Scroll of prostitutes in the palace of Yin and Meng in Tang Dynasty

This hanging scroll is a ink, the Chinese picture made to be unrolled or unpinned a section at a time rather than seen all at once. the Tang painter’s hand that made it assumed a viewer in motion.

The subject is the excuse. What the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) painter sold was a way of looking, disciplined and unhurried.

Tang manufacture met the Silk Road head-on, absorbing foreign forms and motifs into a cosmopolitan court aesthetic.

A hanging scroll like this was made to be handed on, not framed forever. The ink still asks you to slow down, which is the whole point.

Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.