Art Discovered by Chance#
Because I received a gift from a beautiful woman from Yunnan, I treated her to a meal today. Originally, I wanted to suggest having Western food, but when we arrived at the destination, I didn't feel like eating there, so we ended up going to a Japanese restaurant (which was expensive).
The Japanese restaurant had a very "2D" feel, with stickers of light music girls on the walls. While we were eating, they started playing the theme song from K-On! (I remembered it from my ancient memories of the 2D world).
At some point, the power went out in the restaurant, probably because the air conditioning was on too high. The beautiful woman exclaimed, "How romantic! Are they trying to give us a candlelit dinner?" (Then she turned on her flashlight).
Although it was a bit pricey, the food was delicious. Of course, that's not the main point, but I just wanted to share a couple of pictures to make myself happy.
After eating and drinking our fill, we went to a tea shop called "Chayan" and I randomly picked up a postcard. The postcard had this picture on it:
Art can be found everywhere.
"Chinese Emperors" Tapestry Series#
In 1688, the Beauvais Tapestry Factory in France produced the "Chinese Emperors" series of tapestries, which are masterpieces of Baroque-era Chinese-style art. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any pictures of this series on Google Art, so I had to find some random images to make up for it.
Image source: see watermark.
Just by looking at this picture, you can tell that it depicts the author's imagination of China. At that time, many missionaries brought back gifts from China, which were presented by Kangxi, and exaggeratedly depicted the "golden age" of the East in that era. This piqued Louis XIV's interest in the mysterious ancient country of the East, and he personally appeared in public wearing Chinese-style clothing while sitting in a sedan chair carried by eight bearers, thus sparking a French "Chinese craze." If you look closely at Baroque-style paintings from that period, you can see many Chinese elements.
I flipped through a few Baroque-style paintings, such as the classic painting of a Chinese Lady by the Baroque-style painter Boucher.
Boucher also included a painting in the "Chinese Emperors" tapestry series called "Chinese Emperors Reigning," which became a model that Europe studied for decades.
In 1767, French diplomats presented this set of Chinese-style tapestries to Emperor Qianlong. Emperor Qianlong liked them and placed them in the Yuanmingyuan (Summer Palace) (just hearing the name of this place already gives you an idea of its fate). During the Second Opium War, they were brought back to Europe.
Missionary Johann Adam Schall von Bell and "Tianxue Chuangai"#
Returning to the painting on the postcard, the theme of this painting is "Tianxue Chuangai." I only found this series of things by searching for this keyword.
Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a missionary sent to China, reached the rank of first-class official and served as the head of the Imperial Observatory during the Shunzhi era. However, in his later years, he was sentenced to Lingchi (death by a thousand cuts). Although he luckily survived, he passed away the following year.
It's not surprising for a foreigner to be impeached during the height of his popularity in the Imperial Observatory. After all, it's the Chinese officialdom. If you haven't seen or heard about it, you're not familiar with it. In order to respond to the impeachment, Johann Adam Schall and others compiled "Tianxue Chuangai." The basic idea of this book is to introduce the story of Jesus and point out that the ancestors of the Chinese people came from the West, and the teachings of Confucius and Mencius are products of Catholicism, and so on. It's almost saying that China's history is nothing more than a Western vassal. This kind of statement is hard to please the higher-ups.
In the third year of Kangxi's reign, with the support of Ao Bai and others, he was sentenced to Lingchi.
In the fourth year of Kangxi's reign, with the intervention of Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, Johann Adam Schall and other missionaries were pardoned.
In the fifth year of Kangxi's reign, he passed away.
Afterword#
Actually, I don't quite understand what Chayan is trying to express with this painting. After all, I was quite nervous when I was searching for information.