A Court Painter’s View Through Western Eyes
Jiao Bingzhen (焦秉贞; born in Jining (济宁), Shandong (山东); 1689-1726) was a noted painter and astronomer of the Qing dynasty (清朝). He is regarded as one of the first Qing court painters to absorb the pictorial techniques introduced to China by Jesuit missionaries at the Directorate of Astronomy (钦天监), and he later converted to Roman Catholicism. His favourite subjects were portraits, whole figures, landscapes and buildings, and he became one of the leading portrait and miniature painters of the early Qing.
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At the Imperial Board of Astronomy
Jiao Bingzhen served at the Imperial Board of Astronomy (钦天监), where he studied Western linear perspective under the European missionary artists who worked alongside Chinese astronomers there. He was among the first Chinese court painters to apply this technique to his own compositions, doing so even before the arrival in China of the better known Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione, known by his Chinese name Lang Shining (郎世宁), who reached Macau in August 1715 and settled in Beijing later that year. Jiao’s contact with the missionaries also exposed him to European ideas about astronomy and religion, contacts that eventually led to his own conversion to Catholicism.
The Gengzhi Tu
Jiao Bingzhen’s best known work is the Gengzhi Tu (耕织图), “Pictures of Tilling and Weaving,” commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝) in the thirty fifth year of his reign, corresponding to 1696. The album, formally titled Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu (御制耕织图), “Imperially Commissioned Illustrations of Agriculture and Sericulture,” consists of forty six illustrations, twenty three depicting rice cultivation and twenty three depicting silk production. Each scene is paired with a short poem in the style of the Emperor’s own calligraphy; although long attributed to Kangxi himself, later scholarship suggests the verses were composed by court scholars writing in imitation of his hand.
Jiao based his compositions on an earlier cycle of the same subject created around 1145 by the Southern Song dynasty (南宋) official Lou Shou (楼璹, 1090-1162), adapting the older scenes with his own command of pictorial space and perspective. The paintings were then translated into woodblock prints, engraved chiefly by the Suzhou (苏州) carver Zhu Gui (朱圭, circa 1644-1717) together with Mei Yufeng (梅裕凤); Zhu Gui went on to work for the Kangxi court until 1713. Copies of the 1696 edition survive today in institutions including the British Museum in London and the Library of Congress in Washington, and the imagery continued to circulate widely afterward, reappearing on porcelain and inspiring further imperial editions under the Yongzheng (雍正) and Qianlong (乾隆) emperors.
Other Works
Beyond the Gengzhi Tu, Jiao Bingzhen produced individual paintings and album leaves that show the same interest in figure composition and architectural space, among them a leaf from an album titled Paintings of Ladies (画仕女图) and scenes from Virtuous Empresses and Empresses Dowager in Successive Dynasties, a series depicting historical empresses now held by the Peabody Essex Museum. Later generations continued to attribute paintings and printed compositions to Jiao Bingzhen, and works signed with his name, or produced by his followers, still appear at auction houses and in museum collections today, evidence of the lasting reputation his fusion of Chinese and European technique earned him at the Kangxi court.
Related articles: The Jesuits at the Chinese Imperial Court, The Amazing Art of Giuseppe Castiglione at the Chinese Imperial Court
Source: wikimedia , wellcomecollection
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