Številne podobe Gospodarja neba: zgodovina katoliške umetnosti na Kitajskem

Prisrčno vabljeni na gostujoče predavanje z naslovom Številne podobe Gospodarja neba: zgodovina katoliške umetnosti na Kitajskem / The Many Images of the Lord of Heaven: A History of Catholic Art in China, ki ga bo izvedel dr. Antonio De Caro z Oddelka za umetnostno zgodovino Univerze v Zürichu. Predavanje v angleščini bo potekalo v ponedeljek, 10. 11. 2025, ob 9.40 v predavalnici 2-rim. 

Predavanje je organizirano v okviru projekta Med misijo(nom) in muzejem: misijonarske zbirke v Sloveniji in njihov pomen danes v sklopu praznovanj 30. obletnice Oddelka za azijske študije Filozofske fakultete UL.

Povzetek (v angleščini)

A holy card printed in more than 10,000 copies at the very beginning depicts a guardian angel guiding a Chinese boy from darkness to light. This popular image, printed later in even larger numbers, has been attributed, although with some doubts, to Fr. Giuseppe Castiglione S.J. (Lang Shining), the celebrated Jesuit painter at the Chinese court of the emperors Kangxi  (1654–1722, r. 1661–1722), Yongzheng (1678–1735, r. 1722–1735), and Qianlong (1711–1799, r. 1735–1796). Since the pioneering Franciscan missions during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), Catholic images began spreading across the Chinese empire. Later, Catholic artworks created by both Chinese and European artists continued to serve as a unique means for the spread of the Catholic faith in China. However, this widespread circulation was accompanied by several challenges, including reevaluating the role, efficacy, and relevance of these images in China. This talk delves into selected case studies to explore the history of Catholic images in China and the significance of image production in Catholic missions from the 14th to the 19th century.

Življenjepis (v angleščini)

Antonio De Caro (PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Zürich, where he is conducting research on representations of St Francis Xavier in Asia, particularly iconographies of his death on the island of Shangchuan, for the Global Economies of Salvation: Art and the Negotiation of Sanctity in the Early Modern Period (GLOBECOSAL) project. For his current research, he was appointed Resident Fellow at the Albuquerque Foundation, where he is exploring Sino-Catholic artworks preserved there. After completing his doctoral studies in Hong Kong, Dr De Caro was a postdoctoral fellow and Assistant Professor at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He has also been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Turin in Italy, and a visiting fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, and the University of Hong Kong. He received an honorary associateship from the Department of History at SOAS, University of London. His interests include the history of Christianity in China, cross-cultural Sino-European exchanges, and the popularisation, diffusion, and reception of Catholic art during the early modern and modern periods. He has recently published several articles on the topic and a monograph, Angelo Zottoli: A Jesuit Missionary in China (1848–1902), published in 2022.