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2.7Diagram depicting a ewer, known as a “flower waterer.” From Nian Xiyao, The Study of Vision. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Douce Chin. B. 2, p. 37r.
with a detailed eight-step explanation, Nian specifies the use of a compass to describe a series of hemispheres in order to transform blocking squares into the rounded forms of a seemingly three-dimensional vase. Despite his explicit use of precise angles, implicit knowledge of geometry, and technical drawing tools in this process, methods that he further applies in the three pages on the construction of a rectangular box that conclude this section, he never mentions the mathematics underlying the images. Instead, he focuses on the forms that he hopes will result from the illustrations. In this section Nian seems have taken specific advantage of Jingdezhen porcelains, such as a “flower waterer” ewer (huaqiao, figure 2.7), to help him understand how objects could be represented in three dimensions. Several forms produced at Jingdezhen during the Yongzheng reign are illustrated here: flower-waterer ewers were produced both with and without handles in a form perhaps based on European or Islamic metalwork.56 Toward the end of the treatise, more ceramics based on known Yongzheng-era Jingdezhen products also appear, including the final study of a simple teapot (figure 2.8).57 Given the repeated presence of porcelain forms
2.8Detail of teapot. From Nian Xiyao, The Study of Vision. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Douce Chin. B. 2, p. 75r.
in The Study of Vision, perhaps these illustrations also suggest how Nian used sketches to communicate design ideas to Tang Ying at Jingdezhen while remaining at Huai’an.58
The sixth section of The Study of Vision (43r–50r) presents objects (rather than spaces) created using distance-point perspective. In one of the most visually legible illustrations of this section (figure 2.9), which builds from one step to the next over several pages, the distance point is marked with yi (the equivalent of the letter B) and the vanishing point with jia (the equivalent of A) written directly on the corner of the top right border. The dotted lines spreading out from this single vanishing point toward the object are not light rays, but orthogonals that rake over its plan and elevation on the left; the places where the orthogonals intersect with the object at numbered and lettered points correspond to the same points in the central completed image. This section of the treatise, however, is arguably the most opaque: although the results are fairly clear in the end, the steps necessary to achieve them are anything but, and the illustrations do little to clarify the process.
2.9Diagram for creating objects using distance-point perspective. From Nian Xiyao, The Study of Vision. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Douce Chin. B. 2, p. 49v.
Section 7 (50v–53r) explains how to produce illusionistic ceiling paintings, beginning with an image marking out the walls and ceiling of a room (not shown) and progressing through several complicated schematic preparatory illustrations. These are accompanied by the longest instructional passages in the entire treatise, together depicting and describing how to foreshorten the columns and windows so as to appear to be receding vertically away from a viewer standing on the ground and looking up. This sequence results in two finished examples (figure 2.10): a round cupola open to the sky and a square cupola closed at the top, both punctuated by latticed windows and columns around their sides. Like those in the opening section of the treatise, these images are borrowed from the Perspectiva. The false dome or cupola was one of Andrea Pozzo’s trademark forms, repeated in the printed treatise, which spread knowledge of the examples he painted in Sant’Ignazio as well as in Vienna’s Jesuit church. Nian’s illustrations therefore depict the appearance of a vertical extension of space above a flat ceiling, known in the European context as di
2.10Detail of illusionistic ceiling paintings. From Nian Xiyao, The Study of Vision. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Douce Chin. B. 2, p. 52v.
sotto in sù (from below, upward), a striking characteristic of quadratura ceiling painting and essential to its European origins.59
These two illustrations of the completed false ceilings on this page are the only images in The Study of Vision that employ obvious shading achieved through various densities of hatching and cross-hatching, rather than being depicted merely using simplified outlines. The inclusion of the shading and the omission of any preparatory or explanatory lines (an absence otherwise seen only in the opening image) therefore identify these as the only two images to depict the final illusionistic product of Nian’s instructions. Concluding his point-by-point description of how to create the false ceilings, Nian describes the powerful effects of such techniques, reinforcing the effect of such a painting on the viewer: “If you paint a ceiling according to this method and view it from below, the sides of the picture will unite, the stone columns will soar skyward, and the latticed windows will set off each other. It will look like a multistoried structure towering above, and through its openings
you will glimpse the sky and see the stars. When your painting reaches this point, only then will you understand the Western methods. If you study this intensively, the results will be miraculous. How could this not delight the eye?”60 These two images and their accompanying comment synthesize all of Nian’s goals for the treatise: mastery of Western painting methods and the ability to deceive a viewer with such skillful works. However, the presence of this illustration in the center of the treatise diminishes its importance. If it had been placed at the end as a summation of all that could be achieved, it would have been a far more effective demonstration of what the treatise sought to teach.
To identify the overhead vanishing point in this sequence of ceiling paintings, Nian does not use his standard term “head point” or “main head point,” but rather “heavenly point” or “skyward point” (tiandian). In the Perspectiva, Andrea Pozzo’s use of perspective was inseparable from his religious devotion and evangelical mission as a Jesuit: he urged his readers to approach linear perspective “with a resolution to draw all the lines thereof to that true POINT, the Glory of GOD.”61 By identifying the vertical vanishing point as the “heavenly point,” Nian may inadvertently reveal something of the Christian ideology with which he may have been taught perspective, despite the fact that Kangxi had officially banned Christianity after the Chinese Rites controversy in 1721. Although Gaubil wrote in a letter that Nian kept Christian fasts, prayed Christian prayers, kept only one wife, and “should have been baptized if he had not been prevented by death,” there is no other indication that Nian was in any way a Christian, and Gaubil was the only one known to have made such a comment.62 All of Nian’s publications instead point entirely to the contrary: like the High Qing emperors, Nian was attracted not to Western religion, but to its objects and ideas, and includes no discussion of either Christianity or the Jesuits— not even identifying Giuseppe Castiglione as a Jesuit in the prefaces. Those with prior knowledge of Christianity might see a Christian metaphor in tiandian, but The Study of Vision otherwise shows no sign that Nian himself either did or wanted to, and at best it is ambiguous. In Chinese, tiandian is a logical term to use for these images with potential but not necessarily religious symbolism. Although tian can refer to the
