Page 30 - Chinese Decorative Arts: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 55, no. 1 (Summer, 1997)

visual arts as primary icons. Moreover, refer- family name and known as the "three Liangs."
ences to seven generations of ancestors are They were members of the Copybook school,
on
frequently found in inscriptions images of which based its works on the styles of partic-
this period, as it was believed that by attaining ular Tang-period artists. Patronized by the
enlightenment, one could retroactively convey court, this school flourished during the eigh-
this state to seven generations of one's ances- teenth century. Liang Guozhi's signature is
tors. This notion was crucial to the spread of on other jade books produced during the reign
Buddhism in China, where, from the begin- of the Qianlong emperor, and he appears to
ning, it was attacked as antifamily because it have been an imperial favorite. At least one
in
stressed the rejection of the worldly pursuit other jade book recording the text of the Seven
of a monastic, celibate existence. Buddhas stele is known. Written the callig-
by
The text for this book was written in gold rapher Dong Gao, it is preserved in the Chester
ink on pieces of black paper (which in this rare Beatty Library, Dublin. DPL
volume constitute the left-hand pages) and
then carved into the jade and filled with gold
was
leaf or powdered gold. The calligrapher
Liang Guozhi (1723-1787), whose signature on
the written version was copied by the anony-
mous carver. A court official and author, Guozhi
was one of three calligraphers with the same
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