Page 302 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong April 2, 2019 Sotheby's

The episode of the auspicious butterfly is recorded in many
Qing records. In the winter of the 53rd year of the Qianlong
reign (1788), the Qianlong Emperor was presented with
a brocaded box during his stay in the Taichang Temple.
The box opened to reveal a butterfly, and at the sight of
the Emperor, it leapt in flight in continuous upward and
downward movement, as if bowing to the Emperor nine
times. In ecstasy and awe, the Emperor composed an
imperial poem which was later carved into a stele to be
preserved in the Taichang Temple. In his birthday in the
following year, the Emperor even ordered for rubbings of the
stele to be gifted to his high officials; the present handscroll
is one of such examples.
The mounting of the present handscroll with its zitan box
is an archetypal example of packaging art in the Qing
court. See a handscroll of Arguments of Emperor Qianlong
against the Record of the Chao Ran Observatory by Su Shi,
similarly mounted with a kesi panel on the exterior and
stored in a zitan scroll box, exhibited in the National Palace
Museum, Taipei, exhibition Story of a Brand Name. The
Collection and Packaging Aesthetics of Emperor Qianlong
in the Eighteenth Century, Taipei, 2017, cat. no. IV-16. The
author of the catalogue notes that kesi panels decorated
with a mythical deer below multi-coloured ruyi clouds are
characteristic packaging for imperial calligraphic works and
imperial poems during the latter part of the Qianlong reign.
The Qianlong Emperor favoured the use of these simple and
elegant wooden boxes to preserve his poems and essays.
Another zitan scroll box, made to preserve the Qianlong
Emperor’s essays on his military achievements, is included in
the exhibition Qing Legacies: The Sumptuous Art of Imperial
Packaging, Macau Museum of Art, Macau, 2000, cat. no.
4. Another closely related box, destined to hold a Qianlong
version of Zhang Zeduan’s Qingming Shanghe tu (Ascending
the River at the Qingming Festival), was sold in these rooms
on 23rd October 2005, lot 391 and again on 8th April 2010,
lot 1825.