Exhibit of the week: The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures From the Forbidden City

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.

Through Jan. 9, 2011

In 1776, China’s supreme ruler put the finishing touches on a retirement retreat he’d built at what seemed the very center of the world, said April Austin in The Christian Science Monitor. From what is today Beijing, the Qianlong emperor commanded the largest, richest empire on earth, so he “spared no expense” while constructing a private complex of 27 buildings, pavilions, and gazebos deep inside the fortified compound known as the Forbidden City. That ancient seat of power was off-limits to visitors for centuries before Communist leaders finally opened its gates after World War II. But even then, the so-called Qianlong Garden “remained closed and forgotten, asleep beneath layers of dust.” That changed only recently, when an elaborate restoration project began. In the meantime, almost 100 of the garden’s furnishings have crossed the ocean for three U.S. showings “before they’re permanently reinstalled.”

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By arranging to be the show’s first stop, the relatively small Peabody Essex Museum has achieved “the curatorial coup of the year,” said Greg Cook in The Boston Phoenix. Some sense of the garden’s splendor comes from the exhibit’s many rootwood tables, chairs, and bed frames, whose ornate designs “are animated by the polished material’s fantastic, winding, gnarled patterns.” One zitan-and-cedar throne features a carved, curling dragon pattern at its top, and side panels decorated “with a screen of deer roaming wooded mountains.” Another throne is decorated with images of plum blossoms, pine trees, and bamboo, which together symbolize the leader’s ability to “embody patience and poise” in difficult situations. Not surprisingly, those prized traits are equally evident in an 8-foot-tall ink-on-silk portrait of the “skeptical, impassive” emperor himself. “The monumental figure, dressed in gold ceremonial robes, seems to hover in the air over his dragon throne.”

Though the Qianlong emperor created one of his era’s “most exquisitely built environments,” he actually didn’t spend much time there, said Sebastian Smee in The Boston Globe. Even into his 80s, he was kept busy ruling his vast empire, whose goods were coveted by European traders. The emperor in turn had cultivated “a fascination with Western aesthetics.” Look closely at Yao Wenhan’s enormous painting of a woman surrounded by children: A “frolicsome riot of decorative pattern and domestic detail,” it incorporates Western perspective and an unusual level of realism. But the painting is also “packed with details of a Confucian bent: promises of longevity, peace, prosperity—and a multitude of male heirs.” Perhaps the emperor found those themes consoling: Most of his 15 sons predeceased him, making retirement an elusive dream.