There’s a surprising connection to Old Master painting among these images, which I would never have known but for this exhibition. On the whole, the first impressions are of hauteur and remoteness, even when broken up by some of the very sentimental calligraphic poems on display, thanks in part to the formal portraiture of these empresses. There are golden treasures, such as a magnificently gilded processional censor, and the dragon-topped seal of the last empress, as well as formal imperial robes, watercolors illustrating scenes from courtly life, and a fur-trimmed court hat featuring pearls and stacked phoenixes. Making one’s way from the audience chamber-like first gallery into the next rooms of the exhibition, one is introduced to Chinese imperial splendor slowly and deliberately. She may have started out in her youth as one of many court concubines, but after the death of the Xianfeng emperor over the next 40-odd years she went on to establish China’s first rail networks, forge greater trade connections with the West, and make attempts at real social and political reform, not always successfully. A life-sized portrait of the larger-than-life Cixi hangs nearby, and with her intense gaze one can immediately understand why she was such a formidable force in China and international politics for so many decades. The exhibition designers have constructed a Chinese gateway at the entrance to the show, framing an enormous carved screen that sat behind the empress dowager’s throne. Inside the Forbidden City, from the virtual tour.

It’s hard not to think back on the movie when you arrive at the entrance to the galleries containing the show, and remember how in the film, the child Puyi was brought through the many halls of the Forbidden City to meet the dying Empress Dowager Cixi and be named her heir. His story may be familiar to you, if you’ve seen director Bernardo Bertolucci’s Best Picture Oscar-winning film “The Last Emperor” (1987). The Qing Dynasty, which overthrew the preceding Ming Dynasty in the mid-17th century to become the new rulers of China, lasted until the abdication of the Emperor Puyi in 1912.

Empress closed game gallery