The search for the origins of the Chinese manuscript of Matteo Ricci's maps

Abstract

In 1986 the Kendall Whaling Museum (Sharon, Massachusetts) acquired a panel of a Chinese map as an example of the Chinese representation of the monstrous fish (whales) mentioned by Herman Melville in his assessment of eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century depictions of whales. Only later was the panel identified as a rare seventeenth‐century variation of Matteo Ricci's world map of 1602. In this paper, the museum's map is compared with other manuscript and printed maps by Matteo Ricci. Discussion centres on the origins of the manuscript copies of Ricci's 1602 map and their inter‐relationships. A census of woodblock prints of Ricci's maps (1602, 1603, post‐1644) and of the Chinese manuscript copies is included.

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