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The Qianlong Emperor: Treasures from the Forbidden City
Forbidden no longer to outsiders, the Forbidden City is nevertheless still home to thousands of treasures seldom seen by the public. Many of these are on display for the first time in this book.
The remarkable feature of these treasures is that they are all related to one the almighty Qianlong emperor who ruled over a vast multicultural China for the greater part of the eighteenth century. The Forbidden City was not only his own home for most of the 88 years of his life, but also the treasure trove for the huge collection of objects and works of art that he commissioned and collected.
This book is the first to offer a portrait of this outstanding ruler in terms of the great array of visual material associated with him. Portraits show us his multifarious as universal ruler of a multicultural empire, as devoted father of 27 children, as supporter of Daoism and Tibetan Buddhism, as Confucian scholar and as lover. The tens of thousands of treasures he amassed are testimony to his avaricious desire to collect and to categorise. And his own enormous repertoire of paintings and over 40,000 poems bear witness to his aim to be seen as a respected Chinese scholar as well as ruler of the richest and most prosperous nation in the world at that time.
The multicoloured strands of this distinguished emperor's life and the intricate maze of the Forbidden City are skilfully woven together into a tapestry that is a celebration of imperial life in eighteenth-century China.
The remarkable feature of these treasures is that they are all related to one the almighty Qianlong emperor who ruled over a vast multicultural China for the greater part of the eighteenth century. The Forbidden City was not only his own home for most of the 88 years of his life, but also the treasure trove for the huge collection of objects and works of art that he commissioned and collected.
This book is the first to offer a portrait of this outstanding ruler in terms of the great array of visual material associated with him. Portraits show us his multifarious as universal ruler of a multicultural empire, as devoted father of 27 children, as supporter of Daoism and Tibetan Buddhism, as Confucian scholar and as lover. The tens of thousands of treasures he amassed are testimony to his avaricious desire to collect and to categorise. And his own enormous repertoire of paintings and over 40,000 poems bear witness to his aim to be seen as a respected Chinese scholar as well as ruler of the richest and most prosperous nation in the world at that time.
The multicoloured strands of this distinguished emperor's life and the intricate maze of the Forbidden City are skilfully woven together into a tapestry that is a celebration of imperial life in eighteenth-century China.
220 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 2002
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