An important and highly original contribution to the field of Chinese art history. -- Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University Ambitious, intelligently conceived and realized, and exceptionally well written. Rather than being isolated curiosities, in this exposition the illusions are seen as part of a long-term and spatially extensive interest that engaged the talents and energies of many for more than a century. Kleutghen combines recent scholarship, archival research, and close analysis of surviving monuments to offer an expansive account. -- Richard Vinograd, Stanford University

In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprecedented works not only offer new insights into late imperial China’s most influential emperor, but also reflect one way in which Chinese art integrated and domesticated foreign ideas.

In Imperial Illusions, Kristina Kleutghen examines all known surviving examples of the Qing court phenomenon of “scenic illusion paintings” (tongjinghua), which today remain inaccessible inside the Forbidden City. Produced at the height of early modern cultural exchange between China and Europe, these works have received little scholarly attention. Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong’s world.

Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/imperial-illusions

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"This trans-disciplinary book is relevant not just to the history of art and of the high Qing, but also to the history of science and technology"

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"Kristina Kleutghen’s carefully conceived new study. . . sits comfortably at the intersection of these two academic subfields, and provides specialists of both with an overdue, in-depth analysis of this remarkable moment of cross-cultural encounter. . . . The reader familiar with the historiography on the Qing will find a remarkably cohesive review of recent scholarship as it applies to the visual arts; to the nonspecialist, the volume provides an excellent entrée to Qing visual culture and the Qianglong Empire (1711-1799, r. 1736-1795). . . . Imperial Illusions provides the ideal platform for rethinking eighteenth-century court art as distinctively Qing."

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"[A] remarkably well-documented study. . . . Rich and stimulating. . . . There is no doubt that Imperial Illusions is an important contribution and provides a new perspective on visual culture at the Qianlong court."

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"An invaluable addition to the ongoing conversation to globalize Chinese art history. . . . [Kleutghen’s] most important contribution is to return the scenic illusion paintings to their original space and treat them as part of the architecture, and whenever possible to excavate their original placement and to recreate the spaces to which they once belonged, feats which have not always been successfully achieved by her predecessors."

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"Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong’s world."