China at the Center

The

Asian Art Museum presents two rare masterpieces of 17th-century cartography, the

result of early collaborations between Jesuit priests and Chinese scholars

sharing knowledge and curiosity about the world. The 1602 Ricci map, developed

by Matteo Ricci while in China, is the earliest known Chinese map to depict the

Americas. The 1674 Verbiest world map, created by Ferdinand Verbiest for the

Chinese court, is being exhibited for the first time ever.



 Through

these large-scale woodblock-printed maps, discover how much of the world’s geography

and ethnography was known at this early date, including the longest river in

Africa, the peninsula of Florida, the fish-skin clothing of the far north and the

feathered garb of Amazonian peoples. Two interactive digital displays reveal

translations describing the peripheries of the “known world”: lands where

giants paint their faces, oceans with mermaids and flying fish, and a kingdom

inhabited by foot-tall humans who live in constant fear of being devoured by

hawks.



 



With easy

access to GPS technology, the world is now literally at our fingertips. These

maps transport us to an age when tremendous effort was required to understand

the contours of the world and to record (and imagine) the marvels within it. 

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