China at the Center: Ricci and Verbiest World Maps

China at the Center focuses on two masterpieces of seventeenth-century map-making that illustrate the exchange of information (and misinformation) between Europe and Asia. The world maps created by Jesuit priests Matteo Ricci (1602) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1674) for the Chinese courts tell fascinating stories about the meeting of two worldviews. They provided Europeans with greater knowledge of China and the Chinese with new ideas about geography, astronomy, and the natural sciences. The maps also show the ways that certain myths were perpetuated, especially as seen in the vivid and imaginative descriptions of the peoples and places of the world and in their depictions of exotic fauna.

• Natasha Reichle, Editor

• M. Antoni J. Ucerler, Author

• Theodore N. Foss, Author

• Mark Stephen Mir, Author

• The catalog…does a great job of placing the maps into their cultural context.
  —The Wall Street Journal
• The essays are useful and enlightening, and [the book is] full of lovely illustrations, including close-up details of the two maps, and printed on heavy paper. Most importantly, it has foldout pages with reproductions of the Ricci and Verbiest maps in their entirety.
  —The Map Room blog
• These well-written essays, enriched by images of the two maps and other relevant printed materials and paintings, offer a context to understand the maps and the books in the exhibition. They explain in plain language the Chinese cartographic tradition
  —Eugenio Menegon, Journal of Jesuit Studies