The Palace of Nine Perfections 1691 Yuan Jiang Chinese Yuan Jiang thrived in the commercial world of his native Yangzhou. Catering to the vogue for large-scale hanging scrolls and multipaneled screen paintings as decoration in the ostentatious mansions of the citys mercantile elite, Yuan specialized in intricate visions of palatial complexes set within sumptuous blue-and-green landscapes intended to evoke Tang and Song prototypes. This screenlike set of scrolls depicts an eighth-century imperial retreat in the hills north of the Tang capital, Changan (present-day Xian). Destroyed by the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Palace of Nine Perfections is remembered as one of the most splendid residences ever built, with grounds so vast that it was necessary to travel between halls by horseback.Royal palaces have always been likened to Daoist paradises, and Yuans vision plays on this theme, with Qing-style palatial buildings set in a fantastic landscape that suggests the enchanted r