The Far Side: Expatriate Medieval Art and Its Languages in Sino-Mongol China

Abstract

Medieval art refers principally to the art of Western Europe. Objects, however, complicate its chronology and geography. To begin to understand the fast, fluid, and far-reaching currents of the human transmission of European medieval art, this essay studies objects made by and/or for expatriate Europeans resident in China under Mongol rule. A unique part of Yuan visual culture, European ways of making and seeing objects existed in Sino-Mongol contexts-namely for court, merchants and the Church-like those of Europe. European ways of making and seeing objects were not wholly discrete from Sino-Mongol ways of making and seeing objects. Rather, by examining the cases of a French goldsmith active at the court of Möngke Khan (ca. 1208-1259), of tombstones made for the children of a Genoese merchant, and of pictures made by and for Franciscan missions, this essay attempts to show, in a limited way, how European objects in Yuan China spoke languages-firstly, of mimetic form; secondly, of iconography, pictorial convention, and text; and, thirdly, of materialitythat made them meaningful to local audiences, delimited spheres of expatriate European medieval visual culture, and participated in a transregional European medieval art.

The Art History and Material Culture of the Yuan Empire

“…1 Consideration of European artistic encounters with Mongol China (see, e.g., Arnold 1999, Purtle 2011) are beyond the scope of this essay. For an empire-wide survey see Blair and McCausland (forthcoming).…”

A Virgem Abrideira dos Gozos de Maria da Coleção Ivani e Jorge Yunes

“…Na parte superior há um espaço livre, no qual poderia ter sido inserida ou a pomba do Espírito Santo, ou as línguas de fogo, constituindo, assim, o Pentecostes. (Purtle, 2011;Ilko, 2021, Clarke, 2013. No entanto, isso não se configura como um problema, na medida em que importam mais "as rotas do que as raízes", nos termos de Finbarr B.…”

“…Elaborada possivelmente no século XVIII 5 , a Abrideira da CIJY pode ser considerada como um dos resultados do diálogo do uso do material e das técnicas que brotaram das campanhas comerciais e missionárias ibéricas no Oriente(Purtle, 2011;Meegama, 2017). Os europeus usavam a habilidade dos artesãos locais para a execução da imaginária cristã, tendo como modelo gravuras europeias, a pequena estatuária ebúrnea ou em madeira trazida da Europa ou elaborada no espaço asiático.…”