有關中國繪畫贊助的研究

Studies of Patronage in Chinese Painting Studies

如同許多學者曾經指出，中文裡的「贊助人」或「贊助」這樣的名詞是翻譯自英文的patron／patronage。以十五世紀義大利的繪畫為例，贊助的關係主要是一種商業的關係，贊助人簡單的說就是買畫者或雇主，也就是要求畫家作畫，並付之以金錢的人。贊助人的興趣和支持不但直接促成了繪畫的創作，他在藝術品形成的過程中也時常扮演了不同程度決定性的角色。而贊助研究的一個主要目的，便是探討贊助行為如何影響了藝術的風格、內容、與意義。從這個角度來看，繪畫贊助的研究，可以說是社會經濟脈絡研究的一部份。這種研究取向，將理解繪畫作品的重心，從畫家本人轉移到作品所產生的脈絡，強調繪畫並非單純只是畫家自我表達的產物，而是畫家的創造力與自由意志和外在的期望、要求、束縛，互動的結果。

The patronage aspect of Chinese painting began to be explored by art historians in the early 1970s, following an earlier wave of studies of patronage in Western art history. In traditional Chinese writing about art, however, there is no mention of an equivalent term for patron, and the definition of patronage derived from the Renaissance and Baroque art has to be adapted to the unique situations in Chinese painting, in particular, the existence of a dominant amateur tradition in its long history. Nevertheless, in the past two decades or so, patronage study, whose central concern is to address the question of how patronage functions as a factor in the formation of artistic styles or choices of subjects, has proven to be a fruitful approach in the study of Chinese painting. This essay aims to review the major achievements and breakthroughs this approach has brought to our interpretation of Chinese painting and to comment briefly on its limitation. The first part of the essay reviews the studies of imperial patronage, which are further divided into studies of institutions of imperial patronage (in particular the so-called painting academies), of how imperial patronage helped to shape the styles of the court paintings, and of how court paintings became the media of public or personal statements for their imperial patrons. The second part discusses studies of private patronage, including artists or patrons centered studies, as well as devoted to studies that deal with the relationship between the formation of local or regional schools and the regionally-based patronage groups.