Famous Women

Gai Qi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1799, the scholar Cao Zhenxiu wrote a cycle of sixteen poems about famous women of history and legend. Not content with the usual heroines—chaste widows and filial daughters—Cao selected women of more diverse talents, foregrounding poets, calligraphers, and warriors and arguing for an expanded notion of female virtue. She then commissioned the young virtuoso painter Gai Qi to illustrate her poems. Although some of the scenes take place indoors, several of them feature garden settings, including the ones you see here. Light in ink tone, Gai’s images display a seemingly endless variety of brushwork, from dry, rounded strokes to evoke the rough texture of rocks to pinpoint black lines to describe sharp grasses.

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