The most famous painting in China got copied for five hundred years. This is one of those copies, a Ming hand reworking Zhang Zeduan’s Northern Song original.
Ming and Qing painters lengthened the scroll, added crowds, swapped the architecture, and called it restoring a lost masterpiece. They were really competing with it. The copy proves the original’s hold: you do not spend months imitating a painting nobody remembers.
Treat this scroll as a cover version. The tune is Zhang Zeduan’s; the arrangement is a Ming court’s. Both earn the wall, and the copy tells you more about how the Ming imagined the Song than about the Song itself.
Object details
| Name | Ming Dynasty’s Qingming Riverside Picture Scroll (明人清明上河图卷) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00128901 |
| Technique | Ink |
| Period | Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.