Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China

Book excerpt: Pictures were a major source of consumable luxury at this period; pictures not only in the form of independently circulating images classifiable as 'art', but also in the form of wall decoration, in books, prints, maps, 'pictures' on ceramics and lacquer boxes, on textile furnishings, and even on the dress of the prosperous. Artefacts that had previously been decorated with formal patterns, or with plants and animals only, now bore landscape scenes, representations of historical characters and incidents, and scenes from literature, often closely related to the world of the illustrated book.