Original title: Beijing Wanshou Temple's "Hongfu Qitian" color painting
The Wanshou Temple in Beijing was built in the fifth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1577) and was a place for the royal family to pray for blessings and longevity. The main entrance building of Wanshou Temple is also known as the Mountain Gate Hall and the King Kong Hall. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the two sides of the mountain gate hall enshrine the clay sculpture protector King Kong, that is, the folk commonly known as "Hum Ha two generals", the statue is originally one zhang four feet high, about 4.7 meters, the shape is vivid, the state is mighty; they are the two protector gods of the temple, which no longer exists.
Wanshou Temple Mountain Gate Hall is three rooms wide, the top of the hill building, No. 1 tube tile with ridge roof, face width of 11.58 meters, depth of 6.71 meters, area of 77.7 square meters, column height of 4 meters, ridge height of 7.4 meters. The Sanmon Hall is similar to other temples in appearance, and its uniqueness is the shape of the hall. The top of the hall is a brick arched coupon top, and the coupon top is painted with a blue sky flowing clouds and red bats. Before the overhaul of Wanshou Temple in 2018, the staff of the temple kept saying that there were 100 red bats painted on the top of the ticket, until the repair and dusting, after the staff calculated at close range, a total of 72 bats were painted.
Wanshou Temple has been built for more than 440 years, the Ming and Qing Dynasty documents on the temple building, function, landscape, important activities, etc., there are many records, but there is no description of the color painting in the mountain gate hall. From 2018 to 2022, it was the fifth major overhaul of Wanshou Temple since its establishment.
However, during the overhaul, the repair personnel dusted and protected the color paintings of the mountain gate hall, and found a deep fracture hole of about 2 centimeters, in order to understand the type of color painting, the pigment layer and the structure of the ground layer, after expert sampling, instrument analysis, it was detected that there is a layer of color painting mud layer below the existing color painting layer. This shows that this color painting existed in the Kangxi period at the latest, and it may also be painted at the beginning of the temple. Because, the first four large-scale repairs of Wanshou Temple were: the 25th year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty (1686), the 16th year of Qianlong (1751), the 26th year of Qianlong (1761), and the 20th year of Guangxu (1894). During the Kangxi period, the imperial monument and documents of Wanshou Temple were repaired or lost. During the Qianlong and Guangxu periods, the records of repairing the buildings of Wanshou Temple only used words such as "sticking and repairing" and "pretending to see the new", and did not specifically mention this color painting.
Cao Yubian of the Ming Dynasty "Travels to the West Mountain" may explain why the literature does not record the colorful paintings in the mountain gate hall of Wanshou Temple. Yu Shi Cao Yu Bian in Wanli Xin Chou August 7 "edge of the river embankment, big willow thousand chapters, the lotus of the West Lake can be ten miles, its flowers have withered, regret not to come early, suddenly see one or two flowers, but also enough to pay for this trip." Even after passing the gate of Wanshou Temple, the place where the blessing is now also made. The big edge is said to have strange stones inside, please enter the view, don't dare. Tianwei is not against the face, forgive me. The first to enter the neighboring temple Yanqing, watch the portrait of the monk of the cloth bag, not moved by the six thieves, quite a gain". This travelogue records that when the Ming Dynasty imperial history passed by Wanshou Temple, the abbot of the temple invited him to enter the temple to watch the rockery piled up with stones of Taihu Lake, and he humbly said that this is a royal temple, and I should be like in front of the emperor, always maintain a pious and fearful heart, and dare not enter the temple. As a result, the etiquette and rules of the literati missed the opportunity to appreciate the colorful paintings in the mountain gate, and there was no record of this unique landscape in the temple in the literature.
Manjuji Temple 1906
The mountain gate of Wanshou Temple is composed of three gates, the door of the mountain gate hall on the central axis is the main gate, Buddhism calls it "empty gate", the two sides of the door, the east side is called "Wuxiang Gate", the west side is called "Wuzuo Gate". Empty door, no phase door, no door, is the Buddhist doctrine of "emptiness" as the extreme, all the dharmas, are empty, the mind has no idea of creating crops. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the main gate of Wanshou Temple was usually closed, and it was only open when the emperor came to Wanshou Temple or the royal family had activities. Judging from the picture of "Xianglin Qianqu" in the album painted by the court painter of the Qing Dynasty, the civil and military officials entered and exited the Wanshou Temple and walked through the door, and they did not have the opportunity to see the colorful paintings on the top of the mountain gate hall. Therefore, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, in the collections, poems, and diaries of Fang Zhi, there is no description of the literati's colorful paintings of the Shanmen Palace.
Why do you paint 72 red bats on the top of the mountain gate hall? According to the literature, 72 is an auspicious number, which means more. The Buddhist classic "Lengyan Sutra" says that the heart has seventy-two phases; As a result, Wukong has seventy-two changes. Taoism has seventy-two blessed lands, and Confucian Confucius has seventy-two disciples. Therefore, on the top of the mountain gate hall, 72 red bats of different shapes are painted, flying among the clouds in the blue sky, implying "Hongfu Qitian".
In the picture of "Hongfu Qitian", the wave clouds are formed by turning up and down, and the tail of the cloud is connected with the waves, arranged in a corrugated pattern. The blue sky is the background, and red bats are frolicking among the colorful clouds, some with their wings outstretched, some hovering with their heads up, some burrowing into the clouds, and some hooking in the clouds. From the analysis of the cracked and warped paint layer of the picture, the color painting of the mountain gate hall is based on the brick wall, and the upper layer of the brick is the ground battle, and then the mural is painted. By observing the layering of the profile pigment of the mural sample, it can be found that the painting process of the mural painting of the mountain gate is to first paint blue on the ground layer, then use white paint to draw the outline of the flowing clouds, and then paint the waves and clouds on the white clouds. The waves are colorful, with pink, yellow, blue and green and other colors; Draw the red bat at the end.
The microstructure of color painting was observed by scanning electron microscope, and the elements contained in the pigment layer and ground layer were semi-quantitatively analyzed by energy dispersive spectrometer. The results showed that the green, blue and red colors of the color paintings were made of Paris green, ultramarine, and cinnabar, and the white pigment was lead white, the red pigment was lead dan, and the yellow pigment was water chaulite. Since ultramarine and Paris green are both synthetic pigments, their first synthesis time was 1828 and 1814, respectively, and they were introduced to the mainland in the late Qing Dynasty, so it is inferred that the color painting of Wanshou Temple Mountain Gate Hall should be repainted in the fourth overhaul of Wanshou Temple in the 20th year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1894).
The "Hongfu Qitian" picture painting, painted in the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, needs to be further investigated. In February of the sixteenth year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1659), Wanshou Temple suffered a fire, and in the twenty-fifth year of Kangxi (1686), the Holy Ancestor Xuanye began to build the Changchun Garden in the northwest of the capital, which was the predecessor of the Old Summer Palace, the pier in front of the Wanshou Temple, which was the transit station for the royal family members to travel from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace by boat, from the water to the land, and the Wanshou Temple was used as a place for the royal travel. As a result, the geographical location of Wanshou Temple is important. In this year, Emperor Kangxi ordered the reconstruction and expansion of Wanshou Temple, and the three-way pattern of Wanshou Temple, which integrates temples, palaces and gardens was basically completed. It is speculated that the "Flood Fortune Monkey Sky" diagram was drawn at this time.
For more than 100 years, the "Hongfu Qitian" picture has not been fully painted, and the preservation is basically good, the main reason is that the top of the coupon is high and deep, not exposed to direct sunlight, and the wind and rain erosion is also less, so the pigment falling off is not serious, and there is no large-scale cracking. However, due to air pollution, the colors of the pictures have more historical traces in the visual appearance. Judging from the traces of the restoration of color paintings, in the eighties of the twentieth century, the cultural relics department also did partial protection of color paintings.
The picture of "Hongfu Qitian", exquisite and magnificent, is rare in the monasteries of Beijing, which is a unique charm of Wanshou Temple.
Manshou Temple reopened to the public in September 2022 after its fifth major renovation. Walking into Wanshou Temple, the audience can enjoy this auspicious picture of vitality in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Author丨Wang Shuzhen
[Source: Beijing Chronicle, May issue]