Page 73 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

animals on which the Commune of Florence lavish, for the system admitted only those for- in 1526, but when the envoy claimed twelve
prudently chose to dwell in its report of the eigners whom the Chinese court was prepared thousand gold pieces for his expenses it was
embassy submitted to Bayazid n. 35 to impress, while tribute intervals could, theo- indignantly dismissed.
Such dazzling embassies were, however, a retically at least, be adjusted to suit its own The menageries that the Muslim rulers of
commonplace of Muslim diplomacy. That from demand. 41 India and the Middle East presented to each
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the Safavid Shah lsma il to Qansuh al-Ghawri By the mid-fifteenth century, however, this other, and the lions and other animals that they
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in Cairo, in a last-minute attempt to bring pseudo-diplomacy was getting out of hand. believed were acceptable to the Ming court at
the Mamluks into an anti-Ottoman coalition, Faced with an annual horde of merchants from Beijing, make exotic animals a surprisingly
brought seven cheetahs with silk jackets; horses Central Asia, the Ming administration in 1456 important item of international trade across
and horse-trappings; fine arms and armor; gold reduced the official scale of exchanges to four Asia. How the trade worked is unknown, but
cups and silver basins and ewers; gold brocades pieces of variegated silk and eight garments of the animals may have been obtained as a by-
and satins from Bursa; Turkish prayer rugs cheap silk for each Turcoman horse (the most product of the enormous traffic in thoroughbred
and runners; and fine cottons and velvet robes. highly prized steeds in the Ming cavalry); ten horses exported annually from the Gulf ports 47
The Bahmanid embassy of 1471 to Aqqoyunlu garments of cheap silk for three camels; and for the cavalries of the warrior states of north-
Tabriz described by the Venetian Josafa Bar- for each Tatar horse only a piece of hempen ern India and East Africa. Albuquerque's
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baro brought a whole menagerie —a lion, a cloth and eight pieces of cheap silk. The exotic rhinoceros, which was to be commemorated in
tiger, a giraffe, civet-cats, and parakeets; as well animals presented by foreign embassies, even Diirer's famous woodcut (cat. 206), may have
as fine muslins and calicoes; sandalwood, aloes- when they were from foreign rulers, were much added a new dimension to Renaissance pag-
wood, and gems; and porcelains to add to Uzun more critically received. When an embassy eantry, but it was in a well-established Muslim
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Hasan's already fine collection. A charming from Sultan Ahmad (1468-1493), the Timurid diplomatic tradition.
scroll fragment in the Topkapi Saray Library 38 ruler of Samarkand, arrived with two lions, it
showing a gamboling giraffe in a deep blue was objected that lions were useless beasts that
embroidered jacket may be a record of this were expensive to keep but which could neither An oriental obsession
embassy. Nor were the Ottomans excluded. be sacrificed nor even, bizarre thought, be The spectacle of Muslim embassies fueled the
Among the gifts of the Bahmanid embassy of harnessed to a carriage. In 1489 when another Venetian idea of the East as the source of all
1485 to Istanbul were elephants and a giraffe. embassy arrived from Samarkand with parrots benefits and luxuries, to the exclusion of north-
While at Tabriz Barbaro also learned, from an and a lion, the emperor, quite against the ern and western Europe. Unfortunately, the
ambassador of "Tartarie" (probably from Far- Confucian imperial tradition, declared that he Venetians wilfully ignored the most conspicu-
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ghana), of an overland route to Cathay, east- disliked both rare birds and strange beasts. The ous drawback of trade with the East, bubonic
ward from Tana on the Sea of Azov. This was following year yet another lion and an Asiatic plague. For more than a century after the Black
the route traveled by Western merchants and lynx were brought by an embassy from Turf an. Death first arrived, it reappeared annually 48
missionaries during the "pax mongolica" of the Their pictures were drawn at the northern with the galleys from Alexandria, whose crews
first half of the fourteenth century, and by it capital and sent to the emperor who this time, were constantly reinfected through the Mam-
Europe obtained chinoiserie silks from II- though against his ministers' advice, deigned luks' importation of slaves from the Crimea and
Khanid Iran, as well as Chinese silks, which to accept them. 44 the fur trade from the Black Sea and the Volga
strongly influenced the design of northern Ital- The lists of gifts and the commodities to Cairo.
ian silks of the later fourteenth century. By the exchanged for them clearly show that unless An Eastern import that added conspicuously
early fifteenth century the sea route had taken merchants surreptitiously succeeded in striking to the comfort and splendor of Renaissance
over, when the great Ming naval expeditions profitable bargains in the Chinese cities they furnishing was the carpet. Those that reached
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reached Arabia and the Gulf with enormous passed through on their way to or from Beijing, the northern Mediterranean were for the most
war junks in which celadons and blue and white trade was small-scale and rather trivial and part nomad weaves from western Anatolia
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porcelains evidently formed a substantial ele- could scarcely have been the basis of a Chinese and large carpets from Cairo. The "Holbein"
ment of the ballast. export trade westward from Samarkand. In the pattern of small Turkish carpets used to cover
Overland trade with China was from Central early sixteenth century the Ottomans were nev- tables (tappeti di tavola), not for the floor, goes
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Asia: Barbaro's informant rightly gave him to ertheless informed of the overland route to back to the 145OS. The pattern was most prob-
understand that Western merchants would not China, though their political concerns probably ably traditional, uninfluenced either by Italian
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get beyond Samarkand — if they got even that reached no further eastward than the Uzbeks demand or by the Ottoman court. They were
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far. This trade was, moreover, much complicated in Transoxania. In 1516 a certain Sayyid Ali exported by Italian merchants resident at Alto-
by the fact that in Chinese eyes trade was trib- Akbar presented a work on the China trade, the luogo, the medieval port of Ephesus, and by
ute. In the Confucian tradition the emperor Khitdyndme 45 to Selim i, though his advice to merchants on Rhodes who acquired them from
was the divinely appointed ruler of the world, offer gifts of cheetahs, lions, and lynxes sug- agents in the hinterland.
graciously accepting the humble tribute of his gests that he was unaware that for decades the Carpets from Cairo arrived via Alexandria
vassals and their ambassadors, even if the "dip- Ming court had been suffering from a glut and Damascus, in such numbers that there must
lomats" were actually merchants. This elaborate of unwanted animals. Though the Ottoman have been a large, uncontrolled market in them,
make-believe perhaps gave the Chinese court sources say nothing of any embassies to China, though they were much prized by the Mamluk
a better pick of merchandise than if foreign the Chinese annals mention two embassies Sultans and later by the Ottomans too. They
traders had sold their wares on markets at the from "Rum" (Anatolia) that could conceivably were also large, sometimes enormous. In 1515
frontier, and counterfeit embassies with coun- have been official. 46 One in 1524 arrived with the Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri rode in state
terfeit credentials were thus continually wel- a lion and a Western ox, but the envoy was through Cairo to the Citadel, and the whole
comed in Beijing. Provision for them was arrested as a spy. The second embassy arrived way from the entrance of the Hippodrome at its

72 CIRCA 1492