Article ID: CBB942941844

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: The Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations (2020)

unapi

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

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Authors & Contributors
Di Gennaro Splendore, Barbara
Rotelli, Federica
Statman, Alexander
Oszajca, Paulina
John Yargo
Cremonini, Patrizia
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Botany
Plants
Herbals and bestiaries
Medicine
Pharmacy
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
18th century
Renaissance
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
Early modern
Places
China
Beijing (China)
Americas
Italy
Europe
Macau (China)
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Académie des Sciences, Paris
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