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Indepth Arts News:
"Secret World of the Forbidden City: Splendors from China's Imperial Palace"
2001-07-01 until 2001-09-23
Peabody Essex Museum
Salem, MA,
USA United States of America
Imperial Palace was the heart of an empire that, to the Chinese,
was the center of the world. During each dynasty exceptional art was
created to surround and celebrate the emperor and his imperial family,
whose members lived within the protected walls of the Forbidden City.
One of the emperors principal roles was that of arbiter of taste for the
empire as a whole. Under the auspices of the Qing dynasty, the imperial
collections and studios swelled to unprecedented proportions. Thousands
of artists, the finest of their day, toiled in the studios creating magnificent
works of art - portraits and paintings, porcelain, formal robes, armor,
scepters, seals, and jewelry - to affirm the power and glory of the state
and thus the legitimacy of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. Today, the
collection of the Qing emperors forms a substantial portion of the works in
the Palace Museum in Beijing. A spectacular ensemble of more than 300
of these historic treasures, Secret World of the Forbidden City: Splendors
from China’s Imperial Palace invites visitors to experience the imperial
world of dynastic China.
The Forbidden City
Chinas Imperial Palace - known as the Forbidden City - was erected
during the Ming dynasty. It took 100,000 artisans and one million
workmen fourteen years to complete (1406–1420). This
2.3-million-square-foot architectural marvel was designed according to a
Chinese cosmic diagram of the universe that clearly defined the
north-south and east-west axes. Ten-foot-high walls, crowned by four
observation towers and flanked by a deep moat, surround the palace. In
auspicious reference to the emperor’s long life and rule, the palace
contains 999 buildings and 9,999 rooms. (The word for nine in Chinese,
jiu, is a homonym for long, lengthy.) Today the Forbidden City is one of
the worlds foremost museums of Chinese art and culture, with collections
including gifts of state, military campaign treasures, and furnishings and
possessions of members of the imperial household.
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