Research On Architectural Artistic Characteristics Of Taiyuan Jinci Temple-Tang Shuyu Temple

The Jinci Temple, originally named Tang Shuyu Temple, was built to commemorate Tang Shuyu, a prince of the State of Jin. It was named after the Prince of Jin as the Temple of the Prince of Jin but called the Jinci Temple for short. Since it was rebuilt in Song Dynasty and was added the Goddess Hall, the place for worship gradually had shifted to the Goddess Hall. However, the real Tang Shuyu Temple was rebuilt in the southwest of the Jinci Temple but the northeast of the Goddess Hall, enjoying a long history of nearly 800 years so far. The main hall and gate building of the Jinci Temple was built in the Yuan Dynasty, which becomes a typical representative of the legacy building of the Yuan Dynasty since their architectural structure is delicate and concise. Afterwards, the ancestral hall, side hall and stele gallery were added to the building in the Qing Dynasty, forming the existing scale and becoming the second largest building next to the Goddess Hall within the Jinci Temple.Based on the unique structural and decorative characteristics of the temple, this paper studies and discusses the temple from three aspects including spatial structural characteristics of each building, characteristics of colored drawing, and characteristics of three carvings and painted sculpture. The spatial organization of the overall building adopted the central axis layout of traditional architecture, binary courtyard structure and east-west symmetry, and the architectural structure of it inherited the architectural structure of the Song Dynasty. In addition, the column reduction method peculiar to the Yuan Dynasty were adopted to make the hall structure more concise in stark contrast to the later complicated architectural structure in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, reflecting a new architectural structure form derived under the Mongolian rule at that time. The temple inherited the decorative patterns formed in the Song Dynasty in term of colored drawing decoration. This paper combines with the local decoration techniques at that time and links theory with practice to make an image-text comparison of the colored drawings under the roof of main buildings such as main hall, gate, ancestral hall, side hall, and stele gallery. It clarifies the decorative characteristics of patterns and colored drawings of each building, presents the reconstruction and refreshing method of decorative colored drawing, excavates the characteristics of the unique the Full Colored Drawing and the Green & Detailed Drawing in Shanxi Province, and then makes a comparison with the official colored drawing in the Qing Dynasty to figure out the relation and difference between the two. Finally, it summarizes the characteristics of the unique Full Colored Drawing and the Green & Detailed Drawing in Shanxi Province and the progress of the craftsman’s treatment techniques and technological level of architectural colored drawings at that time. In addition, t the Yueji Painted Sculpture in the ancestral hall is the only example in the Yuan Dynasty, reflecting the living environment and the social atmosphere in the Yuan Dynasty palace from colors, clothing styles, musical instruments of then.The architectural artistic achievements of the Tang Shuyu Temple and other aspects of extended impacts can be used for reference to the modern domestic architectural design as well as the protection of ancient architecture, leading to our inspiration and thinking over modern architectural design, interior decoration, lifestyle, etc.