작품 상세

Attributed to Manuel Pereira, born Yu Wen-hui (Macau, China, 17th century) 'Portrait of the Jesuit missionary priest Diego Pantoja, or Diego Pang Ti-uo' Oil on a marble panel. 32 x 27 cm. An exceptional portrait of a Jesuit from Madrid, very probably painted by a Chinese artist from Portuguese Macau, most likely for one of the Professed Houses of the Society of Jesus, where portraits of illustrious figures were customarily displayed as a kind of Academy, for the Greater Glory of God, and of those who gave their lives in mission and service in a distinctive and outstanding manner within the Order and the Church. In the face of this Jesuit priest, the author mirrors his inculturation, the result of years of life and work devoted to China and Asia, transforming him into one of the locals, one of our own, by orientalising his features. Painted in a Flemish Dutch manner, framed by flowers, with the same flowers (tulips, peonies and camellias) meticulously painted on rice paper for albums produced for export. A composition that balances the austerity of a face dressed in a black cassock, with no apparent appeal, with the dynamism and delicacy of the surrounding vegetation, executed in colours of great luminosity. The artist demonstrates extraordinary pictorial quality, especially in the treatment of the gaze and psychology of the missionary priest and the petals of each flower, with technical mastery that combines naturalistic precision and decorative refinement. As with works produced in Canton workshops during the 19th century for the Western market, we value this piece for its chromatic beauty and its historical significance as an example of Oriental art.   Diego de Pantoja (Valdemoro 1571 – Macau, China, 1618) was a Jesuit, missionary, scientist and musician. At the age of eighteen he entered the novitiate of the Jesuits of the Province of Toledo and, after his formation and ordination as a priest, he volunteered for the missions of the East. Assigned by the Father General of the Society of Jesus, Claudio Acquaviva, in 1596 he set out for India aboard the carrack Conceiçao in the company of Father Nicolás Longobardo. After six months sailing along the route of Saint Francis Xavier, which included the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Guinea, the Cape of Good Hope and Mozambique, the ship arrived in Goa, then Portuguese, a centre of Christian outreach in East Asia. After six months there, the young Pantoja left for Macau in 1597, accompanied by the Visitor Father Valignano and Father Manuel Dias. From Macau he departed for Japan, his immediate destination, where he completed his studies in theology and his ascetic formation. In 1599 Father Lázaro Cattaneo (1568–1640), companion of Father Ricci in Chaochou, requested another Jesuit to accompany him to join Father Ricci in his mission in Nanking. Pantoja went there, arriving in the year 1600. At the age of twenty five, Diego Pantoja thus began a new life adapted to Chinese culture. His Castilian surname was romanised as Pang Ti-uo, and under the instruction of Father Ricci he exchanged his clerical dress for the robe and headgear of Confucian scholars. He studied and practised Mandarin and developed a different approach to learning the Chinese language. Thanks to his keen ear he learned music and played the clavichord, and he had a talent for repairing and regulating clocks, three skills he practised in preparation for meeting the emperor, who resided in the North, the final goal of this Christian missionary expedition. With all this preparation, with safe conduct passes and letters of recommendation, and carrying European gifts for the emperor, they travelled to Beijing, accompanied by a candidate for the Society of Jesus, Don Manuel Pereira, a native of Macau and an excellent painter, to whom we attribute the authorship of our work. Manuel Pereira, born Yu Wen-hui, is the author of the portrait of Matteo Ricci (1610, year of the Father's death), a work whose image we include in the present lot for comparison with ours.   They arrived in Tianjin and were arrested by the eunuch Ma Tang, who confiscated the gifts and wrote to the emperor. Six months later the emperor replied, during which time the prisoners were cruelly treated, requesting that the same foreigner should present his gifts at the palace in Beijing. From then on, the treatment of these foreigners changed. As Father Ricci wrote in his manuscript: 'on that journey the Fathers and their companions were given eight riding horses and more than thirty porters to carry the baggage, and everything they needed for the journey. In the cities and towns they passed through each day, both the horses and the porters were changed. They were lodged in the mansions of the mandarins without paying anything, and were treated with great respect, because they had been summoned by the King'. During the first month of their stay in Beijing, the palace mandarins asked them whether they wished for any favour from the emperor. Pantoja wrote: 'We said that we desired no material benefit at all, but that if the King would grant us with his own hand a fixed place and a house in which to live, we would be greatly pleased, because our intention is to remain in a fixed place and to spread the law of God'. The Wanli Emperor read Father Ricci’s memorial, accepted the gifts, and allowed him and his companions to live in Beijing, supported by funds from the public treasury. Diego Pantoja was also a prolific writer, among whose works stands out his 'Treatise of the Seven Victories', which shows the overcoming of the capital sins through Christian virtues, which coincide with the classical Confucian virtues. By order of the emperor, the work was included in the 'Catalogue of Excellent Books', becoming the most highly regarded book written in Mandarin by a Westerner in China. Colonial Spanish America.