Trois Traites Sur Le Portrait [Chinese]

By Jiang Ji, DING GAO, Wang Yi

Portrait painting represented the bulk of Chinese pictorial production under the last two dynasties. But during the Ming and Qing periods, portraits were not kept in collections and were reserved for private use, most often accompanied by a ritual. The only three treatises devoted to the pictorial technique of portraiture in the history of Chinese art are brought together here and translated in full: Secrets for Drawing Portraits (Xiexiang mijue, circa 1360) by Wang Yi (circa 1333-circa 1368); Secrets for Transmitting the Mind (Chuanshen miyao) by Jiang Ji (1714-1787) unpublished in Western languages and Secrets for Tracing the Truth (Xiezhen mijue) by Ding Gao (?-1761), completed by his son Ding Yicheng (active late 18th - early 19th century ). These works give us access to a specific vocabulary, related on the one hand to physiognomy and on the other hand to the painting of mountains and waters, the traditional pictorial and literary landscape. It is thus the lines of force of a face that are scrutinized, the alternations between yin the dark and yang the light that are highlighted in order to bring out the reliefs, but without any link with the laws of optics. Yet the Western method (xiyang), mentioned and recognized, is not used. In addition to their theoretical and practical interest, these treatises also offer us an insight into the social role of portraits and inform us about the status of artists attached to this activity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Chinese
• ISBN: 2251456910
• ISBN13: 9782251456911
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Les Belles Lettres
• Length: 494 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.