1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. Gavin Menzies
frescoes were unveiled.
The Doges’ Palace was designed for different functions. At the front, overlooking the lagoon, is the Great Council Chamber. At the far end, next to Saint Mark’s, the doge’s quarters are linked to the legislative areas by golden staircases. At the heart of the Doges’ Palace is the map room—the biggest in his quarters.
The map room might well be described as the heart of the Venetian Empire. Here the doge would receive visiting heads of state, including Chinese delegations. The two long walls of the room are covered with eleven painted maps of the world. Facing the visitor is a map of the Venetian Empire in the eastern Mediterranean showing the route to China and the East. To the left is the Venetian Empire in the western Mediterranean. Neither of these maps shows latitude or longitude. They cover the same area as maps on the opposite wall showing the rest of the world. The Venetian Empire is thus shown far larger than it was.
The opposite wall is divided by the door into the Sala del Filosofi. To the left of the door is a map of central Asia from Crete to Tibet—the former trading empire of Byzantium. To the right is a map of the world from Arabia across the Pacific to California. India and the Indies, China, Japan, the Pacific, and North America from Alaska to California are depicted with general accuracy. Other maps show the Northeast Passage from the Faeroes to the rivers of Siberia; North and South America; the Red Sea and Arabia; the Atlantic coast of North America to 55° N, and central Asia. The whole world is there save for southern Australia.
Of greatest interest is the world map showing the Pacific and North America. There are two roundels on this map: one describes the part that Marco Polo played in gathering the information; the other recounts the role played by Niccolò da Conti. These are the world maps that Dom Pedro was given during his state visit to Venice between the fi fth and twenty-second of April 1428. A host of Venetian records describes that visit: Les Chronique Venetienne: The Diaries of Antonio Morosone from 1416–1433; the manuscript Zorsi delfine. An extensive bibliography exists in F. M. Rogers’s marvelous book The Travels of the Infante, Dom Pedro of Portugal.
There are no material differences among the various accounts, which Professor Rogers summarizes: “In March of 1428, Mario Dandolo, the Venetian Ambassador to the King of Hungary, reported that the Infante Don Pedro had left for Venice. The Doge (Francesco Foscari) and the Council decided to receive the Portuguese prince and his companions in regal fashion as their guests and at their expense…. the Doge received Dom Pedro on board the Bucintoro (royal barge).”
Of the gifts bestowed upon Dom Pedro during his visit to Venice, Professor Rogers cites several accounts,17 the first by the celebrated historian Antonio Galvão:
In the year 1428 it is written that Dom Peter [Pedro], the King of Portugal’s eldest son, was a great traveller. He went into England, France, Alamaine, from thence into the Holy Land and to other places; and came home by Italy, taking Rome and Venice in his way; from whence he brought a map of the world which had all the parts of the world and earth described. The streight [sic] of Magellan was called in it the Dragon’s Tail; the Cape of Bona Sperança [Good Hope], the forefront of Afrike and so forth of other places; by which map, Dom Henry, the King’s third sonne was much helped and furthered into his discoveries….
It was told me by Francis de Souza Tavares that in the year 1528 Dom Fernando, the King’s son and heir, did show him a map which was found in the study of the Alcobaza which had been made one hundred and twenty years before [1408] which map did set forth all the navigation of the East Indies with the Cape of Boa Esperanza as our later maps have described it; whereby it appeareth that in ancient times there was as much or more discovered than now there is. (Tratado Dos Diversos e Desayados Caminhos, Lisbon, 1563).
Further corroboration is provided by Professor Rogers: “In early 1502 in Lisbon the famous German printer Valentin Fernandes published a beautiful volume of the Indies of the East [China]…. He included Portuguese translations of the Indies based on information gathered in Florence from Nicolo da Conti and delegates to the Council [presided over by Eugenius IV] and included in Book IV of his treatise De Variaetate Fortunae.” Later Professor Rogers writes:
In the second part of his lengthy introduction to Marco Polo, Valentin Fernandes makes the following statement pregnant with meaning from several points of view: “Concerning this matter I heard…that the Venetians had hidden the present book for many years in their Trea sure House. And at the time that the Infante Don Pedro of glorious memory, your uncle, arrived in Venice [1428]…offered him as a worthy gift the said book about Marco Polo that he might be guided by it since he was desirous of seeing and travelling through the world. They say this book is in the Torre de Tombo.” (p. 47)
Professor Rogers also summarized Marco Polo’s and da Conti’s contributions to world maps:
With the Cape [Good Hope] rounded, the all-water route to India lay revealed. Valentin Fernandes could think of no greater ser vice to his monarch than the publication in Portuguese translation the three best available descriptions of the world over which King Manuel now assumed dominion. One was that of Marco Polo; another was the description of the Indies (viz China) written by Pogio the Florentine, based on the information supplied to him by the delegates to the Council of Florence and by Nicolo da Conti.” (p. 266)
It seems to me beyond argument that the world map on display today in the Doges’ Palace is, as the Venetians claim, based on information that reached Venice from Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti and that this was the same world map taken to Portugal by Dom Pedro in 1428. Consequently, both the Venetians and the Portuguese knew the contours of the whole world before the Portuguese voyages of exploration even started. We know that da Conti was in Calicut the same time as Zheng He’s fleets, for he describes the junks and his description tallies with those of Ma Huan, Zheng He’s historian, who was in Calicut in 1419.18
As noted, in 1419, Pisanello (1395–1455) had painted murals in the Doges’ Palace. Pisanello came from Verona, which by then had joined the Pax Venetica—her grandees were elected to the Great Council of Venice. In about 1436 Pisanello painted another fresco in the church of Saint Anastasia at Verona entitled Saint George and the Princess of Trebizond. In the left-hand section is a group of horsemen. Seated on a richly caparisoned horse is a Mongol general with facial features, clothes, and hat very similar to the carvings of Zhu Di’s generals that line the road that leads to Zheng He’s tomb north of Beijing. The Mongol dignitary wears rich silk clothes. Pisanello’s sketches of the hard, powerful Mongol face can be seen separately in the Louvre in Paris. The sketch and painting are so vivid that its seems to me inescapable that Pisanello painted what he saw in the late 1430s—a Mongolian general in Venice or Verona, a captain or admiral of one of the Chinese junks.19 (See note 20 for Pisanello’s other sketches of Chinese visitors to Venice in the 1430s). In my view Pisanello’s sketches depict the Chinese Admiral and his senior Mandarin advisor in their formal dress when they met the Doge. As captain of HMS Rorqual I would wear my ceremonial sword when calling on local dignitaries at the start of an official visit. The Chinese admiral would have carried his ceremonial bow.
A sketch of Mongol faces by the Veronese artist Pisanello, 1430s.
The Chinese junks berthed at the Riva degli Schiavoni, or Quay of Slaves, would have created little fuss—Chinese and Arab ships were there as a matter of course. The ambassador and the captains would have presented their credentials to the doge in his palace a few hundred yards away, together with the Shoushi astronomical calendar giving details of the Xuan De emperor’s conception and birth. Ceremonial gifts of silk and blue-and-white imperial porcelain would have followed, and finally maps of the voyage from China. The barbarians would now be able to return tribute.
Fresh meat, fruit, fish, vegetables, and water would be embarked, paid for partly in Venetian ducats (which the Chinese would have acquired in Cairo) and partly in rice. Zheng He’s fleets would have disposed