Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian artistic expression in the Tang Dynasty: The case of The Wangchuan River Hanging Scroll by Wang Wei (699-759)

Abstract

Wang Wei is the best paradigmatic exemplar of the religious artistic syncretism that characterizes the Tang dynasty. During this dynasty there is a synthesis of three religions, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, in which elements of artistic and doctrinal expression are exchanged and mixed. This new synthesis, that gives birth to the Chinese expression San jiao he yi 三 教 合 一 ("Three teachings make one"), created a valuable set of artistic expressions that take shape in Wang Wei's work. In this article we analyze a hanging scroll that belongs to the patrimonial inventory of the Complutense University of Madrid. It is a landscape of the Wang Chuan Villa and River, and portrays a scene in a quintessential Chinese garden. It is a very rare example of vertical scroll that includes 24 ancient seals, checked one by one from different sources. Four of them may be attributed to Jia Sidao (13rd century), including the famous Chang seal, and eight belong to the catalog of the Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors (18th and early19th centuries). Three are unidentified and one blurred. Among the 126 paintings attributed to Wang Wei in the Xuanhe catalogue sponsored by the emperor Song Huizong and published in 1120 appears mentioned the content of this scroll. In the 21^st century the scroll appears as a secular tribute, an "impressive work of Wang Wei", preserved in the Complutense University of Madrid.