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European book engravers often fabricated details to flesh out illustrations where textual accounts were silent. Such is the case here for “The Idoll Sekia” (Śākyamuni) showing a Buddhist temple in late 17th century Formosa, present-day Taiwan.

This illustration is from the 1674 German edition of Atlas Chinensis by Olfert Dapper (1636–1689). Dapper never visited Asia, but edited the travelogues of the second and third Dutch embassies to China and consulted Jesuit accounts.

The copperplate engraving were most likely prepared in the workshop of the publisher Jacob van Meurs. The image was based on Dapper’s retelling of the accounts of a Scotchman named David Wright who lived on Formosa in the 1650s.

Wright describes the use of music during worship and the prostrations of two priests day and night at the altar.

The main icon – never identified as the Buddha in the text – is described as depicting a religious man, now deified, who shaved his head and never ate animal flesh.

An English edition of Dapper’s work, published by John Ogilby in 1671, can be viewed through Stanford University here: https://tinyurl.com/ycyw93eb

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