A mountain of jade the height of a man, carved all over with tiny figures hauling earth and channelling water: the Emperor Yu taming the flood, rendered at the scale of the flood itself.
The block was a single piece of Hetian jade, dragged from Xinjiang and carved in Yangzhou over the better part of a decade on the orders of the Qianlong emperor. The subject was a sermon in stone: the good ruler works, he does not merely reign. At roughly five tonnes it is the largest jade object ever carved in China.
Qianlong finished it near the end of a long life and had it placed where he could see it. It has outlasted the dynasty that commissioned it and remains less a vessel than a piece of state ideology you can walk around.
Object details
| Name | Jade Mountain of Yu the Great Taming the Flood (大禹治水图玉山) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | — |
| Technique | Carved Hetian jade |
| Period | Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign (18th century) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | 北京故宫博物院 |
Image © The Palace Museum, Beijing. See the original in the museum collection.