魯本斯 魯本斯 | 未曾謀面的東亞人

J. Paul Getty Museum's collection contains two works on paper that foreground the global world in which 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens lived and worked. On the left is Rubens' black and red chalk drawing of an East Asian man wearing opulent robes and a transparent headdress, and on the right is his oil sketch of an elaborately turbaned black African man portrayed at bust length. As a court artist and erudite diplomat who travelled extensively throughout modern-day Europe, Rubens participated in many cross-cultural exchanges. He often depicted in sumptuous detail the famous courtiers and wealthy merchants he met on his travels. But in this lecture, I explore the implications of less direct encounters and how Rubens responded to printed images and luxury goods imported to Europe from afar. In particular, I discuss how Rubens incorporated this fragmentary information into his own imagery, appropriating the clothing and physiogamies associated with distant lands to promote religious and political agendas back home in Antwerp. Rubens' depiction of an East Asian man is by no means a quick, small sketch. The cascade of shimmering silk robes and the headdress that allows light and air to pass through it are meticulously rendered on a large scale. The tightly cropped figure with a piercing gaze in the immediate foreground can phase a forceful presence. The cast shadow at right, together with the rosy red cheeks, ears and lips, further animate the figure. Outlines of a merchant ship are visible in the distant background at left, along with two faint undulating lines behind the figure, evocative of the shoreline. These details allude to maritime travel, but they do not help identify the origins of the individual or his attire. The first recorded guess at this figure's identity appears in the 18th century, and it was incorrect. The drawing was then owned by the English collector and painter Jonathan Richardson, Sr., whose collector's mark appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the sheet. The sale catalogue of Richardson, Sr.'s drawings, sold at auction on January 22, 1746, gave special notice to Rubens's work. In the midst of a vast list of untitled drawings by Rubens, Bernini, Titian, and Raphael, Lot 41 is described in detail as a portrayal of a Siamese priest by Rubens. Richardson's 1746 inventory listing thus established and publicized the figure in the Getty drawing as a priest from the Asian nation of Siam, modern-day Thailand. The Siamese identification offered in Richardson's sale catalogue was given new emphasis and a wider currency in 1774 when Captain William Bailey made a print after the Getty sheet. As an amateur printmaker, art dealer, and connoisseur, Bailey made reproductive etchings of well-known Dutch, Flemish, and French artworks in English collections, transforming unique objects into images that could be reproduced and disseminated widely. Bailey embellished Richardson's earlier Siamese identification with an inscription at the bottom of the plate. Quote, the Siamese ambassador who attended the court of King Charles I, Rubens made the above-described drawing just before he left England on 1636, unquote. Thus, Rubens's design and the Siamese identification entered wider circulation together. As Rubens's drawing changed hands among several generations of British and Czech aristocrats, the Siamese identification survived unquestioned for nearly 200 years. But this accepted fact stumbled in 1935 when a scholar took it upon herself to see whether a Siamese embassy had actually visited the English court in 1636. It turns out the answer was no. Furthermore, from depictions of a Siamese embassy to the court of Versailles in 1686, it was determined that Siamese diplomats of this period wore conical headdresses that were not transparent. This brief history of the early identifications of Rubens's drawing served as an important reminder. Inscriptions on works of art, especially those applied by Europeans to images of foreigners, can perpetuate ignorance about other cultures instead of documenting understanding. Rubens's drawing then became associated with a group of four others by the artist depicting Jesuit missionaries wearing Chinese robes. Three of these four drawings portray the important Jesuit leader of the Chinese mission,Nicholas Trigo. Closest in style to the Getty drawing is one of Trigo wearing floor-length silk robes with wide sleeves and a tall four-corner headdress that Rubens executed in black chalk, red chalk and blue-green pastel. This drawing seen here at left is on a paper stock similar to that of the Getty sheet and with approximately the same dimensions. Trigo's name appears in Latin on the bottom left of the sheet along with the date of 1617. Unlike the Getty drawing in which Rubens emphasized the dynamic flow of fabric rendered the numerous pleats, scintillating highlights and the voluminous quantity of opulent fabric encircling the figure in an extremely vivid manner, the drawing of Trigo articulates the folds and the shimmer and the sheen of the silk in a more matter-of-fact style. This sense of reportage conforms to the drawing of Trigo's function, a study recording clothing donned by the Jesuits in China. By the late 16th century, members of the Catholic religious order called the Society of Jesus or Jesuits were actively proselytizing in China. They were also the most prolific writers about Asian peoples, customs and clothing. For all of their dedication and devotion, however, the Jesuits made little progress until they realized that a better way to convert the Chinese to Christianity would be to infiltrate the Ming Dynasty's governmental structure. To this end, they mastered the Chinese language, donned the long silk robes and tall four-corner hats worn by Confucian scholars and let their beards grow long. The long Latin inscription in Rubens's hand on the upper right of the Trigo drawing records this factual information about the Chinese scholar's attire. The inscription states that however sumptuous Chinese clothing donned by the Jesuits must not offend the emperor by assuming his exclusive imperial color of yellow. It also mentions the Jesuit effort to fashion a variant of the Chinese scholar's costume that was specific to their order. What is important to pay attention to here is that when Rubens had specific knowledge of East Asian costume, he made note of it on his drawings. It only takes a quick comparison of the two drawings to observe that the figure depicted in the Getty Sheet wears a different type of garment than Trigo. According to Korean costume historians, the voluminous overcoat with a low waist, pleated skirt and long sleeves depicted in the Getty Sheet resembles the cholique worn in Korea by government officials up to the 18th century. The numerous folds of the silk robe especially visible in the underskirt appear to have been created by small gatherings of pleats at the waist, characteristic of a Korean cholique. The bunched sleeves shown in the Getty drawing are also typical of the cholique, which has much narrower sleeves than the robes worn by the Jesuits in China. In addition, the transparent headdress in the Getty drawing resembles a Korean pangong, an open headdress in a square format woven from horsehair and worn in Korea by Confucian scholars at home. In an attempt to understand why Rubens depicted Korean and Chinese costume in the same series of drawings, scholars have postulated perhaps the figure in the Getty Sheet represents a Korean Jesuit whom Nicholas Trigo brought back with him to Europe during a recruiting and fundraising mission from 1613 to 1618. No documentation has been found of any Asian Jesuit accompanying Trigo to Europe, however. Surely, if a recent convert from the little-known kingdom of Korea had traveled with Trigo on a publicity tour, his novel presence would have been worth mentioning, especially by the Jesuits themselves, as was commonly done. The association of the Getty drawing with Jesuit missionaries in China was overshadowed by another, more popular identification proposed in 1983. Immediately after the drawing was acquired at auction, a reporter from the Korean News Review postulated that Rubens's figure was a portrait of Antonio Correa, a formerly enslaved Korean man thought to have resided in Rome around 1606. This identification is based on a travel account written by the 16th-century Florentine merchant Francesco Carletti. There, Carletti claims that he bought five Korean men at the Nagasaki slave market in Japan for a low price. After having the enslaved Koreans baptized, he took them to the Portuguese colony of Goa in India and set them free. Later in his text, Carletti states and I quote, I bought one of them with me to Florence. I think today he is found in Rome, where he is known as Antonio Correa." Carletti's mention of Antonio Correa in his travelogue certainly does not prove that Rubens drew a portrait of him when the artist traveled to Italy from November 1605 to October 1608. Typically, Rubens drew a detailed study of the sitter's head when making the portrait. A brief look at the Getty drawing makes clear that the head was not the artist's main focus. Furthermore, while in Italy, Rubens was primarily preoccupied with copying famous ancient Roman sculptures, as well as compositions by Michelangelo and Raphael, as many Netherlandish artists before him had done. During the age of Rubens, European knowledge of the distinct customs and clothing of Korea was virtually non-existent. Until 1594, when a world map showed Korea as a peninsula, European merchants described Korea as, quote, an island above Japan with no certainty concerning its size, people, nor what trade there is, unquote. This lack of specific knowledge is further indicated by the first account of Korea published in Europe. In 1653, a Dutch East India Trading Ship, the Spareware, was shipwrecked on Jeju Island in Korea. The survivors were taken hostage and remained in Korea for 13 years. Upon their escape and return to Europe, a member of the party, the Dutch merchant, Hendrik Hummel, published an account of his captivity. Hummel's 1668 text conveys that European understanding of Korean culture was by no means straightforward. It is clear from his description of the shipwreck that Hummel had no idea where he was when the ship landed. Judging from the clothing worn by the soldiers who took him hostage, Hummel assumed he was on an island inhabited by Chinese pirates. Note here the slippage of identity between China and Korea, a common mistake in 17th century Europe. Upon the return of Hummel and his compatriots to the Dutch East India Company post in Nagasaki, Dutch merchants describe them as being, quote, dressed in a wondrous way with a boat of a strange fashion, unquote. Apparently, seeing Dutch men in Korean clothing struck the other merchants' positioned overseas dumb. I dwell on this point to emphasize that when Rubens made the Getty drawing around 1617 back in Antwerp, its viewers would have mostly regarded the attire as markedly foreign but not specifically Korean. Although there is evidence of East Asians working on Portuguese and Dutch ships that came to and from Europe, there have been no documents found as of yet discussing any Korean or Chinese people who settled in the city of Antwerp. It seems worthwhile to posit that Rubens simply based his drawing on imported silk robes in a horsehair headdress, the very focus of the drawing itself. In the early 1600s, Antwerp was known throughout Europe as a city where expensive luxury goods imported from all parts of the world were traded, collected and depicted. Some of these goods came to Antwerp from Spanish and Portuguese merchants, but others arrived worn on the backs of Jesuit missionaries, as we have seen in the drawing Rubens depicted of Trigaud in 1617. Through his connection with Trigaud, Rubens clearly had access to the Jesuit supply of artifacts imported from abroad, a collection that may very well have included Korean robes and headdresses. It is entirely possible that Rubens's Jesuit patron acquired Korean attire in Beijing during his visit there in 1611, or perhaps in Macau, China's trading post on his way back to Europe in 1613. Korea had a tributary relationship with China, and three times a year, Korean and Chinese merchants traded in Beijing. It also stands to reason that Trigaud, or one of his European recruits, could have modeled Korean garments for Rubens and spurred the artist's fascination with the never-before-seen attire. The Getty drawing signals an artist mesmerized with unfamiliar clothing. Every crease and fold, every shimmer and sheen was considered worthy of attention. Rubens was so concerned with his portrayal of the cascade of folds that the legs and feet assumed secondary importance. The left leg stops short of the bottom of the page, though the sheet does not appear to have been cropped at a later date. The strange truncated calves may instead register the artist's lack of knowledge about what would have been worn underneath this sumptuous robe. Rubens presented two options. On the right, voluminous leggings that echo the vortex of swirling silk robes above. On the left, a completely bare calf. This fascination with one aspect at the expense of another also occurs in the depiction of the headdress. Rubens was clearly captivated by a porous headdress that allowed light and air to pass through it, but he was not as interested in its structure. He did not employ cross-hatching to suggest that the headdress was made of woven horsehair. Instead, he used delicate parallel hatching to heighten the sense of transparency. Rubens also did not depict what was typically found underneath transparent headdresses, the long hair wound up in a topknot. Instead, the Flemish artist introduced wisps of short hair protruding from a headdress and a conical-shaped inner cap inventing his own covering for the head. Entirely removed from the culture to which the novel silk garments and horsehair headdress belonged, Rubens fashioned the attire to his liking. In this vein, his drawing presents his idea of an East Asian man, not a portrait of one. Commonplace in Rubens's time, reductive stereotypes about East Asian physiognomy— high cheekbones, flat noses, heavily arched eyebrows, and deep-set elliptical eyes— are found in written descriptions. These generic facial features also appeared in illustrations, such as those of the Chinese found in Johann Theodor de Bruy's illustrated book, India Orientalis, of which Rubens himself owned a copy. Adding subtle touches of red chalk to the cheeks, ears, and lips, and giving this figure a direct confrontational gaze, Rubens animated the staged stereotypes to make this man appear more lifelike. Following artistic standards of his day, Rubens made paintings and drawings that evoked a powerful immediacy. But the immediacy of this image in no way guarantees that Rubens actually met an East Asian man and drew his portrait. I show you as a comparison to the Getty drawing, a painted portrait that Rubens made around 1613 of Mullah Ahmad, the Hafsid Muslim ruler of Tunis. With a meticulous handling of oil paint, this portrait conveys the glistening olive skin of a ruler of northern Africa. It even shows the moistened eyes of his watchful gaze. Given how lifelike this portrait seems to be, it may be surprising that it was not made in front of the ruler. Instead,Rubens based his portrayal on a print made after a lost portrait painted nearly a century before in 1536 by another Flemish artist. Thus,even with all of its believability, Rubens's portrait of Mullah Ahmad artificially documents an encounter that the artist did not have. Was it convention alone that made Rubens portray his man in a Korean costume in such a lively manner? The reappearance of the Getty figure in Rubens's Miracles of St. Francis Xavier facilitates a partial answer to this question. Executed for the high altar of St. Charles of Borromeo Church in Antwerp, this monumental altarpiece with its life-size figures portrays a synthesis of miracles performed by the Jesuit missionary in Goa. In 1541, the first Jesuit,Francisco Xavier, arrived in Goa, where he proselytized among its diverse population. Rubens portrayed Xavier with his acolyte standing on an elevated plinth while his miraculous deeds unfolded simultaneously beneath him. In the painting, Xavier raised his left hand, pointing to the source of his divine power in an allegorical figure of the Catholic faith holding a chalice and carried aloft by angels in the clouds above. Below, amid the gaping mouths, poignant tears, and outstretched arms, some less dramatic conversions also take place. Rubens placed a multiracial group of men in the center of the composition, representing priests from diverse non-Christian faiths. Among these men is a figure whose robes and headdress resembles those in the Getty drawing. Rubens adapted his solitary subject from the drawing to fit into a complex religious narrative. No longer shown with a ship in the background, here he is crowded with other non-Christians awakening to the Catholic faith. When Rubens began his painting, the Jesuit missionary had not yet been canonized or even beatified. It is most likely that the Jesuits commissioned this grand altarpiece full of drama and incident as a propaganda device to popularize Javier and fast-track his canonization. Accordingly, Rubens's Jesuit patrons appeared to have carefully supervised the artist's depiction of the saints' miracles. Rubens first presented the Jesuits with a small oil-sketched medallo illustrating his compositional ideas. The medallo shows the clerics wearing Turkish turbans and caftans. It appears that the Jesuits in Antwerp wanted Rubens to make specific reference to Goa by depicting a variety of clothing and hairstyles they actually thought could be found there. Rubens thus eliminated the figures in Turkish garb, substituting in their place priests wearing an array of attire that distinguished them from their Jesuit counterparts, including one wearing a transparent horsehair headdress and a gold-yellow silk robe modeled after those in the Getty drawing. In Rubens's painting, the depiction of unfamiliar clothing establishes a hierarchy of faith. Rubens portrayed Javier dressed in a somber black habit, indicating to Catholics in Antwerp his higher moral authority. In contrast, he showed the non-Christians dressed in brightly colored robes. Compared to Javier and his classicizing drapery that conforms to his purposeful stance and his dynamic rhetorical gestures, the priests of other faiths are arrested in their movement with their vibrant robes encircling them. Rubens depicted them awestruck and powerless while Javier commands the divine light to strike down the pagan idol in the temple above them, signaling the literal collapse of their world order. Placed in the Jesuit church in Antwerp before Javier was canonized, this huge altarpiece was intended to encourage mass belief in the miracles the Jesuit leader had performed in Goa. Given its propagandistic mission, the painting had to be convincing. It was Rubens's job to create a believable portrayal of the missionary Francisco Javier and his power to persuade those of other faiths to convert to Catholicism. In the Getty drawing, one detects Rubens's initial encounter with imported attire and senses the artist's fascination and effort to describe the unfamiliar. There is no room for this mode of careful study in the propagandistic altarpiece where the man wearing traditional dress reappears. In the painting, the exoticizing garments become a way to identify a convert from a distant shore. To this end, Rubens altered the pose and the details of his original figure. He is now shown in profile gazing up in awe at Javier and bearing witness to the missionary's miraculous power to persuade. Among the crowd of converts, the Getty figure gains legs and feet as well as leggings and boots. The transparent headdress gets structural support and appears woven. The face becomes more individualized with a mustache and a goatee. In so far as these features are different in the painting, the Getty drawing is not atypical preparatory study for the altarpiece. Instead, it functions as an independent study that was used to inform the depiction of a non-Christian priest in the altarpiece. While Rubens was occupied commemorating the Jesuit missions in China and Goa, he took a pause to consider Asian people on the other side of the globe. Who were these individuals the Jesuits were trying to convert and what might they look like? How might their clothing differ from what the Jesuit missionaries wore themselves? This imaginative turn seems to have been inspired by a first-hand encounter with never-before-seen robes and headdress. Rubens portrayed his man in Korean attire in a tantalizing, credible manner. He portrayed him the way 17th-century Europeans most likely would have imagined him as wondrously different from themselves. Rubens's central role in promoting the Catholic faith in the city of Antwerp and his depictions of people in clothing from overseas to enrich his religious narratives inform another work in the Getty's collection that this lecture can only begin to explore. In the recently acquired study, Rubens used oil on paper to envision in more detail the head of King Balthasar for a larger painting of the Adoration of the Magi. According to the Bible, Magi from the East traveled to Bethlehem to present the infant Christ Child with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Medieval tradition held that the three kings paying homage to Christ came from Africa, Asia, and Europe so that all continents of the world then known to Europeans acknowledged Christianity as one true religion. By the 1600s, Flemish paintings of the Adoration reflected the widely held belief that Balthasar, the youngest king, was from Africa by representing him as a black African. The biblical story of kings traveling from afar to pay homage to Christ, the newborn king, resonated in Catholic Antwerp, Rubens's home city and a center of global trade. Around 1609, when Rubens was in his early 30s and had recently returned to Antwerp from an eight-year sojourn to Italy, he received an important commission. The mayor of Antwerp contracted him to paint an Adoration of the Magi for the city's town hall. This large painting was intended to create a symbolic setting for the room where the 12-year truce between Spain and the United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands was signed on April 9, 1609. Antwerp, located in southern Netherlands, belonged to an empire ruled by Catholic Spain. The importance of this truce cannot be underestimated as it was an attempt to end an 80-year war between a small conglomeration of rebellious northern Netherlandish provinces and their Spanish Habsburg overlords. Rubens's monumental, multifigured painting embodied the explicit hope that global trade would continue to flourish in the mercantile city of Antwerp when the peace was finally restored. Rubens used this oil sketch to refine the facial expression of Balthasar, who occupied a central position in his large painting. As was typical for the artist, he first made an oil sketch of the entire composition, roughly blocking out the placement of the main figures. He then made subsequent oil sketches and chalk drawings to further refine the expressions and poses of key protagonists. A comparison of the black magus in the larger preparatory oil sketch to the head study of Balthasar in the Getty's collection shows the subtle changes the artist made to his central figure's gaze and expression. Rubens further emphasized Balthasar's gaze directed to the side by carefully articulating his pupils. He also refined the expression intended to evoke the king's awe as he witnessed the infant Christ. Instead of gaping in astonishment, Balthasar has a slightly parted mouth that is more subtle in its expression, reflecting the spark of recognition that leads to veneration. Painted on ledger paper containing bookkeeping entries in Italian and Flemish that have yet to be deciphered, the Getty's oil sketch has script that permeates the black king's bust, headdress and face. This visible text indicates just how thinly Rubens applied the oil paint in certain areas, adding to the sense of immediacy. Rubens greatly worked up the portrayal of the black king's face and turban. Grayish white highlights model the figure's deep brown complexion and are especially noticeable on the left cheek, nose and temple. A smooth application of brown paint to suggest the sheen of skin is enhanced by the rough texture of the white headdress that drapes around the head and neck. Rubens used thicker strokes of white oil paint over thinner layers to accentuate dramatically the folds of the turban. The contrast of light, dark, rough, smooth, thick and thin creates a strong three-dimensional presence. Despite Rubens's lifelike rendering of physiogamy, this work was not intended to serve as a portrait in the conventional sense, that is, an independent work recording the likeness of an individual. An important question remains about who served as the model for this study of Balthasar. There are no documented visits of African royalty visiting Antwerp during the early 1600s, but the city was home to both freed black Africans employed as servants and black Africans enslaved by Spanish and Portuguese merchants. Much more archival research about the positions and rights of these men in Antwerp households is still needed. Rubens and his workshop relied on these individuals to inform their portrayals of black Africans, as this example, also in the Getty's collection shows. In Rubens's head study for Balthasar, a man with black African features wears a turban that imitates those traditionally worn by Muslim kings from Tunis, as shown here again in the 1536 etching. By transposing a turban inspired by an earlier pictorial source with the physiognomy of an actual person, Rubens created a rendition of the biblical character. Toward this end, it seems likely that Rubens engaged a servant or an enslaved person to pose as an African king, a role rich with irony. As captivating and significant as they are, the Getty's two drawings do not indicate a deep understanding of faraway cultures or shed light on the historical status of East Asians and black Africans who lived in Antwerp. These works are not documents of pure observation, but creations based on inference in imaginative recombination. Rubens assimilated the scattered evidence and second-hand information about distant lands from his own perspective and for his own purposes. Important among these was to convince his viewers to believe in specific religious and political narratives. While his paintings may have been more public carriers of these meanings, the earlier, more exploratory drawings give unique insights into how Rubens was actually assimilating and transforming the limited information as it emerged within a rapidly interconnecting globe. I hope I have provided some insights into this process and show how deftly he combined depictions of unfamiliar people and objects, such as a horsehair headdress or an elaborate turban, all the while using visual tropes of portraiture from his own tradition to forge cohesive and persuasive images. In these ways and others, the drawings help pull back the curtain on broader, highly complex intersections of power, faith and race in the early modern period. As windows into how these relations were being worked out in real time, they are particularly rich sites for critical inquiry from a multitude of perspectives in the future.