The celestial court and the sun king: study resources about the artistic encounters between China and Europe in the court of emperor Kangxi (1662 - 1722)

Abstract

This project intends to gather bibliographic and iconographic sources about the artistic encounters in the court of emperor Kangxi (1662-1722), the Qing dynasty's fourth emperor of China. It focuses on the presence of the jesuits sent by Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. The contact between the Chinese court and the European envoys made the presence of a rich cultural setting possible, reuniting artists from a wide variety of nationalities, such as the Italian architectural painter Giovanni Gherardini and the French Jesuit Charles Belleville, who was an architect, sculptor, painter, and author of the project of the French Mission's church in the Forbidden City (Beitang). After the Chinese experience, Belleville established himself in Bahia from 1709 until his death in 1730. Thus, the proposed project deals with a still barely-contemplated field in Brazilian historiography. It also directly collaborates with studies that consider a Global Art History through the operation of the Society of Jesus between France, China, and Brazil inside the oriental contribution line in the Baroque Art in America, proposed by the Projeto Jovem Pesquisador FAPESP "Baroque Encrypted: Cultural Plurality in Art and Architecture in the Missions of the State of São Paulo (1549 - 1753)", in progress at FAUUSP.