Imperial illusions: a cross-cultural architectural comparison of qing court tongjing paintings and western trompe-l’œil quadraturism

Abstract

During the 18th century, missionary painters centered around Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining) created the unique art form of Tongjing Hua within the Qianlong court during the Qing dynasty. To understand the correlation between 17th-century Baroque perspective and how it was influenced by and was parallel to 18th-century Qing court art, one must look at Castiglione’s origins as an Italian Jesuit. Castiglione was trained at the height of the Italian Baroque, and his art therefore reflected and was a product of European Baroque illusionism.¹ His arrival in China was after two years at sea, and because he left Italy during the peak of the late Baroque (early 18th century), he served as a time capsule of that era, taking principles of the Italian Baroque into a new context, where his teachings achieved the longevity even as Europe advanced to Rococo.²

Former research is largely centered around the perspectives of the transmission of Western painting techniques moving east or the fusion of the Chinese and Western styles. This paper puts forward that the interrelatedness between tongjing hua and European Baroque perspective/illusionistic art extends beyond just style and technique; instead, the extension constitutes two significant “spatial construction practices” (as theorized by Henri Lefebvre) ³ that showcase how architectural illusion serves different socio-political wills. In this paper, the focus point will be centered around Jingshengzhai, an epitomized wall painting of the Qing court, and Juanqinzhai, an existing dreamlike exemplar wall painting hidden in the folds of the Qianlong Garden. Although Castiglione passed away before the completion of Juanqinzhai, the work was a result of his students, thereby continuing the legacy of scientific perspective he introduced. Parallel to these two works, this paper will also draw a comparison to the 17th-century ceiling frescoes by Andrea Pozzo, whose artwork reflected the standard training Castiglione received. Furthermore, we argue that the Western Trompe-l’œil Quadratura aimed to restrain and conquer the architectural structure as well as the point of view of the onlookers through pictorial illusion by binding them to a single vanishing point. Through this constraint, the artists of that period aimed to manifest the transcending of divine power over space. On the other hand, Tongjing Huas in the Qing court interconnect architectural space with regard toward the viewers' focal points, painting artworks that are navigable where the viewers can see the tongjing huas from multiple angles and locations to reflect the Qianlong Emperor’s personalized physical and mental fantasy and the micro-representation of imperial ideals. This paper explains how the shared scientific tool between Tongjing Paintings and Trompe-l’œil quadratura Art—linear perspective—contributed to the advancement of two branches of architectural acts. Driven by differing philosophical ideals (Chinese philosophy of ambience versus Plato’s theory of Form) and power structures (private servitude and public enlightening), the Western and Eastern wall paintings open to a more nuanced analysis of the connection between space, body, and power within cross-cultural art.