The first topic is a historical introduction, and the second follows in offering clues toward understanding what is described as “a strict visual code” (51).

The book is organized into seven essay-type chapters: “Portraiture and Ancient Rituals,” “Visual Conventions in Portraiture,” “Realism and the Iconic Pose,” “Nomenclature, Production, and Documentary Value,” “Portraits at the Qing Court,” “The Identity of the Sitters,” and “Innovation within a Tradition.” Footnotes follow, as well as two appendices comprising other portraits in the Sackler collection, selected brief biographies, bibliography, glossary of Chinese characters, and an index. The history in worship at the highest levels is only cited in late Chinese history, the year 1082, when statues of ancestors were formally introduced into a new imperial hall, the Jingling Palace. Their description about “ancestors properly cared for” (36) better explains worship as a continuum beyond death that is a source of benefit and support for the living. However, “worship” is a somewhat puzzling word too often repeated throughout the text, and the authors’ own early evaluation deserves greater attention. Later, the informal portrait, marked by positioning or setting, while shown in numerous examples, is not admitted into this formal ritual category. 168 B.C.) and ancestral ritual (Ding Lan’s filial piety toward a wooden sculpture of his father in a late Han relief). A distinction is drawn as early as the Han dynasty between the portrait as a substitute for the corpse (a funeral banner from Mawangdui, ca.

Their writing is about painted portraits and the situation surrounding them, with the recurring thread throughout that leads the image to formal ancestral ritual. Redemption at least partially follows, however, in this work of two scholars from that maligned assembly, authors Jan Stuart, an art historian, and Evelyn Rawski, a historian. Pritzlaff, who in the distant spaces of his New Mexico ranch was initially overlooked by intellectuals he delightfully branded as a “superficial and disappointing lot” (20). Initial gratitude must go to the principal collector and donor, the late Richard G. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, acquires the permanence of carefully researched scholarship about a hitherto neglected aspect of China’s rich embrace of the visual arts. This detailed, beautifully printed volume, while aimed at the needs of an extensive exhibition at the Arthur M.

Performance Art/Performance Studies/Public Practice.

Museum Practice/Museum Studies/Curatorial Studies/Arts Administration.

Drawings/Prints/Work on Paper/Artistc Practice.

Digital Media/New Media/Web-Based Media.

Architectural History/Urbanism/Historic Preservation.Subject, Genre, Media, Artistic Practice.

Chinese portraiture