The arrival of the VOC Embassy at Beijing

The Dutch East India Company's embassy arriving at Beijing in July 1658, from an English edition of Nieuhof's account, using plates from the Dutch edition published by Jacob van Meurs in 1665. Nieuhoff (1618-1672) was steward to the embassy, but was also tasked with drawing the cities and anything else the expedition encountered. 150 illustrations were published; his original drawings were rediscovered in 1984 in the collection of Roland Napoléon Bonaparte (1858-1924), a president of the French 'Société de Géographie'.