What elements of Song era veneration of the scholar-official can you find in the picture "On a Mountain Path in Spring"( You can find this picture in the Internet) and the attached poetry ""Brushed by his sleeves, wild flowers dance in the wind. / Fleeing from him, hidden birds cut short their songs." In some tension with the neo-Confucian reverence for the scholar are Daoist elements in the painting. See if you can suggest what some of these might be?

 

Answer:

Advances in landscape and portrait painting heightened the visual arts during the Song Dynasty . Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring is a painting by Chinese artist Ma Yuan. It is painted on an album leaf, which also contains Emperor Ningzong's poem inscribed in the upper right corner. Mountain Path is done in Ma Yuan's "One-Corner Ma" style, where most of the painting's imagery is in one corner. The Neo-Confucians sought to promote a unified vision of humane flourishing that would end with a person becoming a sage or worthy by means of various forms of self-cultivation. It is also vital to remember that Neo-Confucianism became an international movement and spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

Neo-Confucianism" is the name commonly applied to the revival of the various strands of Confucian philosophy and political culture that began in the middle of the 9th century and reached new levels of intellectual and social creativity in the 11th century in the Northern Song Dynasty.

• Advances in landscape and portrait painting heightened the visual arts during the Song Dynasty .
• The elite engaged in the arts as accepted pastimes of the cultured scholar-official, including painting, composing poetry, and writing calligraphy .
• Emperor Huizong was a renowned artist as well as a patron of the arts, and his court entourage included painters, calligraphers, poets, and storytellers.
• In philosophy, Chinese Buddhism had waned in influence, but it retained its hold on the arts and the charities of monasteries.
• Buddhism had a profound influence upon the budding movement of Neo- Confucianism , led by Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200), which strongly influenced the art of the time.
• Different clothing styles distinguished peasants, soldiers, artisans, merchants, scholars, and officials.