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Plate 6.16 Detail of the cloud-heads of the ceremonial columns in Pl. Plate 6.17 Lingxing Gate of the Temple of Confucius, Qufu
6.15. National Palace Museum, Taipei

this column are also pointing outwards and cloud inwards composition next to the Chengtian Gate. Duan Gate 端門,
(Pl. 6.17). A painter who has never set foot inside the which should be located behind the Gate, is missing from the
Forbidden City is unlikely to paint them accurately. Instead, painting. Moreover, the cloud-heads of the ceremonial
he would simply follow other people’s renderings and columns in both the Zhu Bang and National Museum
imagine the design, which could easily lead to mistakes. versions are pointing in the wrong direction. The
The paintings that correctly depict the cloud-heads of the architectural elements in the two paintings are also not very
four ceremonial columns inside and outside Chengtian Gate clearly rendered. For these reasons, it can be inferred that the
also tend to portray the architectural components of the painters of these two works had not been to the Forbidden
buildings in a structured way, while those that have City before and hence could not have been employed by the
mistaken the direction of the cloud-heads are less orderly in imperial court. Instead, they would have had to base their
their representation of the buildings, and less successful in works on other people’s compositions, so it is not surprising
conveying a sense of being present at the scene. This that their treatment of details such as the direction of the
difference suggests that a painter’s accuracy in his depiction cloud-heads on the ceremonial columns is incorrect.
of the Forbidden City was derived from observation of the Based on the discussion above, we can conclude that
actual place. Based on this analysis, Painting of Xu Gao, there are two basic models for paintings of this type in
Imperial Palace of the Ming Dynasty and the National Museum circulation during the Ming dynasty. One is a version
version can be categorised as works by court painters who created by a painter working outside of the court milieu who
had been to Jinshui Bridge as well as the area around was unfamiliar with palace architecture, represented by the
Chengtian Gate of the Forbidden City, which were Zhu Bang version; the other is by a court painter,
inaccessible to ordinary people. exemplified by Imperial Palace of the Ming Dynasty. The Zhu
It should be noted that both the Zhu Bang version and the Bang version was probably the earlier of the two, painted not
National Museum version were not produced by court long after Kuai Xiang’s death in 1481. This is suggested by
painters. In the Zhu Bang version, the location of Kuai the scene depicted in the bottom part of the painting, which
Xiang is incorrect. Since he was the Left Vice-Minister of the shows Ming officials and members of the gentry standing
Ministry of Works, which was a part of the civil official and bowing to each other outside the Zhengyang Gate. This
hierarchy, he should be standing on the right side of the is the path that one must take to travel to Suzhou, located

Plate 6.18 Detail of Pl. 6.1 showing soul-guiding banner and soul-guiding lantern

64 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450