Free 1434 by Gavin Menzies Page B

uncle, arrived in Venice [1428]…offered him as a worthy gift the said book about Marco Polo that he might be guided by it since he was desirous of seeing and travelling through the world. They say this book is in the Torre de Tombo.”
    Professor Rogers also summarized Marco Polo’s and da Conti’s contributions to world maps:
    With the Cape [Good Hope] rounded, the all-water route to India lay revealed. Valentin Fernandes could think of no greater service to his monarch than the publication in Portuguese translation the three best available descriptions of the world over which King Manuel now assumed dominion. One was that of Marco Polo; another was the description of the Indies (viz China) written by Pogio the Florentine, based on the information supplied to him by the delegates to the Council of Florence and by Nicolo da Conti.”
    It seems to me beyond argument that the world map on display today in the Doges’ Palace is, as the Venetians claim, based on information that reached Venice from Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti and that this was the same world map taken to Portugal by Dom Pedro in 1428. Consequently, both the Venetians and the Portuguese knew the contours of the whole world before the Portuguese voyages of exploration even started. We know that da Conti was in Calicut the same time as Zheng He’s fleets, for he describes the junks and his description tallies with those of Ma Huan, Zheng He’s historian, who was in Calicut in 1419. 18

    A sketch of Mongol faces by the Veronese artist Pisanello, 1430s.
    As noted, in 1419, Pisanello (1395–1455) had painted murals in the Doges’ Palace. Pisanello came from Verona, which by then had joined the Pax Venetica—her grandees were elected to the Great Council of Venice. In about 1436 Pisanello painted another fresco in the church of Saint Anastasia at Verona entitled Saint George and the Princess of Trebizond . In the left-hand section is a group of horsemen. Seated on arichly caparisoned horse is a Mongol general with facial features, clothes, and hat very similar to the carvings of Zhu Di’s generals that line the road that leads to Zheng He’s tomb north of Beijing. The Mongol dignitary wears rich silk clothes. Pisanello’s sketches of the hard, powerful Mongol face can be seen separately in the Louvre in Paris. The sketch and painting are so vivid that its seems to me inescapable that Pisanello painted what he saw in the late 1430s—a Mongolian general in Venice or Verona, a captain or admiral of one of the Chinese junks. 19 (See note 20 for Pisanello’s other sketches of Chinese visitors to Venice in the 1430s). In my view Pisanello’s sketches depictthe Chinese Admiral and his senior Mandarin advisor in their formal dress when they met the Doge. As captain of HMS Rorqual I would wear my ceremonial sword when calling on local dignitaries at the start of an official visit. The Chinese admiral would have carried his ceremonial bow.
    The Chinese junks berthed at the Riva degli Schiavoni, or Quay of Slaves, would have created little fuss—Chinese and Arab ships were there as a matter of course. The ambassador and the captains would have presented their credentials to the doge in his palace a few hundred yards away, together with the Shoushi astronomical calendar giving details of the Xuan De emperor’s conception and birth. Ceremonial gifts of silk and blue-and-white imperial porcelain would have followed, and finally maps of the voyage from China. The barbarians would now be able to return tribute.
    Fresh meat, fruit, fish, vegetables, and water would be embarked, paid for partly in Venetian ducats (which the Chinese would have acquired in Cairo) and partly in rice. Zheng He’s fleets would have disposed of the poor concubines and slaves who had not died in transit or been given away at a previous port, dispatching them to the slave market or shipping them on to Florence.
    A date would