Description de la Chine, part of Prevost's monumental 'l'Histoire General des Voyages' The plate depicts a low terraced building, upon the roof of which are various monumental astronomical tools. These are labelled and described in a lettered key at the top of the plate in French and Dutch. Among the instruments are a zodiacal sphere, a celestial globe, a sextant, a quadrant, an equinoctial sphere, and an azimuth marker. The subtitle to the plate attributes the illustration to the description of Louis le Comte (1655-1728), a Jesuit missionary who travelled to China in the 1687 mission led by the Jesuit mathematician and astronomer Jean de Fontaney. Le Comte produced a memoir of his journey, which was published in Paris in 1696. le Comte had a particular interest in the celestial knowledge of the Chinese, as well as their various religious and philosophical practices, and his memoirs were a major source for the debate in the Roman Catholic church over whether or not Confucianism was compatible with Christian belief.

The Histoire General des Voyages was a monumental eighteenth century general history divided according to geographic region. The original volumes were written by Antoine François Prevost d'Exiles, a French author, novelist, theologian, natural historian, and a priest of the Jesuit and Benedictine orders, but continued by numerous other authors after Prevost's death. The earliest books mostly deal with the Far East and South-East Asia, providing a general history of their regions, kingdoms, customs, culture, costumes, natural phenomena and religious beliefs. Much of Prevost's information is derived from the reports of Jesuit missionaries, Portuguese merchants, and famous explorers, from Marco Polo to Sir Francis Drake. Although written in French, the popularity of the Histoire among Dutch audiences meant that many of the illustrative plates and maps published to accompany the work were either re-engraved or subtitled in Dutch by the engraver Jakob van der Schley. Prevost himself had travelled widely throughout the Netherlands, launching his literary career in Amsterdam and the Hague after fleeing the Benedictines in France. Prevost's work on China, and indeed many of van der Schley's plates, owe a great debt to Johan Nieuhoff (1618-1672) , a Dutch traveller who explored much of China, India, and Brazil while in the employ of the Dutch East India Company. Nieuhoff wrote extensively, with a particular focus on China, for his memoirs, and his numerous drawings of Chinese places and people were much copied by later engravers for numerous works of Chinese interest. Nieuhoffs own book became a major source of inspiration for eighteenth century chinoiserie, and are amongst the first western illustrations to depict the Chinese people in a manner which was based upon personal observation rather than the tradition of oriental fantasy.--Sanders description.

Cf. Golvers, Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623-1688) and the Chinese Heaven, p. 336.
Dig. image [Schley Observatory 1749]

Nicolas Standaert 鍾鳴旦: Dutch, Flemish and German engravings presented to the Kangxi Emperor.
Matteo Nicolini-Zani 馬明哲: Was Xu Guangqi the author of the Tie shizi zhu 鐵十字著 (1627) which promotes the Iron Cross as a Christian relic?
Noël Golvers 高華士: Jesuit correspondence from China: the two ‘Tartary-Letters’ of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ, (1682 & 1683) and their oldest printed edition (Paris, 1684) as a case study.
Hartmut Walravens 魏漢茂: Der vergessene Castiglione-Experte George Robert Loehr und seine Briefe an Walter Fuchs.
Review article: [D.E. Mungello], Turning the wheel in Sino-Western history.

Matteo Nicolini-Zani’s article includes English translation: A Clarification about an Iron Cross [Instruction on the “Song of the Iron Cross”] by Xu Guangqi, posthumously called Wending 文定.

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EUCHINA notice:

1) pp. 1-27: Nicolas Standaert, “Dutch, Flemish and German engravings presented to the Kangxi emperor”. concerns BAV Borgia Cinese 318 (2) [1708] and 316 (17) [1720], describing engravings (which themselves are missing) identified as coming from resp. 'Theatrum Biblicum' (1639/1643, Claes Visscher ed.) and 'Biblisches Engel- u. Kunst Werck' (1694, Johann Kraus comp.).
2) pp. 28-42: Matteo Nicolini-Zani, “Was Xu Guangqi the author of the 'Tie shizi zhu' 鐵十字著 (1627) which promotes the iron cross as a Christian relic?” [with Chinese text and English translation; the attribution to Xu is supported]

3) pp. 43-58, Noël Golvers, “Jesuit correspondence from China: The two ‘Tartary letters’ of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1682 & 1683) and their oldest printed edition (Paris, 1684) as a case study”. [pp. 43-55; p. 56/57: references; p. 57/58: two additional notes]

4) pp. 59-73, Hartmut Walravens, “Der vergessene Castiglione-Experte George Robert Loehr and seine Briefe an Walter Fuchs”. [pp. 59-61; pp. 62-71: the text of seven letters; pp. 71-73: list of Loehr’s publications]

5) pp. 74-91, reviews:
a) pp. 74-81, David Mungello, “Turning the wheel in Sino-Western history” on four recent books about Johann Schreck: 2016 (von Collani /Zettl eds.), 2014 (Deiwiks /Geulen eds.), 2006 (Iannacone, 'L’amico di Galileo'), 2007 (Langner, 'Kopernikus in der Verbotenen Stadt');
b) pp. 81-84, Jocelyn Marinescu, on volume 3 of Golvers, Libraries of Western learning for China (2015);
c) pp. 84-87, David Mungello, on Paul Katz, 'Religion in China and its modern fate' (2014);
d) pp. 88-91, Wu Huiyi on Thierry Meynard, 'The Jesuit reading of Confucius' (2015).