Song landscape painting
Mountains dwarf people: monumental ink landscape as an image of cosmic order
How to recognise it
- Towering central peak on a vertical scroll
- Tiny travellers, huts and bridges
- Mist separates planes instead of perspective
- Rocks modelled with ink texture strokes
- Empty silk as part of the composition
Why it emerged
The Song state was run by scholar-officials for whom painting was a path of self-cultivation; the Neo-Confucian idea of one principle running through nature and the imperial painting academy made landscape the leading genre.
Examples
Travelers Among Mountains and Streamsc. 1000 · Fan KuanThe benchmark of monumental landscape: a cliff fills the scroll, travellers tiny at the bottom
Early Spring1072 · Guo XiDated masterpiece by Guo Xi, author of the 'three distances' theory of landscapeA Panorama of Rivers and Mountains1113 · Wang XimengA nearly 12 m blue-green scroll painted by an 18-year-old artist
Along the River During the Qingming Festivalc. 1100 · Zhang ZeduanA panorama of Kaifeng with over 800 figures — the key image of Song city life
Along the River During the Qingming Festivalc. 1100 · Zhang ZeduanA panorama of Kaifeng with over 800 figures — the key image of Song city lifeMeanwhile elsewhere
- Byzantine art Europe
- Early Islamic art (Umayyad and Abbasid) Middle East
- Moorish style (al-Andalus) Europe
- Khmer art of Angkor Asia
- Yamato-e, Heian Japanese painting Asia
- Pre-Mongol architecture of Rus Eastern Europe & Russia
- Romanesque Europe
- Ife and Benin bronzes Africa
- Gothic Europe
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