The Cultural Heritage of Architectural Linear Perspective: The Mural Paintings in Nantang Church

Manuel V Castilla

doi:10.3390/heritage4030099

Abstract

This paper presents a contextual use of the innovative drawing techniques that involved architecture and painting in the Qing court during the first half of the eighteenth century. At this point architectural linear perspective in painting (quadratura) and stage design had become common fields of experimentation for the Chinese and Jesuit artists missionaries. In this conceptual context, Western quadratura was developed in China by Giovanni Gherardini. (1655–1729), and especially by Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), who is remembered as an extraordinarily versatile architect–painter. The focus of this paper is on the “illusory mural paintings of architectural perspective in Nantang Church” (Beijing), which has now disappeared, and which spread the influence of the Western Renaissance. The imported Western linear perspective and the fundamentals of architectural drawing facilitated the systematization and dissemination of the quadratura as an unknown technique in China. Based on the text described by the contemporary scholar Yao Yuan Zhi, an original interpretation of the architectural perspective mural paintings in Nantang Church is proposed. These paintings provide an important case study of Sino-European collaboration in the eighteenth century from different points of view: the representation of the light in drawings and the fact that the concept of shadow in some respects was unknown to the Chinese artist.

Highlights

In order to understand the dynamic of the linear mathematical perspective transmission process to East Asia and its application to architectural painting, there is a need to start with some important antecedents
Despite the amazement of Yuanzhi about the realism of the murals and the new and unknown technique, there were other contemporary artists in the court that did not positively interpret this pictorial methodology and who saw serious flaws in it. This is summarized by one of these artists (Tsou I-kuei) in these words: The Westerners are skilled in geometry, and there is not the slightest mis- 1780 take in their way of rendering light and shade [yang-yin] and distance
This research started from the premise that Chinese culture contributed to the development of the linear perspective in China, in addition to receiving concepts and methods from Europe

Summary

Introduction

In order to understand the dynamic of the linear mathematical perspective transmission process to East Asia and its application to architectural painting, there is a need to start with some important antecedents. Architecture, mathematics, descriptive geometry, drawing, stage design and other more technical fields of knowledge have applied geometric principles to the solution of practical problems [1] The mathematician Girard Desargues (1591–1661) developed the basic concept of the principle of projection and section view proposed by the Renaissance artists. Desargues’ most important work Brouillon projet d’une atteinte aux événemens des rencontres d une cône avec un plan (proposed draft for an essay on the results of taking plane sections of a cone) was printed in 1639, where Desargues presented innovations.

Development of Graphic Drawings in the Late Ming Dynasty and the Early

Nantang Murals

Conclusions