Palace hideaway nears restoration
Nov 12, 2008
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In between dispatching armies to secure the empire and building China into the richest country in the world, the Qianlong Emperor commissioned a retirement home for himself in the Forbidden City palace in Beijing.
Restoration of part of that home - a lavish apartment and private theater for the emperor called the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service - has been officially completed and will be open to the public for the first time from next year.
Never intended as a simple hideaway, the garden quarters built in the 1770s by the fifth emperor in the Qing Dynasty set a standard for opulence befitting an emperor renowned for his power and refinement including screens inlaid with rare hardwoods, intricate silk embroideries, delicate carvings of jade and bamboo.
To Chinese eyes of 200 years ago, it screamed wealth.
"It's as if everything is gold-plated," said Nancy Berliner, a curator of Chinese art at Massachusetts' Peabody Essex Museum.
Unused and sealed off for most the past century, the garden is three years into a 12-year restoration.
The studio, having been largely abandoned, contains one of the best-preserved interiors from Imperial China.
"The importance of the garden is that it is the most sophisticated design. This was the climax of the period," accroding to Liu Chang, an architectural historian at Tsinghua University, who worked on the US$3-million restoration, a joint project of the Palace Museum in Beijing and the New York-based World Monuments Fund.
Qianlong was also known for his love of arts. He poured that passion into the retirement studio and drew upon the talent of the empire, said Berliner.
Craftsmen from southern China were brought in for the elegant woodworking.
The walls of his private theater were covered with European-style trompe-l'oeil murals done by the students of Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit missionary who brought European painting techniques of perspective to the halls of power.
After the last emperor, Puyi, left the Forbidden City in 1924, the 0.8-hectare garden area was abandoned while the rest of the sprawling 72-hectare palace complex was turned into a museum.
[From Shanghai Daily] |
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