Some historical paintings are realistic enough to provide information for the study of ancient civil buildings and their corresponding living environment. This article uses architectural iconology, computer modeling, and quantitative analysis methods to interpret ancient images for contemporary research. This work selects Qingming Shanghe Tu , painted by Ying Qiu in the Ming Dynasty, and Gusu Fanhua Tu , created by Yang Xu in the Qing Dynasty to study the evolution of the living environment of ancient Suzhou at the natural meaning level. At the conventional meaning level, a comparison of the two images reveals that land use, landscaping, building performance, and building materials evolved due to social development. At the intrinsic meaning level, this development was found to be closely related to the expansion of urban construction, the development of compact landscaping, and the maturation of construction techniques. The architectural iconology method proposed by this work can be used to study other ancient buildings based on existing images.

中文翻译：

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从历史绘画看明清时期苏州人居环境的演变

一些历史画作具有足够的写实性，可以为研究古代民用建筑及其相应的居住环境提供资料。本文使用建筑图像学、计算机建模和定量分析方法来解释古代图像以进行当代研究。本作品选用清明上河图，明代邱应绘，姑苏繁华图，由清代杨旭为从自然意义层面研究古苏州人居环境演变而创立。在传统意义层面，对比这两个图像可以发现，土地利用、景观美化、建筑性能和建筑材料是随着社会发展而演变的。在内涵层面上，这种发展被发现与城市建设的扩大、紧凑型景观的发展和建筑技术的成熟密切相关。本工作提出的建筑图像学方法可用于基于现有图像研究其他古建筑。