Urban Customs in A Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival
1 min readA Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival was a painting created by the court artist Zhang Zeduan(birth and death dates unknown), at the end of the northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).
It is now housed in the Palace museum in Beijing Over the nearly 900 years since its creation, this masterpiece has generated many reproductions. Today there are over 30 reproductions collected in famous museums around the world.
One copy even passed before the critical eyes of Qing Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795), an art enthusiast who had believed it to be the original. That replica is now housed in the Taipei Palace Museum. In a sense, the wide range of imitations only proves the value of this precious artistic masterpiece.
