This book unfolds the artistic and cultural exchanges between China, Persia, and Italy, picturing “a Transcultural Renaissance on the Silk Road” with fascinating reading of rich images. The author has been intensely engaged in the transcultural art history for more than a decade, spanning east and west, crossing different fields of painting, architecture, philosophy, cartography and literature. With illuminating case studies, it also explores the intermedial play between painting and poetry, poetry and architecture and visual art and literature. The book proposes "another form of history of art ": history of art is a theoretical history that interprets works of art; yet it is also a "visible history of art" that exists in the form of exhibitions
Chapter
1. From Assisi Florence to Sultaniyeh.
Chapter
2. Graphics as
Knowledge: A Transcultural Journey of Tour Maps of China.
Chapter
3. The
Secret of the Worm and Silk.
Chapter
4. Visual Psalms: A New Exploration
into the Relations between Poetry and Painting Concerning Chuan
Qiaozhongchangs Later Fu on Red Cliff.
Chapter
5. Style and Character:
Transformation of Early Architectural Design and Theory by Liang Sicheng and
Lin Huiyin.
Chapter
6. Architecture and Poetry: The Historical Opportunity
for the Emergence of Lin Huiyin's Structural Rationalism.
Chapter
7.
Comments of Shen Congwen on Four Paintings in Relation to Wang Deweis
Visibility.
Chapter
8. Shen Congwens Visual Turn: An Intermedial Study.-
Chapter
9. Another form of the Silk Road.
Chapter
10. Exploring the Visible
Transcultural History of Art.
LI Jun, Chair Professor, Head of the Department of Arts and Design, University of Macau. He was dean and professor of art history of the School of Humanities, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Paris I, the French National Institute of Cultural Heritage, the Department of History of Art and Architecture of Harvard University, a visiting professor at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the University of Bologna, Italy.His other publications in recent years include The Picture of Tilling and Weaving and the World: A Renaissance on the Silk Road (2025) ,Wen(Texture) and Wen(Text): A Trans-media History of Art (2025), Picture as Knowledge: A Transcultural History of Maps2025,A Visible History of Art: From Church to Museum (2016), Can We Read Art Like This? (Ed. 2018), Annals of Transcultural History of Art, Volume I: A Story Told in Two Ways (Ed. 2019) and Annals of Transcultural History of Art, Volume II: How Was the Europe Made?Ed. 2021,Volume.III: Images of Ancient History (ED.2022), Volume.IV: Towards the Art of Art History (ED.2023),Volume.V: Raising the Banner of Peace (ED.2024) Prof. Li worked as curators for four large exhibitions: Finding a Homeland at the End of the World: The Transcultural Exchanges and Interactions Between China and Italy from the 13th Century to the 16th Century (Museum of Hunan Province, 2018) ,Embracing the Orient and Occident: When Silk Road Meets the Renaissance (National Museum of China, 2018), With the Sunshine, Across the Sea: From French Impressionism to Landscape Paintings of MacauUniversity of Macau Art Museum,2024and Winds of Confluence: The Story of Macao in the Historical Archives of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (University of Macau Art Museum,2025)
