27 Matteo Ricci, Opere Storiche Del P. Matteo Ricci, S.I. Edited by Pietro Tacchi Venturi. (Macerata: Premiato stab. tip. F. Giorgetti, 1913), 284.
28 These illustrations are: Presentation in the Temple; Jesus among the Doctors; Flagellation of Christ; Christ is crowned with thorns; Christ is led outside the gate to Mount Calvary; The glorious resurrection of Christ; The ascension of Christ into Heaven; The holy day of Pentecost; The Assumption of the Virgin; and The Coronation of the Virgin.
29 Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997).
30 Keith Christiansen, “Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 61, no. 2 (1983): 3–48; Charles Hope, “Religious Narrative in Renaissance Art,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 134, no. 5364 (1986): 804–18; Lew Andrews, Story and Space in Renaissance Art. The Rebirth of Continuous Narrative (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998).
31 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
32 Jorge Marcos and Ignacio Martins, Doctrina Christam Ordenada a Maneira de Dialogo, Pera Ensinar Os Meninos, ed. Marti[m] Ferna[n]dez (Lisbon: Manoel de Lyra, 1592), 182.
33 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 1 (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971); Bryan E. Daley, “The ‘Closed Garden’ and the ‘Sealed Fountain’: Song of Songs 4:12 in the Late Medieval Iconography of Mary,” in Medieval Gardens, ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Harvard University, 1986), 253–78; Matthew Landrus, “Leonardo’s Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and Its Reflexive Intent,” in Gardens and the Passion for the Infinite, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Springer, 2003), 25–46; Victoria Larson, “A Rose Blooms in the Winter: The Tradition of the Hortus Conclusus and Its Significance as a Devotional Emblem,” Dialog 52, no. 4 (2013): 303–12.
34 Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites. Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996).
35 Xiaoping Lin “Seeing the Place: The Virgin Mary in a Chinese Lady’s Inner Chamber,” in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., edited by John W. O’Malley, Hilmar M. Pabel, and Kathleen M. Comerford (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 194.
36 Xiaoping Lin “Seeing the Place: The Virgin Mary in a Chinese Lady’s Inner Chamber,” in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., edited by John W. O’Malley, Hilmar M. Pabel, and Kathleen M. Comerford (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 196.
37 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Rensselaer W. Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting,” The Art Bulletin 22, no. 4 (1940): 197–269; Joanna Woods-Marsden, “‘Ritratto Al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits,” Art Journal 46, no. 3 (1987): 209–16.
38 Xiaoping Lin “Seeing the Place: The Virgin Mary in a Chinese Lady’s Inner Chamber,” in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., edited by John W. O’Malley, Hilmar M. Pabel, and Kathleen M. Comerford (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 199.
39 Paola Demattè, “Christ and Confucius: Accommodating Christian and Chinese Beliefs,” in China on Paper. European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth and Early Nineteenth Century, edited by Paola Demattè and Marcia Reed (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 36.
40 Baxandall bases his historical, cultural and intellectual analysis of the Annunciation on a text by a fifteen-century Franciscan Friar, Fra Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce, in which he analyses the Angelic Colloquy to lay a series of five successive spiritual and mental conditions or states attributable to Mary during the Annunciation: Conturbatio (Disquiet), Cogitatio (Reflection), Interrogatio (Inquiry), Humiliatio (Submission), Meritatio (Merit). See Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 48–56.
41 Joseph D. Parry, “Phenomenological History, Freedom, and Botticelli’s Cestello Annunciation,” in Art and Phenomenology, ed. Joseph D. Parry (New York: Routledge, 2011), 164.
42 George Ferguson, Signs & Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954).
43 Charles H. Carman, Leon Battista Alberti and Nicholas Cusanus: Towards an Epistemology of Vision for Italian Renaissance Art and Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).
44 Charles H. Carman, Leon Battista Alberti and Nicholas Cusanus: Towards an Epistemology of Vision for Italian Renaissance Art and Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 111.
45 Charles H. Carman, Leon Battista Alberti and Nicholas Cusanus: Towards an Epistemology of Vision for Italian Renaissance Art and Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 121.
46 Bonaventure, Bonaventure. The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, ed. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 120.
47 Bonaventure, Bonaventure. The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, ed. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 121.
48 Nicholas Cusa, Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism, Text, Translation, and Interpretative Study of De Visione Dei, ed. Jasper Hopkins, 2nd Edition (Minneapolis, MN: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1987).
49 Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Cesare Catà, “Perspicere Deum: Nicholas of Cusa and European Art of the Fifteenth Century,” Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, no. 1 (2008): 285–305; Arianne Conty, “Absolute Art: Nicolas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei,” Religion and the Arts 16, no. 5 (2012): 461–87.
50 Francisco Furtado, China’s Annual Letter for 1624, BA 49-V-6, fl. 180r.