Women and children in a garden

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Women and children gather in an elegant garden setting surrounded by a lotus pond in full blossom. The opening scene centers on a pair of women playing the board game weiqi in a waterside pavilion. Toward the end of the scroll, a second vignette shows a woman readying to play a zither prepared by her attendant. Weiqi and music are two of the “four perfections,” a set of abilities considered de rigeur for the scholarly elite. Presumably, the scroll once contained vignettes featuring the other two—calligraphy and painting—that have been lost.

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