“雍正西服伏虎图” 与 “雍正伴身西服图” 研究 = A study of Emperor’s Yongzheng western costume portraits

• Main Author: 曾琬瑜 Ching, Elis Wan Yee
• Other Authors: I Lo-fen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: Chinese
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66315
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Emperor Yong Zheng (1678 –1735) was the fifth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the third Qing emperor to rule over China proper. An album of fourteen leaves portrays of Emperor Yongzheng in various disguises like a Daoist magician summoning a fierce dragon, a fisherman daydreaming by a lake shore, a Persian warrior holding his bow and arrow, a Turkish prince receiving a peach from a black monkey, a Tibetan monk meditating in a snow-bound mountain cave, most frequently he assumes the identity of a Chinese scholar watching a waterfall, inscribing a poem on a cliff and etc. In one album leaf, Yongzheng is portrayed as a European gentleman, wearing a tall wig and holding a spear in the attempt to kill a tiger; another dignified portrait of the emperor employs the same Western guise. No previous emperors, either Chinese or Manchu, had ever had themselves portrayed in this manner, it is interesting to speculate what factor(s) may have contributed to Yongzheng’s curious self-fashioning. In 1724, the Emperor Yongzheng issued a decree proscribing Catholicism, the existence of these two Western portrays becomes suspicious as it contradicts with his decree proscribing Catholicism policy. Moreover the source of whom and when these two portrays were drawn still remains unknown. This article aims to speculate the origins of Emperor Yongzheng’s western portrays and the reason behind these paintings.