[KS] The "Korean Man" identified.

[Henny Savenije]

By chance I was alerted to a conference held in Shanghai Fudan 
University and one of the speakers had the following summery


A Chinese Visitor to the Netherlands in 1601: The Hakka Merchant Wu 
Pu and his Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens
Thijs Weststeijn, Utrecht University/University of Amsterdam
m.a.weststeijn at uu.nl
Among the onlookers Rubens depicted in The miracles of Saint Francis 
Xavier, one figure has drawn the particular attention of art 
historians. On the basis of his dress, 14 facial features, and 
curious hat, he has been connected to a drawing in the Getty
Museum known as the 'Korean man'. In this talk I will defend my 
thesis that the drawing was, in turn, based on a work by another 
artist. This was a portrait of an individual: a Chinese merchant who 
travelled on a VOC ship --in fact the first East Asian
to visit Europe whose identity is documented in such detail. The new 
conclusion is based on an album amicorum of the Middelburg lawyer 
Nicolaas de Vrise (1595-1609).
An inscription in Chinese and an additional explanation in Latin 
identify the sitter as the Chinese merchant Wu Pu, who arrived in 
Middelburg on 31 May 1600. Additional Dutch and Chinese sources 
document Wu Pu's career after his return to Southeast Asia,
as a middleman for the VOC. These findings inspire the observation 
that the common tendency to study images in relation to other images 
rather than to historical reality may be counterproductive. Too much 
fear of a positivist 'fallacy' may confirm the
dynamic of Orientalist or 'exotic' projections, whereas an encounter 
between individuals actually took place.







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Henny (Lee Hae Kang)
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http://www.henny-savenije.pe.kr Portal to all my sites
http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr (in English) Feel free 
to discover Korea with Hendrick Hamel (1653-1666)
http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/indexk2.htm In Korean
http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/Dutch In Dutch
http://www.vos.henny-savenije.pe.kr Frits Vos Article about Witsen 
and Eibokken and his first Korean-Dutch dictionary
http://www.cartography.henny-savenije.pe.kr (in English) Korea 
through Western Cartographic eyes
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr Hwasong the fortress in Suwon
http://www.oldKorea.henny-savenije.pe.kr Old Korea in pictures
http://www.british.henny-savenije.pe.kr A British encounter in Pusan (1797)
http://www.genealogy.henny-savenije.pe.kr/tng Genealogy
http://www.henny-savenije.pe.kr/phorum Bulletin board for Korean studies




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