The Emperor’s Private Paradise’ at the Met

[Jeffersons Ghost]

A Man of Contradictions, With a Collection to Match
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: February 3, 2011

When China’s last emperor finally left the premises in 1924, the Forbidden City was renamed the Palace Museum, and a labyrinthine complex of ceremonial and domestic spaces, off limits to all but a few for centuries, was suddenly open to the world.

Still, it kept some secrets. Few visitors, for example, knew of the existence of a self-contained suite of small pavilions and gardens tucked away at the Forbidden City’s northeast corner, echoing its shape.

They made up the Tranquillity and Longevity Palace, which, in the mid-18th century, had been remodeled as a potential retirement home by the adamantly unretiring and design-obsessed Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong.

He lavished attention on the palace — covered its walls with trompe l’oeil paintings, fitted it out with false doors, see-through partitions, Buddhist shrines and clocks — to make it a place that reflected his adventurous tastes, a place where he might want to live. But in the end, he spent little time there. And the palace, often referred to now as the Qianlong Garden, had only a handful of imperial tenants after he died in 1799.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/arts/design/04emperor.html?_r=1&ref=global-home