Past Exhibitions

The Renaissance in which the Europeans take great pride stemmed from the revival of ancient Greek and Roman culture and opened up the new era of modern civilization. Is it true? China and Italy are located at the two ends of the Euro-Asian Continent and are separated by the sea and the land mass. However, thanks to the Silk Road on both the land and the sea, many people like Marco Polo traveled between the two ends. China and Italy are separated geographically, but are tightly connected culturally. Just as Hermann Hesse the German poet used to sing: “Finding a homeland at the end of the world”. When people from the East and the West respectively are stepping into a strange new world, they would notice some familiar and strange things, and they would replace the “strangeness” with a “home-like” familiarity. Beauties on Wood Plate from Xinhui shares similar female images with Gabrielle and Her Sister, and the blue and white porcelain depicted in Feast of Gods has its counterpart in China. Were these pictorial similarities simply coincidences or fruits born out of geographical/cultural unions across mountains and waters?