Zhang Sengyou
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Zhang Sengyou (Chinese: 张僧繇, Zhāng Sēngyóu) was a famous Chinese painter the ink style in the reign of Liang Dynasty Emperor Wudi.
His birth and death years are unknown, but he was active circa 490–540. He was a native Wuzhong (now Suzhou, Jiangsu Province).
Background and reputation
Buddhism with all its iconography, came to China from India, bringing with it to China a Western influence at one remove. Pictorial forms thus acquired a certain three-dimensional quality. Zhang Sengyou, working in the early sixth century, painted large murals of Buddhist shrines in Nanjing. He was one of the first to use these influences with happy results. He was also well known for landscapes, especially snow scenery, with a reputation for the so-called "boneless" technique (mogu).
Zhang is also associated with a famous story. It is said that one day, having painted four dragons on the walls of a temple, he did not mark the pupil, not by negligence but prudence; however, one person, unwilling to heed Zhang's warnings, painted in the eye of two dragons, who immediately fled to heaven riding on clouds with crashing thunder. Marking the eyes of dragons opens their eyes and gives them life. The spirit is fleeting, omnipresent, so that grasping and fixing it in a painting gives his work an uncanny power of suggestion.
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