Page 4 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

forgotten under the spell of what was, in a still pre-tourist age, truly other-worldly. Wang

Lü's album became well-known in the Suzhou region after his death, and may have
contributed to the more empirical explorations of certain painters in the second half of the
fifteenth century and later.
One of Zhu Yuanzhang's first acts in 1368 was to establish the southern city of
Yingtian as his Southern Capital, Nanjing, the name which it retains today. The northern

capital was to be located at the site of the former Northern Song capital of Bianliang (the
modern Kaifeng). In the following year he extended this system to include a Central Capital,
to be built at his birthplace in the Huai River region of Anhui, the town of Linhao (the

modern Fengyang). While the plans for a northern capital became a dead letter, Zhu
Yuanzhang spent seven years on the attempt to create a new capital in Anhui before falling
back on the more highly developed and centrally located Nanjing. He expanded the city
enormously, accomodating a population perhaps conservatively estimated at 473,000 in
1391. What is known of the first Ming palace complex in Nanjing demonstrates that the

Ming founder was willing to devote energies to art when the political gains were clear. The
Polar Forbidden City, named after the northern pole star with which the Emperor was
identified cosmologically, was undoubtedly an impressive sight both inside and out. Its

brightly colored rooves were for the most part covered with yellow and green lead-glazed
tiles, but certain important buildings had rooves of porcelain tiles whose moulded dragon and
phoenix designs were painted in underglaze copper red. Underglaze red, notoriously difficult
to control, is a striking feature of Hongwu ceramics in general (476). The association of red
with the Ming ruling house through a homophonic correspondence was a symbolic

commonplace after the fall of the dynasty. One wonders, therefore, whether the choice of that
color at the dynasty's beginning did not also have an emblematic political significance. More
obviously political were wall paintings in the palace which depicted the Ming founder's

victories, reportedly intended as a reminder and example to his descendants.
At court, the peasant background of Zhu Yuanzhang and his associates, now
enfeoffed as dukes and princes, did not prepare them for the subtleties of elite cultural
patronage. However, bureaucratic continuity ensured that once the Ming capital was
established in the southern city of Nanjing, steps were taken to ensure a supply of necessary

objects in conformity with the sumptuary laws proclaimed soon after the Hongwu emperor's
accession. A factory (later designated the Imperial Ware Factory during the Yongle reign)
was set up in 1369 in the Zhushan area of Jingdezhen where the Yuan imperial factory had

previously been located. Although the potters continued to use the decorative vocabulary of
the Yuan, they were now more selective and restrained in their choice of motifs, creating a
sober and powerful visual effect. The lacquer objects excavated from the tomb of the Prince