Portrait of Confucius

Purportedly Tang dynasty (618� 907), undated

Attributed to Wu Daozi (689�759)

Hanging scroll, ink rubbed on 2 joined sheets of paper; 194.0 x 62.1 cm

Date of rubbing unknown

Inventory number: Biaozhou 138

Confucius (551�479 b.c.e.), whose actual name was Kong Qiu, was the preeminent thinker and political theorist of ancient China.� He was born and raised near Qufu, capital of the small feudal state of Lu at the base of the Shandong peninsula, and made his living as a teacher and private tutor using canonical texts.� Distressed by the constant warfare between the Chinese states as well as the venality and tyranny of rulers, he urged a system of morality and statecraft that would preserve peace and provide people with a stable and just government.� For some 14 years he traveled to several neighboring states but was never successful in inducing any rulers to grant him high office so that he might introduce his reforms.

In this idealized and conventionalized portrait placed against a vacant backdrop, Confucius is depicted as an official dressed in flowing court robes, hands clasped together and standing in a dignified manner.� Although it bears the name of the great Tang-dynasty painter Wu Daozi (689�759), the actual date of execution of this image is probably much later.� The eulogy placed above the portrait is taken from a longer text composed by the Ming scholar-official Chen Fengwu (1475�1541) and may be thus rendered: "His virtue is equal to Heaven and Earth; his dao (way) is the loftiest achieved in the past and in the present.� He explained the Six Canonical Books, and his statutes will last for ten thousand generations."� Based on Chen Fengwu's eulogy, this portrait of Confucius probably was not done before the Zhengde (1506�1521) or Jiajing (1522�1566) reign eras of the Ming dynasty.