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(Chifeng Rongguo Gongjing gong zeng shaoshi Yao gong Guangxiao
zhenrong 敕封榮國恭靖公贈少師姚公廣孝真容).
Once there were many portraits of Daoyan, including
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several connected with temples in Beijing. Most portrayed
him with a shaven head and dressed as a monk, as we see
him in the Palace Museum scroll, but one lost painting
reportedly depicted him in Ming court dress with a red
robe, jade belt and ‘Tang’ court hat. Qingshousi, Daoyan’s
primary residence in Beijing, had one of the former type and
perhaps the picture of him dressed for court as well. In 1530
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this monastery, by that time renamed Da Xinglongsi 大興隆寺
(Great Prosperity Monastery), received Daoyan’s spirit
tablet and state-sponsored offering rites when they were
expelled from the Imperial Ancestral Temple after a zealous
Confucian official complained about memorialising a monk
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in the imperial shrine. Fire destroyed the monastery five
years later and the fate of its portrait or portraits is
uncertain. Daoyan’s tablet and official rites were then
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moved again, this time to the venerable Da Longshan
huguosi 大隆善護國寺 (Great Flourishing Goodness
Protecting the State Monastery) in the western part of the
city. This monastery also had a portrait of Daoyan as a
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monk, perhaps the one formerly at Da Xinglongsi, and it
became one of the famous sights of the capital. In an
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account of his visit to the monastery in 1599, the poet Yuan
Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568–1610) testified to the portrait’s
power. He described Daoyan’s appearance as natural and
unrestrained and his eyes brilliant like a flash of lightning,
and characterised the inscription written on the painting by
the master himself as that of a true Chan monk. This
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painting was lost by the mid-18th century, but the apparent
lifelikeness of the figure and Daoyan’s self-inscription are
enough to connect it with the Sino-Japanese tradition of
monk portraiture wherein image and autograph combine to
evoke a master’s presence for his disciples and Dharma
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heirs. A representative earlier example is the famous
portrait of the Southern Song (1127–1279) Linji school master
Wuzhun Shifan 無準師範 (1177–1249) given to his Japanese
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disciple Enni Ben’en 圓爾辯圓 (1202–80) in 1238 (Pl. 16.4).
A poetic inscription written by the late Ming celebrity
monk Zibo Zhenke 紫柏真可 (1543–1603) on the Palace
Museum portrait of Daoyan associates it with another
Beijing monastery and the Ming Sino-Japanese clerical
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network. Zhenke’s inscription refers to Daoyan’s close
relationship with the Japanese Linji school master Musho
Tokushi 無初德始 (Ch. Wuchu Deshi, d. 1429). Musho
accompanied a Japanese embassy to the Ming court in Plate 16.4 Anonymous, Portrait of Master Wuzhun Shifan (1177–
Nanjing early in the Hongwu period (1368–98) and 1249), Southern Song, with an inscription dated 1238. Hanging
remained in China to study, becoming the Dharma heir of scroll, ink and colours on silk, height 124.8cm, width 55.2cm.
Zongle, the cleric who recommended Daoyan to the Tōfuku-ji, Kyoto, Japan
Hongwu emperor. Musho met Daoyan at Qingshousi in
Beiping; Daoyan found him congenial and took him as a lived out his life there. Daoyan was fond of Tanzhesi from
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‘Dharma nephew’. Musho continued his travels in China, his early days in Beiping and chose it for his old-age retreat,
but in 1402 Daoyan summoned him back to the capital, then making it second in importance only to Qingshousi in his
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Nanjing, where they picked up their friendship and deep biography. Tanzhesi established a memorial portrait hall
conversations about Chan. In 1412, when Daoyan was for him with a painted image, presumably the Palace
planning to retire to a hermitage at Tanzhesi 潭柘寺 (Deep Museum scroll. The large size (184.5 x 120.2cm), apparent
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Pond and Wild Mulberry Monastery) in the Western Hills of realism and fine execution of this painting, along with the
Beijing, he petitioned the emperor to appoint Musho abbot gold inscription including the posthumous title given to the
of the monastery. The appointment was made, and Musho master in 1425, suggest that it was done in that year or

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