A Sino-Portuguese Ming casket

This rare dome-shaped casket, finely carved in ivory in low relief, was made in South China, probably in Zhangzhou, for export to the Iberian markets, between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

It belongs to a small group of similarly shaped caskets and related diminutive pieces of furniture carved in ivory, in a distinctive style of very low relief found nowhere else in Asia. This Zhangzhou-centred production also included figurative carvings in the round, mostly religious and Christian in iconography, which became an important export commodity in the early modern period.[1]

Modelled after an earlier, late medieval European prototype, the casket features a rectangular box made from thick ivory plaques joined together using woodworking techniques (with ivory pegs when needed), and its characteristic dome-shaped lid, likely taking advantage of the natural curvature of the elephant’s tusk.

The metal fittings include a lock plate in the shape of a double-headed eagle, and three hinges on the back; it was originally fitted with a top handle, now missing, which would have hindered the legibility of the lid’s figural decoration.

Adapted from contemporary European ornamental prints, the decoration of the casket includes ferronneries and rinceaux (vegetal scrolls) with animals (dogs and squirrels), and perched birds on the front; vegetal scrolls on the back; and flowering plants with animals on the sides. These animal motifs include a curious isolated ‘Pelican in her piety’ or pie pellicane—a mother pelican wounding herself to feed her young with her blood—a Christian motif widely used in Portuguese-influenced Asia, mostly in textiles and furniture. Both spectacular and intriguing, the decoration on the dome-shaped lid derives from Mannerist prints in a style known as ‘strapwork’ (Rollwerk in German), incorporating cartouches, ferronneries, and grotesques (grotteschi in Italian), which, mainly from Antwerp, disseminated a new ornamental repertoire all over Europe and beyond, including Asia. The lid features a grotesque panel with a ‘strapwork’ cartouche in the centre, flanked by chimerical male and female figures blowing trumpets, crowned by a curious elderly figure. As usual in such Northern Mannerist prints, the background of the grotesque is filled with drapes, garlands, masks, and animals, including a scorpion and a fish hanging from ribbons. The central scene depicts the story of Jonah, known principally from the Hebrew Bible (the Book of Jonah).[2] According to the biblical story, Jonah tries to flee God’s command to preach in Nineveh, is swallowed by a great fish, repents, and is delivered to complete his mission. In late sixteenth-century Counter-Reformation Europe, Jonah was commonly read as a figure of penitence, chastisement, and providential deliverance (and, typologically, of Christ’s death and Resurrection), while also lending itself—by implicit analogy—to the perils and imperatives of Catholic missionary work in Asia.

It is possible that, alongside an ornamental print, such as those published by Hieronymus Cock (ca. 1518-1570) after designs by Cornelis Floris (ca. 1514-1575), the Chinese carver used a 1566 print by Philips Galle, after a composition by Maarten van Heemskerk, depicting the story of Jonah.[3] In the print, Jonah is regurgitated by a monstrous fish onto dry land, overseen by God the Father above, in the clouds. Although mirrored—a widely used process in copying prints—the carved Jonah is similar in pose and gestures to that of the print, and the same is true of the monstrous fish, its curling tail, and the gush of liquid coming out of its mouth. Squeezed into the central field of the cartouche, however, Jonah instead leans over the fish, rather than being expelled from his belly—this may well derive not only from spatial constraints, but from Chinese myth, given that the Daoist immortal Qin Gao disappears into the water and later reappears riding a red carp, before departing again, a story which influenced many Chinese artworks, in painted and sculptural form.[4] The elderly, haloed figure crowning the cartouche carved on the lid may thus be identified with God the Father, similarly adapted by the Chinese craftsman, combined with the more familiar iconography of another Daoist immortal, possibly Laozi. As with other productions for export to the European market—and apart from the strong Daoist iconographical overlapping—the figurative and ornamental motifs are Sinicised, with a typical Chinese stylisation of forms and the inclusion of motifs specific to art made in China, most notably the curling of vegetal scrolls reminiscent of the rúyì, which derives from the head of the língzhī, or mushroom of immortality (Ganoderma sichuanense), and symbolises power, good fortune, and granting of wishes.

            Zhangzhou, one of the most important coastal cities of Fujian Province, was a notable centre for ivory carving in late Ming China. The tradition of carving secular and religious figures (for Buddhist and Daoist private shrines) in ivory in southern Fujian was bolstered by the emergence of a new appreciation and consumption of luxury goods among the urban elite. This shift, far removed from the more austere tastes of the literati, coincided with the appearance of a new European clientele.[5] Europeans with access to the Fujian markets and their local and hinterland agents—merchants and Christian missionaries alike—likely began commissioning not only religious ivory carvings, but also decorative items, including small pieces of furniture such as the present casket. No more than a handful of similarly shaped caskets from this production are known, mostly in Portuguese private collections.