Portraying Our Lady of China: An Alternative Visual Modernity in China

Abstract

This paper focuses on the icon of “Our lady of China”, which was initiated in the early 20th century, to explore the possibility of an alternative visual modernity that mixed together Chinese and western visual cultures as a new one. Through examination of the patronage and reception of its earlier model of “Our lady of Donglü”, this paper concentrates on the beginning of the encountering of traditional and foreign cultures that exemplified by the icon in China during the early 20th century, to delve into the multiple social and historical contexts within which the modern ways of seeing were shaped in native China. The argument is that it is the 20th-century icon of “Our lady of China” that at last effectively visualized the specific Chinese notion of taking Madonna as “Mother Emperor”, which pursuit could trace back to the centuries-long Sinicization of the western icon of “Maria Regina”. The conclusion is that the icon of “Our lady of China” conveys both realistic and Christianized modernity, while at the same time it also distinguishes with several current typical narratives of modernity. In this sense, the icon of  “Our lady of China” provides us a kind of so-called “alternative visual modernity” in the process of visual enlightenment in China in the early 20th century.