Roxana Cooper Wrote:
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> Does Menzies plan to explain why renaissance art
> and literary forms bear
> no resemblance whatsoever to Chinese models if
> they - not the classical world -
> were the inspiration?

I've got no idea, although I believe it is pretty well accepted that the use of perspective, which was so integral to renaissance art, preceded its use in the east. The
nexus of eastern and western art forms appear in the Bactrian forms evident at Dunhuang and the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas whereby we encounter flowing robes and Greco-Roman feminist perspectives on eastern iconic figures of the Buddhas, boddhisatvas and daishikis. All along the Silk Road there is graphic history of the gradual intercourse of art styles.
>
> Mind you it isn't exactly impossible that
> Chinese envoys should have visited
> 15th c. Italy. But they would almost certainly
> have come overland by way of the
> Silk Road and I can't see them having much
> cultural impact but rather being treated
> as exotic curiousities.

There are literary references to a 1st century visit, and ample evidence of Nestorian Christian communities in Chang An circa 7th century. The first diocese of the Roman Catholic church was established in 1308 by John Montecorvino, and before an antagonistic Ming emperor banned Christianity, claimed sixty thousand parishioners. Marco Polo was one of several travelers from the Italian city-states in the thirteenth century.
That civilization descended from one ancient culture, (be it Chinese, alien or Egyptian) is one end of the spectrum while the other holds that all civilizations developed independently. Obviously, the truth lies somewhere in between, and is very complex. As for the cultural impact, boyohboy, thats tough to quantify. For instance, silk. Europe, for hundreds of years tried to make silk as fine as that imported from China, not knowing that there was a secondary process of silkworm cultivation that was unkown... until duplicated by one of the Italian city-states. To this day, of course, Italian silk is a standard.
There is a similar story with porcelein and the efforts of an Englishman to procure the secrets of high fire Chinese ceramics. His name was John Weldwood. Then there was the bloom method of steel production of Alfred Bessemer that originated in the alchemical furnaces of Tang dynasty Taoists. Although I don't believe that EVERYTHING originated in China, there is a great deal that had a cultural impact that escapes recognition. Not many are aware that the Chinese were using toilet paper six hundred years before the west discovered its benefits.