The pictures in this article are all courtesy of the Museum of Nature
During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the painters spent 11 years drawing a picture book of animals with pictures and texts, called the Qing Palace "Animal Genealogy", painting 180 animals. Now, it has come to the Natural Museum, the unicorn, the white ze, the nine-tailed fox... The museum exhibits the magnificent mythical beast imagination of the ancients and the specimens of modern craftsmanship, allowing the audience to re-read the ancient Paintings of Chinese cultural relics from the perspective of natural science.
On January 13th, the exhibition "Qing Palace Animal Genealogy" jointly created by the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and the Palace Museum opened at the Shanghai Museum of Natural History (Shanghai Science and Technology Museum Branch). Through the comparison of specimens and paintings and the development of Chinese mammal science painting, the exhibition displays the 31 most representative high-definition paintings of divine beasts and real animals in the Qing Palace "Animal Genealogy" with the specimens closest to the Qing Dynasty specimen production process, and also compares the same animal drawings in the most representative encyclopedia-like animal atlas in ancient China, and reinterprets the Qinggong "Animal Spectrum" from the perspective of modern mammalology with the help of 3D modeling of mythical beast multimedia and interactive exhibits.
The Qing Palace "Animal Genealogy" is a huge literary and historical project in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, with a total of 180 paintings of animals, painted by the famous court painters Yu Shengsheng and Zhang Weibang, and proofreaded by the military ministers Fu Heng, Liu Tongxun and others.
"Animal Genealogy" is a collection of predecessors, combining the traditional Chinese realistic style and Western painting light and shadow techniques, it explains the name, habits, habitat and culture of each animal drawn, providing us with valuable first-hand information for us to explore the understanding of mammals and the development of mammalology in that era, as well as the communication of mammals in the world at that time.
However, due to the limitations of the times, scientific research on animals at that time had not yet been systematically carried out, so the understanding of the classification, morphology, geography and world mammal species of animals was greatly limited, resulting in some animal paintings in the Qing Palace 'Animal Genealogy' lacking scientific basis and different from the biological morphological characteristics of real mammals.
The exhibition is divided into three exhibition sections: "Opening the Door of Imagination and Curiosity, The Beast of Reality, and Dancing with the Divine Beast".
The first section, "Opening the Door of Imagination and Curiosity", selects the most mass-based divine beasts among the 107 legendary beasts, and considers the elements of the New Year of the Tiger to interpret 7 representative divine beasts such as Qilin, Bai Ze, and Nine-tailed Fox.
The second section, "Beasts of Reality", selects 24 animals with biological "species" significance in the "Animal Genealogy", as well as the corresponding 7 orders and 27 animal specimens, so that the specimens and paintings can be directly compared, so that the audience can see at a glance.
The third section, "Dancing with The Sacred Beast", clarifies the long history of the development of zoology of the Chinese nation through interactive multimedia "Pen and Ink Creatures", and the puzzle game "The Sacred Beast in My Heart" further deepens the audience's intuitive impression of the sacred beast rooted in the spiritual homeland of our nation, allowing the audience to end the exhibition in the interactive experience.
The exhibition will last for four months from January 13 to May 13.