Démons et merveilles : vision de la nature dans une peinture liturgique du XVe siècle

Abstract

Démons et merveilles : the Vision of Nature in a fifteenth Century Painting. The Musée Guimet has in its possession an important collection of Chinese paintings (150 items), purchased in Peking in 1900 by Paul Pelliot for the École Française d'Extrême-Orient. These paintings were deposited in the Louvre in 1904. They include three sets of liturgical scrolls which despite being incomplete, are of the greatest importance. First, there is a set of thirty three paintings dated 1454 (Series A). A second set of seventy four paintings dates apparently from the nineteenth century (Series B). The third series is composed of seven scrolls (out of an original set of ten), depicting the ten courts of hell (Series C). None of these paintings were intended for purely " decorative " uses. On the contrary, they were meant to be hung in a prescribed sequence, in a ritual context. This fact has hitherto not been noted, since the religious paintings kept in western museums are usually detached from the liturgical series of which they originally formed part. Thus, even incomplete sequences of religious paintings are invaluable in the work of reconstructing the true function of liturgical art. The scrolls in sets A and B were created in conjunction with one of the largest of modern Chinese rituals, the Fast of Water and Earth (shuilu zhai) : a comprehensive, seven-day liturgy of universal salvation. In the present article, I study one painting from Series A, (N° EO 684 in the Pelliot collection), representing the " Deities of Nature ". In this scroll we find figures of the most diverse origins in close association : The " General of Desert Places " (an Indian god co-opted by Tantric Buddhism), spirits from ancient Chinese religion, and local deities of modern China. This composition is of great iconographie richness and stylistic magnificence. It illustrates in striking fashion the vast theological work of harmonization and synthesis undertaken by liturgists in concert with painters, in the all-embracing context of the Fast of Water and Earth.