Author(s)

YUANSHUN LIN, CHENGLEI MENG, HUI ZHANG

Abstract

Polychrome painting, as painting on historic wooden members, is one of the most important surface decorations of Chinese traditional architecture, containing tremendous values of history, culture and art. The conservation of polychrome paintings is worrying overall, because of the vulnerable materials used and long-time neglects. Systematic research into polychrome paintings are the prerequisite and foundation of preservation. The previous study of polychrome paintings on timbers focused on the north China area, such as Beijing, Shanxi and Hebei provinces. However, knowledge of polychrome paintings in Zhejiang is almost non-existent, except for a few cases in the northern area, as Zhejiang is considered to be a small part of the South Yangtze-River region in traditional architectural research due to the huge gap between the South Jiangsu area in terms of the quantity and quality of paintings. However, evidence shows that there are better and richer painting resources in the Zhejiang area than expected during the latest survey of immovable historic relics. In this study, 11 architectural sites with probably rich remains were selected and the polychrome paintings on these architectures were investigated. Significant information such as damage types and areas were obtained. It is found that the damage conditions of polychrome paintings in Zhejiang are quite different from those in the north and also different from the South Jiangsu area because of their special structures and characteristics.

Keywords

polychrome painting, damage type, damage area, Zhejiang area