The Ming Dynasty

"In 1368, a popular uprising drove out the Mongol rulers, and from that date until 1644, the native Ming dynasty ruled China.  During this time, court painting flourished and important regional schools emerged.  The Ming court's lavish appetite for luxury goods also gave new impetus to brilliant technical achievement in the decorative arts."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 807

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 View looking up the slope of the Great Wall

 View looking down the slope of the Great Wall

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 "The conservatism of Confucian China, as expressed in its architecture, can be seen in the Taihe Dian (Hall of supreme harmony), one of the principal monuments of the Ming and Qing dynasties.  The Taihe Dian is the largest building and centerpiece of the grand, typically axial design of the "Forbidden City" in China's capital, Beijing.  The former Imperial Palace compound is known as the Forbidden City because only the emperor's closest family members, attendants, and advisors could enter there.  The compound itself is centered on Beijing's north-south axis."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, pp. 811 - 812

       Taihe Dian - Hall of Supreme Harmony

  "The great hall functioned as the emperor's throne room and audience hall.  Built in 1627, rebuilt in 1697, and restored in 1765, it is a late and monumental example of the persistence of the standard Chinese architectural style.  Of great scale, some two hundred feet long and one hundred feet deep, it has a weighty, majestic formality appropriate for the staging of sacred imperial ceremonies.  Raised high on a terraced white marble podium, the massive wooden structure, with its overhanging eaves and upturned roof lines, dominates several smaller halls flanking it symmetrically and grouped behind it. "

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 812

       Moat and Auxiliary Buildings

   "Repeating the design of Taihe Dian, these halls with their hipped roofs and upswept eave lines align with the north-south axis running through the rectangular moat-surrounded imperial compound.  The auxiliary halls, with their courtyards, provided the imperial family's private quarters, service quarters, harems, places for study, gardens and spaces enclosed for the innumerable activities of elaborate court life.  The whole immense composition is faithfully laid out according to rules for design and structure set down and followed for more than a millennium."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 812

         Exterior Moat at Night

 Entry Gate to the Forbidden City (with Portrait of Mao)

Guardian Lion Figures in the Forbidden City

 Taoist Gardens in the heart of the Forbidden City

 "The Chinese logogram for garden provides its definition - 'a place enclosed by walls, within which are buildings, waterways, rocks, trees, and flowering plants.' ... Garden design is a great art, akin to composing a poem or a landscape painting.  It is not a matter of cultivating plants in rows or of laying out terraces, parterres (raised flower beds), and avenues in geometric fashion.  Chinese gardens are rather cunningly contrived scenic arrangements of natural and artificial elements intended to reproduce the irregularities of uncultivated nature.  ... A favorite garden element, fantastic rockwork, represents primitive nature and, ideally, should be 'grotesque, spare, and porous.' ... Chinese gardens are sanctuaries where people commune with nature in all its representative forms and as an ever-changing and boundless presence."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 811

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  Temple of Heaven, Beijing

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 South Entrance Gate in the city of Xian

 Guard Tower on the city walls of Xian

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"... down from the library came a loud ping                                          From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming -                              Then the family would say: "Now which was that cat?"

- T. S. Eliot: Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer                                         from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

 (photo credit: Clay Levering)