Three Medieval Chinese Paintings about Girls Leaving for Foreign Lands and Their Historical Background

Abstract

The article deals with three Chinese paintings, created in the 13th century. All three scrolls depict different personages living at different times, however the general plot remains the same: an enforced departure of a girl to a foreign land.Zhang Yu’s painting “Wenji returns to Han” tells of an Eastern Han poetess Cai Yan (Cai Wenji), who was a Xiongnu captive for 12 years, redeemed at the beginning of the 3rd century AD by a famous Chinese warlord, poet and politician Cao Cao. Gong Suran’s scroll “Ming-fei leaves the fort” illustrates a legendary story of Wang Zhaojun, one  of the “four great beauties of ancient China” and a concubine of the Western Han Emperor Yuan-di, who married  a Xiongnu chieftain in the last third of the 1st century BC to save her country from nomad invasion. The third painting looks the most realistic, however the reason for the creation of “Nomads” by Hu Huan is unknown. The author argues that all three paintings, in various artistic form, reflect the same historical event which happened in 1214. This was the enforced marriage of a Jin Empire princess Qi to the Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan as a condition set by him to raise the siege of the Jin capital. Paintings by Zhang Yu and Gong Suran treat this event allegorically and Hu Huan’s “Nomads” – realistically.