Tags: Buddhism | Confucianism | Daoism

Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist philosophies form the foundation of Chinese culture.

Confucianism, a school of thought founded by Confucius (551-479 BCE), places humaneness at the top of the standard of morality. It emphasizes governing the country with propriety and reaching universality through personal virtue. Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty dismissed all other schools of thought and exclusively followed the teachings of Confucius, bringing Confucianism into the mainstream of traditional Chinese culture. ......

Tags: calligraphy | National Palace Museum | painting

"Treasured Painting and Calligraphy" takes the most important of the 70 "restricted" masterpieces of painting and calligraphy in the National Palace Museum collection as its core. They hold a very important place in the field of Chinese art history, but their viewing in any form is severely restricted to preserve them for posterity. This website uses different levels of comprehension and a sequential approach to make them easier to understand and appreciate. Hopefully, it will also lead users to admire Chinese art in general and learn about the rich heritage and cultural significance behind these individual works of art. ...

Tags: National Palace Museum | painting | portrait

The National Palace Museum in Taipei is home to many Chinese imperial portraits throughout the dynasties. Some portraits may have been ordered by the emperor himself while still on the throne, while others may have been commissioned by later rulers for memorial, didactic, or other purposes. This section focuses on imperial portraits of the Yuan dynasty and introduces different forms of court-produced imperial portraits. Comparison with imperial portraits of the previous Sung dynasty also highlights the salient features of those from the Mongol Yuan. ...

Tags: calligraphy | National Palace Museum | Northern Sung | painting

The main aspects of Chinese painting, such as the techniques of rendering, specialization of painters, ideas of painting, types of painting subjects, the establishment of individual styles and regional manners, and the cultural realm of painting all matured in the Northern Sung period and reached a level of completion. Later generations often followed the modes and ideas established in this period to develop their own paths in painting. ...

Tags: god | jade

In distant times, people fought a difficult battle with nature, suffering from the ravages of the elements and learning how the sun controls all life; the movement of the sun leads to the change of night and day, winter and summer, and it also decides the growth and decay of plants and the survival and well-being of the human race. Life is maintained by the vital energies present throughout the universe. Primitive man therefore believed that heaven, earth, sun moon, mountains, rivers, grass and trees as well as wind, rain, thunder and lightning are the soulful spirits of the gods. ...