Tag: Verbiest

A Close Look at the Verbiest Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Ferdinand Verbiest, A Complete Map of the World, 1674. Ink on paper, eight scrolls, 217 × 54 cm. Library of Congress.
Ferdinand Verbiest, Kun yu quan tu, 1674. Ink on paper, eight scrolls, 217 × 54 cm. Library of Congress.

A detailed look at the Verbiest Map from the University of Michigan’s Clements Library. Also known as the Kun yu quan tu (坤輿全圖), this is a 1674 Chinese-language map of the world by Jesuit priest Ferdinand Verbiest during his time in China. The Library holds one of 20 remaining copies of the map; another, held by the Library of Congress, was (along with Matteo Ricci’s 1602 map) the subject of the China at the Center exhibition in 2016. An interactive version of the Verbiest map that translates the Chinese text into English was part of that exhibition, but I hadn’t seen it before now.

Previously: China at the Center; The WSJ Reviews China at the Center.

The WSJ Reviews China at the Center

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

verbiest
Ferdinand Verbiest, A Complete Map of the World, 1674. Ink on paper, eight scrolls, 217 × 54 cm. Library of Congress.

Here’s a review in the Wall Street Journal of the Asian Art Museum’s exhibition, China at the Center, which I’ve told you about before.

The show includes portraits of both as well as a half-dozen books to evoke the libraries each brought and the impact they had. Most helpful, however, are two large touchscreens, one for each map, that allow us to access translations and summaries of many of the texts. This quickly becomes addictive, because the journey is full of surprises. Here, we read about scientific theories or descriptions based on travelers’ accounts. There, we learn how best to capture a unicorn.

[WMS]

Previously: China at the Center; Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange.

China at the Center

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Two important seventeenth-century world maps are the focus of a new exhibition opening this Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. China at the Center: Rare Ricci and Verbiest World Maps, which runs from 4 March to 8 May 2016, features Matteo Ricci’s 1602 map and Ferdinand Verbiest’s 1674 map.

Ricci (1552–1610) and Verbiest (1623–1688) were both Jesuit priests, in China to spread Christianity; their maps, produced in collaboration with Chinese calligraphers, artists and printers, produced a fundamental rethinking of China’s place in the world. Not that China wasn’t at the centre of these maps, as the essays in the accompanying catalogue point out, but these maps filled out the rest of the world, which was previously a marginal afterthought in Chinese cartography.

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