On Mural Art In Mani Temple Of Zhengding Longxing Monastery,Hebei Province

Playing a crucial role in studying murals in the Chinese Art History, Buddhist murals are the treasures of China’s painting arts. Buddhism and Buddhist paintings were introduced into the country and absorbed by China’s local culture. After years of experiences, unique Buddhist paintings are produced. Mani Temple of Zhengding Longxing Monastery, Hebei Province, was built in fourth year of Huangyou, Northern Song Dynasty. The temple has nine rooms, which are all Buddhist altars. With three walls, the inner walls were painted with Buddhist figures. The back of the Buddhist altars was painted with colorful murals that are about Buddhist figures, “Western Landscape” and “Eastern Pure Glass World”, Sutra paintings, Buddhist stories and “The origin of Buddhism” which revealed the life of Gautam. Staffs of Zhengding Cultural Relics Preservation Office found after field measurements investigation that the original mural wall was 528 square meters. But due to wall collapse and alkali, falling, hollowing of walls, the survived area of walls was 387 square meters. The paper generalizes the distribution of the murals and focuses on analyzing modeling features and humanistic philosophy embodied in these paintings. With the application of field survey, literature review and comparative analysis, it reviewed and comparatively studied murals in different periods and regions. Finally, it concludes with characteristics of times of these characters on the murals in Mani Temple, thereby pointing out the important significance of traditional modeling philosophy in the creation of modern Chinese paintings.The murals of Mani Temple in Zhengding, Hebei Province were painted in Ming Dynasty. The modeling styles boast characteristics of times. Characters tend to be more secular. As a result, images of Buddhist immortals are not so serious or solemn as before. Instead, the characters showed more folk “warmth”, with richer inner expressions and more flexible modeling, which formed the Ming-Dynasty mural languages with distinctive geological features. The unique artistic charms of the modeling and humanism under the specific background of times and characteristics of elements make the murals provide important realistic principles for researches on the development and cultural history of traditional Chinese paintings.Features of murals in Mani Temple reflect cultural spirit and aesthetic preferences of Ming Dynasty cultures. The classic artworks created in these approaches affect the artistic features and humane philosophy of the Chinese nation unconsciously. Ancient Chinese murals pursue the expression of the aesthetics of “immortals” by respecting authors’ inner feelings in terms of modeling. Therefore, importance was not paid to the similar appearance with natural images. Instead, the murals’ images tend to be more exaggerated, express self-respect and pursue artistic conceptions. “Spiritual likeliness”, “spiritual experience” of images and themes are created, which are embodied in the ideal and emotional artistic expression. National images, personal emotions and aesthetic ideas are integrated so as to boast unique characteristics. Consequently, the mural creation is originated from the nature but above the nature, thereby arousing resonance of audiences via imagination.The paper attempts to explore the relationship between unique modeling characteristics in Mani Temple and humanistic ideas through studying and analyzing modeling of murals in the temple and demonstrating spirits of characters. Besides, it also reviews the positive significance of modeling in the figure painting works and applications in modern China.