The illusion of verisimilitude : Johan Nieuhof’s images of China

Abstract

The central theme of this dissertation is the investigation of the images of China in Europe in the seventeenth century through the works of China made by Johan Nieuhof on the visit of the first Dutch embassy to China in 1655__57, and of the reproductions made on the basis of his sketches. Involving mainly the drawings in the Paris manuscript, the engravings in the first Dutch edition in 1665, and later works of chinoiserie inspired by the engravings, my analysis concentrates on the issues including what kinds of images of China were represented by Nieuhof, and how to interpret the __na het leven__ claim of the drawings and the engravings in the context of Dutch pictorial conventions of the seventeenth century. The main contribution of this dissertation is to shed light on the studies of images of China presented to European audiences, the illustrations of Dutch travelogue and the __na het leven__ images made by Dutch artists in the seventeenth century. Meanwhile, the study of the __na het leven__ quality of the drawings and illustrations reveals a more complicated relationship between Nieuhof__s images of China and chinoiserie.