Ricci translated Euclid into Chinese, demonstrated Western clocks to the Chinese and created a method for representing Chinese using the Western alphabet. As Jonathan Spence points out in his classic book, “The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci” (Penguin, 1984), he even gave the Chinese lessons in special techniques of memorization.

This map is an extension of his Jesuitical project, so while paying homage to the Chinese, Ricci was also well aware that the map was partly a demonstration, an argument. It is not decorated with an ornate compass rose or mythological sea creatures, nor does it display terrifying terra incognita. It is devoutly rational, even scientific: it contains descriptions of the world’s peoples that may seem wildly fanciful, but are based on the authoritative sources of Ricci’s time.

It also incorporates an explanation of parallels and meridians, a proof that the sun is larger than the moon, a table showing the distances of planets from the earth, an explanation of the varying lengths of days and nights, and polar projections of the earth that are unusually consistent with its main map. Ricci declares that it offers testimony “to the supreme goodness, greatness and unity of Him who controls heaven and earth.”

The map, then, portrays the crossroads of two great civilizations. Even as Ricci shifted the geographic center of Western global maps, filling in detailed outlines of China and other regions from Chinese cartographers and annotating the whole in Chinese, he also added a frame that was both rationalist and religious, celebrated Western science and faith and created a culturally hybrid vision of the earthly cosmos.

The result may even be a portrait of the earth as a Jesuit would like the Chinese to think a Jesuit would see it. The offering is meant to be both humble and full of pride, deferential and assertive, combining sincere homage and earnest self-affirmation.

On the one hand, Ricci stripped away much detail from his portrayal of Europe, making its “24 countries” seem far less central than they were becoming on the world stage. On the other hand, Ricci’s annotations offer grandiose declarations that all Europeans were “ reverent adherents of the holy Christian religion,” that “all are versed in the elements of astronomy and philosophy,” and that its princes and subjects were all wealthy.