Hugo's former residence ▲ Picture | Hai Xia
"China Complex" of European Celebrities and Nobles
Hugo has a special complex for China. He has never set foot in China, but he is familiar with the history of China and the art of China, and he is obsessed with China's works of art. The antique China Poetry House he built for Juliet is the embodiment of his China complex.
According to Hugo's Guernsey Notebook VI, in order to decorate his poetry house, he bought 48 China artworks, which cost about 3,000 francs.
Poetry House Living Room ▲ Picture | Hai Xia
The house of Hugo's love poems is more China style than many China families. China ochre tone, China furniture, China porcelain, China palace lantern, China bedding, and a blue and white porcelain wall. Everything made the people who came to this room dumbfounded and amazed. In a letter to Hugo, Juliet said, "I want to thank you, my dear husband. You have arranged such a beautiful room for me, which not only makes every visitor like it, but also deserves respect as a temple person. Your creativity transcends art and makes every place feel special ... In other words, I must look back and express my full respect for this rich Chinese style and lyrical house. "
In this China Poetry Room built by Hugo, countless literati and artists come and go, such as Ramadi, Dumas, Merimee, Flaubert, george sand, Balzac, Berlioz and so on. It can be said that this room is "/kloc-the living room of French literature in the first half of the 9th century".
Victor hugo (victor hugo) ▲
Hugo's love for China is so deep that he can't put down a love poem room. He is a person who truly loves China culture and Chinese civilization from the bottom of his heart. When Hugo learned that the British and French allied forces burned the Yuanmingyuan and plundered China's treasures, he angrily stood up and denounced the brutality and barbarism of the invaders, accusing his country and Britain of being robbers and barbarians, demanding that the invaders immediately return the cultural relics, and wrote a letter.
Part of the translation of the letter to Captain Butler from the British-French allied expedition to China;
Somewhere in the world, there is a world miracle. This miracle is called Yuanmingyuan. Art has two sources: one is ideal, which produces European art; One is fantasy, which produces oriental art. Yuanmingyuan's position in fantasy art is just like that of the Parthenon in ideal art.
This building as big as a city is the crystallization of several generations. Who was it built for? For the people of all countries. Because everything created by years belongs to human beings.
This miracle has disappeared. One day, two robbers from Europe broke into the Yuanmingyuan. One robber robbed property and another robber set fire to it. The only difference between what they did to the Parthenon in the past and what they are doing to the Yuanmingyuan now is that they did it more thoroughly and beautifully, so that nothing was left. If you add up the treasures of all the cathedrals in Europe, it may not be as great as this magnificent museum in the East.
We Europeans are civilized people, and China people are barbarians in our eyes. This is what civilization does to barbarism.
Letter to Captain Butler about the British and French Allied Expedition to China ▲
Blue and white porcelain in the eyes of European celebrities and nobles
There are many China elements in Hugo's love poems, but only China's blue and white porcelain is his favorite. On a big wall of the poet's living room, there are blue and white porcelain that he bought many times, and there are also blue and white porcelain on many shelves.
Hugo pays more attention to every blue and white porcelain, and even Hugo compares every blue and white porcelain to "China". Once a maid accidentally broke a vase. Hugo was heartbroken and wrote a poem "Broken Vase": "My God, the whole' China' fell to pieces on the ground!"
Hugo also compared blue and white porcelain to a beautiful girl, and wrote a poem saying: You, a little sister from the tea country, had a strange and beautiful dream. There is a big city in the sky. China, Cui Wei, is a natural suburban girl. We are dark in Paris, and you are looking for it. Naively, you are looking for a splendid garden and a proud peacock miracle. Look at our zenith. There are dwarfs who are happy to describe the pure blue in your china white's eyes.
Blue and white lotus bowl ▲ Picture | Palace Museum
In Europe, Hugo, a great writer, was obsessed with and attached importance to China blue and white porcelain. As early as a long time ago, European celebrities, nobles and all walks of life were fascinated by China culture and China porcelain, proud of China porcelain in the hall, and fashionable to collect and exhibit China porcelain.
It is said that/kloc-At the beginning of the 8th century, when Louis XIV held a ball at the Palace of Versailles in France, he appeared in a Chinese costume and sat in a Chinese sedan chair, which attracted the admiration of the audience. A member of the Portuguese royal family loved blue-and-white porcelain so much that the roof was inlaid with 2,665,438 pieces of blue-and-white porcelain that he spent a huge sum of money to buy. He looks up and sees it every day, and its spectacular sight is staggering.
Portuguese Palace ceiling mosaic 26 1 piece China blue and white porcelain ▲
Picture | Yong Cheng's love for blue and white porcelain of European celebrities and nobles
First, crazy purchase of blue and white porcelain
According to foreign statistics about archives:
From the establishment of the Dutch East India Company to the thirty-four years of Kangxi, 20 million pieces of China porcelain were trafficked to Europe, mainly including blue and white, multicolored and multicolored porcelain in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
In the twelfth year of Yongzheng, 68,000 pieces of porcelain were sold.
About 400,000 pieces of porcelain were shipped to England in the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong.
From 15 to' 46, Qianlong sold1100000 pieces of Swedish porcelain. ……
Blue and white Hua Niaowen can be covered ▲ Picture | Palace Museum
Second, blue and white porcelain is the heart of European royalty and nobility.
After China porcelain was introduced into Europe, it was immediately loved by the royal family, nobles and people from all walks of life. Blue and white porcelain has become the best among many porcelains and their treasures. There is a poem that says: Come on, look at this porcelain. What attracts me is its magnificence. It comes from a new world, and I have never seen such a beautiful work of art ... how attractive and exquisite it is, from China, its native land.
1, blue and white porcelain as a symbol of identity. In Europe, blue and white porcelain is very expensive, but it is still hard to find a bottle. Every time it was launched, it was snapped up by the royal family.
They put blue and white porcelain in palaces, luxury houses and showrooms to show their elegance and show off that they are royal property.
According to relevant records, most of the 3000 pieces of porcelain collected in the Spanish palace are blue and white porcelain; In the famous novella Palace in Portugal, there is a main hall covered with blue and white porcelain, and porcelain is an extremely important item in the property list of the Queen of Portugal. King Louis XIV of France loves blue and white porcelain best. /kloc-The Palace of Versailles was established in 0/670, and then the Palace of Toliano was built in it, which is famous for displaying the blue and white porcelain of China collected by Louis XIV.
2. List blue and white porcelain as a valuable gift. Simply put, blue and white porcelain is the most extravagant national gift given to each other by the European royal family. It is a very high-standard dowry for the princess when she gets married, and it is also the object used by the royal nobles to show off their wealth.
3. Imitation of China blue and white porcelain. Blue and white porcelain in China is expensive and the output is scarce. It triggered the creative desire of the European royal family, and countries decided to set up workshops to imitate blue and white porcelain. Among them, the Dutch "Royal Delft" factory is one of the best, known as "Delft Blue", and the blue and white porcelain they produced has now become a national treasure and specialty of the Netherlands.
Dutch blue and white porcelain Delft blue ▲
China blue and white porcelain, precious, really expensive!
The preciousness of China blue and white porcelain intoxicated the world; China's expensive blue and white porcelain broke the hearts of royalty all over the world.
When French King Louis XIV established the China Porcelain Palace, the national treasury was frequently in a hurry because he bought blue and white porcelain for many times.
There is also a crazier king of Saxony-Augustus II. 17 17 years, in order to marry a porcelain-loving queen, he exchanged 600 personal bodyguards and his good neighbor, the king of Prussia, for his collection of 127 Chinese blue vases in the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty. These blue and white porcelain exchanged by guards are still displayed in the Wingel Palace Museum in Dresden.
Augustus II was crazy because according to the statistics of his collection list, at the peak of his collection, Augustus II owned as many as 24 100 pieces of oriental porcelain. He specially built the China Palace and the Japan Palace to store these porcelains, and numbered them for storage. Therefore, it was called "one of the best collectors of oriental porcelain" by later generations.
Augustus II ▲
China's Rare Treasure-Yuan Qinghua
20 10 Yuan blue-and-white porcelain "Guiguzi Down the Mountain" pot was auctioned by American antique dealers for 230 million RMB, setting a record for the highest auction in the history of China cultural relics and even Asian art works.
Yuan Blue-and-White Guiguzi Downhill Picture Pot ▲ Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain, mainly decorated with Guiguzi Downhill Picture, describes the story of Sun Bin's master Guiguzi who, at the repeated request of the envoys of the State of Qi, promised to go down the mountain to rescue Qi famous soldiers Sun Bin and Du who were besieged by the State of Yan.
20 1 1 Another piece of blue and white yuan was sold at a high price of 840 million Hong Kong dollars in Macau CITIC Auction Company. This kind of blue and white is very similar to the cultural relic Xiao He Chasing Han Xin under the Moon, which is forbidden to go abroad in China. According to cultural relics experts, there are three pieces of this blue and white yuan * * *, one of which is kept in Nanjing Museum and the other is missing.
According to industry experts' estimation, Xiao He Chasing Han Xin under the Moon by Yuan Qinghua of Nanjing Museum will be worth at least 654.38+0 billion if it appears in the auction market. There are four reasons for the high price:
-Gong family in Qing Dynasty
A piece of blue-and-white porcelain intoxicated the whole world, which made European aristocrats scramble to buy it and used it as an object to show off their wealth and identity, which was probably unexpected by our ancient people. Perhaps this is the state-owned boundary, and art has no boundary. As Hugo said, "Everything created by years belongs to human beings."
China Garden/Boucher/1742 ▲
China ebony lacquer painting cabinet ▲
Jean-Henri Ritzner, a famous French furniture master, made it for Queen Marie Antoinette of Louis XVI in 1783.
Author: Guan Ru
Note: Some pictures in this article are from the Internet, so they are deleted!