Typology and Aesthetic Basics of Traditional Chinese Portrait

Abstract

The portrait was one of the oldest and most popular genres of Chinese painting. The objective of this article is to provide an extended portrait typology and to explore the basics of portrait aesthetics in light of the latest achievements in Oriental studies. The extensive typology of the Chinese portrait forms of the 10th–19th centuries testifies to the pictorial tradition’s maturity. The portrayed were depicted standing, sitting, and lying. They appeared life-size or from the chest up, were pictured full-face or in three quarters and, sometimes, from the back. The social portrait typology was composed of tomb portraits, lifetime ceremonial portraits, lifetime informal portraits, commemorative portraits, historical and didactic portraits, diplomatic portraits, compromising portraits, religious portraits, portraits of donors, and self-portraits. The stylistic development of all portrait types was based on three main principles of national aesthetics. The first principle, borrowed from the xiangfa physiognomy, claimed a direct link between the structural features of the physical body, the psyche, and the mental abilities of an individual, which together determined his fate. The tradition of visual psychosemiotics did not allow the commissioner to demand that the artist change the appearance of the person being portrayed to any idealizing standards, as it was believed that this would lead to a change of personality. The second principle was based on the concept of “body oneness” (yi ti) of the Universe, whereby each part of the human face was in energy resonance with various astronomical and landscape objects. In the portrait, a person was characterized simultaneously as part of the cosmos, society, and race. The third principle concerned the spiritual content of the portrayed person’s image, denoted by the term shen. The analysis of occurrence of the term shen in treatises shows that what their authors meant by shen was a personified manifestation of the connection between the single and the Universal rather than the portrayed person’s individuality (a certain soul) and the sacral beginning (spirit).