Beautiful yet lonely and melancholy: women from imperial China were often depicted by male painters in terms of their highly circumscribed lives, entirely dependent upon men. In some paintings, women engage in duties appropriate to their stations in life, according to patriarchal Confucian principles. Other paintings show women with fanciful coiffures and silk dresses, serving as musicians or courtesans, existing to please men. Literary and visual artists often compared women to flowers: refined and delicate, yet fragile, their beauty (meaning marriageability) transient. But some artists hinted at women’s suppressed urges and unacknowledged emotions, reflecting a growing interest in the inner lives of their subjects.