An exceptionally rare eight-panel screen from Macao, this monumental work brings together the symbolic landscape of late Ming China and the luminous gold ornament associated with Japanese folding screens. More than five metres wide, it offers an immersive vision of a world in perfect harmony.

Its subject is interpreted in the gallery’s detailed study as a Taoist dongtian, or “grotto-heaven”: a sacred mountain landscape linked to retreat, transformation and immortality. Watercourses, a bridge and a grotto structure a richly populated valley beneath the sun and crescent moon. Pairs of birds and animals appear alongside auspicious mythical creatures, including fenghuang and qilin. Broad clouds in gilt relief and intricate geometric borders animate the painted surface.

The screen belongs to an exceptionally uncommon group associated with the artistic exchanges that developed around Portuguese Macao. Chinese cosmology and landscape painting meet Japanese decorative conventions within the wider history of Asian and European contact. The gallery’s study compares it with related screens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museo Soumaya, Mexico City; and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

Its rarity, monumental scale and iconographic richness give it particular significance for an institution or private collection concerned with Asian art, cross-cultural exchange and the origins of a global artistic world. It is illustrated and discussed in Las Artes del Galeón de Manila: Seda, laca y enconchado (2025).