Forging Exotic Spectacles: Workshop Paintings of Tribute Bearers in Seventeenth-Century China

This paper investigates how workshop practices in seventeenth-century China—particularly the production of paintings with dubious attributions—reconfigured the pictorial theme of Tribute Bearers. Originating in the court more than a millennium ago, these paintings conventionally functioned to reinforce political legitimacy of the ruling regime and to document the ethnocultural identities of visiting foreign envoys. However, when workshop artists of the late Ming period (ca. 1550–1644) adopted this theme, stylistic choices associated with forging works attributed to “master hands,” fabricated colophons serving to lend credibility to the painting, as well as cost-efficient modular methods of production, transformed the Tribute Bearers theme for the commercial art market. By invoking the stylistic trademarks of historical figures such as Li Gonglin (1049–1106) and contemporary artists like Qiu Ying (1494–1552?), workshop-produced paintings anchored tributary scenes within spatial and temporal frameworks distinct from the imperial court context. Furthermore, each depicted tributary entourage became an independent pictorial unit, enabling flexible reproduction and adaptation in subsequent artistic productions. Meanwhile, this process led to increasingly homogenized portrayals of diverse foreign figures and fluid indexicalities in their iconographic representations. Ultimately, this research reframes painting forgeries as a creative practice rather than merely a commercial endeavor that plays a significant role in Chinese art historical legacy and thematic transmission.