Abstract
This article preliminarily analyzes a corpus of fifteenth-century Persianate paintings preserved in the Topkapi and Diez albums. It investigates the album paintings as the pictorial evidence to the Persianate first-hand encounter with Ming China. The paintings feature their emphasis on physiognomic verisimilitude of the painted figures and faithful description of their props and clothing. As a totality, they formulate the proto-ethnographic knowledge on China in the Persianate consciousness of this period. The last section on the representation of Chinese beauty, on the other hand, shows how pre-existing stereotyped imagination merged with the first-hand observation.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 57-73 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Ming Studies |
Volume | 2018 |
Issue number | 78 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- Ming China
- Persianate painting
- Timurids
- Diplomacy
- Representation of the other