In order to avoid being involved in the fierce "Nine Sons and Concubines", the prince deliberately created a literary and artistic youth who loved Zen and concentrated on compiling books to the outside world, so as to stand alone in the storm of the imperial struggle.
Twelve beauties as a whole
So "Twelve Beauties" is also one of the signals or gestures. After the dust of history has settled, we are more willing to interpret it from an artistic point of view, to see how beautiful the "Twelve Beauties" really is, and to show what kind of aesthetic style as the Prince of Yong.
Obviously, these twelve beauties were not his concubines, because the Qing court called them "beauty silk paintings", because they could not call the emperor's concubines, they should be "a certain concubine Xi Rong" or "a certain concubine Xi Rong", if you rush to call them "beauty", it is quite disrespectful, because the Qing Court rules are quite strict, these are beyond doubt. "Questions about the Twelve Beauties of the Yongzheng Period"
The appearance of these women in "Twelve Beauties" is roughly the same, and all the differences are the performances hidden in the details. For example, the first "fur suit mirror" of "Beauty Figure", whether it is the figure, appearance, temperament, movement of the characters, together with the texture of the dress, are similar to the "Poetry Commentary", so from this point of view, "Beauty Figure" follows this style in the creative style.
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What makes people feel different is that in the era when the Manchus paid special attention to Manchu costumes, the women in these paintings were all dressed in Hanfu. Only their flower hairpin headdress can be seen to be Manchu identity. For example, the beauty of "fur dress to the mirror" wears a "golden silk phoenix", which is obviously a style of the concubines of the Qing Dynasty. The time is fixed before 1723, or in 1709 AD, because it was in that year that the fourth brother Yinchen was given to him by the old emperor, and he became the "Master of yuanming", and the "Twelve Beauties" became the master's greatest beautiful sustenance in the spiritual world.
Sui-sying image
Through the dim history, we can see that a man who deliberately gives the outside world a transcendent object slowly opens the "Twelve Beauties" under the refraction of the light and obtains a temporary inner peace.
At this moment, the court was not at peace, and his wolf-like brothers were making trouble, even exhausting the old tears of Kangxi's lifelong torment. However, this Prince Yong exerts his literary and artistic image to the extreme everywhere, as if the ups and downs of the future empire have nothing to do with her, what he pursues is those endless mysterious religions, those "Pleasant Hearts" that cannot be read, and the "Twelve Beauties" that make people linger.
Knowing the son Mo Ruo's father, Kangxi's wisdom may lie in this. Although he was an emperor, he was more often a father, a father with many children. Although the government affairs are busy, he took the time to personally write the family training of the Ai Xin Jue luo family for his sons, and in the book he hoped that his sons would be: "When the spring solstice is harmonious, a hundred flowers are still shopped, a splendid embroidery, a good bird and a good sound, countless good sounds." Moreover, as a person in the world, he is fortunate to meet Shengping and live and work in peace and contentment. Make a good deed and do a good deed, so that you will be worthy of this life. The beautiful expectation of the "Kangxi Family Training" reflects the regret and desolation that he cannot express in his heart.
And these seem to be understood only by Prince Yong, and his literature and art and his seemingly pure heart and desire and "no haste and forbearance" all illustrate his detachment and enlightenment.
These beautiful women in the "Twelve Beauties" are all idyllic, dignified and solemn, or contemplative, or doing female red, or reading books, or looking forward, these women are undoubtedly Prince Yong's definition of a perfect woman.
The meaning of "twelve beauties" thus emerged. They are life-sized, accompanying Prince Yong every day, never leaving, never aging. Because they continue the tradition of the beauty figures of the past, the image is high and elegant. They are gentle, not promiscuous, pure, not debauched. ..... Their expressions are all delicate and gentle, both emotional and colorful, not from the outside world, but from female instincts... No happiness in sight. Happiness and them are always separated by a layer, troubles are not known, perhaps reflecting the inner emptiness, loneliness, bitterness, wandering and even anxiety of Yin Chan at this time, the traditional Chinese literati sometimes express their own ideals that are difficult to express through the image and speech of women, here, it is not excluded that Yin Chan also used such a psychology.
During this period, Prince Yinchen of Yong was quiet on the surface and anxious in his heart, and he was even more eager for Jiangshan than all others, but only detachment could increase his chips for more chances of winning, so he who browsed the beauty chart must want those brothers to know: "The fourth elder does not do his job, and every day he looks at beautiful women in the palace." Then a few Agora laughed. No matter who it is, seeing "Twelve Beauties" is comfortable in their hearts, and they feel a real beauty. The beauties here are obviously perfect incarnations, although they can't speak, but they completely reflect "hands like soft, skin like gelatin, collar like cockroaches, teeth like rhinoceros, moth eyebrows, smart smiles, beautiful eyes!" The beauty of the traditional classic is a perfect work of art depicting a woman.
From this point of view, later Yongzheng was not only not a cultural conqueror, but on the contrary, he was conquered, and those weak and gentle beauties, with the gentle hands characteristic of women, soothed the unspeakable wounds in Prince Yong's heart at this time, and let his heart, which was entangled in greed, lust and hatred, be temporarily calmed.
Beauty figure is a formatted spiritual world, from the point of view, it is the embodiment of a perfect woman in the traditional sense of the millennium. Since the Popularity of The Female Figures in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, through the Tang and Song Dynasties, until the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the painting method of beauties has long been fixed and has become a symbol system that can be copied. The standards of beauty are unified, and people's aesthetics tend to be consistent.
As Zhao Bifeng wrote in the Song Dynasty: "Autumn water is full of demon eyes, spring mountains are light and light eyebrows", all the beauties are similar, and those exquisite eyebrows, mouths and noses have become the standard parts in the art industry chain. This kind of formatting is the consensus on "beauty" of the female face after being filtered by the male gaze. Driven by these beauties, the female face immediately transcends the individual's body and is connected to a larger system of symbols, which are constructed by philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology, sexology, and so on.
The Ming Dynasty's anonymized "A Thousand Autumns and Absolutely Beautiful Pictures", which depicts more than 60 classical beauties such as Ban Ji, Wang Zhaojun, Erqiao, Zhuo Wenjun Su Xiao, etc., is a real beauty like a cloud, but carefully looking, we find that everyone's appearance seems to come out of a mold, and all people are uniformly eyebrow-trimming: If we compare the Qing Dynasty Fei Danxu's "Zhaojun Out of the Setu" and Chen Qingyuan's "Li Xiangjun Small Portrait", we can easily compare the beauties of these two different dynasties as Li Sheng sisters. Therefore, in "Twelve Beauties", we see a woman who is not unfamiliar and has a cultural heritage.
In addition, from this painting, it can be seen that "before and after Yongzheng ascended to the emperor's throne, he showed two personalities, two faces and two hearts." In fact, through what Yongzheng has done in his life, we can also find many opposing poles, such as magnanimity and harshness, simplicity and luxury, worship of Buddhism and heavy tao, science and superstition... All of these together constitute Yongzheng's uncertain spiritual world, in addition, including the future "Yongzheng Xingle Diagram" and "Yongzheng Cultivation And weaving map" can show that although Yongzheng later became emperor, he was always a lovely person, and his deeds were an outlier and a different kind among the emperors of the entire Qing Dynasty, whether it was "Yongzheng is such a Hanzi", or his aesthetic and even the "stuffiness" of the spiritual world, all of which told future generations that he will always be a different firework in the Qing Dynasty.