Page 121 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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DISTANT WORLDS inhabited it. The trickle of exotic goods —both Abraham Cresques
Tales of the splendors of Cathay had circulated natural objects, like ostrich eggs and coconut Mallorcan, 1325-1387
in Europe for centuries before Columbus' shells, and manmade products, like silks and
voyage. The medieval world had inherited from porcelains —that reached Europe from the far- CATALAN ATLAS
antiquity a bewildering variety of fact and fic- off lands of Africa and Asia fetched high prices, 1375
tion concerning the lands of Asia, dating as far as did the spices that were so vital to a society 12 vellum sheets, 2 leather bindings, mounted on
back as the time of Alexander the Great and that lacked effective means of refrigeration to 7 wooden panels
7
preserved in romances and in the Christian preserve food. each panel 65 x 25 (25% x 9 /s)
encyclopedias. In the late thirteenth and early The few maps that have survived from this references: El Atlas Catalan 1975; Freisleben 1977;
fourteenth century these sources were enriched by period—most notably the Catalan Atlas — Grosjean 1977; Campbell 1981, 116; Avril et al
the narratives of actual travelers to China, most present a world that looks familiar to us only in 1982, 96-98, no. no
notably Marco Polo. Their journeys were made its western reaches, where coastal navigation Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS espagnol 30
possible by the opening up to Europeans of the had established the basic contours of land and
overland trade routes during the period of sea. To the east lay a vast, uncharted territory, The Catalan Atlas was originally made up of six
Mongol rule over China and central Asia. full of riches and wonders, whose luxuries large rectangular panels; at the beginning of the
Late medieval Europe was fascinated by enticed the merchant and whose largely sixteenth century each of these was split length-
these accounts of the marvels of the East, which heathen populations beckoned to the Christian wise in two, and the vellum leaves were glued
centered on its storybook riches and on the rulers of Europe, who also imagined new onto the rectos and versos of seven panels which
strange humans and monstrous creatures that opportunities for spreading the Gospel. were then backed onto one another so that the
map could be read as a book. The binding in
120 CIRCA 1492