Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of the Book of Odes

This book is the first comprehensive study of an important monument of twelfth-century Chinese art, the imperially sponsored set of handscrolls transcribing and illustrating the poems in the ancient anthology known as the Book of Odes (Shijing), long canonized as a 'Confucian classic'. The project is reconstructed and analysed as the centerpiece of Southern Song emperor Gaozong's efforts to bring about a dynastic revival and to persuade the Confucian official-elite of his own legitimacy to rule. The artist Ma Hezhi's compositions are shown to have been conceived in awareness of literary tradition and antiquarian currents in Song intellectual life. Vigorous connoisseurship is applied to solve the longstanding problem of separating 'original' scrolls from 'copies', and all extant scrolls are systematically catalogued in an appendix.