Discourses of Visual Learning in Yuan Painting: The Case of Luo Zhichuan's 'Snowy River'

The Art History and Material Culture of the Yuan Empire

“…As seen in A Soup for the Qan, a picture of a peacock or a carp effectively was a peacock or a carp (McCausland 2015). The Mongol love of consummate technical ability and sheer artistic quality certainly afforded and enhanced transparent and unmediated readings of these images as the things they represented.…”

“…109). In A Soup for the Qan, a pregnant palace woman is being shown paintings of a peacock and a carp, and jade and pearls, which are all said in the captions to be 'beneficial' for her fertility and aspirations for her progeny founded upon a desire to beget rank and status (McCausland 2015).…”

“…Within this overarching economy, luxury was highly valued --but much research needs to be done to trace flows (Soucek 1999;Kadoi 2009;Liu 2016). For instance, the early-fourteenth-century Ilkhanid publications of Rashid al-Din (1247-1318) in Tabriz on medicine (Tanksuknama) and history (Jami al-Tawarik or Compendium of Chronicles) drew upon imagery sourced from China and elsewhere, including medical diagrams and portraits of China's past emperors (Berlekamp 2010;McCausland 2015). Thanks to Wang Yun's 1276 catalogue, we know that the Yuan palace held -and likely provided in some form --authoritative sources for images of China's rulers, such as the The Thirteen Emperors (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) attributed to the early Tang (618-907) master Yan Liben (c. 600-673).…”