Beijing Cultural Relics Essence Series - Buddha Sculptures Volume (Lower)

Author: Editorial Committee of "The Masterpieces of Beijing's Cultural Relics" / Beijing Bureau of Cultural Relics
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The "The Masterpieces of Beijing's Cultural Relics" - Buddha Sculptures volume is divided into two parts. The first part includes Buddhist bronze sculptures from various dynasties in China, while the second part—this volume—collects 165 scroll-style Buddhist paintings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, including 121 water-and-land paintings and 44 Tibetan tangkas. This volume begins with bilingual (Chinese and English) indexes, followed by two thematic essays: "Water-and-Land Paintings in the Capital Museum" and "Tangka Art in Beijing During the Qing Dynasty." Next come the illustrations, and finally the illustration descriptions. The illustrations are divided into two parts: water-and-land paintings and tangkas. In the water-and-land painting section, works from the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties are listed in chronological order, with each era's works roughly categorized based on the deities in the water-and-land ceremonies. Tangka works are generally categorized according to the deities in Tibetan Buddhism.
Naming of the works: In water-and-land paintings, those with inscriptions are named according to the inscriptions; if there are two inscriptions, they are combined into one; if there are multiple inscriptions, they are either summarized into a single name or one is selected with "etc." added at the end; those without inscriptions are named based on their content. Tangka works are named based on their content.
In the illustration descriptions, the Chinese name, era, and English name are listed first, followed by material, dimensions, collection location, and a brief description of the work. Most water-and-land paintings and tangkas are anonymous, so the "Author" field is omitted. In cases where an artist's name is provided, it is recorded in the description.
Imperial era dates and sexagenary cycle dates are annotated with the corresponding Gregorian dates. Illegible characters in the original works are represented in the text with "square." Variant characters in the original are standardized during transcription, while misspellings and loanwords remain unchanged.