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‘Great beauty’ immortalized in both music and painting
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“ZHAOJUN Chu Sai,” or “Zhaojun Goes Beyond the Great Wall,” is a painting drawn from a famous story that has been adapted into various operas, novels and dramas over the centuries.
It tells the tale of Wang Zhaojun, one of the four great beauties in China, who was chosen to become a concubine of a Han Dynasty emperor.
But she refused to bribe the royal painter Mao Yanshou, who was in charge of painting the emperor’s concubines. Consequently, he deliberately painted her as ugly, and she never caught the eye of the emperor.
In the year 33 BC, Huyanye Chanyu, supreme leader of the Xiongnu, a nomadic tribe and empire beyond the Great Wall, threatened to invade Han territory. In order to defuse the crisis at the lowest possible cost, the Han emperor agreed to marry one of his daughters to the Xiongnu leader.
The emperor was crafty, so he chose Wang, who was painted as mediocre-looking, to pass off as his daughter. When Wang, gorgeously dressed, showed up at court, the emperor finally discovered her true beauty.
“Zhaojun Goes Beyond the Great Wall” recreates a classic scene as Wang starts her journey to the northern realm of the nomads.
In Zhu Gang’s painting, Wang looks far into the distance, with her whip in hand on the horse, and her neckwear and skirt fluttering in the wind. But her feet are pointed in the direction from whence she has come.
Using that device, Zhu lets viewers into the mind of Wang, who is filled with sorrow when she is about to cross the border.
“With tears in my eyes, how can I leave my home?” she laments.
In the work, Zhu cleverly teases out the feelings of sadness and homesickness.
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