Science and Art in . 利瑪竇 Li Matou (), 郎世寧 Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione), and the Influence of Western Geometry and Mathematical Perspective on Early Qing Dynasty Mathematicians and Artists or The Jesuits’ Failure to Transmit Western Mathematics, Astronomy, and Mathematical Perspective to China: Reflections on Matteo Ricci, Giuseppe Castiglione, Andreas Pozzo, and the Needham Question

Joseph W. Dauben Professor of History and History of Science The City University of New York

History of Science Society 2016 H. Hazen Lecture New York Academy of Sciences April 27, 2016.

In 1607 the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), in collaboration with his colleague 徐 光 啟 Guangqi (1562–1633), translated the first six books of ’s Elements of Geometry into Chinese. Among those to take a serious interest in this work was the prominent mathematician 梅文鼎 Mei Wending (1632‒1721), but his 幾何通解 Jihe tongjie (General Explanation of (Euclid’s) Geometry) eliminated most of the demonstrations and redrew many of the original diagrams. Similarly, when the Jesuits introduced western astronomy and the telescope to China in the , Chinese astronomers were interested in the accuracy of the tables and planetary observations that led to better calendars and astronomical predictions (like eclipses), but they were not impressed by the Jesuit’s models of the cosmos, be they Ptolemaic, Tychonic, or Copernican. And the telescope was regarded as a curiosity rather than as an instrument with which to study the heavens. Several decades later, when the Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766) collaborated with 年希堯 Nian Yixiao (1671‒1738), a high- ranking official of the Yongzheng reign, to produce a Chinese version of Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum (1693‒1698), this reflected the fascination of the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–1735) in the trompe l’oeil effects of illusionistic perspective paintings. His successor, the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1795), also commissioned many such works, but imperial patronage did not result in popular success for the genre, and today only a handful of these Chinese perspective paintings, rarely seen, survive. Why were the basic elements of western mathematics, so essential for the , as well as the discovery of mathematical perspective that revolutionized western artistic vision (as exemplified by Pozzo’s magnificent illusionistic frescoes in the Jesuit Church of St. Ignazio in Rome, for example, and imitated by Giovanni Gherardini for the Beitang or North Church of the French Jesuits in ), not similarly appreciated by Chinese intellectuals and artists? Are the examples of the limited reception of Euclid’s Elements by Chinse mathematicians and the general lack of interest in the principles of mathematical perspective in Chinese art in any way related? And does the answer to this question in turn shed any light on the Needham Question—the question sought to answer through his monumental investigation of Science and Civilization in China—namely why was there never a Chinese scientific revolution?