Page 248 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

buildings is the Ch'i-nicn-ticn (Hall of Annual Prayers), erected
near the Altar of Heaven in the southern quarter of the city late in
the nineteenth century. Its gleaming marble terraces, its richly
painted woodwork, and the deep blue of its tiles dazzle the eye.
But we need only to glance at the poverty of its detail, its reliance
upon paint rather than functional carpentry, to realise that, fairy-
276 Chiao Ping-chen (active c. 1G70-
1710), Country Pursuits. Dcuilof a like as is its total effect, the Hall of Annual Prayers marks the final
hanging scroll. Ink and colour on silk.
exhaustion of a great tradition.
Ch'ing Dynasty.

EUROPEAN In a corner of the Forbidden City, K'ang-hsi set aside a courtyard
INFLUENCE ON known as the Ch'i-hsiang-kung as a studio and repair shop where
COURTLY ART Chinese and Jesuit artists and mechanics worked side-by-side,
painting, engraving, repairing clocks and musical instruments.
The court painter Chiao Ping-chen studied perspective there un-
der the Jesuits and embodied what he learned in forty-six illustra-
tions to the famous agricultural work Keng-chih-t'u, while his
pupil Leng Mei was noted for delightful but over-elegant paint-
ings of court ladies, generally in a garden setting and showing
2
some knowledge of Western perspective. Castiglione, who had
arrived in Peking in 171 5, was already an accomplished painter.
He soon mastered the academic manner of his Chinese colleagues,
and proceeded to create a synthetic style in which a Chinese me-
dium and technique are blended with Western naturalism, aided
by a subtle use of shading. He was a favourite at court, where his
still-life paintings, portraits, and long handscrolls depicting