Research on the Subject of Departing From the Forbidden City
and Imperial Procession to the Ming Tombs
Chu Hung
Department of History
NationalTaiwanNormalUniversity
Abstract
Chu Yüan-chang, the founding ruler of the Ming dynasty, esteemed filial piety, established mausoleums for the emperor and his ancestors, and personally inaugurated the practice of paying homage to the imperial tombs. Ch’eng-tsu (Emperor Yung-le, r. 1403-1424), built his mausoleum just outside Peking, in the suburb of Ch’ang-p’ing. After the relocation of the Ming capital to Peking, subsequent Ming rulers were also buried at this site. Of the various Ming rulers from Jen-tsung (Emperor Hung-hsi, r. 1425) on to the end of dynasty, most paid visits to the tombs. One of the emperors ordered artisan painters in his service to paint a pair of long hanging scrolls depicting an imperial visit to the Ming tombs. The two works, collectively entitled Departing From the Forbidden City and Imperial Procession to the Ming Tombs明人出警入蹕圖, are now in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Na Chih-liang and Lin Li-na, scholars at the NationalPalaceMuseum, have previously described these paintings as representations of Shih-tsung’s (Emperor Chia-ching, 1522-1566) visit to the tomb. Although Na gathered and carefully analyzed a substantial amount of textual evidence, he neglected the possibility that the subject of the paintings was actually one of the emperors after Shih-tsung. In addition, neither Na nor Lin fully addressed the issues presented by Procession to the Ming Tombs. Through a combination of textual verification, iconographic comparison, and examination of the actual site of the Ming tombs, this essay seeks to comprehensively explain the two paintings, with particular attention placed on fundamental issues of subject and attribution. The author concludes that: (1) the emperor depicted in the paintings is not Shih-tsung, but rather Shen-tsung (Emperor Wan-li, r. 1573-1620); (2) the late Ming painter Ting Yün-p’eng served for a time in the imperial court, and was the primary artist responsible the two paintings; and (3) the painting was produced in the intercalary second month of the eleventh year of the Wan-li reign (1582), and is a representation of Shen-tsung and his consorts’ visit to Mts. T’ien-shou and Hsi-shan for the spring sacrifices at the imperial tombs.
Key words: Departing From the Forbidden City, Imperial Procession to the Ming Tombs, Ming Shen-tsung, Ming imperial tombs, paying homage at the imperial mausoleums, Ting Yün-p’eng