The Códice Casanatense: an introduction

Trailer for "Painter and Patron: The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense" by Peter Gordon & Juan José Morales (Abbreviated Press 2020).
To see text, turn on closed captions.
The Códice Casanatense, or Codex Casanatense 1889 as it is more formally known, is a 16th-century Indo-Portuguese collection of some 76 captioned watercolours now held in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. Deposited there at the beginning of the 18th century, it resided in almost complete obscurity for two and half centuries and was not brought to scholarly attention until the 1950s. It has never been discussed in detail for the general reader.
Painted by an Indian artist, and annotated in Portuguese, the illustrations are a contemporaneous Asian view of the peoples, costumes and customs of a region extending from Africa to China. This region, crossed by Portuguese explorers and traders, maps on what is now commonly called the Maritime Silk Road. Lively and evocative, the illustrations of the Códice Casanatense provide a human window into a world in which Asia dominated and that Europeans were only just entering.