The Nanjing Porcelain Tower and Three Chinese Pagodas

The artwork

At the top left, the tower with bells hanging from the edges of each roof is the porcelain tower of Nanjing, which Europe came to know thanks to a drawing like this and which was razed to the ground in 1856. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, with a handmade frame.

Behind this view is a drawing by Johan Nieuhof, a house master of the embassy that the Dutch East India Company sent to the emperor of China: in 1656 the Dutch traveled up rivers and canals from Canton to Beijing, for about 2,400 kilometers. The embassy failed: the emperor granted a visit every eight years. Nieuhof, however, had orders to draw cities and temples as he saw them, and his book, published in Amsterdam in 1665, gave Europe the first faithful images of China and a great desire for Chinoiserie. The tower, commissioned by Emperor Yongle at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was about 79 meters high and covered with white porcelain bricks.

This plate comes from La Galerie agréable du monde, the collection of views that Pieter van der Aa published in Leiden in 1729, with the four scenes printed inside a separately engraved frame. At the top right is the Teywanmiao pagoda, in Shandong; below, a pagoda near the village of Sinkocien and the eight-sided tower of Linqing, "90 cubits high", which Nieuhof also drew and which, unlike the one in Nanjing, is still standing. The reproduced copy is kept in the David Rumsey Map Collection, in Stanford.

Among the shelves of a home library or above a sofa, it is a gift for those who have been to China and for those who collect porcelain. At the top left, each roof of the tower still has its bells.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm
With frame: 31 x 44 cm
Material: artwork printed on the finest handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass