by Morgan Spencer
A translucent, lustrous Kingfisher hairpin – inspired by the eighteenth century Qing Dynasty – handcrafted from the bones of bird feathers and ornamented with bejeweled gold – seems slightly misplaced in a classic Italian villa. Entering the Acton family’s private art collection at Villa La Pietra in Florence, one experiences a sort of cognitive dissonance between the expected and the actual Italian decorative arts. Housing more than 6,000 objects, from Italian panel paintings to Renaissance polychrome sculptures, the ‘Oriental’ – specifically Chinese influence in painting, fashion, and accessory – is surprisingly prominent here. Chinoiserie, a tentacle of Oriental Fetishism, is a Western appropriation that mimics Chinese motifs and techniques. This was used by the French during the eighteenth century, but imitations of Chinese decor presuppose this immensely. While often only characterized as a trend, the underlying reasons for this aesthetic approach are much more complex; Chinese cultural influence, specifically in Italian fashion, changed analog to the Western view of China, proving here that fashion trends mirror social and cultural thought. The aesthetic of Chinese influence, or Chinoiserie, in fashion signals the fluid Italian sociocultural relations to the Chinese “Other”: embodying paradoxes of desire and detest simultaneously in the history of Italian fashion.
I. Clarifying the Chinese Orient as the “Other”
The Orient (a term including China) is one of the most prevalent images of the “Other,” and inherently suggests a stark contrast of the West (Occident) and the East (Orient).[1] Originally, the Western vantage of the Orient as “exotic” was limited to a simple fascination with Asian culture; the East was idealized as a place with no societal evil: utopian. But, by distinguishing the Orient from the West and positioning Eastern cultures as “Other,” the Occident demanded positional superiority over Oriental “backwardness.”[2] As the Occident gleaned more information on this “exotic” land, Chinoiserie started operating more as signs: shared sets of codified meaning understood by all cultural participants. Until legitimate Western surveys of the place, China meticulously curated its cultural depiction to how they wanted to be perceived in the West. The unveiling of Chinese society, politics, and religion – Chinese culture – to the Western perspective enabled Chinoiserie; it became a shared aesthetic of the Western whole, an “embodiment of a joint spirit.”[3] This aesthetic characterized the Orient as “weak, feminized, exotic, mysterious, sensual and sexual . . . as something to be desired and possessed.”[4] With this definition, the Occident simultaneously defined itself as powerful, masculine, and “normal” by contrast.
II. Formation of Chinese-Italian Relations
Initial characterization of the Chinese “Other” is seen in ancient Roman sumptuary laws. At this time, Roman knowledge of China was nonexistent, but their impression of China from the Silk Road was unfavorable. Cultural anxiety spawned, and China was categorized as strange and effeminate. But, it became increasingly popular for Roman men to wear silk because of an “exotic” allure. Tacitus – Roman historian and author of the Annals (109 C.E.) – confirms this while speaking on the loosening of “national morality;” he documented the enactment of a sumptuary law with the preceding of “Oriental silks should no longer degrade the male sex.”[5] According to Simmel (1957), one possible explanation for this immediate rejection is the lack of cross-cultural interaction at the time, as
The savage is afraid of strange appearances; the difficulties and dangers that beset his career cause him to scent danger in anything new which he does not understand and which he cannot assign to a familiar category.[6]
Thus, the Chinese “Other” was defined as strange and feminine because of the absence of existing cultural categorization. However, while this vitriol was linked with Chinese silk, the exotic allure never left: it simply existed parallel with contempt.
III. Creating the “Other”: Seduction and Wrath
The European Crusades unshrouded Cathay (modern China) to Western explorers, which subsequently painted the “Other” as enchanting and merciless. Marco Polo – the famous Venetian explorer – traveled Asia in 1271; twenty-four years later, he returned with stories of the staggeringly wealthy Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire, and romanticized China for the Venetians. According to Polo, Khan’s Palace was the “greatest palace that ever was;”[7] everyday “1,000 carts of silk alone, from which are made quantities of cloth silk and gold” entered the city.[8] Venetians obsessed over the China he fabricated. In the same vein, Simone Martini clothed an angel in his “Annunciation” with Chinese silk. By wrapping the body of a Western angel with silk, the foreign textile gains holy connotation while keeping its established symbolic meanings (strange, effeminate).[9] While dressing in a historically Oriental style would have been illicit, this adaptation of the textile to Western shape lost the “body transference” of the Chinese.[10] Martini familiarized the unfamiliar, thus removing the foreign body from the foreign dress: dispelling all cultural anxiety the fabric evoked by linking China with familiar iconography. Marco Polo’s glorification and Martini’s painting are both exemplar of the Italian idealization of China as utopia-esque.
This enchantment existed in tandem with a confusion spawned from China’s non-acceptance of Western beliefs. Soon after Polo’s return to Venice, Ambrogio Lorenzetti of Siena featured Mongolian fashion in “The Martyrdom of Franciscans at Tana.”[11] This painting shows, amongst other variables, a Mongol witnessing the execution of Franciscan monks; he is dressed in opulent silk, painted with gold leaf and detailed embroidery; he is also wearing a luxurious broad-brimmed hat – like those of a Cardinal – with beads resembling those used in the Roman church, and yellow feathers pointed upwards. The Mongol’s clothing reveals veneration and perceived power of China, linked with the violence and cruelty inherent to the painting. Also, Lorenzetti’s depiction of Mongolian dress is factually wrong, as “Mongol emperors did not wear feathers raised straight up; they wore bundles of peacock feathers that hung down from their shoulders.”[12] Again, the Oriental is revealed as a Western artifice. This sumptuous evocation coupled with the merciless painting manifests the complex archetype the West crafted of the East.
IV. Wealth and Falsehood
During the Italian Renaissance, Chinese influence operated as a form of “cultural snobbism;”[13] fashion was wholly concerned with exclusivity and displaying societal hierarchy. According to Simmel (1957), “there exists a widespread predilection for importing fashions from without, and such foreign fashions assume a greater value within the circle, simply because they did not originate there.”[14] Furthermore, including distant culture in fashion demonstrates intellectualism; it was not a “frivolous and fanciful gesture, but an imperial act, signifying worldly knowledge.”[15] At this time, China was thought to be a refined civilization – Europe’s equal in all but religion – their science, technology, architecture, and culture were very advanced, and recognized as such. The Italian elite who wanted and wore these imported fashions were demonstrating their wealth and worldly knowledge.
However, Chinese influence as a symbol demonstrating “wealth” is an illusion. Italian craftsmen started producing silk in Lucca and creating Chinese cultural symbols such as lotus flowers, pomegranates, peonies, florets linked with whirls and sprays, the phoenix, and dragons[16]. These symbols are also embedded with the original femininity from early Chinese stereotypes, and continued to prevail as a stereotype. For example, the phoenix (Figure 1), appropriated by 14th century Lucca, was originally the emblem of the Chinese empress. This early reproduction, according to Francesco Moreno, could have been the “first known form of Chinoiserie.”[17] During the Renaissance, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit priest and explorer, returned from participation in Chinese culture at the highest hierarchal level and detailed his experience to Roman authors. Engravings describing this experience, coupled with other missionary’s accounts, were particularly important to the development of a refined image of China; also, subsequently, highlighted pagoda sleeves and intricate headgear; also introduced to the world of fashionable Italian dress were reverse scallop necklines, and, of course, the ornamented silk from Lucca. It would have been unlikely for the Western eye to distinguish between the Chinese imports and the Italian copies. However, local production made Chinese-inspired dress much more affordable for the Italian bourgeoisie. The symbolic link of Chinoiserie and wealth remained, but, ironically, the commoner could afford the aesthetic too; the archetypical Chinese “Other” was used by Italians to identify themselves in society, and also to don a mask of fictitious wealth based on worldly materialism.
V. Stylishness of Religious Conflict
In 18th and 19th century Europe, Chinoiserie fashion retained the Renaissance demarcation of wealth, but also highlighted dissonance in thought between the East and the West. Between these two centuries, Western fashion migrated its capital to Paris because of the popularity and technical skill of courtiers. “Chinoiserie” was particularly celebrated by 18th century France, as its motifs and figures paired exceptionally well with the Rococo fashion movement. Thus, the origin of most Chinese-inspired fashion this era was French — French clothes adorned the Italian body; but, the continued tradition of Italian Chinoiserie was unaffected by this origin of production.
Chinese culture was contemptuous in 18th century Italy, especially because of Confucianism conflicting ideologically with Catholicism. For example, Pope Benedict XIV issued a papal bull against associating Confucianism and Chinese ritual with Catholicism. Italian Catholics saw Confucianism as a threat to society and progress because of their celebration of nature spirits, rather than the Catholic God.[18] This papal bull justified the Italian dismissal of Chinese perspectives; if Chinese ritual and ideology were in opposition to Catholicism, Italians felt no need to respect China. This lack of respect is coupled with the archetypical “foolish Chinese” figure. Jean Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808), a famous French textile artist, created A New Book of Chinese Designs to Improve the Present Taste (1755) to show the Western vantage on Chinese aesthetics.[19] Pillement’s thoughts on Chinese influence, however, were considered “bizarre” in his presentation of Chinese culture and dress. His designs were sensual yet elegant, comical yet wise. The lighthearted nature of the Chinese figure in 1759 Chinese Dancer contrasts harshly with the dramatic and gloomy chiaroscuro techniques popular at the time. In his 1765 Chinese Astronomer, Pillement clothes the male figure in a bright dress recalling the “Thin Lizzie” Chinese beauties popular in 17th century Europe. The astronomer is gazing at nothing, quite literally painting him a fool; Pillement’s humorous depictions relied on the debasement of Chinese culture. These depictions also bolster the West-East hierarchy system of the Catholic Church and their vantage on the absurdity of Confucianism.
VI. Celebration and Condemnation
Fashion and Chinoiserie moved to Paris, but uniquely Italian costumes during the same era functioned as mechanisms for highlighting fetishization of the “Other.” While ornate and expensive costumes obviously represented wealth, there was also a desire for differentiation.[20] To the Italian perspective, China had a progressive energy and unparalleled contemporary wisdom. Italy then expanded its aesthetic foundation with dance spectacles featuring ballerini in Chinoiserie costumes, inspired by their particular idealization of China at that time.[21] We can see Italians donning the mask of Chinese “Other” through costume. Firstly, we can see this in the annual Carnevale; during the weeks preceding Lent “many a bedragonned domino was to be found strutting through the Venetian ridotti, sauntering along the Arno in Florence, or stalking around the piazze of Rome.”[22] The domino Venetian masks allowed the Venetians to physically distinguish themselves as “Other”. Actors of the Académie de France in Rome celebrated China during the Carnevale; many famous Italian dance featured ballerini in Chinoiserie, inspired by associations with progressive energy and thought.[23] A member of the East-India Trading Company even declared that Chinese religion was the least heretical (synonymous with least wrong): “of all the heathen sects which are come into the knowledge of those in Europe, we have not read of any who are fallen into fewer errors than the Chinese.”[24] Regardless of religious, scientific, and cultural differences, China’s image was transmogrified to worthy of study and imitation; demonstrating this through fashion allowed the model to be legibly erudite.
However, the associations of individuation and progressive thought with China was not always displayed admirably. Theatre presented viewers with a more direct visual experience of the “Other” than fiction. Italian opera and theater frequently used Chinoiserie and Chinese settings to create a safe space, where one could explore risky subjects without harsh backlash. The foreign “Other” was an excuse for new progressive thoughts, usually shown in “exotic” comedy[25]. However, the label of exotic was not needed for this half-baked study of culture, but for the easy compartmentalization of Chinese aesthetic and thought. By defining this “Other,” the Italian identity became clearer based on the positional relation to an other and the viewers perception of this foreign-ness. For example, in Gianbattista Lorenzi’s L’idolo Cinese – a two act comic opera – China is used to define Italian identity in Naples. According to the opera description, “The Middle Kingdom signifies a bizarre, alien system of government, one that threatens social stability,”[26] as their new philosophies threatened known Italian modes of being. The costumes in L’idolo Cinese are particularly important because of their featuring silk prints in Western shapes (Figure 3), rather than traditional Chinese shapes; this identified the characters as Chinese, regardless of inaccurate representations. But, if the fashion was represented accurately, then there would be no comical aspect of correct presentation; this comedy represents the cultural anxiety from an acceptance of Chinese culture: it rejects China to maintain social stability. Dress, here, is used as scorn. Costume was not supposed to present China accurately, but to jeer at their alien, nonsensical culture and persons.
Rather than praise the distinctions of Chinese culture as Carnevale did through wealth symbolism, the Italian operas belittle the Chinese for these same distinctions, defined in word as in costume. By painting the Chinese as inferior in character and in costume, Italians subsequently, inherently position their self as superior. Costume celebrated and condemned Chinese differentiation.
VII. Desire and Disappointment
Because of the 20th century revival of the Italian Stilisti, Chinoiserie resurfaced in Italy with nostalgia of a lost “Other,” an echo of colonial failures. Associations of wealth and femininity remained from past establishment, but comprehensive knowledge of China was learned in the preceding century. Thus, China was no longer “exotic,” and lost the respective allure. During the Italian Fascist regime from 1919 – 1938, uniformity dominated the fashion industry under the heavy influence of nationalist propaganda. In 1951, following the official birth of Italian fashion, devotion to the nation’s hyper-real internal glamor. was prime. Ultimately, Chinoiserie was not officially revived until the 1980’s by designers like Gianfranco Ferrè and Georgio Armani. Wearing Chinese products from China was vividly defining of Chinese-Italian relations: a mix of desire and internal failure. According to Richard Martin and Harold Koda (1994), Armani and Ferrè’s collections represented an “unrequited colonialism [because] the West’s passion for China abides today in the continuing aesthetic fascination for that Far Eastern land.” The 1980s resurgence of Chinoiserie is haunted by Italy’s failed colonization of China. The “Oriental land that [Italy] had never conquered” taunted the Italians, especially after the concession of Tiajin in 1901. Through Chinoiserie, Italy was self celebrating and self subjugating, simultaneously. If Italy could not possess Chinese land, the extraction of the Chinese body through appropriations of Chinese dress was a consolation.
VIII. Conclusion
The Chinese Kingfisher hairpins found in Hortense Mitchell Acton’s collection are, at this instant, hidden from the world; at one time they demarcated wealth, another they represented fetishization of the exotic, or failed Italian colonialism. Seen without an anthropological lens, the temporal nature of fashion dissolves their historical meaning and significance. We see again and again how Chinoiserie in Italian fashion closely mirrors Italian self-positioning relative to a desirable, to a detestable “Other.” Perhaps the paradox of China-Italy relations in fashion truly reflects the vacillating Italian self: desiring to be an other and hating that desire.
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[1] Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (W. Ross MacDonald School, Resource Services Library, 2006) Chapter 1.
[2] Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (W. Ross MacDonald School, Resource Services Library, 2006) Chapter 2.
[3] Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994) 1-30.
[4] Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 6, 1957) 541-558, doi:10.1086/222102.
[5] Publius Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals of Tacitus, (Cambridge University Press, 1981) 33.
[6] Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 6, 1957) 541-558.
[7] Adela C.Y. Lee, “The First Contact Between Rome and China,” (Silk Road Foundation, 1997).
[8] Adela C.Y. Lee, “The First Contact Between Rome and China,” (Silk Road Foundation, 1997).
[9] Shirley Ann Smith, Imperial Designs: Italians in China, 1900-1947, (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012) 165-173.
[10] Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994) 1-30.
[11] Shirley Ann Smith, Imperial Designs: Italians in China, 1900-1947, (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012) 165-173.
[12] Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez, Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler, (The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
[13] Christopher M. S. Johns, China and the Church: Chinoiserie in Global Context, (University of California Press, 2016) Conclusion.
[14] Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 6, 1957) 541–558.
[15] Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994) 1-30.
[16] Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994) 1-30.
[17] Francesco Moreno and Eve Leckey, Chinoiserie: the Evolution of the Oriental Style in Italy from the 14th to the 19th Century, (Centro Di Firenze, 2009).
[18] Charles Francis Aiken, “Confucianism,” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 12 Dec. 2017 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04223b.htm>.
[19] Francesco Moreno and Eve Leckey, Chinoiserie: the Evolution of the Oriental Style in Italy from the 14th to the 19th Century, (Centro Di Firenze, 2009) 77.
[20] Adrienne Ward, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage,(Bucknell Univ. Press, 2010).
[21] Adrienne Ward, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage,(Bucknell Univ. Press, 2010).
[22] Adrienne Ward, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage,(Bucknell Univ. Press, 2010).
[23] Adrienne Ward, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage, (Bucknell Univ. Press, 2010).
[24] Johannes Nieuhof, “A General Description OF THE EMPIRE OF CHINA” Quod Library, University of Michigan, quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A52346.0001.001/1:7.8.
[25] Adrienne Ward, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage, (Bucknell Univ. Press, 2010).
[26] Shirley Ann Smith, Imperial Designs: Italians in China, 1900-1947 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012), 165-173.