Visual Representations of China. Institutions, Society, and Nature in Western Illustrations (c. 1700-1840)

The experience of human and cultural otherness in modern-age Europe was largely mediated through visual perception and imagery. In the pre-photographic era, illustrations complementing textual descriptions and the illustrated book in its many forms were among the principal tools carrying out such mediation, as numerous studies have increasingly documented. This article explores the visual construction of China in Western illustrated works from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Focusing on the shifting interplay between text and image, it traces how European representations of Chinese society, institutions, and nature evolved from Jesuit sinophilia to the more critical and commercial perspectives of the early nineteenth century. By analyzing the thematic variety and iconographic motifs of major illustrated works, the essay reveals the deep ambiguities and enduring fascinations that characterized the Western gaze upon the Middle Kingdom