Scopic Frames: Devices for Seeing China c. 1640

Abstract

Practices, technologies, and instruments of vision powerfully shape visual fields. The transitory nature of visual practices, the changing nature of technology, and the potentially ephemeral nature of the moment of vision mediated by optical devices make it difficult to understand how people saw, how they perceived technologies of vision, and how they saw with the aid of optical devices. More elusive still is the constellation of visual practices, technology, and optical devices that produce moving, reflected, and projected images. For, to represent vision, its technology and its devices, is momentarily to fix dynamic processes of seeing. In 1640 the Chinese publisher Min Qiji (1580–after 1661), a native of Wuchang, Zhejiang province on the southeast coast of China, issued a colour-illustrated edition of ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ (Xixiang ji).1 As a drama of virtually unparalleled popularity in an era of widespread and burgeoning mechanical reproduction of images, many publishing houses issued illustrated editions of ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ during the Ming dynasty.2 Min followed one popular late-Ming convention for the illustration of a dramatic text: he produced one image for each act of the play, that is, a set of twenty images, plus a cover image.3 Min, however, released his illustrations for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ from the standard formulae of framing and composition for printed illustrated text, instead forging their relation to period practices, technologies, and instruments of vision.4 To begin to understand the stakes of Min Qiji's illustrations, this article examines how his illustrations render binocular visual experience of the late Ming. Circa 1640, a growing awareness of monocular vision, imported from the West, interfered with established Chinese ocular epistemologies and heightened late-Ming awareness of indigenous, established practices of binocular vision and their manifestation in images ordered by multipoint perspective, as is evident in the case of printed illustrated books, especially those that illustrate popular plays. By examining the interdependent cultural and technological frames, or scopic frames,5 of binocular vision depicted in Min Qiji's illustrations – namely, pictorial objects, reflective surfaces, and optical devices – this article argues that, in the face of external challenges to indigenous modes of seeing and conceptualizing vision, Min Qiji eschewed conventional strategies for representing textual narrative and pictured visual experience to render elusive practices of non-monocular vision and its ephemeral paraphernalia.6 This article, however, goes beyond proposing how Min Qiji depicted what Jonathan Crary, in his analysis of vision and modernity in the West during the nineteenth century, calls ‘techniques of the observer’:7 it concludes by suggesting that even as European monocularity challenged Chinese ways of seeing, Chinese binocularity reshaped European devices for, and ways of, seeing. During the late-Ming period, printing permitted ways of seeing to be recorded in large numbers of images.8 Scholarship of late-Ming illustrated fiction and drama often analyzes such imprints as indexical of shifting relationships of text and image driven by the technological conditions of printing, its historical evolution, and its economic contexts.9 Given their obvious relationship to practices of sight and vision, printed illustrations of dramas provide an index of the relationship between practices of vision and viewership in late-Ming China.10 The corpus of late-Ming printed illustrated drama, because of its implicit relationship to stage production and viewership, represents in visual terms a range of habitual visual practices. These include: visualizing dramatic narrative in pictorial terms, watching dramatic performance, seeing dramatic performance, and representing other types of narrative action as dramatic performance. The representation of dramatic narrative in pictorial rather than in visual experiential terms is evident in images in which conventions of painting narrative take precedence over representation of an audience-like view of dramatic performance. One illustration of this type is that of the maid Crimson eavesdropping on the lovemaking of Scholar Zhang and Oriole from an illustrated edition of ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ published in 1498 (plate 1).11 Specifically, the architectural infrastructure contained within the picture plane is elaborated beyond the schema of stage and stage props. Moreover, the diptych format creates a picture space like that of a handscroll, unified by orthogonal perspective. In narrative terms, the dimensions of the image, that is, longer than it is tall, imply its relationship to the handscroll. By extension, these proportions imply the potential for narrative movement. ‘Crimson eavesdropping on Scholar Zhang and Oriole’, illustration for Act 13 of Wang Shifu, The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji), published by the Yue family of Jintai, Beijing, 1498. Wood-block print. Beijing: Peking University Library Collection. Photo: Courtesy of Wu Hung. The translation of architectonic frames for drama into two-dimensional pictorial conventions was a complex process in which frames marked the field of vision. A frame shaped like a window of the period contains an image from the 1566 printed edition of a Minnan vernacular opera, the ‘Lychee Mirror Record’ (Lijing ji) (plate 2).12 A tile floor, like that of a house, garden, or stage, grounds the image in architectonic and material space, but the frame isolates a moment of dramatic performance by constricting the viewer's gaze to a limited range of visual data.13 The field of vision imposed by the frame is coupled, in narrative terms, with the limiting of narrative progression: the brevity of the image, both in its rendering of detail and in its compression of space leaves little over which the eye can linger, and no room in which the narrative can progress. With no possibility of narrative progression, the image suggests a dramatic performance seen or glimpsed, as though momentarily, but not fully watched.14 ‘Dramatic Scene’, illustration from Li Dongyue, Lychee Mirror Record (Lijing ji), published by the Yu Family Xin’an Studio, Jianyang, 1566. Wood-block print. Oxford: Bodleian Library, Sinica 34, folio, 1r. Photo: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Sustained viewing of drama is pictured in illustrations of staged dramatic moments. Such picturing of stage performance is exemplified by full-page illustration, such as that of Crimson eavesdropping on Scholar Zhang and Oriole, included in a 1592 edition of the ‘Annotated Western Wing Collection’ (Xixiang pinglin daquan, plate 3).15 The format of this image, within a printed book, maximizes the pictorial representation of dramatic performance, permitting the illustrator to produce a composition that suggests an extended moment in the dramatic staging of the narrative similar to what an audience member might have seen on stage. The viewer's eye has purview over a larger space of more elaborate description, but in narrative terms, this full-page illustration, like framed, partial-page illustration, limits narrative progression by fixing the viewer's gaze. In a visual culture habituated to the possibility of narrative movement in paintings, especially the horizontal visual movement dictated by the format of the handscroll, there is, pictorially, and by extension narratively, nowhere to go in this image. Unlike the 1498 image (see plate 1), which renders Crimson spying something that the viewer discovers through right-to-left pictorial narrative movement, the 1592 image (plate 3) reads as a single moment in which Crimson observes Zhang and Oriole.16 ‘Crimson eavesdropping on Scholar Zhang and Oriole’, illustration for Act 13 of Wang Shifu et al., Annotated Western Wing Collection (Xixiang pinglin daquan), published by the Xiong Family Zhongzheng Studio, Jianyang, 1592. Wood-block print. Tokyo: Naikaku bunko Collection. Photo: National Archives of Japan. While various ways of seeing drama informed printed illustrated editions of popular plays, the conventions of these illustrations (and their implied sense of viewership) were also applied to the graphic representation of novels and other non-literary narratives. The Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni (1582–1649) followed other Jesuits to apply late-Ming conventions for the illustration of dramas and novels to the creation of the ‘Illustrated Explanation of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven’ (Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie) of 1637, exemplified by ‘The Holy Mother Visits Elizabeth’ (Shengmu wang gu Yisabo’er, plate 4). Previous Jesuit woodblock-printed illustrations, such as the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci's (1552–1610) images for the compendium ‘Mr Cheng's Ink-Cake Garden’ (Chengshi moyuan) of 1606,17 and the Portuguese Jesuit João de Rocha's (1565–1623) series of images, the ‘Rules for Reciting the Rosary’ (Song nianzhu guicheng) of 1619 based on Jerónimo Nadal's (1507–80) Evangelicae historiae imagines ex ordine Evangeliorun quae toto anno in Missae Sacrificio recitantur of 1593,18 communicated Christian narratives to Chinese audiences by translating Western pictures into Chinese pictorial schema. In contrast, Aleni's ‘Illustrated Explanation of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven’ presented the Life of Christ in the format normally associated with illustrated drama – framed illustration executed in line drawing, with an adaptation of the image-above text-below (shangtu xiawen) convention. ‘The Holy Mother visits Elizabeth (Shengmu wang gu Yisabo’er)’, illustration from Giulio Aleni, Illustrated Explanation of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie), published Jinjiang, Fujian, 1637. Wood-block print. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France Collection. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Despite the use of this late-Ming format for illustrated drama to depict the Life of Christ, the illustrations attempt Western single-point perspective (albeit not always executed correctly). In ‘The Holy Mother’, it is the tile floor of the foreground, often represented in Chinese printed illustrated drama, that reveals familiarity with single-point perspective. The artist of ‘The Holy Mother Visits Elizabeth’ thus attempts to render the main portion of the image as an artefact of monocular vision. In addition to portraying an interior in a manner conversant with single-point perspective, Aleni's ‘The Holy Mother Elizabeth’ draws on conventions for printed illustrated drama that permit the embedding of multiple, sequential narrative moments (each of which is labelled in the text below) in a single image. Aleni's image thus ruptures Chinese conventions for the representation of binocular vision, and also renders unstable Chinese presumptions about the temporality of seeing. In 1640, the year in which Min Qiji issued his printed illustrations to ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’, the German Jesuit Johannes Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666) offered his printed illustrations of the Life of Christ, the ‘Booklet of Images Presented to His Majesty’ (Jincheng shuxiang) to the Chongzhen emperor (r. 1627–44).19 These illustrations, exemplified by ‘Jesus, Lord of Heaven teaching the Way at a young age’ (Tianzhu Yesu huanling chengdao xiang, plate 5) present themselves as pictures of pictures by use of a double frame: that is, by framing the picture within a blank page rather than printing it to fill the page or filling the page with text, which was the conventional treatment for Chinese printed, illustrated drama. Like Aleni's illustrations, Schall's images also made variably successful attempts at rendering details in single-point perspective.20 Where, in a European context, Aleni and Schall's images might exemplify a Baroque breakdown in the use of single-point perspective, in China the vestigial (or imperfectly understood) elements of single-point perspective constitute the incursion of that representational system into an indigenous mode of representing previously driven solely by binocular experience. That these images were presented by Schall, author of the first Chinese-language treatise on the telescope, ‘Speaking of the Telescope’ (Yuanjing shuo) of 1626,21 to an emperor who had already received a telescope as a gift from the scholar and official Li Tianjing (1579–1659) in 1634,22 reaffirmed the incursion of Western monocular vision and the schema for representing it at the highest levels of Chinese visual culture. ‘Jesus, Lord of Heaven, teaching the Way at a young age, illustration number 10 from Adam Schall von Bell, Booklet of Images Presented to his Majesty (Jincheng shuxiang), 1640. Wood-block print. Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Collection. Photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien. All twenty of Min Qiji's illustrations for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’, unlike illustrations contained in the ‘Booklet of Images Presented to His Majesty’, represent binocular visual experience in China of 1640. Wu Hung has addressed Min's illustrations as ‘metapictures’,23 what W. J. T. Mitchell has defined as ‘pictures about pictures… that are used to show what a picture is’.24 But, Min's illustrations are not limited to pictures about pictures, as Schall's were. To broaden understanding of Min's images, Craig Clunas subsequently addressed them with respect to ‘their representation of twenty types of artefact or performance… in a manner which queries with a sort of playful implacability the security of any kind of representational stability’;25 Clunas focused on the way in which layers of representation make it impossible for the viewer of the prints to know what the illustrations are a picture of. This article instead proposes that Min's illustrations depict the narrative action of a popular play while simultaneously depicting a range of visual experiences. To reify late-Ming ways of seeing untouched by monocularity, eighteen of Min Qiji's twenty illustrations for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ depict objects that move and/or project images. These eighteen prints illustrate the dramatic narrative of ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ within representations of image-moving media and optical devices. The illustrations thus render moving and projected images, suggesting how late-Ming viewers saw them. In this way, Min Qiji represents image-moving media and optical devices as a form of late-Ming scopic frame. Min opens his set of illustrations with a scene rendered within the picture plane of a handscroll, which (as is common knowledge among those familiar with Chinese painting, and as Wu Hung has demonstrated to those not familiar with Chinese painting) produces moving, panoramic images.26 This image is one of five of Min's twenty illustrations to use paintings as scopic frames that, if imaginatively manipulated, move the dramatic narrative.27 This illustration for the first scene of the play (plate 6), in which Scholar Zhang arrives at Pujiu Monastery where he will first meet Oriole, is one example of this type of scopic frame.28 Here, Min depicts Scholar Zhang arriving at Pujiu monastery, within the picture plane of a handscroll. Min's first illustration for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ indicates that this panoramic opening to the album could potentially move pictorially and narratively, by means of the materiality of the depicted handscroll.29 In the 1498 illustrated edition of ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ (see plate 1) the narrative can merely move visually like a painting. In contrast, Min images a narrative capable of moving panoramically as a painting, through imagined manipulation of its material support, that is, its ability to be rolled and unrolled. ‘Scholar Zhang arrives at Pujiu Monastery’, illustration for Act 1 of Wang Shifu, The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji), published by Min Qiji, Wucheng, Zhejiang, 1640. Wood-block print. Cologne: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Collection, Inv. No. R61, 2 [No. 1]. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln. Other formats for painting current during the late-Ming period permitted images to move in other ways, and Min Qiji also harnessed these in his illustrations for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’. A painted hanging scroll frames the illustration of the eighteenth scene of the play, in which Oriole writes a letter to Scholar Zhang.30 This depiction of the material support for the painting suggests the inherent ability of the medium to move the narrative image, albeit vertically. The illustration for the fifteenth scene of the play, which depicts Scholar Zhang leaving Oriole for the capital, is framed by the painted medium of the folding fan (plate 7).31 Min's choice of pictorial frame thus provides a material suggestion for the movement of the illustrated narrative through manipulation of the fan; when such a fan is opened or closed, it moves in a fashion akin to a cinematic wipe. Supports and mountings for painting created further means by which images moved. The illustration of the seventeenth scene, which depicts Oriole receiving a letter about Scholar Zhang passing the examinations, images narrative moving as paintings attached to the wooden structure of a folding screen.32 ‘Scholar Zhang leaving Oriole for the capital’, illustration for Act 15 of Wang Shifu, The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji), published by Min Qiji, Wucheng, Zhejiang, 1640. Wood-block print. Cologne: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Collection, Inv. No. R61, 2 [No. 15]. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln. Beyond the traditional materials of painting, other supports for pictorial images and their relationship to their material apparatus also imaged the movement of the image. The illustration of the second scene (plate 8), in which Scholar Zhang meets the maidservant Crimson, appears to be an image of a ceramic bowl decorated with the pictorial image of the narrative action.33 As such, the image is like many pictorial images on ceramics of the period. Min, however, renders the bowl apart from its stand. This rendering suggests the potential movement of the bowl off and on the stand, which in turn moves the images of the dramatic narrative.34 The various types of supports and mountings for paintings thus showcase variable means for moving images. ‘Scholar Zhang meets the maidservant Crimson’, illustration for Act 2 of Wang Shifu, The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji), published by Min Qiji, Wucheng, Zhejiang, 1640. Wood-block print. Cologne: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Collection, Inv. No. R61, 2 [No. 2]. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln. Four of Min Qiji's twenty illustrations utilize optical devices, broadly defined as objects that mediate the movement of light, to frame and pictorialize the dramatic narrative, and to suggest the projection and movement of images.35 The illustration of the sixth scene, in which Crimson's delivery of an invitation exists on what appears to be a bronze vessel (plate 9),36 has been read analogously to that of the second scene (see plate 8), in which Crimson meets Scholar Zhang on the surface of what appears to be a porcelain bowl. Such readings suggest that the illustration of the sixth scene depicts an image painted or incised on the surface of a bronze vessel. Ming dynasty bronze vessels, for example, a seventeenth-century turnip-shaped flower vase (plate 10), however, did not portray single human figures on their surfaces, nor did earlier archaic bronzes collected in the Ming dynasty; as in the case of the turnip-shaped vase, such bronzes, unlike their archaic counterparts, were polished to a high shine, their reflective surfaces bordered by areas of archaistic pattern cast into the body of the vessel, features visible in the bronze vessel depicted by Min. Given the care with which he

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