The murals in the Sistine Chapel are known across the world, but hardly any tourists have seen their Chinese counterparts, the murals in the remote Yongle Gong temple, also known as the Palace of Eternal Joy.
Located in a reclusive part of northern China’s Shanxi Province, the murals depict deities and everyday life scenes.
They are not only 200 years older than Michelangelo’s 16th-century ceiling in Rome but also comparable in size and beauty, according to Stephen Little, a scholar of Taoist art and director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Yongle Gong stands not only as the largest Taoist temple in China, but it is also a treasure chest filled with traditional Chinese art.
Art critics and historians have called the 960-square-meter frescoes in the palace the greatest of mural painting in China.
Construction of the Taoist temple started in 1247 during the early period of Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to worship Lu Dongbin (born AD 796), the revered founder of the Taoist mainstream Quanzhen School. The construction, including creation of those extremely beautiful murals, took a total of 110 years.
Featuring a distinctive Yuan architectural style, the temple’s layout gives people an impression of simplicity and spaciousness. In addition to its front gate, the temple has four main halls, namely, the Longhu Hall, Sanqing Hall, Chunyang Hall and Chongyang Hall, sitting along the south-north axis.
In 1959, China decided to build a gigantic dam on the Yellow River that would wind through Shanxi Province and flood the site of the Taoist temple. Thus the temple was moved and now stands nearly 20 kilometers north of its original location.
In 1987, China added the Yongle Gong temple to its list of tentative UNESCO World Heritage Sites, arguing that the murals are an exquisite masterpiece of art.
However, the temple was ineligible as a World Heritage Site as the government had moved it.
Still, the awe-inspiring murals have been preserved and remain one of the single ensembles of murals in the country.
Most of the murals in the Taoist temple can be found in three main halls there.
The Sanqing Hall, or the Three Taoist Saints Hall, is the largest hall in the temple and its inside walls are almost completed covered with elaborately painted murals. The murals, covering more than 400 square meters, depict a grand scene of congregation, featuring Taoist saints and more than 280 other figures.
The murals here demonstrate the superb Taoist painting techniques that had been inherited from Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and Song Dynasty (960-1279). The figure painting here reminds viewers of the ethereal style of Wu Daozi (AD 680-759), a legendary artist of Tang Dynasty.
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