Painting: Beauty of Yongle Palace (Copy)

Among the remains of the wall paintings of the Yuan Dynasty, those in Yongle Palace, Shanxi Province, are the most famous. Yongle Palace used to be located in Yongle Town, until it was demolished in a great fire. The Palace was restored during the Yuan Dynasty, and it took a total of 30 years to accomplish such a grand task. In 1959 when the water dams along the Yangtze River were being constructed, the Palace was dismantled and re-constructed in Longquan Village, a near by location. Currently only 4 courts have remained out of the whole Palace, within which beautiful paintings can be seen on the walls. For example, there is Dawn which features the three original Taoist deities. In this painting can also be seen over 280 various deities and heavenly people. The whole painting is of a grand scale. All figures were constructed carefully, and each possesses an individual character. Such can be seen from the solemnity of the Heavenly Emperor, the bravery of the heavenly soldiers, the gentleness of the heavenly maids, and the extraordinariness of the deities, etc. The painting is such a masterpiece that it not only influenced the later generations’ artistic creativity, but greatly affected the near-modern figure painting in the Ming and Qing Dynasty.

The painting copied by Cuiying Zhang, Beauty of the Yongle Palace>, shows a female with milky white skin, moon round face, with manners of a lady and of elegant sophistication. Her nose ridge is long and firm, her ear loops round and plump, her brows thin and eyes large, her mouth small and her lips red…This beauty certainly has an extraordinary appearance in terms of conventional prettiness, highly valued by the Taoist School. The beauty, who is also named as the jade beauty, together with the golden boy, are to serve the Taoist Masters who themselves are deities and, true persons. Jade beauties must have reserved appearance in the conventional way. Jade refers to the characteristics of jade, which are pure and firm.

From a technical point of view, the painting was articulated via “fine boundary lines and filled-in colouring”. The boundary lines are slim and firm, especially when it comes to the expression of drapery. Various greens and reds were used to fill in. The colouring is smooth and even. The overall expression of the painting is an ornamental one.