Eight Songs of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the eleventh century, an artist named Song Di painted a set of melancholy landscapes evoking the river watersheds of the Xiao and Xiang region in current-day Hunan Province, southwest China. Poets of the day responded to Song’s paintings with corresponding poems, giving rise to a tradition of Xiao-Xiang poetry and painting that continued in subsequent centuries in China and eventually extended to Japan and Korea. This rendition bears a signature of the Ming-dynasty artist Wen Zhengming, but both the calligraphy and painting lack Wen’s subtlety; it is believed to have been painted in his style after his death.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art