november 30, 2018
Sinologist and Tibetologist, specialist in Buddhism and Director of Research at the CNRS, Françoise Wang Toutain is Scientific Director of the Tibetan Studies Library at the Collège de France. For the past 15 years, she has been working on the tomb of Emperor Qianlong, emperor of the Manchu dynasty who ruled China in the 18th century.
A survey of the inscriptions and illustrations that cover the interior walls and vaults of this monument has enabled her to show that this emperor, generally presented as Confucian, was in fact Buddhist. The interior layout of his tomb was that of a stupa, and the intertwined motifs on the walls and vaults of each room are reminiscent of Buddhist funerary symbolism.
Research on this tomb has been the subject of an ANR (2008-2012) in partnership with a CNRS laboratory specializing in the digitization of architectural heritage. In 2017, Françoise Wang Toutain, with the help of Francesca De Domenico, embarked on a 3D modeling project of the tomb, now threatened with decay.
Winner of a PSL call for projects, the modeling is now complete and has been selected for presentation in November at the Digital Heritage 2018 Technology Innovation Conference in San Francisco. It enables a virtual tour of the tomb and the study of the hundreds of inscriptions and sculptures that adorn it.
