* 5 He Feng ANCER THE GLOBAL LIVES OF A FEMALE DANCER: TRANSCULTURAL IDENTITIES OF A CHINESE D PAINTING MOTIF1 There are always many children surrounding the doll’s houses in Room 2.20 at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Sitting, kneeling, or standing on tiptoe, their fascination for the exhibits allows other visitors few opportunities to observe every chamber in the doll’s houses, let alone the many tiny details, which means they might have missed something EMALE amazing. F This essay touches on the changing identities of a pictorial motif: a Chinese dancing woman, who in most cases is accompanied by musicians in a garden. The motif was appropriated in the decorative arts in the Netherlands and Germany during the second half of the 17th century and the 18th century. Back in its original Chinese context, the cultural identities attached to the dancer have changed significantly since the Wanli period (r. 1573-1620) of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Dancer motif in the Netherlands and Germany IVES OF A in the 17th and 18th centuries L The kitchen in Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house is on the lower left side (fig. 1). Four painted panels are pasted onto the kitchen cabinet. The first panel on the left features a female dancer accompanied by three figures in the foreground of a garden. The painting captures the moment when the dancer, on a carpet and dancing to the rhythm of music, raises her right leg and arm. Two musicians in front of her are playing drum and flute. Another figure stands to the side, gazing at the dancer and seemingly enjoying the performance. Previous research has shown that apart from the painted panels with the motif of a dancer, the other three panels are all mirrored copies of HE GLOBAL prints in the album Picturae Sinicae ac Surattenae (‘Pictures of China and T Surat’).2 The album was drawn by Petrus Schenk Sr. in 1702 and is now in the Kupferstich-Kabinett collection of the Dresden State Art Collection. Petrus Schenk Jr. published another album of Chinese landscapes and figure paintings in which he depicted a scene of a Chinese female dancer and three musicians. This later album, dated between 1727 and 1775, was designed as a pattern book for ceramic production.3 A Delftware dish in the Rijksmuseum has the dancer motif as central decoration, although an admiring young attendant has replaced the musicians.4 On 18 May 1678, Delft potter Pieter Fransen van der Lee was invited to Berlin by Friedrich Wilhelm (1620-1688), Elector of Brandenburg (popularly known as ‘the Great Elector’).5 Van der Lee was appointed 6 Fig. 1 supervisor of the Berlin faience manufactory until his death in 1680, when Petronella Oortman’s Gerhard Molin took over the function. Molin died in 1693, and his widow’s doll’s house, oak, second husband, Gerhard Wolbeer, ran the factory thereafter.6 It was veneered with tortoiseshell and under Wolbeer’s supervision that a gourd-shaped faience vase with the 7 tin, h. 255 x w. 190 x dancer motif was produced in Berlin. It is possible that the pattern book d. 78 x d. 28 cm, was handed down during the change of leadership at the Berlin faience Amsterdam, ca. 1686- manufactory, after which the dancer motif entered Germany. Considering ca. 1710, Rijksmuseum the many places the dancer has travelled to, it seems practical to ask: who Amsterdam, inv.no. BK-NM-1010 is she? Dancer motif in the context of Chinese material culture The dance with two outstretched sleeves is, literally, the ‘sleeve dance’ (xiuwu). It dates to the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE). Archaeological excavations in Guangzhou revealed its ancient origin when a jade figurine of a woman performing the sleeve dance was found in 1983. This figurine, from the tomb of the second Nanyue King, Zhao Mo (r. 137-125 BCE), measures only 3.5 centimetres in height. The sleeve dance was extremely popular down the centuries, but its pictorial representation peaked in the Ming dynasty. The Chinese painter Qiu Ying (ca. 1494-ca. 1552) created three extraordinary handscrolls depicting historic stories from the Han dynasty, namely the Hangong chunxiao tu (‘Spring Morning in the Han Palace’, hereafter ‘the Spring Palace’), the Bai mei tu (‘One Hundred .