Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat

Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This portrait depicts a middle-aged man in court robes topped by a sumptuous fur coat. Building on both Chinese and European precedents, the artist shaded the face to suggest three-dimensional volume; the glistening white dot in the eye, suggesting moistness, is a purely European convention adopted by the artist during a time when images from abroad were becoming more widely available in China. The man sits before a screen painted with a floral rebus, or multipart visual pun: magnolia (yulan 玉蘭), crabapple (haitang 海棠), and peony (nicknamed fugui 富貴) combine to mean “fortune in the jade hall” (yutang fugui 玉堂富貴), a wish for riches and honor. With such an auspicious background, this portrait was likely made for a milestone birthday; after the death of the sitter, it could have been repurposed for veneration in the ancestral shrine.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoatPortrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoatPortrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoatPortrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoatPortrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.