Scopic Frames:
Devices for Seeing China c. 1640
Jennifer Purtle
Detail of ‘Scholar Zhang
leaving Oriole for the capital’,
published 1640. (plate 7).
DOI:
10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00722.x
Art History | ISSN 0141-6790
33 | 1 | February 2010 | pages 54-73
© Association of Art Historians 2010
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
55
Scopic Frames
1 ‘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.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
that even as European monocularity challenged Chinese ways of seeing, Chinese
binocularity reshaped European devices for, and ways of, seeing.
Printed Illustrations as Artefacts of Late-Ming Vision
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.
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
56
Jennifer Purtle
2 ‘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.
3 ‘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.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
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
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
57
Scopic Frames
4 ‘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.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
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
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.
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’ (TianzhuYesu huanling chengdao xiang, plate 5) present themselves as
58
Jennifer Purtle

5 ‘Jesus, Lord of Heaven, pictures of pictures by

teaching the Way at a young
age, illustration number 10 use of a double frame:
from Adam Schall von Bell,
Booklet of Images Presented
that is, by framing the
to his Majesty (Jincheng picture within a blank
shuxiang), 1640.Wood-block
print.Vienna: Österreichische page rather than printing
Nationalbibliothek Collection. it to fill the page or
Photo: Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek,Wien. 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.

Pictorial Objects as Late-Ming Scopic Frame

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.

© Association of Art Historians 2010 59

Scopic Frames
6 ‘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.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
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
60
Jennifer Purtle
7 ‘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.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
a painting, through imagined manipulation of its material support, that is, its ability
to be rolled and unrolled.
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
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
61
Scopic Frames

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.

8 ‘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.

9 ‘Crimson’s delivery of an
invitation’, illustration for Act
6 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. 6]. Photo: Rheinisches
Bildarchiv, Köln.

© Association of Art Historians 2010 62

Jennifer Purtle

Reflective Surfaces as Late-Ming Scopic Frame

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 rendered objects prized during the late-Ming
period, it seems unlikely that Min would have created an image of a freakishly
anomalous bronze vessel.
Min Qiji’s interest in rendering late-Ming visual experience of the movement and
projection of images suggests that the sixth illustration might alternatively be read as
depicting the reflection of an image on the surface of a bronze vessel, a form of optical
projection.37 Bronze was the preferred material for mirror-making in China, and a
bronze surface would thus have been mirror-like, informed by Ming discourses of
reflected images found in belles lettres accounts and in catalogues of period painting.38
Discourses on reflected images were especially prevalent in the texts that describe the
production and reception of portraiture.39 An illustration of the fourteenth act of a
1617 printed edition of
Tang Xianzu’s (1550-
1616) Peony Pavilion gives
pictorial form to the
capturing of an image
in a mirror, and its
relation to the making of
a painting.40
Discourses of
the ephemerality,
multiplicity, mobility, and
projectability of reflected
images permeated late-
Ming visual culture. Min’s
illustration of the tenth
scene of ‘The Romance of
the Western Chamber’
(plate 11) underscores
reading the sixth scene
10 Shimokabura (turnip-
shaped flower vase), named (see plate 9) as a projected,
Onden (‘Conducting Sound’), moving image. In the
seventeenth century (China,
Ming Dynasty). Bronze, 10 1/8 tenth image, Oriole reads
inches high. Private collection. Scholar Zhang’s love letter,
Photo: Courtesy of Christie’s,
Inc. illustrated in the depiction

© Association of Art Historians 2010 63

Scopic Frames

11 ‘Oriole reads Scholar

Zhang’s love letter’, illustration
for Act 10 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. 10].Photo:
Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln.

of the narrative as reflected in a mirror.41 Chinese optical theory associated reflections

with motion and agency of the image.42 Depicting the reflection of images in these
illustrations thus might be viewed as yet another means by which narrative movement
of images was suggested in pictorial terms, as reflected and projected images.

Optical Devices as Late-Ming Scopic Frame

The pictorial representation of the projection and movement of images through the
use of an optical device is found in Min Qiji’s illustration of the fourteenth scene
(plate 12). In this scene, Madame Cui scolds Crimson, a dramatic moment depicted
as figures painted onto an illuminated lantern.43 The rendering of the lantern with
its streamers aflutter suggests the lantern’s motion.44 The history of moveable media
and optical devices in China is a long one, beginning with the emergence of shadow
puppets as a form of popular entertainment not later than the second century BCE.45
In practical terms, such a lantern was the simplest device with which to project an
image. The simple play of such a lantern, able to project images, in the wind created
the most basic type of moving, projected image.
Corroboration that the lantern rendered in Min’s fourteenth illustration is indeed
lit, and thus capable of projecting, is found in Min’s illustration for the eighth scene
for the play. In this illustration, Oriole listens at night to Scholar Zhang playing the
qin zither.46 This illustration uses a similar representational convention, namely
inversion of light and dark, to depict the emanation of candlelight, and by extension
the illumination of the room in which Scholar Zhang plays the qin zither. Picturing
the narrative of the fourteenth scene as encapsulated in a wind-blown, moving
lantern thus presents the narrative in a medium in which its images are both moved
and projected.
Such simple painted lanterns, blowing in the wind, served as poor cousins to a
variety of gyrating, zoetropic lanterns (zouma deng, literally ‘pacing horse lanterns’),
one type of which Min Qiji used to represent the chasing of bandits in the fifth scene

© Association of Art Historians 2010 64

Jennifer Purtle

12 ‘Madame Cui scolds

Crimson’, illustration for Act
14 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. 14]. Photo: Rheinisches
Bildarchiv, Köln.

of the play (plate 13).47 Beyond its rendering of the content of the play, this illustration
makes explicit reference to the technology of the zoetropic lantern, the mechanism
of which is visible at the top of the lantern. Unlike the lantern of Min’s fourteenth
illustration (see plate 12), which projects images through or onto the panels of the
lantern, and beyond, the zoetropic lantern of the illustration for the fifth scene moves
external paper-cut images illuminated by the core of the lantern to silhouette these
images against the light of the lantern. The zoetropic lantern thus mechanistically casts
moving shadows of the paper-cut figures.48
Beginning in the Song dynasty (960–1279), Chinese literati repeatedly noted
the workings and popularity of zoetropic lanterns; in this way, these optical devices
were a staple of Chinese visual experience prior to the introduction of European ideas
about vision in the early modern period. Sources from the Song dynasty onwards
describe precisely the type of zoetropic lantern pictured by Min in his illustration for
the fifth scene of the play.49 Furthermore, twelfth-century authors note the popularity
of these optical devices in China at least from the Song dynasty.50 Such lanterns were
also greatly admired by Yuan- and-Ming-dynasty literati.51 Chinese zoetropic lanterns
are designed so that when an interior candle is lit, convection currents power vanes
that turn concentric cylinders either inside or outside the lantern. These illuminated,
turning cylinders thus simultaneously moved and projected paper-cut images, plain
or painted, placed inside or outside the lantern.
Chinese authors of the Ming dynasty noted the materiality and mechanics of
‘pacing horse lanterns’. The literatus Deng Ya (b. 1328) includes a poem in his literary
anthology ‘Deng Ya’s Collected Works’ (Yusi ji), entitled ‘Pacing Horse Lantern’.
This poem reveals how the lantern works, noting that, ‘Shadows move, circling and
leaning, on a silk gauze screen.’52 In a poem of the same title, the medical doctor and
literatus Zhou Geng (1443–89) notes how papercuts were used to make the shapes
that turned inside the lanterns.53 The philosopher Fang Yizhi (1611–71) used the
‘lighted pacing horse lantern’ as a metaphor for the self-sustaining nature of the

© Association of Art Historians 2010 65

Scopic Frames
13 ‘Oriole listens to Scholar
Zhang play the qin zither’,
illustration for Act 5 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. 5]. Photo:
Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln.
14 Detail of Anonymous,
Colourful Lanterns in Shangyuan
(Shangyuan dengcai tu), c. 1572–
1627. Ink and colour on silk,
25.5 × 266.6 cm.Taipei: Jeffrey
Cheng-fu Hsü Collection.
Photo: © 2004 University of
Oregon. Used by permission of
Jeff Hsü, Ina Asim, and Garon
Hale.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
human body.54 These and other Ming authors thus elucidated the workings of these
devices for the movement and projections of images to literate audiences.
Both Chinese and Western writers attest to the visibility and describe the visuality
of ‘pacing horse lanterns’ during the late-Ming period. The literatus He Fuzheng
(fl. 1625–31) notes the presence of ‘pacing horse lanterns’ in celebrations of the
New Year, indicating that the lanterns were not only visible, but also visually narrated
human stories by ‘Hanging paper people and horses in their centre and using fire to
move them’.55 The Portuguese Jesuit Gabriel de Magalães (1609–77) corroborated
such accounts of the late-Ming period, providing information about their workings.
De Magalães writes of lanterns in which the projected figures were placed inside:
And the lamps and candles of which there are an infinit number in every
Lanthorn, are intermix’d and plac’d within-side, so artificially and agreably,
that the Light adds beauty to the Painting; and the smoak gives life and spirit
to the Figures in the Lanthorn, which Art has so contriv’d, that they seem to
walk, turn about, ascend, and decend.56
De Magalães, like his Chinese contemporaries, describes the type of mid-seventeenth-
century ‘pacing horse lantern’ rendered in Colourful Lanterns in Shangyuan (plate 14), and
like the American Gyrating Shadow Lantern of 1875 (plate 15), this type of ‘pacing horse
lantern’ hides both projectible images and image-moving mechanisms from the
viewer.57 It is unclear if Min Qiji’s illustration for the fourteenth scene of the play
represents such a lantern or a non-gyrating lantern.
Min Qiji’s illustrations for both the fourteenth and fifth scenes of the play (see
plates 12 and 13) depict the optical projection and movement of the dramatic narrative.
Individual Ming authors describe a range of subjects that a viewer might find
rendered in the medium of a ‘pacing horse lantern’.58 De Magalães notes of viewing
zoetropic lanterns:
66
Jennifer Purtle
15 McLaughlin Bros, New York,
Gyrating Shadow Lantern, 1875.
Mixed media, 34.3 × 28.0 × 28.0
cm.Watertown, MA: Richard
Balzer Collection. Photo: John
Horner Photography.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
You shall see Horses run, draw Chariots and till the Earth;Vessels sailing;
Kings and Princes go in and out with large Trains: and great numbers of
People both a Foot and a Horseback, Armies Marching, Comedies, Dances,
and a thousand other Divertisements and Motions represented...59
In describing for a European audience what a late-Ming viewer might expect
from viewing a zoetropic lantern, de Magalães indicates that such lanterns,
either with images turned and projected from within, or suspended and turned
without, served as story-telling aids, and details their range of subjects.
De Magalães’ account suggests that such gyrating lanterns functioned as a
narrative medium for specialist storytellers or street performers. For, it is difficult,
in the Chinese narrative tradition with its many historical anecdotes, to imagine the
depiction of a generic King or Army moving across such a device randomly. Nor,
given the rich tradition of pictorial story telling and story-telling aids, is it likely that
the potential polyvalence of such images remained uninterpreted for spectators.60
‘Pacing horse lanterns’ thus gave visual form to narrative progression by moving and
projecting their component images.
Seeing through Scopic Frames
By picturing media that moved and/or projected images, Min Qiji’s illustrations
for ‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ fixed the most ephemeral, transitory
ways of seeing in the late Ming in enduring, material form. These illustrations
bear no text that elucidates the ideas about vision that informed them. Instead,
by articulating a well-known narrative through a series of media that move and
project images, the illustrations themselves show how culture and technology
interdependently produced late-Ming practices of vision. The illustrations also
invoke the late-Ming rejection of representational
stability, as Craig Clunas has argued.61 This detailed
picturing of transient visual experience suggests a
late-Ming self-awareness of the predominance and
importance of practices of vision and its paraphernalia
in 1640.62
Min Qiji’s illustrations for ‘The Romance of the
Western Chamber’ represent late-Ming binocular
visual experience at a moment when binocular vision
faced larger challenges than a few Jesuit printed
books of limited distribution and optical devices
gifted to the court. The prominent literati convert,
Paul Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), baptized in 1603 by
João de Rocha, worked together with Matteo Ricci to
produce a Chinese-language translation of Euclid’s
(fl. c. 300 BCE) Elements, known in Chinese as Ji he yuan
ben, published in 1607.63 Although the Elements is not a
perspective treatise, the great Renaissance perspective
treatises such as Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404–72)
De Pictura (‘On Painting’) of 1435 were grounded
nonetheless in the work of Euclid.64 Euclid’s work
was thus necessary, if not sufficient, for the
development of single-point perspective in China.
67
Scopic Frames

More significantly, the introduction to China of European optical devices

challenged indigenous, traditional modes of seeing and conceptualizing vision
such as those represented by Min Qiji.65 It is clear that such disruptions, although
their true extent cannot be measured on the basis of surviving materials, affected
the most elite levels of literati culture. The French Jesuit Philippe Couplet
(1623–93) noted that Candida (1607–80), granddaughter of Paul Xu Guangqi,
inherited her grandfather’s extensive collection of optical devices, suggesting the
circulation of instruments of monocular vision.66 One work of elite literature, the
playwright, novelist, publisher, and actor Li Yu’s (1611–80?) short story, ‘A Tower
for the Summer Heat’ (Xiayi lou), records a series of optical devices including the
microscope (xuanwei jing, lit. ‘minute-revealing glass’), the ‘Incense-burning Glass’
(fenxiang jing), the glass mirror (duanrong jing, lit. ‘makeup glass’), and the ‘Lighting
Glass’ (quhuo jing).67
While various optical baubles circulated in late-Ming elite visual culture, the
telescope earned pride of place, not only manufactured in China as early as the mid-
seventeenth century, but described and evoked in textual culture.68 The Explicatio
Sphaerae Coelestis’ (Tianwen lüe) of 1615 by the Portuguese Jesuit Emmanuel Diaz
(1574–1659), for example, propagated in Chinese the discoveries made by Galileo
(1564-1642) and his telescope.69 Xu not only advocated for the production of
telescopes in China as early as 1629,70 but also followed Schall to write about how the
telescope could be used.71 Xu was not alone: the Beijing gazetteer ‘Brief Explanation
of the Sights and Things of the Imperial Capital’ (Dijing jingwu lüe) of 1635 noted what
a telescope was and how it was to be used,72 as did the literatus and philosopher Fang
Yizhi (1611–71).73 By 1657/58, Li Yu also featured the telescope in ‘A Tower for the
Summer Heat’.74 This followed Bell’s instructions for using the telescope from inside
a building (as opposed to using it from an open body of water).75 Li Yu’s story thus
promoted use of the telescope as a tool of urban voyeurism.
Monocular images inadvertently created by the use of optical devices, such
as views of Chinese cities seen through a telescope, co-existed alongside
prescriptions for making pictures based on monocular experience. Specifically,
Schall’s ‘Speaking of the Telescope’ described how to use a mirror-lens projection
(a device functionally similar to a camera obscura, which employs a concave mirror
instead of a lens to project an image into a darkened space), to make a picture.76
Knowledge of pinhole projections was not new in China: it is found in early optical
texts, as well as in the writings of the polymath Shen Gua (1031–91), and the
late-Ming literatus Gu Qiyuan (1565–1628).77 But it was Schall who spelled out
the applicability of monocular devices to the making of pictures, thus posing the
greatest challenge to the picture plane as repository of binocular visual experience.
Monocular devices proliferated in China, as Joseph McDermott has
demonstrated in a ground-breaking article ‘Chinese Lenses and Chinese Art’.78
Yet McDermott makes the point that lenses first circulated as single objects, but
later circulated as framed pairs of eyeglasses, this later phenomenon rendered in
Colourful Lanterns in Shangyuan and other paintings.79 As McDermott shows, during
the period 1654–63, lenses mounted in pairs were imported to Japan from China,
reaffirming the use of lenses, often a component of monocular devices, in binocular
contexts.80 Extant Chinese images corroborate the overwhelming persistence of
binocular vision in China, suggesting that while European images, instruments,
and ways of seeing challenged elite Chinese visuality, they did not radically and
pervasively transform it. Thus when the anti-Christian scholar and official Yang
Guangxian (1597–1669) attacked both Christian doctrine and Western astronomy

© Association of Art Historians 2010 68

Jennifer Purtle
16 ‘Magic Lantern’, from
Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna
lucis et umbra, Rome: Ludovici
Grignani, 1646. Engraving. New
York: Science, Industry, and
Business Library Collection,
The New York Public Library.
Photo: Science, Industry, and
Business Library,The New York
Public Library,Astor, Lenox,
and Tilden Foundations.
17 ‘Smicroscope’, from
Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna
lucis et umbra,Amsterdam:
Johannes Jansson, 1671.
Engraving. New York: Science,
Industry, and Business Library
Collection,The New York
Public Library. Photo: Science,
Industry, and Business Library,
The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations.
© Association of Art Historians 2010
and geography in his ‘I Can Not Stand It’ (Budeyi) of
1665 although Yang reprinted Christian and scientific
illustrations to demonstrate the fallacies of both
Western religion and science, he did not include
illustrations that attempted single-point perspective,
nor did he specifically deride new, imported modes
of representation.81
In contrast, the introduction to Europe of Chinese
optical devices interfered with European practices
and technologies of vision. The astronomer and
mathematician Christiaan Huygens (1629–95) is
credited with the invention, not later than 1659, of
the earliest extant European device for projecting
images painted on glass.82 But lantern slides debuted
in Europe when the Flemish Jesuit André Tacquet
(1612–60) used images painted on transparent glass
to illustrate his lectures (in Leiden in 1653, and in
Louvain in 1654) on the journey of his fellow Jesuit,
the Italian Martino Martini (1614-61), from China to
the Netherlands.83 Both Tacquet and Huygens likely
derived their knowledge of such devices from their
contact with China: Tacquet through his contact with
Martini, who worked in the Dominican missions on
the south-east coast of China, and Huygens through
his father Constantijn (1596–1687), a diplomat and
poet well connected in Dutch intellectual circles at a
time when the 1644 collapse of the Ming dynasty, and
its implications for Dutch interests in China, were a
pressing subject.84
In Europe, moreover, Chinese devices of non-monocular vision bred new
devices from hybrid Chinese and European practices and technologies of vision.
In 1644–45 the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–80) noted a device he
called the ‘catoptric lantern’ (lucerna catoptrica), which he pictured in simple form
in the 1646 edition of his Ars magna lucis et umbra published in Rome, and which he
pictured both simply and in the more elaborate form of a ‘magic lantern’ (lucerna
magicae) in the second edition of 1671 published in Amsterdam (plate 16).85
Whether Kircher invented the magic lantern, or used his extensive, but indirect,
contact with China (which culminated in his China Monumentis Illustrata of 1667)
to appropriate such a device is unclear. More interestingly, the 1646 edition of
Ars magna lucis et umbra notes a device perhaps invented with knowledge of the
Chinese zoetropic lantern: the smicroscope (smicroscopio).86 Kircher described
and pictured this device, a type of canister with a viewing hole that contained a
wheel of images painted on glass, which could be rotated, in the 1671 edition of
Ars magna lucis et umbra (plate 17).87 When the images rotated and the viewer looked
through a viewing hole, the images appeared to move. Like Chinese zoetropic
lanterns, Kircher’s magic lantern projected images, and his smicroscope moved
them. Neither device both moved and projected images for larger audiences, yet each
offered new ways of seeing to European audiences.
69
Scopic Frames

Scopic Frames, Fractices of Vision, Ocular Epistemologies

Western accounts of visuality align the visual with modernity.88 A constellation
of late-Ming practices and paraphernalia of vision bears striking resemblance to a
similar constellation of practices found in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.
These practices include: an immense society of spectacle, the recording and shaping
of seeing by print media, and devices that move and project images.Vastly different
histories, however, distinguish late-Ming practices and paraphernalia from their
nineteenth-century European doppelgängers.
Within the sixty years bounded by the publication of Xu and Ricci’s translation
of Euclid’s Elements in 1607 and Kircher’s China Monumentis Illustrata in 1667, Chinese
and European practices of vision commingled to broaden the range of possible visual
experiences in China and Europe. From this moment, knowledge of devices for the
movement and projection of images expanded in Europe, serving as a foundation for
alternatives to monocularity and single-point perspective. It is from this encounter
that Europeans developed the optical devices collectively referred to as ‘pre-cinema’.89
At the same time, knowledge of single-point perspective and ground-glass lenses
widened in China. The late-Ming visual world, an immense society of spectacle
shaped by printed media and enriched by moving and projected images of many
types, absorbed monocularity and single-point perspective. But the richness of late-
Ming visuality, with its infinite and/or mobile lines of sight and vantage points, made
it possible for monocularity and single-point perspective to co-exist with indigenous
modes of seeing and representing, without destabilizing or devaluing them.
There is no reason to diminish seventeenth-century Chinese visual practices as
not fully realized precursors to so-called universal, ‘modern’ visuality, like that of
nineteenth-century Europe, and to modernity at large. Some Chinese commentators,
such as the Manchu artistocrat Dun Lichen (1855–1911), however, understood the
Chinese zoetropic lantern in this way, writing:

As for ‘pacing horse lanterns’, cut paper [is] made [into] wheels [that]
use the warm air [literally ‘exhalation’ (xi)] of a candle to move carts [and
make] horses [inside the lantern] gallop, [turning] round [and] round
without stopping. When the candle is extinguished [it] immediately stops....
Regarding the making of the pacing horse lantern, [it is] furthermore a type
[of thing] that uses the [heat of the] flame to drive the wheel, using the
wheel to move [its] mechanism. So, it is one [of the] class [of things to which
belong] the steamships and railways of today. [If people] had been allowed
to push and expand its [principle, so that from one abstract principle they]
progressed to seek [further abstract] principles, after several hundred years
[who] knows [but that there] might not have been perfected an advantageous
implement?... [What a] pity that China avoided [its own] ingenuity. So, that
which comes naturally from the mind [was] cut off, [the abstract] principle
[separated] from the creators, [to be] used only [for] a children’s toy.90

The ‘pacing horse lantern’, as well as the constellation of practices and paraphernalia
of vision that form the context and subject of Min Qiji’s illustrations for ‘The Romance
of the Western Chamber’ should not be viewed as embodiments of China’s precocious
and unfulfilled modernity. Rather, these devices for seeing China in 1640 exemplify
late-Ming visual culture, and, more importantly, unsettle accounts of a universal,
Western modernity defined by vision.

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Jennifer Purtle

Notes régimes of modernity’, in Hal Foster, ed., Vision and Visuality, New York,
My thanks to colleagues, students, and conference audiences for 1988, 3. A similar linking of vision and modernity is found in Jonathan
their support of this project, especially Tom Gunning, Matt Kavaler, Crary, Techniques of the Observer: OnVision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century,
Elizabeth Legge, Alex Nagel, Katie Ryor, Barbara Stafford,Wu Boston, MA, 1990, 9–14.
Hung and Ryan Whyte for their generosity, I am also grateful to the 7 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 14, 97–136.
individuals and institutions that provided the illustrations for this 8 This condition began in the Song dynasty (960–1127); the late-Ming
essay, and to Felix Chakirov, for working with those institutions and expansion of the printing industry permitted prints to proliferate as
individuals on my behalf. never before.
9 Robert Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China, Stanford, CA,
1998, 164–326; Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit:The Commercial Publishers
1 The play tells the tale of Scholar Zhang, who falls in love with a
of Jianyang, Fujian, 11th–17th Centuries, Cambridge, MA, 2002, 52–62,
beautiful young woman Oriole (Yingying) already betrothed to
205–20.
another. After a clandestine love affair, followed by Scholar Zhang’s
10 Craig Clunas has, in Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, attempted
success in the imperial examinations, Oriole remains betrothed to
to recover the habitus of late-Ming viewers in looking at paintings, by
another. The drama ends happily when the powerful general Du Jue
examining the vocabulary used to describe the play of the eye upon
intervenes to allow the lovers, once doomed to separate existences, to
paintings. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 102–33.
marry. On the plot and evolution of the tale, see William H. Nienhauser,
11 Wu, Double Screen, 245–6, 254.
editor and compiler, The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature,
12 Zhou Wu, Jian’an gu banhua, Fuzhou, 1999, 78–83; Piet van der Loon,
Second Revised Edition, Taipei, 1989, 407–8, 950. Prior scholarship of these
The Classical Theatre and Art Song of South Fukien:A Study of Three Ming Anthologies,
prints includes: Dawn Ho Delbanco, ‘The Romance of the Western
Taipei, 1992, 2–14.
Chamber: Min Qiji’s album in Cologne’, Orientations 14:6, 1983, 12–23;
13 The representation of the tile floor to communicate the space of the
Wu Hung, The Double Screen, Chicago, IL, 1996, 243–59; Craig Clunas,
stage is a device not limited to late-Ming printed illustrated drama. Not
Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, Princeton, NJ, 1997, 32, 56–7;
only is the floor of the stage at the Guangsheng Lower Temple tiled,
Ma Meng-ching, ‘Fragmentation and Framing of the Text:Visuality and
but murals inside that stage building, which depict some aspect of
Narrativity in the Late-Ming Illustrations to “The Story of the Western
dramatic performance, prominently render the tile of the stage floor.
Wing”’, PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2006; Ma Meng-ching,
For a reproduction of the stage and its murals, see Anning Jing, The Water
‘Looking through the frame: visuality in late-Ming illustrations to The
God’s Temple of the Guangsheng Monastery: Cosmic Function of Art, Ritual, and Theater,
Story of the Western Wing’, Taida Journal of Art History, 13, September 2002,
Leiden, 2002, plates 1–5, 1–53.
201–76.
14 The narrowness of this frame strongly limits the view, a new way of
2 Given its appealing theme of love that surmounts all obstacles,
seeing images in late-Ming China; other illustrations from this book
including that of arranged marriage, the only kind of marriage
have horizontal rectangular frames, which similarly crop, and thus
practised by Ming élites, period commentators noted the
compress, the scene.
unprecedented popularity of the tale across the course of the Ming
15 Zhou, Jian’an gu banhua, 119–30.
dynasty (1368–1644).Ye Sheng (1420–74), Shui dong riji, Beijing, 1980,
16 Ma Meng-ching, ‘Looking through the frame’, 212–13.
21:213–14. The tale grew to become the most widely disseminated
17 On Ricci’s pictorial contributions to the Chengshi moyuan, see Jonathan
love story in traditional China, with more than two hundred editions
Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Harmondsworth, 1983, 11,
compiled between 1600 and 1900. Indiana Companion, 950; Stephen H.
59–64, 128–31, 201–4, 262–5.
West and Wilt L. Idema, trans. and eds, The Moon and the Zither:The Story of
18 On the images by Rocha and Nadal, as well as on their relation, see John
the Western Wing by Wang Shifu, Berkeley, CA, 1991, 3–153. Min’s edition
McCall, ‘Early Jesuit art in the Far East IV: in China and Macao before
was one of the last of more than thirty illustrated versions of this
1634’, Artibus Asiae, 11:1–2, 1948, 45–69, 57.
play produced during the Ming dynasty (during which perhaps an
19 On the Jincheng shuxiang, see Nicolas Standaert, An Illustrated Life of Christ
additional thirty unillustrated versions were produced). Denda Akira,
Presented to the Chinese Emperor:The History of Jincheng shuxiang (1640), Sankt
Min kan Gen zatsugeki Seishōki mokuroku [‘A Catalogue of New Ming Editions
Augustin, 2007.
of the Romance of the Western Chamber’], Tokyo, 1979. Presumably
20 Of the forty-eight images contained in the Jincheng shuxiang, at least
Min’s edition benefited from access to its precursors. Wu, Double Screen,
seventeen extant images attempt to render some forms in single-point
246.
perspective, either in the rendering of architectural forms or in the
3 Although there are multiple definitions of the ‘late Ming’, I here follow
rendering of tile floors. These include illustrations 4, 5, 8–10, 15, 16,
the work of Willard Peterson, who defines the late Ming as beginning
25, 26, 30–2, 35–8, 40.
with the reign of the Jiajing emperor in 1522. On this definition of
21 Schall specifically notes how to use the telescope, and also how it
the late Ming, see Willard Peterson, ‘Confucian learning in late Ming
produces vision. Adam Schall von Bell [Tang Ruowang] (1592–1666),
thought’, The Cambridge History of China, 8:2, 708–9.
Yuanjing shuo, 1626, reprint Shanghai, 1936, 6–14, 15–17, 20–1, 24–5.
4 An excellent study of how printed illustrations of drama relate to late-
22 On the presentation of a telescope to the Chongzhen emperor, see
Ming viewership of theatre is found in Li-ling Hsiao, The Eternal Present of
Zhang Baichun, ‘Introduction of European astronomical instruments
the Past: Illustration,Theater, and Reading in the Wanli Period, 1573–1619, Leiden,
and the technology related [sic] into China during the 17th century’,
2007, 38–175.
unpublished paper presented to the 8th International Conference on
5 My sense of the scopic posits culturally specific ways of seeing that
the History of Science in China, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany,
replace the traditional definition of ‘vision’ as a universal and natural
August 1998, as retrieved on 6 November 2008 from the worldwide
phenomenon. The concept of scopic regime, moulded by both
web at: http://www.ihns.ac.cn/members/zhbaichun/twyq.htm, 5.
technological and cultural contexts of vision, emphasizes the fact:
23 Wu, Double Screen, 237–59, especially 246–59.
that ways of looking are not natural, but constructed; that they have
24 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory, Chicago, IL, 1994, 58.
a history; and that they also vary synchronically. For an excellent
25 Clunas, Pictures andVisuality, 56–7.
definition of scopic in the context of scopic regimes, see www.
26 This Chinese panoramic rendering and the Western panorama are
photherel.net/notes/relationships/idea/rel9aiii retrieved from the
differently achieved. Whereas the Chinese panoramic image is based on
web on 27 July 2007. My notions of framing diverge from those
multipoint, and in some cases orthogonal perspective, in which there
presented by Patricia Sieber and by Ma Meng-ching. Sieber, ‘Seeing
is no vanishing point, the Western panorama is achieved by rendering
the world through Xianqing ouji (1671)’, Modern Chinese Literature and
a series of vignettes in single-point perspective, and blending their
Culture 12:2, 2000, 1–43, 12; Ma, ‘Looking through the frame’, Ma,
lines of site to suggest seamless, integrated perspective. On Chinese
‘Fragmentation and Framing of the Text’.
perspective, see Wu, Double Screen, 16–20; on the Western panorama and
6 Here I intentionally echo Martin Jay, in his ‘Scopic régimes of
its construction, see Stephan Oetterman, The Panorama: History of a Mass
modernity’, which he begins by stating ‘The modern era, it is often
Medium, New York, 1997, 31–2.
alleged, has been dominated by the sense of sight...’ Martin Jay, ‘Scopic
27 Scene 1 is rendered as a handscroll painting; Scene 2 is rendered as

© Association of Art Historians 2010 71

Scopic Frames
painting on a ceramic vessel; Scene 15 is rendered as a painted folding
fan; Scene 17 is rendered as a folding screen; Scene 18 is rendered as a
hanging scroll.
28 For this moment in the play, see Wang Shifu (fl. c. 1250–1300), Xinkan
qimiao quanxiang zhushi Xixiang ji, 1498, reprint Shanghai, 1955, 35b,
hereafter cited as Xixiang ji; for a translation of this moment in the play,
see West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 119.
29 Wu, Double Screen, 57–68.
30 Xixiang ji, 138a, 141b–142a; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 258,
263; for a reproduction of this image, see Wu, Double Screen, fig. 184, 250.
31 Xixiang ji, 124a–130a; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 239–45.
32 Xixiang ji, 137a–137b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 256–7.
33 Xixiang ji, 45a–b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 132.
34 On the implied movement of object and stand, see Jan Stuart, ‘Methods
of display and their impact on art appreciation in mid-to-late Imperial
China’, paper presented at ‘Bridges to Heaven: A Symposium on East
Asian Art’, 1 April 2006.
35 Scene 5 is rendered as a zoetropic lantern; Scene 6 is rendered as a
reflection on the surface of a bronze vessel; Scene 10 is rendered as a
reflection in a mirror; and Scene 14 is rendered as images projected
from within a moving lantern.
36 Xixiang ji, 70b–74b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 168–73.
37 The depiction of a reflection in a shiny surface was common in Dutch
painting of the seventeenth century. On this point see, for example,
Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century,
Chicago, IL, 1983, 19–21.
38 On bronze mirrors in connoisseurial literature of the late-Ming dynasty
see, for example, Wen Zhengheng (1585–1645), Zhang wu zhi, Shanghai,
1936, 7:53.
39 Late-Ming texts on painting note the use of mirrors to project likeness
in the making of veristic paintings, and associate this practice with both
the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and the painter Zeng
Jing (1564–1647), a native of Putian county, Fujian. (fl. 1642–79),
Wu sheng shi shi, in Zhongguo shuhua quanshu, v. 4, Lu Fusheng, ed., Shanghai,
2000, 7:875b, 4:857b.
40 Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), Mudan ting, Beijing, 1976, 14:68–70; for a
translation of this passage, see Cyril Birch, trans., The Peony Pavilion: Mudan
ting, Bloomington, IN, 2002, 66–72; for a reproduction of this image,
see Richard Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600–1900, New
York, 1992, fig. 7, 17. The text mentions a mirror, and imbricates it in
the making of the self-portrait.
41 Xixiang ji, 96a–97b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 200–1.
42 In Mohist optics, for example, reflection was understood as an active,
motile state, in which a body shot forth rays of light that were captured
on a reflective surface. One passage of the Mozi (Classic of Master Mo),
which describes the play of light through a pinhole, states, ‘In the case
of the shadow, an illuminated person shines as if shooting forth [rays of
light]’. Mo Di (fl. 400 BCE), Mozi, in Wenyuange siku quanshu Electronic Version
(Hong Kong, 2002; hereafter WSKQSE), 10:11a; Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilization in China, Cambridge, 1962, v. 4.1, 82. A subsequent passage,
which describes the use of plane mirrors, states: ‘The target [for the rays
of light] of the person who is mirrored is in the mirror; [it is] never
[the case] that [it is] not mirrored’. Mo Di, Mozi, 10:11a; Needham,
Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 83. Here, the language of the target reinforces
a sense of the agency of the light that appears to be given off by human
beings in making a reflection.
43 Xixiang ji, 121a; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 235.
44 The lantern might move through the agency of a hidden zoetropic
mechanism; zoetropic lanterns are discussed below.
45 Shadow puppets served as a form of popular entertainment in China
beginning not later than the second century BCE, as recorded in the
‘Records of the Historian’ (Shi ji) and in the ‘History of the Han’ (Han
shu). Sima Qian (c. 145–c. 86 BCE), Shi ji, Beijing, 1964, 28:1387–8;
Ban Gu (32–92), Han shu, Beijing, 1970, 97a:3952. In shadow
puppetry, an artificial light cast is used to project the silhouettes
and colours of moveable puppets onto a translucent white screen.
This early form of projecting images flourished in Europe in the
eighteenth century, where it was known by the term ombres chinoises, and
persists in China today. Scholars such as Zhang Zhen emphasize the
significance of shadow puppetry to Chinese ideas about moving and
projecting images, writing, ‘This indigenous art form, has generally
© Association of Art Historians 2010
been considered by Chinese film historians to be the bedrock of the
Chinese cinematic (un)conscious.’ Zhang Zhen, ‘Teahouse, shadowplay,
bricolage: “Laborer’s Love” and the question of early Chinese cinema’,
in Yingjin Zhang, ed., Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, Stanford, CA,
1999, 27–50, 33.
46 Xixiang ji, 84a–85b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 186–7; for a
reproduction of this image, see Wu, Double Screen, fig. 187, 251.
47 Xixiang ji, 68b–69b, 70b; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 165–6, 168.
48 The text of the fourteenth scene of the play recalls the fifth scene,
specifically the chasing of bandits away from the Pujiu Monastery.
Xixiang ji 121a; West and Idema, Moon and the Zither, 235. Perhaps it is
mere coincidence, but the fourteenth scene is, like the fifth scene,
pictured as a lantern, a narrative medium for moving and projecting
images. Similarity of the optical devices with which these scenes are
depicted underscores the recalling of the action of the fifth scene in the
fourteenth.
49 Wu Zimu’s Mengliang lu (‘Record of a Dream of Liang’) of 1274 notes
lanterns in which things moved outside and around the core of the
lantern. Wu Zimu (fl. 13th cent.), Mengliang lu, in WSKQSE, 13:9a;
Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 124.
50 Twelfth-century writers, including Fan Chengda (1126–93) and
Jiang Kui (12th c.) described zoetropic lanterns, as did Wu Zimu. Fan
Chengda (1126–93), Shihu shiji, in WSKQSE, 23:5a; Jiang Kui (c. 1155–c.
1255), Baishi daoren shiji, in WSKQSE, 2:19b–20a; Wu Zimu (fl. 13th
cent.), Mengliang lu, 13:9a; Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 124. The
Southern Song dynasty literatus Wu Qian (d. 1262) also wrote about
zoetropic lanterns, noting the shadows cast by their streamers. Wu Qian
(d. 1262), Lüzhai yigao, in WSKQSE, 1:4a.
51 Mention and description of zoetropic lanterns are numerous. Some
describe them as ‘pacing horse lanterns’ (zouma deng). Xie Zongke (fl.
Yuan dynasty, 1279–1368), Yongwu shi, in WSKQSE, 8b; Deng Ya (b.
1328), Yu si ji, in WSKQSE, 4:7b; Mu Ang (d. 1445), Canghai yizhu, in
WSKQSE, 1:3b; Wu Kuan (1435–1504), Jia chang ji, in WSKQSE, 11:2a;
Qian Gu (1508–c. 1578), Wudu wen cui xu ji, in WSKQSE, 27:32a,
27:32b–33a; Cao Xuequan (1574–1647), Shicang lidai shixuan, in
WSKQSE, 237a:5b–6a, 330:2b; Xu Yingqiu (jinshi 1616), Yuzhitang tanhui,
in WSKQSE, 8:53b; He Fuzheng (fl. 1625–31), Wenzhang bianti huixuan,
in WSKQSE, 637:9b; Fang Yizhi (1611–71), Wuli xiaoshi, in WSKQSE,
4:25a. Elsewhere authors refer to them as ‘horse-riding lanterns’ (ma qi
deng). Fan Chengda, Shihu shiji, 23:5a; Song Gongchuan (fl. fourteenth/
fifteenth centuries), Yuan shi ti yao, in WSKQSE, 9:18a; Wang Ao (1450–
1524), Gusu zhi, in WSKQSE, 14:30b; Qian Gu, Wudu wencui xuji, 8:6a; Cao
Xuequan, Shicang lidai shixuan, 237b:16b–17a. Wu Kuan also described a
‘cock fighting lantern’ (dou ji deng), a variant of this type of lantern. Wu
Kuan, anthologized in Qian Gu, Wudu wencui xuji, 27:32a–b.
52 Deng Ya, Yu si ji, 4:7b.
53 Qian Gu, Wudu wencui xuji, 27:32a.
54 Fang Yizhi, Wuli xiaoshi, 4:25a.
55 He Fuzheng, Wenzhang bianti huixuan, 637:9b
56 Gabriel de Magalães (1609–77), A New History of China, Containing A
Description of the Most Considerable Particulars of thatVast Empire, done out of French,
London, 1688, 105–6; Nouvelle Relation de la Chine, Contenant la description des
particularitez les plus consideres de ce grand Empires..., Et traduite du Portugais en François
[sic], Paris, 1688, 129; Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 124.
57 A lantern of this type is depicted in Colourful Lanterns at Shangyuan, towards
the end of the scroll. On this lantern and those like it, and also on their
relation to Chinese zoetropic lanterns, see Barbara Stafford, Devices of
Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, Los Angeles, CA, 2001, 73.
58 Deng Ya, Yu si ji, 4:7b; Song Gongchuan, Yuan shi ti yao, 9:18a; Mu Ang,
Canghai yizhu, 1:3b; Wu Kuan, Jia chang ji, 11:2a; Wang Ao, Gusu zhi,
14:30b; Qian Gu, Wudu wencui xuji, 27:32a, 27:32b–33a; Cao Xuequan,
Shicang lidai shixuan, 237a:5b–6a, 237b:16b–17a, 330:2b; Xu Yingqiu,
Yuzhitang tanhui, 8:53b; He Fuzheng, Wenzhang bianti huixuan, 637:9b.
59 Magalães, A New History of China, 106; Nouvelle Relation de la Chine, 129–30;
Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 124.
60 Accounts of the mid-seventeenth century do not make clear which
narratives were told in zoetropic lanterns, but in the early twentieth
century, Chinese zoetropic lanterns were sold that illustrated a variety of
specific tales. When Furen University sought to purchase such lanterns
for their collection, they discovered at least thirteen discrete tales
pictured in zoetropic lanterns for sale. Matthias Eder, ‘Spielgerate und
72
Jennifer Purtle

Spiele im chinesischen Neujahrsbrauchtum, mit Aufzeigung magischer depicts a monocle; for a reproduction of Colourful Lanterns at Shangyuan,
Bedeutungen’, Folklore Studies 6:1, 1947, 1–206, esp. 25–8. see Ina Asim and Garron Hale, Colourful Lanterns at Shangyuan, Eugene,
61 Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 57. Crary makes a similar point about vision OR, 2004. Additionally, an eighteenth-century copy of a portrait of
in Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Crary, Techniques of the the late-Ming painter Zeng Jing (1564–1647), now in the collection
Observer, 13–14. of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, depicts Zeng holding
62 Anne Burkus-Chasson has neatly sketched elusive, philosophical aspects eyeglasses.
of late-Ming ocular epistemology. Anne Burkus-Chasson, ‘“Clouds 80 McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and Chinese art’, 12.
and mist that emanate and sink away”: Shitao’s Waterfall on Mount Lu and 81 Yang Guangxian reproduced three images from Schall’s Booklet of Images
practices of observation in the seventeenth century’, Art History, 19:2, Presented to His Majesty, with pejorative commentary.Yang Guangxian
1996, 169–90, 184. Burkus-Chasson writes about the philosopher (1597–1669), Budeyi, 1665, reprint Hefei, 2000, 1:30–3; for a
Fang Yizhi’s (1611–71) interest in the workings of the eye; Fang knew translation of Yang’s commentary, see Standaert, An Illustrated Life of Christ,
the zoetropic lantern and its workings, as mentioned in notes 51 and 54 53–4.
above. 82 Christiaan Huygens (1629–95), Oeuvres Completes, The Hague, 1888–
63 Xu Guangqi, ‘Preface’, in Ji he yuan ben, Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and 1950, 4, 102–4; 4, 111–12.
Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) trans., in Congshu jicheng chubian, Changsha, 83 Kaspar Schott (1608–66), Magia universalis naturae et artis, Herpiboli
1939, Preface, 2; Matteo Ricci, ‘Introduction’, in Ji he yuan ben, (Würzburg), 1657, 426; Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 132.
Introduction, 5. 84 On Constantijn Huygens and his relation to contemporaneous Dutch
64 In De Pictura (‘On Painting’) of 1435, Alberti (1404–72) proposed new ideas about images and seeing, see Alpers, The Art of Describing, 1–25.
methods for showing distance in painting. In particular, Alberti replaced 85 Athanasius Kircher (1602–80), Ars magna lucis et umbra, Rome, 1646, 887;
conical projections of vision with planar ones, to posit how lines of Ars magna lucis et umbra, Amsterdam, 1671, 768–9.
sight, passing from the viewer’s eye to the landscape, strike the picture 86 Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbra (1646), 834–5. This device is much like
plane. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), On Painting and On Sculpture:The Latin what would be called a phenakistiscope (lit. ‘deceptive view’) during
Texts of De Picture and De Statua, ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson, London, 1972, the nineteenth century. On the phenakistiscope, see Crary, Techniques of the
36–59, esp. 40–3. Alberti then showed how this enabled the artist to Observer, 107–9.
calculate the apparent height of a distant object using two proportional 87 Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbra (1671), 730, 770–1.
(or similar) triangles. Alberti, On Painting, 50–1. Although Alberti does 88 Jay, ‘Scopic régimes of modernity’, 3–20.
cite the mathematical source of his theory, it is Euclid who formulated 89 On pre-cinema see, for example, Hermann Hecht, Pre-Cinema History:An
the mathematics of similar triangles. Euclid, Elementa, Basel, 1553, Encyclopedia and Annotated Bibliography of the Moving Image before 1896, London,
137–68, esp. 153–5; Ji he yuan ben, 6:277–356, esp. 6:309–17. 1993; Stephen Herbert, A History of Pre-Cinema, London, 2000; Laurent
65 Such notions of visibility also existed with quite accurate, earlier Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow:Archaeology of the Cinema, Richard
knowledge of the transmission of images with strong implications Crangle, trans., Exeter, 2000.
for understanding the workings of the eye. The belle lettrist Shen Gua 90 Dun Lichen (1855–1911), Yanjing suishi ji, Beijing, 1906, 53a–b;
(1031–95), writing in the eleventh century, for example, accurately translation adapted significantly from Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking, as
described the way that images were inverted when projected through Recorded in the Yen-ching sui-shih-chi by Tun Li-ch’en, Derk Bodde, trans., Hong
a small hole, with implications for understanding how the eye works. Kong, 1965, 80–1.
Shen Gua (1031–95), Mengxi bitan, in WSKQSE, 3:1b–2a.
66 Philippe Couplet, Histoire d’une dame chretienne en Chine, Paris, 1688, 16–17.
67 Li Yu, Shi’er lou, 2:15a–17a; Patrick Hanan, trans., A Tower for the Summer Heat,
New York, 1992, 3–39, esp. 16–20.
68 On early Chinese manufacture of telescopes, see Hanan, A Tower for the
Summer Heat, 19 n. 8; see also Joseph McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and
Chinese art’, Kaikodo Journal, 19, Spring 2001, 9–29; 10, 13–14.
69 Emmanuel Diaz (1574–1659), Tianwen lüe (‘Explicatio Sphaerae
Coelestis’), 1615, reprint Beijing, 1985, 104–5.
70 Xu Guangqi, Xinfa suanshu, in WSKQSE, 1:24b.
71 Xu Guangqi, Xinfa suanshu, 58:36a; 58:38a; 98:12a; 98:35b; 100:20a;
100:21a.
72 Dijing jingwu lüe (1635), cited in Yao Zhiyin (jinshi 1721), YuanMingshi
leichao, in WSKQSE, 30:20a–b.
73 Fang Yizhi (1611–71), Tongya, in WSKQSE, 34:27b–28a.
74 Li Yu, Shi’er lou, 2:15a–17a; Hanan, A Tower for the Summer Heat, 3–39, esp.
16–20.
75 Schall, Yuanjing shuo, 13–14; see also Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 3,
443–6; on the later, seventeenth-century experience of seeing through
a telescope in the urban landscape, see Li Yu (1611–1680?), ‘A tower for
the summer heat’ (Xiayi lou), Shi’er lou (1657–58), in Guben xiaoshuo jicheng,
Shanghai, 1990, v. 107, pt. 1; Hanan, A Tower for the Summer Heat.
76 Schall, Yuanjing shuo, 30–1. The technique Schall describes is that studied
by David Hockney in his controversial book, Secret Knowledge. David
Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters,
London, 2001, 74–9, 103–22.
77 Mo Di, Mozi, 10:11a; Shen Gua (1031–91), Mengxi bitan, 3:1b–2b;
Gu Qiyuan (1565–1628), Ke zuo zhui yu, (reprinted Nanjing, 2005),
9:335–336 see also Needham, Science and Civilization, v. 4.1, 84–5, 97–8,
99.
78 McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and Chinese art’.
79 McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and Chinese art’, 11–12. McDermott
includes a detail of a late-Ming painting that depicts eyeglasses.
McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and Chinese art’, 11 figure 3. In addition
to the detail of Colourful Lanterns at Shangyuan shown here, this painting,
which depicts the zoetropic lantern in figure 19 of this essay, also

© Association of Art Historians 2010 73