Page 652 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

sponse of disapproval was liable to be accompa-
nied by curiosity.
The curiosity with which Europeans ap-
proached the non-European world was reflected
in the journals of voyagers like Pigafetta or
Verrazano, who described with fascination the
customs of the peoples whom they came across
in their travels. This curiosity suggests a degree
of openness in sixteenth-century European civi-
lization. At times it showed itself willing to be
impressed, as Diirer was impressed by the beauty
of the objects brought back from Mexico in
Motecuhzoma's treasure, and by the skill of na-
tive craftsmen in working gold and silver. Such
reactions suggested that Europe would not re-
main immune to the cultural influences of the
non-European world, even if the principal reac-
tion in the sixteenth century was more often
astonishment or wonder than the desire to
emulate. 23
This responsiveness to certain aspects of non-
European culture was reinforced in some quar-
ters by a growing sense of guilt. While the
arrogance that sprang from an innate sense of
superiority was liable to predominate in the
dealings of Europeans with non-Europeans,
there were some, both at home and overseas,
whose scruples of conscience made them ques-
tion the behavior and motivations of their
fellow-Europeans. Above all it was a growing
realization of the fate that was overtaking the
inhabitants of the Indies at the hands of the
Spaniards that provoked the first stirrings of
conscience in European minds. These stirrings
will be forever associated with the name of
Bartolome de Las Casas, the Spanish friar who,
after witnessing in the Caribbean and mainland
America the sufferings of the Indians, devoted
the rest of his long life to denouncing the
behavior of his compatriots, and expatiating
on the social and cultural achievements of the
people who, even as he wrote, seemed set for
extinction. 24
The combination of an awareness of diversity,
an intense curiosity, and the growing sense of
guilt that characterized sixteenth-century Euro-
pean thought at its best, was nowhere better
represented than in the essays of that sceptical
Frenchman, Michel de Montaigne, who was
prompted by his reading of Gomara's account of
the conquest of the Indies to reflect on Europe's
record in its encounter with the non-European
world: "So many goodly cities ransacked and
razed; so many nations destroyed and made
desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse peo-
ples of all sexes, states and ages, massacred,
ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest,
the fairest and the best part of the world topsi-
turvied, ruined and defaced for the traffick of fig. 4. John White, An Indian Painted for the Hunt, c. 1585, watercolor, Trustees of the British
Pearles and Pepper. . . ," 25 Museum, London

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