Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, printed in Ming China at the request of the Wanli Emperor in 1602 by the Italian Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci and Chinese collaborators, the mandarin Zhong Wentao, and the technical translator Li Zhizao, is the earliest known Chinese world map with the style of European maps. It has been referred to as the Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography, "because of its rarity, importance and exoticism". The map was crucial in expanding Chinese knowledge of the world. It was eventually exported to Korea then Japan and was influential there as well, though less so than Giulio Aleni's Zhifang Waiji.
Left panels 1-3
Right panels 4-6
1674 Kunyu Quantu by Ferdinand Verbiest 1 hemisphere (very detailed)
1674 Kunyu Quantu of Ferdinand Verbiest 2 hemispheres
Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci's heroic virtues, thereby bestowing upon him the honorific of Venerable.
1610 Chinese portrait of Ricci
The statue of Ricci in downtown Macao, unveiled on 7 August 2010, the anniversary of his arrival on the island
Ricci with Xu Guangqi (right), from Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata, 1667
Matteo Ricci's way from Macau to Beijing