국경을 넘어, 새로운 경계를 그리며 = Crossing Borders, Drawing Boundaries Contextualizing Rubens’s Man in Korean Costume

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Peter Paul Rubens’s depiction of a man wearing Korean costume of around 1617 figurel, in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, has captured viewers" attention for centuries. This large drawing was copied in Rubens’s studio during his own life time and circulated as a reproductive print in the eighteenth century. Despite its renown, there has been no consensus as to why the drawing was made or whom it may depict-and, in particular, whether he was Korean. This article examines past interpretations of the Getty’s Man in Korean Costume, including the identifications of the figure as a Siamese ambassador, a Korean Jesuit, and former Korean slaves who traveled to Italy or the Netherlands. Exploring the missionary and mercantile contests in which Europeans had contact with Koreans in the early modern period, this essay offers a new explanation of how Rubens came to draw the attire of an Asian kingdom little-known to him. As there is no documentation of a Korean living in Antwerp, the city where Rubens lived and worked, the tantalizing possibility of the artist gaining knowledge of Korean costume would have likely come in the form of material goods-exotic imports brought back from Korea via China. A nuanced interpretation of drawings and paintings Rubens made for the Jesuits around 1617-1618 demonstrates how the Man in Korean Costume relates to the Jesuits’ appropriation of exotic costume to glorify their missionary work in China and Goa and assert their victory over “idolaters.” Seen in these contexts, Rubens’s compelling portrayal of Korean costume is neither a document of a historical event nor a portrait of clothing worn by a specific sitter. Drawing in a virtuosic manner, Rubens portrayed a figure in Korean costume the way his seventeenth-century European audience most likely would have imagined him-as alluringly exotic and foreign, a wonder to behold but defying categorization.