One Hundred Horses

One Hundred Horses
ArtistGiuseppe Castiglione
Year1728
Dimensions94.5 cm × 776 cm (37.2 in × 306 in)
LocationNational Palace Museum
One Hundred Horses
Traditional Chinese百駿圖
Simplified Chinese百骏图
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinBǎi jùn tú

One Hundred Horses (Chinese: 百駿圖) is a Qing dynasty silk and ink painting by Giuseppe Castiglione. It was painted in 1728 for the Yongzheng emperor. The painting depicts a hundred horses in a variety of poses and activities, combining Western realism with traditional Chinese composition and brushwork.[1] Some of the horses are in a 'flying gallop' pose, which had not been done before by European painters.[2] The painting was executed using tempera on silk in the form of a Chinese handscroll. It was largely done in a European style in accordance with the rules of perspective, and with a consistent light source. However, the dramatic chiaroscuro shading typical of Baroque paintings is reduced and there are only traces of shadow under the hooves of the horses.[3]

One Hundred Horses in a Landscape
Castiglione's preparatory drawing for One Hundred Horses
  1. ^ Museum, National Palace (2019-06-26). "Painting Anime: One Hundred Horses". National Palace Museum. Retrieved 2022-09-11.
  2. ^ Lauren Arnold (April 2003). "Of the Mind and the Eye: Jesuit Artists in the Forbidden City in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" (PDF). Pacific Rim Report. 27. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 August 2016.
  3. ^ "Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766)". Media Center for Art History, University of Columbia.