Ma Hezhi and the illustration of the book of Odes

by Julia K. Murray

Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of the Book of Odes is the first comprehensive study of one of the major monuments of twelfth-century Chinese painting. Illustrating the Book of Odes (Shijing), an important Chinese anthology of poetry, the series of handscrolls is the final and most ambitious artistic project by which the emperor Gaozong sought to validate the Southern Song dynastic revival and his own legitimacy. The scrolls paired the 305 poems of the ancient anthology (reputedly transcribed by the emperor himself) with compositions by Ma Hezhi, a leading figure in the resurgence of classical illustration at the Hangzhou court. The illustrative program of the Odes scrolls, reconstructed here for the first time, is shown to be closely linked with currents in Song intellectual history and literary studies, as well as with politics and art . In this study, Julia Murray accounts for all previous scholarship on the Odes scrolls, summarizes the exegetical tradition of the text, and documents