明 胡正言 《十竹齋書畫譜》 四開 木版畫|Page from the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
first edition printed in 1633
Medium
Individual leaf from a printed book; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
9 7/16 x 10 3/4 in. (24 x 27.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Culture & Period
China · Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1924
Accession Number
CP97
Art Historical Context
This page comes from Hu Zheng’s *Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of and Calligraphy*, first printed in 1633 during the late Ming. Hu, a scholar, publisher, artist based in Nanjing, created the manual as an instructional guide for aspiring painters and calligraphers. It offered carefully reproduced examples of brushwork, composition, and subject matter, making refined artistic techniques more widely accessible at a time when interest innoisseurship and amateur painting was growing among the educated elite. The leaf exemplifies Hu’s pioneering use of multi-color woodblock printing, a technique that al...
About the Artist
Hu Zhengyan · 1584–1634
Hu Zhengyan (胡正言, c. 1584–c. 1674) was a Chinese artist, publisher, seal-carver, and printmaking innovator who lived through the turbulent transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty. Born in Xiuning in Anhui province, he eventually settled in Nanjing, where he established his home and workshop on a hill within the northern city wall and named the property the Ten Bamboo Studio, or Shizhuzhai, af...