Leaf from "Traveling Among The Five Sacred Peaks"

Rocks with bizarre or extraordinary shapes fascinated Chinese intellectuals. They saw in them cherished qualities of individuality and originality, as well as references to sacred mountains, which they imagined as refuges from worldly affairs. In this album of rock portraits, Lan Ying depicts various Taihu rocks—convoluted rocks formed in China’s Lake Taihu that were preferred by the scholarly elite—against a blank ground. Several of the stones are named in the accompanying inscriptions, suggesting that they were well-known centerpiece rocks from gardens familiar to the artist. This album was likely commissioned by a member of the educated elite as a type of record of some of the great Taihu rocks in his garden and in those of his friends.