The Chinese Empresses
Two thousand years of women who shaped an empire. Xiang Li has painted more than 200 empresses — each researched, reimagined and rendered by hand in gemstone mineral pigments on 100% silk. Three to six months of work go into a single portrait.
About this collection
Xiang Li began the empresses in 2012, after forty years as a master artist inside Beijing's Forbidden City, and is still painting them. Most of these women left no portrait: what survives is a posthumous title, a clan name, a line in a dynastic history about how they died. Each painting is an act of research first and imagination second — the robes, ranks and headdresses are reconstructed from the record, the faces are given back.
The collection is arranged the way the histories are, dynasty by dynasty from the Han to the Qing. Some silks hold a single empress; others hold everyone who held the title in one reign, or across a whole period — so there are more empresses here than there are paintings. Use the bar below to jump to a dynasty, or scroll and read straight through.
- Empresses
- 200+
- Paintings here
- 74
- Dynasties
- 12
- Years covered
- 2,118
New here? Start with the only woman who ruled China in her own name.
Meet Wu Zetian →Looking for an emperor? Every ruler of these twelve dynasties is listed by reign, each one linked to the empresses of his court.
The Chinese Emperors →202 BC – 220 AD
Han Dynasty
“The First Woman in Power”
“The Child Empress”
“The Clerk’s Mistake”
“The Deposed and the Divorced”
“The Golden House and the Singer”
“The Seal”
“The Old Sword”
“Sixty-One Years”
“Blamed for the Eclipse”
“The Flying Swallow”
“The Cut Sleeve”
“Ashamed to Face the Han”
“The One That Ends Well”
“The One Who Refused”
“The Turning Point”
“Paper and Ink”
“Seven Months”
“The Sister”
“One Emperor, Three Empresses”
“The Last Two”
“The End of the Han”
9 – 23 AD
Xin Dynasty
220 – 280
Three Kingdoms
266 – 420
Jin Dynasty
420 – 589
Southern & Northern Dynasties
581 – 618
Sui Dynasty
618 – 907
Tang Dynasty
“Chosen at the Peacock Screen”
“The One Who Refused”
“She Opened the Door”
“The Only One”
“Fourteen Years at Fangzhou”
“The Purple Coat”
“Between Him and the Door”
“The Empty Coffin”
“Two Empty Graves”
“Three Days”
“A Hundred and Eighty-Six Days”
“Seven Reigns”
“A Refusal to Leave a Space Blank”
“The Last One”
907 – 979
Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms
960 – 1279
Song Dynasty
1271 – 1368
Yuan Dynasty
1368 – 1644
Ming Dynasty
1636 – 1912
Qing Dynasty
Play · a new empress every day
Look closely. Who is under the silk?
Empress Unveiled shows one of these portraits very close and steps back with every guess — a new empress every day. Or find out which of the empresses you are.
Also: daily Chinese history trivia · which Chinese empress are you?
Bring an empress home
Canvas prints, scarves, puzzles and more — from $14.
Two full-color hardcovers — 217 empresses, 413 painted characters.
Questions? Write to xiangliart@gmail.com