Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies

This handscroll illustrates a court poem instructing palace women in Confucian virtue. In one scene a black bear lunges from its cage toward the emperor and the brave Lady Feng steps into its path; elsewhere ladies dress and reflect before a mirror. The fluttering ribbons and fine, even 'silk-thread' line set the model for Chinese figure painting for centuries. Attributed to Gu Kaizhi of the fourth century, the surviving scroll is a slightly later copy, now crowded with the red seals of the emperors and collectors who prized it, and the earliest masterwork of Chinese painting to reach us.