One Hundred Horses and the Four Seasons

An immersive experience with VR videos and animations

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Emperor Qianlong on Horseback (1700/1900) by Giuseppe CastiglioneSmithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

Giuseppe Castiglione

Giuseppe Castiglione was born in the city of Milan, Italy, on July 19, 1688.
He early began studying in a painting studio. When the Jesuit mission in China passed along a request from the Qing dynasy court for a Western painter.

One Hundred Horses (AD 1644-AD 1911) by Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766)National Palace Museum

One Hundred Horses

This long handscroll depicts a hundred steeds by a riverbank, the horses appearing in different manners and poses. Some are at leisure and peace, while others romp with energy, making this painting of a hun-dred horses exceptionally varied.

In 1728, Castiglione completed "One Hundred Horses," a monumental handscroll that is his most famous extant painting, demonstrating close attention to adapting Western one-point perspective and painting from life to traditional Chinese art.

In Qianlong reign (1736-1795) Castiglione continued to use traditional Chinese paper and silk, pigments, and brushes in working with Ruyi Hall painters, achieving renown for developing a new syncretic style of court painting "joining China and the West."

One Hundred Horses (AD 1644-AD 1911) by Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766)National Palace Museum

The handscroll begins at the right with two stately pines trees filling the surface, skillfully setting the stage for scenery that is nearly eight meters long.
With a constant horizon and uniform height, Castiglione portrays diverse horse scenes with varying postures. 

Although the painting compositionally represents a continuation of traditional arrangements of herding horses in Chinese art, the placement and depiction of the trees and landscape elements clearly reveal the deep atmospheric effect often found in Western art.

The horizon line for the landscape is maintained at a two-thirds height throughout, creating for a complete and contiguous sense of space across the surface of the painting and the scenery.

Castiglione, however, consciously subdued the shadows for the forms to preserve their solidity but without creating a dramatic contrast between light and dark. This work can be seen as Castiglione’s way of actively integrating the qualities of two disparate painting traditions.

One Hundred Horses, Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766), AD 1644-AD 1911, From the collection of: National Palace Museum
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The technique in the painting differs from that of traditional Chinese art, with the artist, Giuseppe Castiglione, utilizing areas of light and dark colors for the forms to suggest their volumetric quality and to express a sense of light and shadow as well. 

One Hundred Horses, Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766), AD 1644-AD 1911, From the collection of: National Palace Museum
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清 郎世寧 百駿圖白描稿 卷|One Hundred Horses, From the collection of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Compared to Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, audiences can now compare it with the final version in the National Palace Museum, offering an ideal opportunity to study the mechanism of academic painting at the Qing court.

Contemporary Transformation and Applications: Painting anime-- One hundred Horses

The production basis of this film is to remain loyal to the original painting, by incorporating the latest high-end animation technology, herd of horses from the painting are gorgeously rendered, especially poses and activities such as playfully wrestling, leisure and recreation, galloping horses or ford crossing. Amazing horse actions are vividly presented before the audience.

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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