More about the Officer Portraits of the Qianlong Period

Hartmut Walravens

More about the Officer Portraits of the Qianlong Period

(55th Meeting, 2012)

After two earlier PIAC communications on the subject (Berlin and Szeged) more information has come to light – above all some more portraits have become available and they allow a more detailed study and a more contextualized evaluation.

The portraits were done by order of the Qianlong emperor to document the bravery of his officers during his numerous military campaigns, and official eulogies (half of them by the emperor himself) in Manchu and Chinese were added. Besides their role as historical documents of a realistic nature, the authorship, based on a cooperation of Jesuit and court painters is intriguing.