This section illustrates how the digital artistic beasts produced in recent years by the National Palace Museum through research, translation, and creativity originally emerged from Chinese paintings, and how their rebirth through new media was fostered. The Painting Anime: One Hundred Horses, derived from the ancient painting, One Hundred Horses, presents the beautiful horses of the original painting in vivid activity, and further uses animations to create the alternations between day and night, as well as sun and rain through the painting techniques employed in the original work. A voice-activated display inspired by a work in the Museum collections, Immortal Blossoms in an Everlasting Spring, is also exhibited here, and allows viewers to use their voices to awaken the birds and flowers in the paintings by Giuseppe Castiglione and walk into a torrent of birdsong. The Wondrous Hundred Horses exhibit invites viewers to play with two works by Giuseppe Castiglione, One Hundred Horses and Ten Imperial Hounds, working with the painter to create modern interpretations of artistic beasts.
Spring Birth Posture-activated interactive installation
"Spring brings back all the verdure of the Earth; Blossoms burst forth on branches with their songs."
The images here of flowering crab apple, magnolia, peony, carnation, and peach blossom are representative works of Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione) in fine brushwork and bright colors. The combination of Chinese and Western painting methods forms a unique style to portray the charming poses of birds and realistic finesse of blossoms. Combining posture-activated interaction and animation that brings the moving beauty of spring to life in the paintings, this installation is completed in using audience participation, with posture activation to control the animation and recreate the appearance of movement. With the birds and blossoms swaying in the breeze, you will become intoxicated by their eternal charm and enchanted by the magical power of Castiglione's spirited naturalism.
Painting Animation: One Hundred Horses
The production basis of this film is to remain loyal to Giuseppe Castiglione's original masterpiece One Hundred Horses. By incorporating the latest high-end animation technology, a herd of horses from the painting is gorgeously rendered and vividly presented before the audience, especially poses and activities such as playfully wrestling, leisure and recreation, galloping or ford crossing. The story revolves around officers tending to horses throughout the day, starting from the break of dawn and morning activities, to afternoon thundershower, evening dusk and returning home under the starry night. Audiences can fully experience changes around the clock and appreciate the beauty of nature as it alternates between sunshine and rain.
Giuseppe Castiglione(1688-1766), also known by his Chinese name Lang Shining, was a Milanese and Jesuit missionary from Italy. At the age of 27, he was sent to China for missionary work and served in the Qing court with his painting expertise through three successive reigns under Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. This painting, a masterpiece representative of his early works, was completed in 1728.
This long handscroll painting depicts a scene of a herd of horses out in the pasture. The hundred steeds are shown in a variety of poses and activities as they leisurely make their way around the pastures and trees. Every detail is realistically done, and the composition is intricate and beautifully colored. Castiglione uses refined gradations of light and shadow to render an exceptionally lifelike scene. He was very good at combining traditional Chinese themes and techniques with Western pigments and their perspective methods, revealing a true meeting between East and West. The placement and depiction of the trees and landscape elements clearly reveal the deep atmospheric effect often found in Western art. Even the sizes of the horses vary with the distance and are shown in relative proportion. Furthermore, the painting method for the distant mountain rocks is distinct from that seen in traditional Chinese brushwork, with layered pigments also visible among the trees.
One Hundred Fantastic Steeds
- Artifact Inspiration: Qing Dynasty, Giuseppe Castiglione, One Hundred Horses
- Scroll, colors on silk
- Length: 94.5 cm, width: 776.2 cm
This installation magically transforms Giuseppe Castiglione's classic works, One Hundred Horses and Ten Fine Hounds, into a large-scale, immersive digital interactive projection wall that embraces the spirit of edutainment. This installation encourages visitors to freely reinterpret the horses and hounds in Castiglione's paintings and create artifacts that reflect their individual styles. This fun and interactive digital installation echoes the co-creative spirit shared by Giuseppe Castiglione and fellow Qing dynasty court painters, presenting an artistic trajectory that conjoins the past and present.
One Hundred Fantastic Steeds
- Qing Dynasty, Giuseppe Castiglione, Xuezhualu from Ten Fine Hounds
- Scroll, colors on silk
- Length: 246.7 cm, width: 163.2 cm
One Hundred Horses, painted by the Qing Dynasty's imperial court painter, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688 – 1766), depicts a plain with a hundred horses at leisure in various poses. Every detail in the painting such as trees, rocks, mountains, rivers and figures are all realistically done. The beautiful coloring, intricate composition, and compelling realism reveal a fusion of Eastern and Western techniques. Traditional Chinese techniques were combined with Western shading and perspective as well as Western painting materials, showing a true meeting of East and West. This work is representative of Giuseppe Castiglione's early style.
Giuseppe Castiglione excelled at painting horses and hounds. With fine brushwork and beautiful coloring, his figures are accurate and realistic. Ten Fine Hounds portrays the purebred European hounds that accompany the Emperor Qianlong on his trips to the Southern Preserve and hunting grounds. Each painting has Manchu, Mongolian and Chinese titles. The Lu Hound is a type of black hound exceptionally skilled at running. Since the hound in the painting has paws that are white like snow, it is named Xuezhualu.