Page 386 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

i3d CHINESE ART.

Kabodha (Ka-fo-t'o), an artist honoured by the Wei emperor, as
well as by the founder of the Sui dynasty, who built the mountain
temple of Shao-lin-ssu for him. Kabodha was celebrated for his
pictures of the men and scenes of the Byzantine empire, under the
name of Fu-lin (see page 72), as well as for his drawings of
strange animals, and of spiritual beings {kuei sh'n) terrestrial and
celestial.
We come now to the T'ang dynasty (a.d. 618-906), when China
attained its greatest height as an Asiatic power, when literature and
poetry flourished apace, and the sister arts of painting and design
arrived at their highest perfection. Yen Li-te and Wu Tao-tzu
are named by the Emperor K'ang Hsi in his preface as representative
artists of this dynasty, and he names none other after them. Yen
Li-te, who flourished in the seventh century of our era, was a high
official at the court of the founder of the dynasty, and was appointed
President of the Board of Works in the year 630. His younger
brother,Yen Li-pen, also an artist of repute, who succeeded him in
the Board of Works in 657, became a chief Minister of State during
the reign of Kao Tsung in 668. Yen Li-te painted Taoist pictures
such as. the "Immortals gathering the Polyporus Fungus of
Longevity," the embodied " Spirits of the Seven Planets," etc. ;
historical scenes, the most celebrated of which was the " Marriage
of the Chinese Princess of Wen-ch'eng to the Tibetan kmg Srong-
"
tsan in the year 641 ; drawings of strange people and of foreigners
bringing tribute, in which he excelled his predecessors of the Wei
and Liang dynasties ; pictures of palaces and of Imperial sacrificial
ceremonials ; fighting cocks, and flying wild geese intended to
illustrate the poems of Ch'en Yo. His brother was a still more
prolific artist, working in much the same lines, according to the list
of forty-two of his pictures enumerated in the Hsiian-ho catalogue
(i2th century).
Wu Tao-yuan, generally known by his literary title as Wu Tao-
tzu (Japanese Go Doshi), stands, by universal consent, as