The ‘Chinese Garden in Good Taste’. Jesuits and Europe’s Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in 17th and 18th Centuries

During the 18th century, Western garden art underwent a radical change, which led from the regular arrangements of Baroque gardens to the development of an irregular design inspired by the natural landscape. A contribution to this evolution was offered by Jesuits’ accounts of the natural appearance of the gardens of China. Based on an analysis of original sources in European languages, the book presents and discusses Jesuits’ descriptions of Chinese plants and gardens written in the 17th and 18th centuries and published in Europe at that time. It traces the different phases of the Jesuits’ perception of the gardens of China: from an initial general curiosity, to an understanding of the garden composition and design method, and the promotion of Chinese garden design as a model for the evolution of Western gardens. Jesuit missionaries were the first Westerners to reside lengthily in China and to visit extensively imperial gardens. The book argues that their narratives played a seminal role in Western understanding of the Chinese garden. It also argues that their accounts contributed to the development of a novel type of garden inspired by irregularity and naturalness, which spread over Europe during the 18th century.