A Study on the Color System of the Yongle Palace Murals: Materials, Structure, and Symbolic Mechanisms

Abstract

The Yongle Palace murals of the Yuan dynasty, with their highly mature “blue-green and gold” color system, constitute a typical paradigm of color language in Daoist temple murals. Taking Chaoyuan Tu in the Sanqing Hall as the central case study, this paper introduces theories of iconography and semiotics to systematically analyze the internal logic of the color system of the Yongle Palace murals from four dimensions: material properties, technical procedures, visual structure, and symbolic mechanisms. The study shows that this system is based primarily on mineral pigments and supplemented by plant pigments, forming a hierarchical color structure in which “minerals serve as the framework and plants provide refinement.” Through multi-layered coloring and decorative enhancement techniques, the murals establish a stable and long-lasting heavy-color effect. At the visual level, color participates in the construction of pictorial hierarchy and viewing paths through the control of warm and cool tones, area distribution, and brightness organization. At the symbolic level, it completes the visual translation of the Five Elements color concept and the Daoist cosmological worldview. Thus, color is no longer merely an auxiliary decoration, but becomes an important structural language for organizing religious pictorial space, providing a key example for understanding traditional Chinese color aesthetics and the mechanisms of religious painting.