CHINESE PORTRAITURE

Chinese portraiture has been a much practiced art down the centuries but has received little concentrated attention here. The publishers feel that Eli Lancman's book ""fills a gap as surprising as it is wide."" Mr. Lancman traces portraiture from the decoration of ancient tombs to the present, with its propagandist tendencies, but focuses mainly on the classical period through the intrusion of Western influence in the sixteenth century. The portraiture is characterized by its seeking of a spiritual rather than a physical likeness, ""a composite of what the painter thought the essence of the man to be,"" and consequently requires a different conformation of values from Western art.