Lequi Yu

My dissertation focuses on the Chinese architectural painter Xia Yong (mid-14th century CE) to investigate the Mongol Yuan’s (1279–1368) unique role in China’s architectural painting history. Xia Yong came from Qiantang (a region of the Southern Song capital Lin’an, namely today’s Hangzhou) and preferred to depict Song buildings.

Two copies of his Pavilion of Prosperity and Happiness survive today. This pavilion was a Southern Song pavilion near the West Lake in Lin’an, destroyed during the late Yuan period. Xia’s microscopic inscriptions on these paintings refer to a prose poem, which comes from the local chronicle Lin’an Chronicle of the Xianchun Reign and describes West Lake’s beautiful scenery and the Southern Song’s prosperity. One can assume that Xia Yong was familiar with Southern Song sites in his hometown and literature relevant to them. Furthermore, the modern scholar Wei Dong’s comparison of Xia’s painting and a Southern Song map of West Lake proves that Xia Yong seriously considered the actual location of the Pavilion of Prosperity and Happiness and its relation to nearby sites.

The goal of my summer project was to answer: did actual Song architecture inspire Xia Yong to create his architectural paintings? If so, to what extent? If not, what factors have shaped the late-Yuan architectural paintings in Jiangnan? Support from the Penn Museum allowed me to make a detailed investigation of Song architecture unearthed in the Lin’an sites and largely contributed to my dissertation research.

I mainly carried out fieldwork in Hangzhou, visited Southern Song capital sites, and examined related archaeological evidence. Particularly, I visited the site of Imperial Ancestral Temple, the historical remains of the Royal Street, and buildings near the West Lake. To supplement my field research, I also visited the Zhejiang Provincial Museum and Zhejiang University Museum of Art and Archaeology.

I realize that most Southern Song buildings near the West Lake have been rebuilt, and it is hard for us to re-imagine their original appearances. However, it is still helpful for us to compare their locations with those depicted in Yuan architectural paintings and examine how painters represented space and location.

I specialize in Chinese painting, so I paid more attention to images instead of objects in the past. But this fieldwork makes me believe that three-dimensional archaeological objects could provide us with a different perspective to study two-dimensional images.