.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The text which bears the title, Yuzhi Shi, 'Poem composed by the Emperor', is a seven-character stanza of four lines in poetic description of the carved image. It may be translated as:
The floating mist settling on the rock face forms a glittering shimmer;
when the golden lingzhi fungus is gathered, our wishes of immortality will be achieved.
We ask the Daoist immortals how the years can be halted?
Perhaps Buddha's divine intervention is needed in decoding this secret.
The poem was composed in the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign (1768) and is published in Qing Gaozong (Qianlong) Yuzhi Shiwen Quanji, juan 5, Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, p. 458. It was inspired after Qianlong had inspected a painting in the imperial collection painted by the Ming artist Lu Zhi entitled Caizhi Tu, 'Gathering Lingzhi Fungus'.
Carved jade boulders of this type may be found in a variety of sizes, representing miniature idealised landscapes upon which the scholar-collector could contemplate and escape. A comparable jade mountain boulder is illustrated by R. Kleiner in Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 160, pl. 127, where the author mentions that these boulders "complement the miniature gardens and trees cultivated by most scholars." The inclusion of the imperial poem serves to combine text and imagery, thereby enhancing the overall monumentality of the boulder. Compare also with a series of jade boulders in the Palace Museum, Beijing, some with Imperial poems, illustrated in Zhongguo Yuqi Quanji, 1991, vol. 6, pls. 252-256.
The floating mist settling on the rock face forms a glittering shimmer;
when the golden lingzhi fungus is gathered, our wishes of immortality will be achieved.
We ask the Daoist immortals how the years can be halted?
Perhaps Buddha's divine intervention is needed in decoding this secret.
The poem was composed in the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign (1768) and is published in Qing Gaozong (Qianlong) Yuzhi Shiwen Quanji, juan 5, Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, p. 458. It was inspired after Qianlong had inspected a painting in the imperial collection painted by the Ming artist Lu Zhi entitled Caizhi Tu, 'Gathering Lingzhi Fungus'.
Carved jade boulders of this type may be found in a variety of sizes, representing miniature idealised landscapes upon which the scholar-collector could contemplate and escape. A comparable jade mountain boulder is illustrated by R. Kleiner in Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 160, pl. 127, where the author mentions that these boulders "complement the miniature gardens and trees cultivated by most scholars." The inclusion of the imperial poem serves to combine text and imagery, thereby enhancing the overall monumentality of the boulder. Compare also with a series of jade boulders in the Palace Museum, Beijing, some with Imperial poems, illustrated in Zhongguo Yuqi Quanji, 1991, vol. 6, pls. 252-256.