A late Qing dynasty signed Beijing silk and metal thread carpet, Northeast China. Centre and corner designs with dragon motifs on gilt-metal thread foundation, red field with lotus flowers and leafs surrounded by rock and wave border. Signed: Tian Tan Yu Yong (Temple of Heaven, The Forbidden City). The temple of heaven was the Imperial place for the emperor to pray for good harvest every year. Late Qing dynasty, 19th century. 305×245 cm. Located south of the Forbidden City on the east side of Yongnei Dajie, the original Altar of Heaven and Earth was completed together with the Forbidden City in 1420, the eighteenth year of the reign of the Ming Emperor Yongle. In the ninth year of the reign of Emperor Jiajing (1530) the decision was taken to offer separate sacrifices to heaven and earth, and so the Circular Mound Altar was built to the south of the main hall for sacrifices particularly to heaven. The Altar of Heaven and Earth was thereby renamed the Temple of Heaven in the thirteenth year of the reign of Emperor Jiajing (1534). The current arrangement of the Temple of Heaven complex covering 273ha was formed by 1749 after reconstruction by the Qing emperors Qianlong and Guangxu.The siting, planning, and architectural design of the Temple of Heaven as well as the sacrificial ceremony and associated music were based on ancient tenets relating numbers and spatial organisation to beliefs about heaven and its relationship to people on earth, mediated by the emperor as the ‘Son of Heaven’. Other dynasties built altars for the worship of heaven but the Temple of Heaven in Beijing is a masterpiece of ancient Chinese culture and is the most representative work of numerous sacrificial buildings in China.Literature: Hans König and Michael Franses, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Köln, Glanz der Himmelssöhne, Kaiserliche Teppiche aus China 1400–1750; H. A. Lorentz, A view of Chinese Carpets; Eberhart Herrmann, Asiatische Teppich und Textilkunst.