Artist: Yan Liben, d. 673.
Title: The emperor Wen ti from the scroll of emperors.
Material: polychrome painting on silk
Site:
Current Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Period/Date: Tang Dynasty
Iconography/Iconology: The history of China is steeped in the reverence of early, quasi-mythical rulers, to whom various cultural innovations have been attributed. In the Confucian sense, the order, li, must be maintained and to do so one must revere these great ancestors. To do so it was necessary to provide portraits of the ancestors, a custom that survives in the traditional Chinese cultural context to the present day.
Stylistic Comments: Portraiture of this type, depicting long deceased ancestors, is known as conceptual portraiture. While the images may appear more or less realistic there is no sense that a specific individual is being portrayed. The figure painting of the Tang is characterized by the absence of a ground plane or any basic support. The figure of the emperor is hierarchically scaled in contrast to his female attendents. He appears much larger, giving more importance to the emperor. The figures are developed with a very fine "wire" line done with an extremely precise hand. The shading of the emperor's robe is essentially a graduated wash of red pigment. The shading is done imperically without reference to the actual direction of light as would be seen in Italian chiaroscuro. An unusual convention, unique to East Asian painting is the use of reverse perspective in which the object appears to widen as it receeds , rather than narrow as it would appear in Western optical perspective. The platform on which this emperor sits is a clear example of the reverse perspective in use.
