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Your galleryPoem Commemorating an Imperially Bestowed Feast
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Read the large columns from right to left, each from top to bottom, and watch the strokes swell and thin as the brush presses down and lifts.
Here Dong Qichang writes rather than paints: a poem of seven lines of seven characters in standard script, dated 1632, four years before his death. The smaller columns at the left say it commemorates a feast of wheat cakes that the emperor gave to officials at the Noon Gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Dong, unlike his friend Chen Jiru, made a career in government service.
Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Image: 60 7/8 x 21 1/2 in. (154.6 x 54.6 cm · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Ming
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Poem Commemorating an Imperially Bestowed Feast
- Artist
- Dong Qichang (Chinese, 1555–1636)
- Date
- dated 1632
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 60 7/8 x 21 1/2 in. (154.6 x 54.6 cm) Overall with mounting: 105 3/4 x 28 1/4 in. (268.6 x 71.8 cm) Overall with knobs: 105 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. (268.6 x 81.9 cm)
- Credit line
- Gift of Douglas Dillon, 1979
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1555–1636
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.