Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion

China

1790

Light green jade

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong (r. 1736–95) commissioned this jade boulder, apparently the largest piece of historic carved jade outside of China. It depicts a literary gathering of scholar-officials at Lanting, the Orchid Pavilion described in “Lanting jixu” (Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion), by Wang Xizhi (303–361), recognized as the greatest calligrapher of the Far East. The prose itself is carved on the front. Wang Xizhi, together with forty-one other renowned scholar-officials, gathered at Lanting and engaged in a drinking contest: wine cups were floated down a small winding creek as the men sat along it