Introduction This dissertation explores Chinese literati memorial painting with a special focus on Wu Li’s 吳歷 (1632-1718) handscroll Remembering the Past at Xingfu Chapel 興福庵感舊圖 (referred to as the Xingfu scroll in the following study) in commemorating the deceased Chan Buddhist monk Morong 默容 (Fig. 1). I became first interested into the Xingfu scroll because it touches upon the topic of death. Death is an important theme in Western art as well as in Chinese literature, but it is rarely represented in Chinese painting. I began my research on the Xingfu scroll by looking into the question of how death was represented. Further exploration revealed that there were a series of such literati paintings in commemorating the deceased. Interestingly they were represented in a very subtle way. To take the Xingfu scroll as an example: At first glance it appears to be a landscape painting only. But beyond the visual representation, it actually is dealing with religious ideas. It is a painting of religious landscape in fact. Commemorative painting in memory of the deceased produced by literati is termed Chinese literati memorial painting in this study. In her book The Painting of T’ang Yin, Anne de Coursey Clapp discusses commemorative paintings and regards them as a genre of Chinese painting. According to Anne Clapp, Tang Yin’s 唐寅 (1470-1524) commemorative paintings - often a human figure depicted in a landscape, function like a eulogy of the patron to honor his achievement and to win recognition from the elite literati society. Moreover, these commemorative paintings have different ranges of subject matters such as biehao tu 別號圖 (paintings of the visual pun of the patron’s name) or songbie tu 送別圖 (departure paintings).1 The subject matter of commemorating the deceased, however, is hardly mentioned in this book. In fact, Chinese literati memorial painting has some specific characteristics distinguishing them markedly from those commemorative paintings 1 Anne Clapp. The Painting of T’ang Yin. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. 1 discussed by Anne Clapp. The following study shows that literati memorial painting had their own origins in the 15th century in the Ming dynasty (1368- 1644) centered in the Wu 吳 (i.e. Suzhou) area in Jiangsu province when death became an important theme in the Chinese society and they were widespread during the late Ming and early Qing period (1644-1911). They had their own rules such as the usage of inscriptions, colophons and symbols and were represented in a subtle way. In her book Poetry and Painting in Song China. The Subtle Art of Dissent, Alfreda Murck points out that some Chinese literati found landscape painting as an elegant and subtle means to criticize government policies and actions during the Song dynasty (960- 1278).2 According to Alfreda Murck, the capacity of Chinese painting’s systems of reference in using the coding of messages in seemingly innocuous paintings allowed Chinese literati to express dissent with impunity.3 In fact, this subtle way of representation was also favored by later Chinese literati in memorial painting due to presonal, religious or political reasons. In the history of Chinese art, traditional memorial paintings were produced by professional painters for funeral and commemorative practices. Most of them were portraits. The image of Lady Dai with her name substituted in the center of the silk banner from Mawangdui 馬王堆 Tomb 1 (Western Han, early 2nd century BC) is considered to be one of the earliest portraits of this kind. It most likely constitutes a memorial painting with a strong religious function used in the funeral service (Fig. 2; Fig. 3). Such portraits used in funeral and commemorative practices were often the result of a specific relationship between the painter - normally a professional anonymous painter - and the painted, a dead or dying person. The Portrait of Shen Zhou at Age Eighty produced by an anonymous artisan painter is an example of such a functional portrait from a later period (Fig. 4). It was painted as a shouxiang 壽像 (longevity image) when Shen Zhou 沈周 (1427-1509) was eighty years old and still alive. Imperial and ancestral portraits used in funeral and memorial services are brilliantly discussed in Worshiping the Ancestors: 2 Alfreda Murck. Poetry and Painting in Song China. The Subtle Art of Dissent. Harvard- Yenching Institute Monograph Series 50. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002, 1-2. 3 Ibid., 2. 2 Chinese Commemorative Portraits by Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski.4 Additionally, commemorative paintings of historical or archaic figures, such as Zhulin qixian 竹林七賢 (Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove) are explored by Ellen Johnston Laing in her dissertation Scholars and Sages: A Study in Chinese Figure Painting. 5 In the following study, however, such commemorative paintings will not be discussed. In general, Chinese literati memorial paintings require an understanding of the inscriptions and colophons. This point distinguishes them from the functional portraits used in funeral and memorial services. Furthermore these paintings are concerned with commemorating those deceased, who had a social relationship either with the painter or the patron in their lifetime. They were originally produced for a small private social group among the painter, the patron, friends or associates of the deceased. Chinese literati painting in general is considered as being independent from court and artisan styles and ideologies, emphasizing amateurism and the role of inscriptions or colophons instead. According to Chinese literati painting theory, the literatus painted as he wrote, putting forward his own views and feelings, while the artisan, with an eye to his patron’s wishes, obviously could not.6 The word literati in connection with literati painting actually became controversial after the mid-15th century. Paintings by artisan painters like Tang Yin, who was a great poet, but dependent on his art for his livelihood, are regarded as literati paintings in this study. Therefore, literati refer to those artists with a scholarly background. Memorial paintings by artisan painters like Tang Yin, court painters like Yu Zhiding 禹之鼎 (1647- 1716) are also regarded as literati memorial paintings in this study. The primary aim of this study is to contribute a better understanding of Chinese literati memorial painting, which is not yet systematically researched in the scholarship. It secondly is devoted to an intensive analysis of the Xingfu scroll, which will provide insights into socio-religious issues of its time and this will help to reveal Wu Li’s hybrid religious inner world such as 4 Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski. Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001. 5 Ellen Johnston Laing. Scholars and Sages: A Study in Chinese Figure Painting. PhD Thesis. UMI. University of Michigan, 1967, 132-188. 6 Anne Clapp (1991), 25. 3 his understandings to Buddhism, which in turn will throw new light on the study of Wu Li as a Chinese Christian. Although Chinese literati memorial painting as a whole constitutes a largely unexplored field, there are still many excellent case studies on painters and their paintings by scholars such as James Cahill, Anne Clapp, Craig Clunas, Jonathan Hay and Richard Vinograd, which have been of great importance to the present study.7 Among these studies the research on Shen Zhou is of significance since Shen played an important role in the origins of Chinese literati memorial painting. Early research on Shen Zhou and his painting has been conducted by Richard Edwards in his dissertation from 1953 and his later monograph The Field of Stones: A Study of the Art of Shen Zhou (1427- 1509) published in 1962, which served as a standard work for many years.8 More recent research examines Shen Zhou and his art from different perspectives, such as Early Ming Painters: Predecessors and Elders of Shen Zhou (1427-1509) by Kathlyn Lannon Liscomb (1984), which provides a historical-artistic background of Shen’s art. Other works inlcude Shen Zhou’s Topographical Landscape by Jen-mei Ma (1990), Revisiting Shen Zhou (1427-1509): Poet, Painter, Literatus, Reader by Chi-ying Alice Wang (1995), Reading Birds: Confucian Imagery in the Bird Painting of Shen Zhou (1427-1509) by Ann Elizabeth Wetherell (2006) and The Immortal Brush: Daoism and the Art of Shen Zhou (1427-1509) by Chun-yi Lee (2009).9 7 James Cahill. Parting at the Shore. Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368-1580. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1978; ---. The Compelling Image. Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1982a; ---. The Distant Mountains. Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty, 1570-1644. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1982b; Anne Clapp (1991); Craig Clunas. Elegant Debts. The Social Art of Wen Zhengming, 1470-1559. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004; Jonathan Hay. Shitao. Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Richard Vinograd. Boundaries of the Self. Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 8 Richard Edwards. The Field of Stones: A Study of the Art of Shen Chou (1427-1509). Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1962. 9 Kathlyn Lannon Liscomb. Early Ming Painters: Predecessors and Elders of Shen Zhou (1427-1509). PhD thesis. UMI. University of Chicago, 1984; Jen-mei Ma. Shen Zhou’s Topographical Landscape. PhD thesis. UMI. University of Kansas, 1990; Chi-ying Alice Wang. Revisiting Shen Zhou (1427-1509): Poet, Painter, Literatus, Reader. PhD thesis. UMI. Indiana University, 1995; Ann Elizabeth Wetherell. Reading Birds: Confucian Imagery in the Bird Painting of Shen Zhou (1427-1509). PhD thesis. UMI. University of Oregon, 2006 and Chun-yi Lee. The Immortal Brush: Daoism and the Art of Shen Zhou (1427-1509).