Wonders Travelling From China: Examples From The Settala Collection

The list of gifts the ambassadors of Portuguese king Manuel I presented to Pope Leo X in March 1514 was spectacular. Among others, it included a “Moor”-ridden, “Saracen”-guided, well-trained, playful, chaos-inducing, and—emotionally and linguistically—almost human-like elephant; a horse-mounted tamed cheetah wrapped in ermine-lined brocade; cagefuls of Indian fowl, parrots, and small dogs; gems, jewelry, and pearls that “no eye could sufficiently admire and no language could praise enough”; and a silver-made castle-like structure whose central fortress contained an exquisite golden tabernacle and whose many towers housed chests filled with brocade-made pearl-adorned paraments and liturgical vestments heavy with decorations—“the most beautiful thing in the world.” 1 A richly ornamented pontifical miter joined these pieces of opulent papal attire. Spices and porcelains also changed hands. 2 More significantly, from the perspective of this chapter, another object travelled to Rome on the same occasion—a Chinese book.