Object details
| Name | Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy (阎立本步辇图卷) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00119106 |
| Category | Chinese Paintings (绘画) |
| Period | 唐 |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
A handscroll from the Tang dynasty (618-907). The Palace Museum holds it among the paintings of its collection, and the image here is reproduced with the museum’s credit.
Tang painting set the canon for figure and narrative art. Court painters recorded emperors, beauties and Buddhist subjects with a confidence that still shapes how the world pictures classical China, and the period’s line and colour were copied for a thousand years.
A handscroll is read left to right and unrolled a section at a time across a table. It is a private, sequential format closer to reading than to wall display, and the viewer meets the composition the way one reads a sentence.
Source: The Palace Museum, Beijing — 数字文物库 (Digital Collection). Artefact no. 新00119106.
Image: © The Palace Museum.