Patricia Ann Berger’s Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China is not just the first monograph on court art of this period in Western language, but also a much-needed contribution to the study of Manchu court culture in general, an area enjoying something of renaissance in the last decade. Like recent publications by cultural historians, Berger’s work could be read as contrasting the “cynical” view on Manchu rulers, a view that dismisses the emperors’ cultural projects or religious practices as purely political manipulation or that explains them as a result of the rulers’ personal obsession with grandeur, vanity, and egocentricity. By focusing on Buddhist artworks produced and collected at Qianlong court and analyzing them within the contexts of Vajrayana meditation practices and techniques, Berger approaches her topic somewhat differently from those by cultural historians: she shows how Buddhist art of the Qing dynasty, previously little explored, can be studied fruitfully, while reminding us how much we have simplified and distorted the relationship between Buddhist art and politics in the Qing dynasty by not seriously taking into account the people’s religious practice. It is well known that the Manchu emperors’ patronage of Tibetan Buddhism can be traced...