The CIT brings together sinology, art history and information studies to create the first thesaurus of Chinese iconography.

Traditionally considered a methodology rooted in European art history, iconography has been historically employed to index and access images related to Euro-American art. Because of the lack of alternative models for documenting non-western artefacts, Chinese art objects housed in European and North American collections have often been catalogued according to Eurocentric classifications. The CIT presents a unique opportunity to create an alternative classification scheme rooted in the specificity of Chinese visual culture and foster systematic comparison between Chinese and European art.

The CIT welcomes suggestions for improvement.

If you would like to contact the CIT, please email Jin Gao (j.gao@vam.ac.uk)

The Chinese Iconography Thesaurus (CIT) is designed as both an indexing standard and image archive for Chinese iconography.

The CIT terminology uses a corpus of historical catalogue records and inscriptions on art objects (e.g. Shiqu baoji and Midian zhulin) as the primary source.

The CIT terminology consists of general terms (e.g. plants, animals, people, objects, events), proper names (e.g. names of persons and places in Chinese history, religion, mythology or literature), and terms describing motifs, subjects and themes.

The CIT systematically organises terms in a hierarchical order and in synonym groups.

The CIT develops a system of associative relationship between terms.

The CIT images link to CIT terminology, and to the website of their original sources.

The CIT is a bilingual database searchable in both Chinese and English.

CIT database is an online construction site. It is liable to change periodically.

Due to the shortage of the staffing, the CIT datasets may not be proofread and updated promptly.

The Chinese Iconography Thesaurus database has been developed and is released in 2019 as a result of a three-year research grant awarded to the V&A by the UK government's Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Please acknowledge your use of the CIT in your publications.

Hongxing Zhang, Chief Editor

Jin Gao, Coordinator & Data Standard Editor

Yi-Hsin Lin, Data Standard Editor

Bingjun Liu, Data Standard Editor

Marion Crick, Head of Collections Management

Anna Jackson, Keeper of the Asian Department

Nick Marchant, Head of International Programmes

Joanna Norman, Director of the V&A Research Institute

Kati Price, Head of Digital Media & Publishing

Jevgenija Ravcova, International Initiatives Coordinator