Text/Huang Yulu
Like a west wind gently caressing the bells under the eaves, clanging, crisp and more rhythmic, like playing music...
The sound of the poly art museum in Beijing's second ring road is at 3 p.m. on October 15, and all the visitors to the special exhibition "Hongli World II" will look around and follow the origin of the bell with their ears.
After nearly 300 years, this Qianlong Imperial Gourd Clock, as long as it is clockwork, the whole body is golden and embellished, it is still accurate and time-telling, running freely, so that the "West Wind" that drove straight in a hundred years ago has been in the ears.
Photo: Poly Museum of Art
The "Oil Painting Portrait of the Pure Hui Emperor and Noble Concubine" painted by the Italian missionary Lang Shining, as well as many exhibits of Chinese and Western fusion at the exhibition site, make the old "West Wind" vividly remembered - pigments and techniques came from afar, and conformed to the national conditions of Eastern Turkey and the taste of the royal family.
Pure Hui Emperor Guifei oil painting photo / Poly Art Museum
To the surprise of many visitors, the Qing court, which was known for its conservative decay, did not have the usual closure, but what researchers called "closing customs without locking".
However, the Qing court's admiration for Western culture and craftsmanship did not translate into productivity.
"The Chinese Empire was just a dilapidated old ship, and it was only fortunate to have a few cautious captains that it did not sink for nearly 150 years..." wrote Macartney, a British emissary who visited China during the Qianlong period.
What if there were no three old captains, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong?
The treasure reappears, the bells echo, and the recently concluded special exhibition wants to throw the question to the audience: In today's era of globalization, how do we grasp the course of civilizational exchanges?
The "globalization" of the Qing court
British movements, Baroque architecture, the iconic rose carvings of the French court, a large gourd at the very top, inlaid with the shiny word "Daji"...
Such a bronze gilded gourd clock integrates the aesthetics of China, Britain and France. After more than two hundred years, after debugging, the gourd clock can still "turn flowers and water", and the sound is abundant, attracting many viewers to flock to the glass window to take photos and videos.
Qingqianlong Imperial Copper Gilded Spinning Flower Transfer Method Daji Gourd Clock Photo/Poly Art Museum
This gourd clock, treasured by the Qianlong Imperial Family, is just a glimpse of the Qing court's "globalized" collection.
In this exhibition, the most important focus of literary and historical experts is the "Pure Hui Emperor Noble Concubine Oil Portrait". It is recognized by experts as the only known private collection of Portraits of The Queen Concubine of Lang Shining. As an Italian missionary during the Qianlong period, Lang Shining used the material of his painting technique as tempera, a painting system born in Europe that is considered the source of oil painting.
The perspective method in Western painting pays attention to the contrast between light and shadow, but the Chinese emperor did not like the shadow under the glory, and Lang Shining depicted the soft lines of the royal figures through the diffusion of the flat light on the front. Qianlong, a technician who blended East and West with Lang Shining, praised him greatly: "Photographing Shi Ning is good at painting me when I was a teenager." ”
In the early years of the Qianlong Dynasty, Lang Shining painted "Pure Hui Emperor Guifei Oil Painting Portrait" / Poly Art Museum
Western oil paintings mostly use oil canvas or wooden boards, but the portraits of empress concubines drawn by Lang Shining are mostly based on Koryo paper and silk. The "Oil Painting portrait of The Pure Emperor and Noble Concubine" exhibited this time is based on Koryo paper. Through multiple layers of overlapping and glued Koryo paper, it is both fluffy and hard, showing a texture similar to oil canvas.
Western law is the technique, and the oriental concept and material are the muscle base, which is why this portrait is considered to be a major example of the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures in the Qing Dynasty. Nie Chongzheng, academic advisor of this exhibition, research librarian of the Palace Museum and expert in Qing Dynasty court painting, said: "This work not only contains the characteristics of European painting, but also absorbs the characteristics of traditional Chinese portraits. ”
Kang Youwei even promoted Lang Shining to the level of "Grandmaster". China, he wrote, "unites China and the West for a new era of painting ... When Lang Shining is the grandfather".
Nor was Lang Shining a court painter alone. Cao Tiancheng, professor of Shangqiu Normal College and vice president of the Academy of Fine Arts, told this writer that Lang Shining also taught the methods and experience of oil painting to a group of Chinese painters, and cooperated with Nian Xiyao to translate the Italian Baroque painter Pozzo's "Painting Perspective Method" into Chinese, with pictures published, Chinese the book title "Vision Science".
Illustration of "Vision Studies" Photo/Poly Museum of Art
Qing Yongzheng White glaze molded chrysanthemum petal engraved tangle flower pattern flower pouring Photo/Poly Art Museum
"Many of the general view paintings in the Yuanmingyuan and forbidden City, including the murals in Beijing's South Hall, were painted using this focal perspective method, which was called 'line painting' at that time." Cao Tiancheng said. At the same time, Lang Shining and another French missionary, Jiang Youren, jointly designed and built the Yuanmingyuan, and the twelve beast heads that were mostly scattered overseas were the works of the two.
From canvases, perspectives, gardens, and high-temperature kilns, Western techniques are fused with imperial porcelain of the Qing Dynasty.
This exhibition exhibits a set of color porcelain, glaze color is "carmine" and "lemon yellow", the shape is small and exquisite, the color is pure and bright, with the title of "Western yellow vessel", which was recorded by Tang Ying, the most famous inspector of the Qing Dynasty, in the "Tao Cheng Chronicle".
According to the exhibition party, the reason why it is called "Western yellow utensils" is because the Ministry of Internal Affairs introduced a glaze containing the element of "antimony" from the West that year, and later developed it by the overseers to achieve "domestic production". Similarly, "carmine" was called "Western magenta utensils" by Tang Ying, and it also went from introduction to localization. The two became the most valuable varieties in the imperial kiln and have been passed down to this day.
Combined with years of research, after seeing many exhibits from the Qing court's imperial collection at the exhibition site, Li Guorong, researcher of the First Historical Archive of China and secretary general of the Qing Palace History Research Association, believes that today's people need to comprehensively and objectively look at and study the exchanges between China and the West in the 18th century.
"The Kang Yongqian period was the heyday of social development in the Qing Dynasty, the figure of Western missionaries has never left the Forbidden City, and cultural exchanges between the East and the West are relatively frequent."
However, most of the "mastery skills" of these famous Qing court craftsmen only stayed in the royal play and pleasure, and did not realize their lofty ambitions, but Lang Shining mistakenly hit and became the "first person of Western painters".
Misplaced priests and "long skills"
"Do you want to live a lukewarm, light life?"
The Japanese writer Shusaku Endo adapted the history of the 17th-century Visit of Japanese Emissaries to Europe and the European missionary Nishido into the novel Samurai, in which the Spanish priest regarded preaching in Japan as a lifelong fierce and supreme cause, but faced resistance and strangulation from Western theology from the ideological to the political level by Eastern culture.
At the age of 28, after 15 months of sailing, Lang Shining also came to China with a warm missionary volunteer. He did not spend a lukewarm and indifferent life, but he also faced a difficult missionary environment, and even did not hesitate to become a "painting barbarian" in the mouth of the eunuch, hoping to perform at the court and subtly influence the Qing Emperor and relax his strict control over missionary work.
By the Qianlong period, the focus of Lang Shining's paintings shifted from flowers, birds, insects and fish to portraits, and his position within the imperial court also rose to Qingyun.
"Lang Shining could always go to the emperor, even to the inner palace to paint a portrait of the empress, and no foreigner had ever seen those places." At the same time, another foreign missionary to China, Liu Songling, wrote in a letter.
But the first half of this letter reads: "Chinese was less and less interested in Western science, and the emperor's highest evaluation was European painting, and the rest did not pay much attention." ”
Although Qianlong highly praised Lang Shining's amazing painting techniques, and even humbled himself, "I know that he can't write, and he ordered Shi Ning to pass on the divine pen", he never allowed the mission. For the strange treasures of the West that "sneaked into the night with the wind", Qianlong and his fathers did not hesitate to collect them.
Regarding Qianlong's foreign policy, Li Guorong's summary was "closing the customs without locking them." At that time, the Qing government implemented the national policy of "one port of trade", leaving Guangzhou as a "south wind window" for trade, which became the main channel for foreign goods to enter China.
Li Xiangrong introduced that at that time, all the senior officials and senior officials in Guangzhou competed to buy Western imports, and sent a large number of foreign goods such as rosewood, ivory, enamel, snuff, clocks, instruments, telescopes, glassware, gold and silverware, woolen fabrics and pets to the court. "Guangzhou thus became the 'Tianzi Nanku'."
According to records, in the forty-ninth year of Qianlong, the Governor of Liangguang and the Guangdong Customs Supervision accumulated a total of 130 tribute clocks. "Now the British court wants to come to the Chinese Watch Museum to see the 18th century British chiming clock." Li Qianzhou, curator of the special exhibition and artistic director of Chinese antiques and rare games at Beijing Poly Auction, said that according to the archives, Qianlong did not hesitate to buy clocks and watches locally, which can be called "sitting on a variety of langs". Tang Ying did not purchase a clock for the first-class movement that year, and was fined dozens of taels by Qianlong.
Foreign talent is also not delivered. During the Yongzheng period, the French missionary Sha Ruyu invented the bell in the manufacturing office, and during the Qianlong period, the number of Chinese and foreign craftsmen in the bell office reached more than 100, and the earliest Chinese watchmakers were trained. Lang Shining is also a representative of Western painters.
The fates of the individual and the empire are thus intertwined. A person's dislocation may be different, a dynasty's dislocation, but the consequence is that the building will fall.
"In the long years from the 1st century to the 15th century AD, Chinese outperformed Europeans in applying natural knowledge to meet human needs, so why didn't the modern scientific revolution take place in China?" This is the famous "Needham's Question" proposed by the British scholar Needham.
"Generally speaking, Qianlong's interest in Western science and technology only stayed in the royal enjoyment, and almost did not promote its application at the national social level." Li Guorong held that Qianlong was indifferent to Western science and technology.
At that time, a large number of tributes brought by the British envoy Magalni were piled up in the Yuanmingyuan warehouse for a long time. Qianlong did not organize special research on ship models, telescopes, guns and other items with high scientific and technological content and greater application value. "Not to mention the application until the Anglo-French army burned down in 1860." Li Guorong said.
"The Heavenly Dynasty is rich in products and has everything, and the original foreign goods are not available for all." In Li Guorong's view, just as Qianlong wrote in his "edict" to the British king, the Qing Emperor, who was crazy about Western treasures, could not open his eyes to the world, refused to trade equally, and always harbored the old dream of "a great country in the heavenly dynasty", calling foreign countries "foreign yi", foreign envoys were "tribute envoys", and gifts of normal exchanges were regarded as "tributes".
Just like the gilded bronze bell, historian Shi Jingqian called the prosperous era of Kangqian "the golden age". After several wars and internal friction, the last layer of gold on the surface of the Qing court was polished and oxidized, and even the copper body gradually decayed. Finally, he fulfilled Kangxi's prediction: "Overseas countries such as the West, after thousands of years, China will suffer from it." ”
At the end of this special exhibition, there is a porcelain plate painting with the theme of "Eight Wild Treasures", and a poem by the poet Kitajima is quoted-
"Put the wine in the wind, and you grow old with China." The long corridor runs through the spring and autumn, and strangers at the gate are smashing the door knocker. ”
(Proofreader: Peng Yufeng)