concept:era medieval

Night Revels of Han Xizai

Handscroll attributed to Gu Hongzhong (Five Dynasties, c. 943–960 CE), believed to be preserved as a Song dynasty copy of the original. Ink and colour on silk; Palace Museum, Beijing. Depicts the nocturnal banquets of the Southern Tang official Han Xizai across five sequential scenes: listening to music, watching the dance, resting, playing music, and bids farewell. Considered both a masterwork of narrative figure painting and a complex sociopolitical document about surveillance, performance, and dissimulation.

Scholarly Significance

Masterwork of Five Dynasties figure painting; earliest surviving Chinese multi-scene narrative scroll depicting contemporary social life.

Notes

·The five episodes: (1) Listening to music while Jia Dun plays the pipa; (2) Watching Han Xizai himself beat a drum while a dancer performs; (3) Han Xizai resting, surrounded by maids; (4) Han Xizai and guests playing music; (5) Guests departing.
·Han Xizai (韓熙載, 902–970) was a high official at the Southern Tang court; Emperor Li Jing wanted to appoint him as chief minister but was concerned about his reportedly dissolute private life.
·Art historians debate whether the work is propaganda (commissioning the painting to justify not promoting Han), a personal commemoration, or a monument to Han's deliberate political self-marginalization through performance of dissipation.
·The work is notable for its detailed depiction of musical instruments, furniture, and interior architecture of the Five Dynasties period.