In China and the West, public and private spaces are perceived differently. For Jesuits, the way in which the church of Il-Gesù in Rome was situated, from 1553 onwards, can be seen as an efficient strategy ensuring the order’s power in the urban space, moreover as a genuine paradigmatic shifting for the foundation of other Jesuit buildings, including that of the South Church (Nantang) in Beijing, established initially by Matteo Ricci in 1605. Based on Chinese and European written sources, this article firstly aims to re-conceptualize the specific ways of the first Jesuit building in Beijing, a residence city with strictly determined town planning which entirely differed from early-modern Baroque cities in Europe. On this fundament, the contribution secondly seeks to demonstrate that this site was intentionally purchased by the Jesuits, not due to a random choice. Quite on the contrary, the “privileged” relationship be-tween the Jesuit private space, the local landmarks as well as the cultural and commercial centers was much desired by the early generation of missionaries. Finally, through a compar-ison with contemporary topological solutions, the present paper seeks to demonstrate how the Jesuits in Beijing strategically used the courtyard wall to create a “semi-public space”, thus imitating the Il-Gesù solution.

The present study deals with the formation and elaboration of transcultural spaces of power (in terms of Mary Louise Pratt’s »contact zone«) in the times of Emperor Qianlong as the interests of various protagonists and social groups entangled. On the basis of four case studies, ranging from the space of the palace linked to events, to the political space of negotiation, and to the Emperor’s personal spaces of representation, it becomes evident just how strongly the emergence of Qianlong’s spaces of power were connected with the Jesuit buildings adorned with images in Beijing. The illusionistic animal portrait, which became possible thanks to the use of perspective and its architectural linkage with the church interior, was transformed at court into a complex image system for the display of the Qings’ newly established tribute system. The emergence of a visual rhetoric of the other, that can be subsumed under the term »europerie«, became the mode of expression for Qianlong’s claim of cultural hegemony and served the construction of the Manchurian subject. Finally, the translatio loci of a monumental image pair turned into an effective means of hegemony for the promotion of a Pan-Asian, multicultural empire ruled by Qianlong.

Consisting of three research articles appended with translated poems, postscripts and personal accounts, this book expands upon the multiple dimensions of the Kangxi emperor’s (r. 1661–1722) mountain estate as represented in both poetry and prints, with a central focus on the phenomenon of translation. Setting the prints alongside accurate but picturesque translations and commentaries, the two authors—Richard E. Strassberg and Stephen H. Whiteman—have collaborated to provide a close reading of ‘translation’ in the making of the Thirty-Six Views at the textual, pictorial and material levels. In this illuminating volume, three separate works from various collections—the printed Imperial Poems from the National Library of China and the woodblock and copperplate illustrations, both now in the Dumbarton Oaks Library and Harvard University—are combined to give a more complete view.

In the early modern world, the Jesuit garden arguably became a transcultural phenomenon materializing the transfer of both elite knowledge and ideas. This paper elaborates the transcultural dimension of the Jesuit symbolic garden by focusing on the so-called Beitang garden in eighteenth-century Beijing, built in the European style by French Jesuits. As witnessed by a number of Chinese and Korean travelers, however, the Beitang garden was not the only tangible garden constructed by Jesuit missionaries. Like their counterparts in Europe, garden spaces were essential to the Jesuit residences in Beijing. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these gardens, in which advanced European knowledge of cultivation, mechanism, as well as water conservancy were applied, were gradually turned into a dynamic space of increasing Jesuit botanic and cosmopolitan learning. Considering their unique social and political functions within sacred spaces, this paper will first synthesize the relevant facts in order to re-contextualize the construction of these garden spaces by examining various forms of their visual representation. Relying on written records by Korean travelers, this paper will elaborate on how concrete spatial arrangements and pattern designs, which were used to convey certain attitudes and ideas, became accessible for the Beijing Jesuits. This paper thus captures a transcultural moment for Jesuit garden spaces by demonstrating the ways in which a Jesuit garden in France was transferred to an eighteenth-century Jesuit space in Beijing.

Please scroll down for the English abstract.

Dieser Band beschäftigt sich mit dem materiellen Erbe der jesuitischen Mission außerhalb Europas unter Einbezug dreier Pekinger Schlüsselbauwerke. Gestützt auf eine kritische Revision der Baugeschichte, gilt das Interesse zunächst der Transkulturalität und Wirkung der jesuitischen Bautopographie im Kontext flaneuristischer Stadterkundungen. Es gilt insbesondere, die Auswahl der identitätsstiftenden Bautypologien hinsichtlich ihres auf Machtrepräsentation ausgerichteten Mechanismus zu hinterfragen. Zentral sind des Weiteren Fragen zum Einfluss der jesuitischen Räume auf die kaiserlichen, transkulturellen Machträume sowie die Positionierung der jesuitischen Gartenräume im Zuge transkultureller Wissenschaftsnetzwerkbildung im 17./18. Jahrhundert. Gestützt auf eine Vielzahl von Bildzeugnissen, liefert die Studie einen gründlichen Einblick in die globale Entfaltung der Kunst und Architektur eines historisch bedeutenden Klerikerordens und trägt zur aktuellen Debatte um die globale Kunstgeschichte maßgeblich bei.

Additional English abstract:


In the early modern world, no individual, institution, or organization could match the impact and influence of the Jesuit missionaries. As the “global patron” in the Age of the Counter-Reformation, the members of the Society of Jesus consciously promoted the transcultural process of artistic, cultural and intellectual histories on a global scale. By exploring three key built structures and their related transcultural spaces in Beijing, this volume re-evaluates their role in unprecedented global dynamics, which unified various secular interests, institutions, and artistic practices.
First, these built structures served as narrative matrices of dazzling myths associated with imperial patronage; furthermore, as repositories of collective memory and as spaces which attracted the interests of the public and the flaneur alike, these physical structures understood themselves primarily as public monuments that proclaimed the triumph of Catholicism in a monumental way. Second, as suggestive fields of action as well as walk-in spaces of synesthetic experience, the structures’ frescoed spaces played a major role as an experimental field, stimulating transcultural pictorial practices that informed the illusionistic palatial interiors of the eighteenth-century Qing court. Last but not least, the Beijing Jesuit gardens presented themselves as places of fruitful transcultural encounters, which nourished various interest groups with knowledge of European cosmopolitanism and fostered the formation of a global network of knowledge.
Given the multifaceted nature of the topic, this volume questions the limits and singularity of art history, including its Eurocentrism, and provides a new way of re-evaluating the Jesuit global heritage. The first three chapters focus on the questions of historicization, self-expression, and subject formation, which contributed significantly to their establishment as urban highlights and public “contact zones.”
Based on a critical revision of the buildings’ histories, the volume first places its interest in the deconstruction of a glittering, widely circulated “Jesuit myth” – that the construction of their residences and churches was patronized by the Chinese emperors – and further evaluates the social effect of Jesuit topography in the context of urban exploration. The latter is crucial for understanding the choice of identity-granting “architectural modules” in terms of their power mechanism inside the Society of Jesus.
A heuristic tool for elucidating the practices that were connected with the making, entanglement, and unfolding of the Jesuit transcultural spaces is the praxeological concept of “aesthetic practices.” It highlights the fact that certain historical, social and transcultural practices, despite being hardly recognizable in the final architectural products, were essential components of the material heritage of the Beijing Jesuits. Following this concept, finally, the sociological, cognitive, and receptive dimensions of the Jesuits’ physical spaces and their function as “contact zones” urge us to look at processual and temporary moments in the course of global aesthetic entanglements, reversals, and penetrations.
In the last two chapters, case studies from Emperor Qianlong’s (r. 1735–1796) court, ranging from palatial spaces linked to events, to political spaces of negotiation, and to the emperor’s personal spaces of representation, are used to illustrate how aesthetic and intellectual implications were determined by actors and the public and were in turn instrumentalized for the purpose of the Qing political agenda and the subject-formation of the Manchu elites. In doing so, the last chapters discuss the entanglement of Jesuit sacred spaces with Qing imperial, transcultural spaces and positions the Beijing Jesuit gardens in the global dynamics of horticultural and hydraulic practices of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Drawing on a variety of images, the volume provides a thorough insight into the global entanglement of the art and architecture of a historically important religious order, and significantly contributes to the current debate on global art history.