Over twenty-seven meters long, the Ordination Scroll of Empress Zhang (1493) is an important Ming Dynasty Daoist artifact from the San Diego Museum of Art's collection. It is a record of the imperial ordination of Empress Zhang (1470-1541), consort of the Ming Dynasty Hongzhi emperor (r. 1488-1505), by Zhang Xuanqing (d. 1509), the forty-seventh Heavenly Master of the Zhengyi institution. This book builds a history of imperial ordinations through a detailed examination of the scroll's transcriptions and meticulously painted images of celestial beings, and it examines the influences of the Daoist leaders known as the Zhengyi Heavenly Masters.

In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprecedented works not only offer new insights into late imperial China’s most influential emperor, but also reflect one way in which Chinese art integrated and domesticated foreign ideas.
In Imperial Illusions, Kristina Kleutghen examines all known surviving examples of the Qing court phenomenon of “scenic illusion paintings” (tongjinghua), which today remain inaccessible inside the Forbidden City. Produced at the height of early modern cultural exchange between China and Europe, these works have received little scholarly attention. Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong’s world.

《中国青铜器全集1:夏商1(竖排版)》选录夏代青铜器二十余件、商代早中期青铜器一百三十余件，其中一些作品为首次面世。中国青铜器经历了产生和最初的发展阶段。夏和商早中期青铜器即是这一阶段的作品。夏、商早中期青铜器，继承了龙山文化陶器的造型和艺术特点，经过长期的发展变化，逐渐形成了独特的艺术体系。这一阶段的青铜器，由小到大，从简到繁，由朴素无华到富丽堂皇，为商代晚期以至两周时期青铜器的高度发达奠定了基础，在考古学和美术史上占有举足轻重的地位。