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Your galleryZhi and Xu's Pure Conversation
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Find the two sages seated on the bank at the foot of the pine, then follow the overhanging cliff at the right and look across to the far peaks at the left.
Lan Ying gave this painting to his friend Wuyun, a Chan Buddhist monk, in 1643, a year before the Ming dynasty fell. It shows two sages of the Six Dynasties, the monk Zhidun and the Daoist priest Xu Xun, who, as Lan’s poem says, talked all day under a tall pine and an ancient cliff. The Cleveland Museum of Art reads the pair as an image of the friendship between painter and monk, and as a retreat into the past.
Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Painting: 141 x 56 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Ming
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Zhi and Xu's Pure Conversation
- Artist
- Lan Ying (Chinese, 1585–after 1664)
- Date
- 1643
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Painting: 141 x 56 cm (55 1/2 x 22 1/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 246 x 80 cm (96 7/8 x 31 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Stephen O. K. Chen
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.