Living Aloft: Master Liu’s Retreat
Original title
Wen Zhengming 文徵明
- Institution
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
- Accession
- 2017.327.2
- Credit
- Gift of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill, in honor of Wen C. Fong, 2015
- Rights
Public domain: the artist died in 1559. The Metropolitan Museum of Art releases this image under CC0 through its Open Access programme.
- Description
- A pale landscape in soft colour. A two-storey pavilion stands among tall pines and leafless trees, with two figures seated in the open upper room; a gate and a path lie below, mountains rise in mist behind, and a long inscription in neat script fills the top of the scroll.
- Image
- 1009 × 1600
source file retrieved 2026-10-11 - Catalogue no.
- G-009020
coldlibrary.com/g/009020 - Credit line
- Wen Zhengming, Living Aloft: Master Liu’s Retreat, 1543. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain (CC0). Via Cold Library: https://coldlibrary.com/g/009020
Wen Zhengming painted this at seventy-three for an old friend, Master Liu, who longed to live in an upper-storey retreat, above the dust of the world and among his books. Wen’s poem at the top speaks of the wish. It is less a landscape than a portrait of a reading room, and a fitting picture for a library that also lives a little above the street.
