The triptych of 'Daoist Deities of Heaven, Earth and Water' and the making of visual culture in the Southern Song period, (1127--1279) (China).

摘要

This interdisciplinary study of three Daoist paintings depicting the pantheon of the Three Officials (sanguan) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston proposes a new way of viewing and thinking about Chinese religious paintings. By addressing issues of image-making, imperial patronage, regionalism, and religious practice, this study shows how these Daoist images shed light on painting practices and ritual performances in twelfth- and thirteenth-century China.; The various chapters of this dissertation propose a sequence for studying the Boston triptych: from the opening stage of its production to when it was finished and used in a ritual context. The quality of the Boston triptych links the three paintings to a small body of extant works previously attributed to earlier painters or simply treated as anonymous works. Together, they belong to the little-studied Southern Song imperial collection and workshop production. Stylistic analysis of the Boston triptych and comparison with figure, landscape, bird-and-flower paintings, and Buddhist prints from the metropolitan Hangzhou region and the provincial Ningbo region suggests that it can be dated to the late twelfth to early thirteenth century.; The Boston triptych is a powerful visual statement that documents the intricate intersection of image-making and religious practice. Its encyclopedic array of the deities of Heaven, Earth, and Water (tianguan, diguan, shuiguan), spirits, and a human ghost suggests that it was a set of efficacious images (ling xiang) used in a Daoist mortuary ritual huangluzhai, similar to a Buddhist shuilu hui. Both the Daoist canon and ethnographic sources have shown that paintings like the Boston triptych were hung alongside other painted deities in Daoist rituals, the common repertoire of which included sending petitions to the gods, summoning them to a ritual, warding off evil spirits, and exorcising human souls. The Boston triptych should be considered in such a performative setting. Its positioning in ritual and its style signify the efficacious presence of the mobile cosmic powers summoned by the Daoist practitioners to restore the universe to a natural order governed by the Dao.