Why do ancient women's portraits look so different?

When we appreciate the ancient Chinese art paintings, it is inevitable to find that some characters, although different forms, makeup, clothing, action are different, but at first glance, but it seems to be the same person, which in the ancient women's portraits on the performance of the particularly obvious, while the men's portraits are not.

So why is this?

When we appreciate the ancient paintings, we should look at them with the aesthetics of the ancients, according to the historical environment, the mainstream of aesthetic thought, as opposed to modern times, as opposed to the West.

In ancient times, women were considered to be beautiful with long, narrow eyes and small noses and mouths, so painters would paint in the direction of what they considered to be beautiful, to show women's posture as weak as a willow, and as delicate as a flower.

If we look closely at the four great beauties of antiquity, we will find that there is a certain similarity, and that they represent ancient aesthetic ideas.

Just like our p chart, we usually adjust the eyes big, nose high, face small, because we think this is beautiful.

The high similarity of ancient Chinese women's portraits also relates to the realism of Chinese portraits.

There are two main reasons why ancient Chinese portraits look less realistic.

One is because modeling with lines is the traditional essence of Chinese painting.

The linear thinking brought about by the brush tool hindered the development of Chinese painting in the direction of realism.

Secondly, it is due to the neglect of modeling ability in the mainstream of society after the Song Dynasty.

In fact, when we appreciate ancient paintings, we don't need to care too much about whether they are realistic or not.

For example, in traditional Chinese painting, the focus was on the idea of writing, and the landscape-based Chinese paintings mainly embodied the atmosphere, and whether the characters were real or not was not so important.

Moreover, the more realistic the painting, the better. If you paint a portrait of an official, and if you go too far in your pursuit of realism, and if you show some of the official's ugliness and smoothness, I guarantee you that the painter will not live long.

However, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, European Renaissance painting techniques were imported into China, which aroused the great interest of some Chinese *** painters, who injected some Western techniques into their paintings, thus making the traditional portrait painting a breakthrough in presentation techniques.

I am delighted that Chinese portraits have developed so much today.

As a final note, it is the distance from reality that is the essence of painting.

That's what I mean when I say that distance creates beauty.