【Eastern Jin Dynasty】Part of Gu Kaizhi's "Female History Zhentu" (Tang facsimile)
The tradition of ancient figure painting was established by Gu Kaizhi, who was revered as a painter. "The World Speaks New Language, Qiaoyi": "Gu Changkang paints people, or does not point out the fine eyes for several years." When asked why, Gu Yue said, "The four-body Yan Concubine has nothing to do with the magic; The portrayal of God is in the midst of a blockade. Talking about Gu Gong must quote this allusion, and when he talks about Chinese paintings, no one dares to bypass the four words of "conveying the divine portrayal". As we all know, the so-called "A block" is "eye essence", that is, eyeballs. Gu Gong seems to want to let the Chinese people know the importance of eyeballs in figure painting.
However, to our great disappointment, in the two most representative gu gong painting facsimiles that can be seen today, "Roselle Fu" and "Female History Zhentu", the eyes of the characters are squinted into a line, and the eyeballs are absolutely invisible. Of course, this is not "not pointing out the eyes", but the entire eye is represented only by a line of "the spirit is fluttering, above the smoke" (Zhang Huaiwan). This is the beauty of Gu Kaizhi's paintings: the portrayal of God. Undoubtedly, among the visible paintings, Gu Gong is the "initiator" of the aesthetic taste of "squinting eyes".
Gu Kaizhi was a native of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, born and died from 348 to 409 AD. In Cave 44 of the Maijishan Grottoes there is a statue of Amitabha Buddha. This is a statue from the Western Wei Dynasty, that is, from 535 to 556 AD. This femalely incarnated Buddha statue obviously continues the style of Gu Kaizhi's "Female History Proverbs": long eyebrows and fine eyes. Its two slender curved eyebrows and a pair of delicate eyes match the peach blossom lips, bringing a solemn and feminine charm to its square face. This Buddha statue is hailed as a model of "the smile of the East", and it does convey the charm of the subtle and subtle "laughter" of Oriental women. Undoubtedly, its eyes, as feminine as the willow leaves of the spring breeze, played an important role in conveying the spirit. "Conveying the portrayal of God is in the midst of a blockade", here we can indeed use Gu Kaizhi's statement as a comment.
【Western Wei】Cave 44 of Maijishan Grottoes, Amitabha Buddha
Buddhist statues, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Tang Dynasty are characterized by curved eyebrow repertoire. The so-called "repertoire" is to use the position and orientation of the pupil, the upper or lower eyelid has obvious curvature, and even shows a cornering phenomenon. Among the Dunhuang murals, the two-body "Thinking Bodhisattva" statue in the Chu Tang Mural "Pure Land Change in the West" on the north wall of Cave 71 and the Bodhisattva of the Crowd Listening in the Sheng Tang Mural "Guan Wu Wu Shou Jing Change" on the north wall of Cave 45 are typical bent eyebrow repertoire. The repertoire not only highlights the pupils (eyes), but also makes the transmission of the eyes more direct, and in fact more feminine - the end of the eyes is elongated and raised, such as double feathers, adding dexterity to the feminine. The monks of the early Tang Dynasty were critical of such changes in Buddhist statues. He said: "The Brahman statue is made, and Song Qi has thick lips, a long nose, long eyes, and a rich heart, which is very like a husband. Since the Tang Dynasty, the penmanships are strict and weak, like the appearance of prostitutes, so people praise the palace like a bodhisattva. (Essentials of the Interpretations, Vol. 3)
【Tang】Cave 71 of Dunhuang Grottoes, Thinking Bodhisattva
Daoxuan's dissatisfaction with the Buddhist statues of the Tang Dynasty is actually dissatisfaction with their indigenization and naturalization of respect for life. He said: "Today's people are created with affection, do not follow the truth, but gain faith and respect, and lose in the French style." The so-called "French style" refers, of course, to the original rules of Buddhist statues; The so-called "faith" refers to the imager's pursuit of authenticity and appeal. As far as the author can see, it is said that Wu Daozi made the five female statues in "Sending Sons to the Heavenly King", which shaped the model of the eyebrows of Chinese ladies for more than a thousand years. Slender and stretched eyebrows like willow branches, delicate as early spring willow leaves like beautiful eyes, subtle and timeless. Eyebrows and eyes fluctuate slightly and nearly smoothly, such as the harmony of the two strings, which is the charm of Wu Daozi's painting style between women's eyebrows.
Tang Dynasty royal tomb murals such as the tomb of Princess Guanyongtai, as well as the paintings of painters such as Zhang Xuan and Zhou Fang who are good at painting women, the eyebrow modification of women in the Tang Dynasty is diverse, but there are generally two types: First, short and thick, such as moth wing eyebrows; Second, it is thin and curved, like a willow leaf eyebrow. If it is as thin as a string and curved like a crescent moon, such eyebrows are also called "moth eyebrows", which means that its delicate, curved tentacles are like moths. Bai Juyi's "Long Hate Song" writes two poems about Yang Yuhuan's situation before he was given death: "The Six Armies do not send helplessness, and they die before the moth eyebrows." "In later life, moth eyebrow and willow eyebrow are two classic words that are commonly referred to by different names, which jointly refer to the supreme beauty of women's eyebrows. Compared with the continuous popularity of slender and curved moth eyebrows and willow eyebrows, the short, straight, figure-of-eight moth wing eyebrows, although they are the iconic eyebrows of the ladies in Zhang Xuan's "Mashing Diagram" and Zhou Fang's "Hairpin Flower Lady Figure", have not continued to be popular in later generations. The transmission and non-transmission of these two eyebrow styles naturally contain the humor of ancient aesthetic purpose.
Unlike the diversity of eyebrow shapes, the eyes of Tang Dynasty ladies were dominated by slender willow leaf eyes. Bai Juyi's "Jian Jian Poem" said: "The little girl of the Su family is named Jian Jian, and the hibiscus flower cheeks and willow leaf eyes." "The women in Wu Daozi's "Sending Sons to the Heavenly King" and the women in zhang xuan and Zhou Fangshi's female paintings are mainly willow leaf eyes. Song Huizong Zhao's visit to Zhang Xuan's "Trick Drawing" obviously strengthens the fineness and subtlety of Zhang Xuan's original female eyes. In the emperor's painter's pen, the small eyes of the painted ladies fluttered like two young buds of spring willows on their plump and wide faces.
Song Huizong G Zhang Xuan's "Trick Drawing"
The Tang people called it beauty eyes, and it seems that they are only named "willow leaf eyes". The five generations have the "starry eye" metaphor for the beauty eye. Later Shu Yan chose the words of "Yu Meiren": "Yue'e Xingxing's eyes are smiling slightly [mouth] [frequency], and Liu Yao peach is invincible to spring." The "Five Lantern Society Yuan, Volume II" contains the "Four Phases" of Master Shanhui Shuanglin, saying: "In the past, I grew up, and today I am a baby." The starry eyes turned with the person, and the lips opened to the breasts. "Water Margin" writes that Song Jiang's foreign house woman Yan Po Xi "the starry eyes are like dot paint, and the crisp breasts really look like truncated." The rhyme is like a begonia flower in the wind, and the standard is like a jade plum tree in the snow. "Using the starry eye as a metaphor for baby eyes, and calling the starry eye like a dot of paint, is both a metaphor for its brightness and its smallness. Tang Yin of the Ming Dynasty was a famous female painter who marked the style of trees, and the ladies in his writings were all moths and stars. In "The Picture of a Good Night in the Small Garden", the lady tang Yin shows to the audience is a young woman with moth eyebrows and starry eyes. The two starry eyes of the lady in this painting are raised in an inverted figure-eight oblique line, and the brushwork of painting the willow leaf eyes of the female body in Wu Daozi's "Sending Son Heavenly King" is used in a dramatic exaggerated way. These two eight-character up-and-coming starry eyes and the two curved moth eyebrows on them unfolded a game of wanton pleasure in the desire and separation, and the eyebrows shone brightly, and this young woman under the good night of the small court really had the attitude of "the starry eyes of the moon are smiling slightly [mouth] [frequency], and the willows are peachy and beautiful in spring".
【Ming】Tang Yin's "Small Courtyard Good Night Map"
In Ming and Qing dynasty literature, starry eye is a very popular hot word to describe the eye of beautiful women, and famous works such as "Water Margin", "Journey to the West", "Golden Plum Bottle" and so on use "starry eye" as a common word for beauty purposes. The popularity of the term "starry eye" is probably due to the "West Chamber" of The Yuanren Wang Shifu, of which the second book is "Cui Yingying Listens to the Piano Miscellaneous Drama at Night", the second fold Zhang Sheng confesses that "looking at his clouds and falling low, the starry eyes are slightly hazy", and the third fold Cui Yingying sings the lyrics "The starry eyes are hazy, the Tankou is consulting, but it is not good". "Starry-eyed hazy" is an idiomatic idiom used in Ming and Qing dynasty literature to write about women's drowsiness, drunkenness and infatuation. "Starry Eyes Hazy", "Starry Eyes With Sorrow", "Starry Eyes Tilted", "Starry Eyes Autumn Waves", "Starry Eyes", "Starry Eyes Full of Eyes"... In Ming and Qing novels, the popularity of "starry eyes" is actually the use of "starry eyes" to refer to all beautiful and moving female eyes. However, the beauty of fine and delicate and juanxiu is undoubtedly the fixation of the aesthetics of Chinese women's eyes in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In the third episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Jia Baoyu first saw Lin Daiyu, and Cao Xueqin depicted That Baoyu saw Daiyu in Baoyu's eyes as "two bends like a cage of smoke eyebrows, a pair of eyes that seem to be happy or not happy... When idle, it is like a flower shining on the water, and the action is like a weak willow supporting the wind." Feng Menglong wrote "Awakening to the World Hengyan Qiao Old Master Random Mandarin Duck Spectrum" to describe the young girl Liu Huiniang said: "Moth eyebrows with show, phoenix eyes with affection, waist like a weak willow facing the wind, face like a delicate flower blowing water." Cao Xueqin's description of Lin Daiyu may be derived from Feng Menglong's text, but the difference is that Cao Xueqin focuses on depicting the hazy and subtlety of Daiyu's eyebrows. Zeng Pu's "Evil Sea Flower" writes that the new branch Yuanyuan Wenqing meets the fifteen-year-old girl Caiyun, and what she sees in her eyes is also "two moth eyebrows that want to be trampled, a pair of phoenix eyes that seem to open and not open, déjà vu, mo Dao ruthless, it is the endless posture and style, the ancient posture and the covenant". Zeng Pu apparently used Cao Xueqin's imagery of Lin Daiyu, and focused on the elegance and hazy rhyme of the eyebrows.
【Qing】Gai Qi", "Lin Daiyu Statue"
What type of eyes is Lin Daiyu? Cao Xueqin did not directly say it in the eighty original works of "Dream of the Red Chamber" that was handed down. The seventy-fourth time, Madame Wang once told Wang Xifeng that Qingwen looked like "a water snake waist, shaved shoulders, eyebrows and somewhat like your Sister Lin"; The fifty-second time, Bao Yu told Xiao Gui'er about the incident of stealing Ping'er's bracelet, "Qingwen listened, and sure enough, she was angry and her eyebrows were upside down, and her phoenix eyes were wide open." According to these two plots, we may be able to say that Dai Yu, like Qingwen, is also a pair of "phoenix eyes". However, the twenty-sixth time, Bao Yu went to Xiao Xiang Hall to see Dai Yu, at this time Dai Yu was sleepy and first woke up, "Bao Yu saw that his starry eyes were slightly hungry, his cheeks were red, and he did not feel that his spirit was early." If we follow this plot, we should say that Daiyu's eyes are "starry eyes". In fact, the phoenix eye and the starry eye, in The Ming and Qing dynasties literature, are not different, both refer to the beautiful eyes of women. "Moth eyebrows upside down, phoenix eyes round open", "willow eyebrows upside down, star eyes round open", all refer to the woman's angry look. In the same way, Cao Xueqin uses the "starry eye" and "phoenix eye" metaphor to refer to Daiyu's eyes, not specifically, but using a fashion universal metaphor to refer to the female beauty purpose.
The third time he wrote Wang Xifeng, who appeared in front of Lin Daiyu, who had just entered Jia Province, "A pair of Danfeng triangular eyes, two curved willow leaves hanging eyebrows; Slim and athletic; The powder face contains spring and does not reveal, and Dan lips smell before smiling"; The twenty-eighth time I wrote that Bao Yu carefully looked at Xue Baochao's description, "I only saw that my face was like a silver basin, my eyes were like water apricots, my lips were not dotted and red, and my eyebrows were not painted but green." Lin Daiyu's eyes, caged smoke and emotion, are hazy with joy, and they will definitely not be sharp and clear Dan Phoenix eyes, nor will they be round and feminine water apricot eyes. Lin Daiyu's eyes were definitely smaller than Xue Baochao's. However, Cao Gong did not think that Baochao was better than Daiyu, but it was "another feminine style than Lin Daiyu". Baochao made Baoyu fall in an instant, not with apricot eyes, but by the "snow-white crispy arm" exposed when Baochao faded the string of red musk beads on his wrist, so that Baoyu "did not feel envious". Li Bai's poem "Grievances" says: "Beauty rolls up the beaded curtain, sitting deeply with moth eyebrows." But when I saw the tear stains, I didn't know who I hated. The third time, Bao Yu first saw Dai Yu, because he saw that his "eyebrows were like a furrow", he sent the word "颦颦" to Lin Daiyu to make a word. This not only alludes to Li Bai's poetry of "resentment", but also echoes the "cage smoke contains affection" of Daiyu's eyebrows. With its delicate and hazy expression, these eyes are undoubtedly Bai Juyi's willow leaf eyes.
The fifth time, in the too illusory realm, the police fairy goddess gave her sister Xu to Jia Baoyu, who had come here sleepwalking. Her sister, whose breast name is "Kanmei" and the word "Keqing", "is bright and feminine, and there seems to be Baochao; If you are like Daiyu, you are like Daiyu." Kanmei is rare, even unattainable- the real "kanmei" Qin Keqing died early. Although Jia Baoyu is not unavoidably moved by Baochao's "bright and feminine", it is Lin Daiyu's "charming and charming" that he loves. Not only Jia Baoyu, the evil young Xue Pan was also poured out for Lin Daiyu's charm. On the twenty-fifth occasion, when Baoyu and Fengjie were in the middle of the demon, and the chaos in the Grand View Garden was in chaos, Xue Pan "suddenly caught a glimpse of Lin Daiyu's graceful flow, and she had collapsed there." In contrast, Lin Daiyu is written as a model of "wind flow" that is appreciated by good and evil, which naturally shows the aesthetic bias of the author Cao Xueqin between the two female charms of "feminine style" and "wind flow". However, Cao Xueqin's aesthetic preference is not limited to her personal taste. The Qing Ren and Bang'er "Ye Tan Suilu Dong Rubiao" wrote that the fox spirit old man had two daughters, "Long Yue Ah Xun, small and white as jade, feminine and manless, and valued by the nine marriages; The second time Aneng, the eyebrows are thin and slightly numb, and the grace is very special. "Ah Xun is white and feminine, similar to Xue Baochao; Aneng's eyebrows were delicate, close to Lin Daiyu. The "eyebrow trimming" that Dai Yu and Aneng share is indeed the beauty of classical Chinese women.
【Qing】Sun Wen's "Dream of the Red Chamber, The Eighth Time, Bao Dai's Return"
From the painter Gu Kaizhi to the novelist Cao Xueqin, Chinese literati painters prefer "detailed eyes", which have both natural and cultural factors. Naturally, Chinese women's eyes are elongated as a commonality. The Song Dynasty painter Deng Chun analyzed the differences between Chinese and Indian Buddha statues and pointed out that India "is good to the Buddha and Chinese different, and the eyes are slightly larger" (Painting Ji, Vol. 10). As far as culture is concerned, Chinese culture prefers implicit fun, and the "seemingly nothing" eyes are gentle and moving. Westerners think that the eyes are beautiful, and Homer writes about Lady Zeus Hera, calling her "the queen of the bull's eyes", which sets the baseline for Western literature and art to describe the beauty of women. Our ancestors probably could not have accepted a "queen of cow's eyes."
In the Chinese cultural tradition, the earliest poem specifically describing the appearance of beautiful women in Imami is the "Book of Poetry, Shuoren", which writes that The wife of Wei Hou and Lady Zhuang Jiang said: "The hands are like soft hands, the skin is like gelatin, the collar is like a cockroach, the teeth are like a rhinoceros, and the moth eyebrows are moths." Smiling and smiling, beautiful eyes. The Analects of the Eight Nobles quote the latter two sentences, the Mao Biography notes: "Pan, black and white", and Ma Rong notes "Pan, moving the eye". "Hope" echoes "laughter" and is a verb. "Smile" writes the face, "hope" writes the look. Mao's note is inaccurate, Ma Rong's note is yes. Mingren Zhong Yuyun: "The two sentences of clever laughter paint beautiful people, not in the form, to get their temperament." The first five sentences of this chapter are as wonderful as their shapes, and the last two sentences and their temperament are vividly written. In Tang Xianzu's Handan Chronicle and Miscellaneous Qing, Lu Sheng said to Cui: "Smiling and smiling, beautiful and looking forward to it." What is the hope of that prayer, and what is the hope of your heart? What kind of laughter do you say when you laugh, and laugh down the soul of a person. Cao Xueqin wrote Lin Daiyu precisely to play the "Shuo Ren" to describe beauty and "get its temperament". He did not write directly about the shape of Lin Daiyu's eyes, but wrote about his expression: cage smoke with emotion, joy and mist. The reader is not sure what the shape of Lin Daiyu's eyes is, but he can feel and imagine their delicate and delicate charm. The so-called Chinese poetry "without a word, do everything you can", and the so-called "no painting place, all become a wonderful state" in Chinese painting, implemented in Cao Xueqin's pen, is Lin Daiyu's eyebrow trimming details to give readers the indescribable charm.
In fact, in the history of human plastic arts, the prominence of the eyes is a very late story. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which is praised with the infinite meaning of the eyes, is a trace of humanity's karma at the beginning of the 16th century. Tracing the history of figure painting, it seems that Chinese painters do not put the eyes in the first place, but make it unified in the overall aura of the picture, including all the forms, and the true meaning of the so-called "divine portrayal" is really not the "eye essence" as an entity, but the charm of the whole picture, which is the "vivid rhyme" proposed by the Southern Dynasty Sheikh in the "Catalogue of Ancient Paintings". Sheikh said: "If you are confined to the body, you will not see the essence; If you take the image outside, it can be described as subtle. "The Chinese aesthetic spirit, the subtle charm of the exchange of all things." My generation has inherited the essence of culture, how can I be stuck in the size of the two eyeballs?
Author: Xiao Ying
Editor: Wu Dongkun