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Appropriation, Elevation and
Re-presentation: The Evolution of
Chinese Objects in
Seventeenth-century Netherlandish
Art
Candace Q. Huey, Chabot College
This paper investigates the twin
discourses of aesthetic and
economic value of imported material
goods within seventeenth-century
Holland, examining the evolution of
seventeenth-century Netherlandish
representations of Chinese objects
in both visual and textual sources.
Initially linked with Dutch
political pursuits and notions of
masculinity, a shift occurs in the
reception and imaging of Chinese
objects, specifically porcelain and
silk, which eventually evolves into
feminized objects confined within
the domestic realm. The
domestication of Chinese objects is
indicative of the developing
material culture, which comments on
Dutch perceptions and projections
of the exotic Other as
dangerous yet desirable.
“Let us now travel into Cathay,
so that you may learn something of
its grandeurs and its treasures.”-
Marco Polo
(1305).[1] Marco Polo
characterizes China (Cathay) as an
illustrious land filled with a
plethora of exoticism. Adding to
Marco Polo’s hyperbolic assessment
of China, the Jesuit accounts in
the Renaissance commented on the
country’s material wealth,
sophisticated government and
dynamic empire.[2] In the
seventeenth century, European
explorers and merchants
comprehended China as a setting for
lucrative ventures. Although few
texts focused on the Chinese empire
exclusively, the Europeans often
conflated their characterizations
of China with the East. Dutch
perceptions of the East were
paradoxical in nature: a complex
layered picture of fact and
fiction, a blurring of positive and
negative impressions. On one hand,
the Dutch perceived China to be a
great empire that rivaled their own
in vitality and sophistication. Yet
on the other, China was
comprehended as part of an ‘idol
worshipping’ East, and therefore
inevitably set in opposition to and
inferior to ‘Christian’ West.
Throughout the seventeenth century,
two major Chinese commodities
imported by the Dutch were
porcelain and silk. My aim is to
explore Chinese objects through
notions of exoticism in
seventeenth-century Netherlandish
painting. They were viewed and
valued for their beauty, rarity,
exoticism, and quasi-
sacred,[3] highly
skilled, refined, and curious
attributes. This characterization
of porcelain and silk will be made
evident through the examination of
visual and textual sources and
their analogous relationship to
net painting (the privileged
Netherlandish style of
painting).[4]
By considering and critiquing
Netherlandish re-imaging porcelain
and silks, through the lens of
twentieth-century art and
anthropological theory (e.g.,
Alfred Gell, Edward Said, etc.), I
will illustrate a notable shift in
how art functioned to primarily
reflect seventeenth-century Dutch
culture (i.e. desires, values) and
second, proliferate this
contemporary lifestyle insofar that
painting became a visual mechanism
which worked to fuel their
proto-capitalist and mercantilist
nation. Such a focus on Chinese
commodities ultimately becomes a
revealing commentary on
seventeenth-century Dutch
self-imaging and culture.
1. M.
Polo, De regionibus
orientalibus libri
III. 3vols. Brandenburg,
1671.
2. M. Ricci, ed.
and trans. Louis Gallagher,
China in the
Sixteenth-Century: The
Journals of Matteo Ricci,
1583-1610, New York, 1953,
30.
3. ‘Quasi-sacred’>
is meant to connote
associations to an
ecclesiastical space or
religious characterization.
4.
Nettiytch or neat,
illusionist painting was
privileged by Karel van Mander,
The Lives of the Illustrious
Netherlandish and German
Painters, from the first
edition of the
Schilder-boek, 1603-04,
Trans. Hessel Miedema,
Doornspijk, 1994.
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