Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty

The last native Chinese imperial lineage, the Ming dynasty epitomizes the glories of China's past. Ming means bright, and the term could not be more appropriate, since artwork in many mediums—among them painting, textiles, ceramics, and objects in jades and other stones, gold and other metals, enamel, lacquer, wood, and bamboo—achieved true brilliance during this splendid period. Roughly contemporaneous with the European Renaissance, the Ming dynasty produced comparable artistic achievements,…