Sackler Gallery Encompasses the Globe
The most recent exhibition at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, organized with help from the National Museum of African Art, Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries, is as much a chronicle of history as it is a document for how art records history. Trying to pigeonhole this exhibition into a one category is difficult. It is more than just the fact the exhibition displays more than 260 objects, from several nations, which were created over the span of two centuries. Partly, it is that a gallery typically focused on the art of Asia is featuring a show about Portugal. Partly it is a remark made by Portugal’s Minister of Economy and Innovation positioning Portugal as the leader of the first age of globalization. The explanations layer like an onion.
Bordered as much by sea as by Spain, Portugal possessed an ability to construct fast naval vessels for the purposes of exploration, and they would use this to their advantage. The world in 1475 was rather limited. Though mathematicians and astronomers alike assumed the earth was round, no one had yet proved it. North and South America were undiscovered masses of land, as were Australia and Antarctica. No one in Europe had sailed in an ocean defined as the Pacific, and no explorer had found a navigable route around that expansive continent to the south, Africa. The Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Dias, was the first to get around the Cape of Good Hope by 1488. This was used to the advantage of the Portuguese in the spice trade, building forts and treaties in places like Mozambique, Oman, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, Moluccas (The Spice Islands), China and Japan. By 1500 the Portuguese had also sailed to the new world and established a colony in what has since become Brazil.
Portugal becomes the interesting protagonist of this exhibition because as it was mapping the globe it left considerable influence on the nations and cultures it encountered. And that influence has its roots in the spice trade. It is easy to forget in 2007 that the trade of spices would provide economic advantage or be the stuff over which battles were fought, but keep in mind the that few spices grew naturally in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, except perhaps black pepper, with salt a close second and reserved for the more affluent. As for cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, ginger or clove, according to James Turner's essay in the exhibition's accompanying text, it had to be imported from the east, and most of those imports came via land through Middle Eastern merchants.
Some of the art on display at Sackler is a record of trade and signature of the treaties that occurred between Portugal and the various Eastern peoples they encountered. Maps were constantly updated as new lands and waters were discovered and charted by the Portuguese. The boundaries of the continents became better defined. The knowledge of foods, animals, and flora found their way into paintings, illustrating the economic expansion and global capital Portugal was able to possess. Portraits of African and Asian men depict the adoption of then contemporary Portuguese fashions. One artifact shows a messenger of the king of Benin wearing a garment decorated with the likenesses of Portuguese soldiers, and wearing a cross.
Of course the other principal function of Portuguese colonization cannot be overlooked -- the search for Christians. If they could not be found, at the very least they could be made. While the skilled craftsmen of the various cultures the Portuguese encountered were commissioned to produce necessities such as utensils, dishes and saltcellars, the Portuguese were also wise to ask them to create other odds and ends. A crucifix, for instance, would be just as necessary for the Portuguese to feed the soul as a spoon would be necessary to feed the stomach. The carving of the Virgin Mary on a saltcellar could act as an ever present pious reminder. If, in the process, this should persuade the ivory carver in the Congo, or of a silversmith in Japan, all-the-better. These items could find their way into the homes of craftsmen, their purposes revealed to them by their Portuguese contractors. The crafts could then be observed by the craftsman’s family and eventually objectified as items of worship.
The exhibition is tough to piece together. The knowledge can only be gleaned from extensive reading of wall placards accompanying the artifacts on display, rather than by casual observation and passing by. Encompassing the Globe is comprehensive, obsessive, and illuminating. The wonderfully illustrated accompanying text, with the same title as the exhibition, expands upon the available themes. Overall, it serves as a marvelous account of one nation's prosperity, and how that prosperity was also its cause for undoing. Unfortunately for Portugal, their efforts to gain control of the spice trade stretched them thin, with military stationed in the many ports around Africa through to Japan. By the end of the 17th century their ports in the East were collapsing to the Dutch, the British, and the peoples they were attempting to colonize, civilize, and enlighten. There is, perhaps, a lesson for us to observe; there are limitations to empire.
Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries is on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery through September 16, 2007. The gallery is located at 1050 Independence Avenue, SW and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Image of World Map (top) from Insularium Illustratum Henricus Martellus (active 1480-1496), Florence, Italy, ca. 1489, Ink and color on vellum, 30x47 cm, ELS2007.2.17, Image Credit: ©The British Library Board
Image of Messenger, Edo Peoples, Benin Kingdom, Nigeria, 16th-17th Century, Brass, 57x20x20 cm, Image Credit: Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden