Painting and Politics

This chapter shifts its focus from art to politics. After the Southern Song collapsed and the Mongols finally reunited China, Chinese painters from the South played the most significant role in the formation of Yuan jiehua as a distinct tradition that Mongol court patronized. This chapter examines these painters’ political careers at the Yuan court and analyzes how their jiehua helped them advance into government. It also explores how Mongol artistic patronage and taste—particularly that of Emperor Renzong (Ayurbarwada) and that of the Grand Princess Sengge Ragi—helped shape the mainstream of Yuan jiehua in the early fourteenth-century court.