Some artistic descriptions and ethical dilemmas in Shan Shili’s travel notes on Italy (1909)

Abstract

In this paper I will analyze what were the emotions that Rome, and its artistic heritage, excited in a Chinese traveller’s eyes and heart—rationally and unconsciously—at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper will focus on the analysis of some pages of the Guiqian ji (归潜记), written by Shan Shili, the wife of the Ministry of China in Rome from July 1908 to November 1909. Unlike Chinese travellers of the previous period, she, during her sojourn in Rome, was more fascinated by art and culture than by scientific and technological marvels. This ‘unknown territory’—art, history, mythology, in brief, the historical and cultural European past—unknown to her, but also to the Chinese at that time, attracted her curiosity insomuch as to use artistic descriptions as means of cultural dialogue between her own culture and the other’s culture. But what did the discovery of a different artistic expression provoke in a Chinese traveller? Did she appreciate these forms of art? Did they go along with her artistic and cultural tastes? The analysis of some explanations of artistic works (paintings and sculptures), offered by Shan to her readers, and the reading of emotions and feelings which these works presented to her—esteem, repulsion, admiration or disapproval—allow us to draw a brief cultural dialogue between a Chinese female traveller and the other (Italian), at the end of the Qing empire.