Who is this?

I believe many people can answer this. This is Du Fu, a poet from the Tang Dynasty, because the Du Fu in the textbook looks like this.

But does Du Fu really look like this?

In fact, this portrait of Du Fu came from after 1949: At that time, Moscow University needed China to provide a group of portraits of ancient scientists and cultural celebrities, so it appointed the famous Chinese painting artist Jiang Zhaohe to draw such a group of historical figures. painting.

Due to the urgent urging from above, Jiang Zhaohe simply painted according to the appearance of modern people. It is said that Li Shizhen's appearance was based on the appearance of his father-in-law, Xiao Longyou, one of the four famous doctors in Beijing. And this Du Fu is exactly Jiang Zhaohe's self-portrait.

However, there are ancient portraits of Du Fu. If the textbook chooses a portrait of Du Fu painted by an ancient person, will it look like him?

I’m afraid it’s still unreliable.

For example, if you ask which emperor the picture below is, many people will answer "Tang Taizong" because such portraits of Tang Taizong are often seen in textbooks.

And this is not due to face blindness because the portrait comes from the "Three Talents Picture Society" compiled by Wang Qi and Wang Siyi and their son in the Ming Dynasty. The portraits of Emperor Gaozu of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty provided in this book are as follows:

The portrait of Emperor Gaozu of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty are indeed the ones that often appear in textbooks. There is just a slight difference in the sideburns and it is very easy to confuse them.

In fact, all the portraits provided in "Sancai Tuhui" are in this pattern: Japanese melon faces, swollen eyelids, obvious eye bags, and most of them have long beards. The characters in the painting are mainly distinguished by their clothing. Once they are dressed similarly, it will be difficult to distinguish them.

As a folk encyclopedia written in the early 17th century, the illustrations in "Sancai Tuhui" are indeed not of high quality. Its chief editors, the Wang family and his son, were not professional painters, and the technical level of the folk painters and engravers responsible for engraving and printing this set of books was also quite limited.

What's more, "Three Talents" is a "daily book" that attempts to include all the knowledge related to the "three talents" of "heaven", "earth" and "man". The author wants to collect some information from it. Fourteen categories of things are accompanied by concise illustrations.

Therefore, in this 108-volume encyclopedia, the number of illustrations can be said to be huge. In less than two years of compilation, it was simply impossible to draw pictures based on the personalities and characteristics of various characters. Draw portraits of them one by one.

So in the end, the author could only draw an image of a middle-aged and elderly man who looked rather old-fashioned and decayed as a template, and painted them with clothes in different dynasty styles, and added illustrations to make it work. A certain ancient sage.

This naturally does not represent the level of portraiture of the ancients. If the teaching materials select portraits from high-level paintings, will their appearance be accurately displayed?

Whether they are similar in appearance or in spirit

It is still difficult to satisfy people.

Purely speaking from a technical point of view, Chinese painting has long been able to achieve "painting likeness". The mature period of portraiture may be much earlier than we think.

As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China already had early portraiture. The depiction of characters in these paintings is still relatively simple, with the characters mostly in profile and resembling silhouettes. However, among the silk paintings unearthed from ancient tombs in the Warring States and Han Dynasties, there are also quite delicate and realistic portraits.

Portraits continued to develop during the Wei and Jin Dynasties. According to "Shishuoxinyu", Xun Xu, a painter in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, once painted a portrait of Zhong Hui's father, Zhong Yao, on the wall of the lobby of Zhong Hui's residence. "The clothes and appearance are just like his life." When Zhong Hui saw the vivid portrait of his late father, he couldn't help but feel sad and cry bitterly. In the end, he even refused to live in this house.

In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the great painter Gu Kaizhi put forward the idea of ??"viewing spirit through form". With the rise and spread of gentry taste in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, many dignitaries and literati were keen to ask others to paint their own portraits or to paint their own portraits. The famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi was one of them.

However, from ancient times to the Tang Dynasty, the portraits of historical celebrities that have been preserved to this day can still easily make modern people who want to see accurate appearances feel disappointed.

The "Pictures of Emperors of All Dynasties" by Yan Liben of the Tang Dynasty can be said to be the most famous early portraits. It contains the portraits of thirteen emperors before the Tang Dynasty, including Emperor Zhao of the Western Han Dynasty to Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty. The emperor's appearance it provides is still too similar, and the height and body shape are often nearly twice as large as those of the waiters on both sides, making it difficult to regard it as a realistic work.

Of course, this can be explained by the fact that Yan Liben drew this picture without any reference and purely based on his imagination. Although he was commissioned by Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty to create this painting, and the painting also stated that he had personally seen Taizong himself and the Tibetan envoy Lu Dongzan, there are still problems in the painting such as simple facial depiction and disproportionate figures. As for the appearance of the two parties involved in the painting, it can only be "roughly like this".

Why do these problems still occur with Yan Liben’s skills?

This should be his intention: in traditional Chinese painting theory, the so-called "realism" means not only "likeness" in form, but also "likeness in spirit".

For example, the emperors in "The Picture of Emperors of the Past" have similar images but different expressions: the founder of the country is bright and energetic, the king of the country is dejected, and the tyrant Sui Yang is fierce in appearance and weak in heart. Although the facial depiction in "Stepping Chariot Picture" is simple, it effectively shows the temperament of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty.

As for the disproportionate figure, it is also to highlight the kingly demeanor of the emperor in the painting. From the perspective of satisfying the emperor's needs, Yan Liben's writing in this way is not only not problematic, but also quite "sensible".

When will there be portraits that modern people feel are "real"?

We must also thank the missionaries

Although there were many records praising the high level of painters' works before the Song Dynasty, after the Song Dynasty, portrait painting gradually became an independent painting discipline. has been further developed.

The Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty can be said to be one of the ancient Chinese artists who was most dedicated to "painting likeness". Huizong of the Song Dynasty painted landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, and was particularly famous for his exquisite and realistic paintings. According to legend, Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty once asked the painters to draw peacocks walking. He was not satisfied after everyone painted them. The reason was that "when a peacock ascends a pier, it lifts its left leg first." Everyone painted it with its right leg lifted first.

Similarly, ancient Chinese portraiture after the Song Dynasty paid great attention to the criterion of "real people". Since the Southern Song Dynasty, portrait painting has been further separated from scholar painting, and portrait painters have become increasingly professional, becoming a new professional category.

As the best-quality portraits of this period, the style of royal portraits has tended to be realistic rather than "realistic" in the past.

The reason for this change is that since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, most of the portraits that have survived in the world are standard portraits used within the palace to show descendants. Their main function is to hang in secret rooms for future generations to worship and observe. It was extremely rare to leave the palace and hang it on the street. Therefore, royal portraits often have to put a lot of effort into the "likeness". After all, most people are not willing to let their descendants pay homage to someone who looks different from them.

Among them, the most common ones are the portraits of emperors and concubines from the Nanxun Hall of the Forbidden City and the portraits of Qing emperors and concubines stored in the palaces and imperial temples of the Qing Dynasty.

Nanxun Hall was first built in the Ming Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, it became a place dedicated to enshrining images of emperors, empresses and wise ministers of the past dynasties. The hall houses the portraits of emperors and empresses of the two Song Dynasties that were enshrined in various palaces and palaces in the Song Dynasty, the photo album of the emperors and empresses of the Yuan Dynasty copied by the Ming Dynasty based on the old editions of the Yuan Dynasty, and the portraits of saints and famous ministers of the past dynasties, totaling 121 It includes 583 portraits of various sizes.

Among the 63 portraits of emperors and empresses of the past dynasties collected in Nanxun Hall, most of the emperors have one portrait per person. There are 3 portraits of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty and 4 portraits of Emperor Taizu of the Song Dynasty. The one with the most portraits is Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang: he alone has 13 portraits.

After the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Western missionaries entered China, and the verisimilitude of Chinese portraits began to advance by leaps and bounds. In the Qing Dynasty, Western missionaries became court painters, further introducing modern Western painting techniques and applying them to daily court portrait paintings.

On the other hand, with the arrival of European missionaries from the East, the expression techniques of Western painting were gradually absorbed and mastered by Chinese painters, and portraiture began to show a new mixture of styles.

Zeng Jing (also known as Bochen), who was active in Nanjing during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, was a representative figure of this painting style. He founded the "Bochen School" of painting that combined traditional Chinese painting methods with modern Western painting methods.

▍The portrait of Xu Wei is a representative example of the influence of Western paintings. However, the detailed depiction of age spots, wrinkles and other details in the painting is not recommended in Western portraiture. Because such a non-beautifying, overly realistic painting method can easily annoy employers.

Whether it is the various costume pictures of Emperor Yongzheng that were once popular, or a series of portraits of emperors and empresses and pleasure pictures created during the Qianlong period, they were all drawn independently or with the participation of Western missionaries such as Castiglione. In many "traditional Chinese painting" portraits during the Qianlong period, foreign painters often painted the faces first, and then hired Chinese painters to add the clothing and background.

The Qing emperor’s acceptance of Western painting methods was not smooth sailing. The depiction of facial light and shadow effects that we recognize in Western paintings today, especially the practice of painting shadow effects and highlighting on the face of the subject, was completely unacceptable in the eyes of the Chinese at that time: "smearing" the emperor's face was What's the point?

Therefore, the Western painters who entered China at that time, while retaining the anatomical structure of the face, also took care of the aesthetic habits of the Orientals and reconciled the original strong contrast between light and dark, making the face clear and soft.

▍"Qianlong Grand Reading" was painted by the Italian painter Castiglione. The image of the emperor riding a horse comes from Western tradition, but the background of the mountain stone painting method is also the processing method of traditional Chinese fine brushwork

The combination of Chinese and Western painting methods of the Pochen School was highly praised at that time, and its influence is so great that it even continues to this day. Contemporary Chinese painting schools are still improving on the basis of this set of techniques. The portrait of Du Fu mentioned at the beginning of the article is a continuation of this style of work.

Does this mean that with the integration of Western techniques, in Chinese portraiture in the past two hundred years, spiritual resemblance no longer trumps physical resemblance?

However, this is not the case. "Realistic" is still one of the core criteria for judging Chinese figure paintings. Especially when drawing portraits of ancient people, instead of painstaking research, it is better to directly please the imagination in people's minds. In many cases, this "realistic approach" even reshapes the ancients. image.

In some cases, "realistic" is understandable: the appearance of the characters painted is really difficult to examine. In addition to drawing appearances and postures that fit the public's imagination, painters also assist with certain props, environments and even plots.

For example, in "Portrait of Ni Zan", the child beside Ni Zan is holding a long-handled feather fan, while the maid on the left is holding a copper wash in her hand and a long silk cloth on her arm to express His image of mysophobia.

But more often than not, the appearance of the person concerned is not completely unrecorded, but he is famous among the people, so the painter abandons the former and caters to the latter.

The biggest public scandal caused by this approach is the appearance of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang. One of his most famous portraits is the shoehorn face below that people will never forget after seeing it.

This portrait was actually painted by later generations based on the appearance of Zhu Yuanzhang in folklore. The portrait of Taizu stored in the Wuying Hall of the Ming Dynasty has a majestic appearance and should be closer to reality.

However, the shoehorned face painted by later generations is not the Qing Dynasty’s intention to discredit Zhu Yuanzhang as commonly explained, because the corresponding explanation became popular in the Ming Dynasty. Zhang Han, who served as Minister of Industry in Nanjing in the sixth year of Longqing's reign in the Ming Dynasty, recalled that after he admired the portrait of Taizu, he realized that it was "very different from the legendary portrait among the people."

It is worth mentioning that Zhu Yuanzhang is one of the few victims of folklore reshaping his image. More historical celebrities have benefited from this. They are heroes and protagonists in opera novels, so they are popular today. The appearance has been beautified a lot.

Among them, the one with the biggest difference between his popular appearance and his real appearance may be Yue Fei. According to the "Picture of the Four Generals of Zhongxing" painted by Liu Songnian, a painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, in 1214, Yue Fei originally had a round face, narrow eyes, a white complexion and no beard, and his figure was not particularly tall. However, because he was highly respected in later generations, he was transformed into a man with a strong and tall figure. The image of a military commander.

Even today, when photography has become popular, "expressiveness" may not be outdated. In fact, its application is not limited to painting, nor is it limited to China. As long as the world still has great people, this time-honored skill will will continue to exist. If you don’t believe me, just zoom in and take a look at the famous “Putin showing off his muscles photo” below. Can you really find his chest and abdominal muscles?