Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion .. [3.3 / 3.3] Light gr

Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion .. [3.3 / 3.3] Light green jade sculpture made in 1790, exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN. The Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong (r. 1736–95) commissioned this jade boulder, apparently the largest piece of historic carved jade outside of China. It depicts a literary gathering of scholar-officials at Lanting, the Orchid Pavilion described in “Lanting jixu”, by Wang Xizhi (303–361), a scholar official and recognized as the greatest calligrapher of the Far East. The prose itself is carved on the front. The theme represented on this jade boulder, the largest piece of jade carving outside of China, refers to an event that occurred on March 3 in the lunar calendar of 353. Wang Xizhi, together with forty-one other renowned scholar-officials, gathered at Lanting, or Orchid, Pavilion in Shaoxing (in presend-day Zhejiang province), celebrating the Spring Purification Festival. The scholars engaged in a drinking contest: wine cups were floated down a small winding creek as the men sat along its banks; whenever a cup stopped, the man closest to the cup was required to drink it and write a poem. In the end, twenty-six of the participants composed thirty-seven poems. Emperor Qianlong’s own poem appears carved on the reverse. Wang Xizhi was asked to write an introduction to the collection of these poems. Written in semi-cursive script and known as the Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion (transcribed on the top of the mountain by the Qianlong Emperor), it is the best known and most copied calligraphic work in art history. While the mountain image alone is enough to convey a close association between the jade sculpture and many painted landscapes, the Qianlong Emperor’s seal and poem carved at the top on the other side of the boulder reinforces the idea of the jade mountain as a three-dimensional landscape painting. -- source link

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