Empires and Emporia highlights the cultural consequences of sustained contact between Asians, Europeans, and Americans in a connected history that coalesced in the sixteenth century. This period saw the arrival of Portuguese merchants in China and Japan, the conquest of the Philippines by the Spanish, and the establishment of a transpacific trade route between Manila and Acapulco. The final link in a globe-encircling economic system, the annual fleet known as the Manila Galleon connected the eastern and western limits of the world known to Europeans. Fueled by Spanish-American silver and the demand for Asian luxury goods such as silk and porcelain, the transoceanic circulation of people, things, and ideas left its visible trace in works of art that bear vivid witness to the complex dynamic of human encounter and exchange.
Right: Athanasius Kircher (German, 1602–1680). Athanasii Kircheri e Soc. Jesu China monumentis: qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata (Amsterdam: Apud Joannem Janssonium a Waesberge, & Elizeum Weyerstraet, 1667). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Jane E. Andrews Fund, in memory of her husband, William Loring Andrews (912.1 K63 Q)
南蛮屏風 (Arrival of the Europeans), first quarter 17th century. Edo period (1615–1868), Japan. Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, gold, and gold leaf on paper, each 41 3/8 in. x 8 ft. 6 5/8 in. (105.1 x 260.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015 (2015.300.109.1, .2)
On view in gallery 209.