Listening to the Qin (late 1400s–early 1500s): Art, History and Details

Listening to the Qin (late 1400s–early 1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tang Yin (Chinese, 1470–1523).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The painting alludes to a legendary incident from the life of Ji Kang 嵇康 (AD 223–262), a guqin player who belonged to a group of 3rd-century eccentric intellectuals. Ji Kang is known as the author of a Guangling San (廣陵散; Melody from Guangling), a composition for the guqin so haunting that it aroused spirits to visit him. The painting depicts the moment when one of the spirits––disguised as a human––is helped by another to emerge from the ground, while others are drawn to the musician playing in his cottage under the full moon.

Object facts

• Title: Listening to the Qin
• Date: late 1400s–early 1500s
• Creator attribution: Tang Yin (Chinese, 1470–1523)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and light color on silk
• Dimensions: Overall with knobs: 118 x 45 cm (46 7/16 x 17 11/16 in.); Painting: 35.8 x 29.1 cm (14 1/8 x 11 7/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1977.199

A detail from the museum

The painting is mounted in a Japanese-style three-tier format with futai.

Collection credit

Gift of Herbert F. Leisy in memory of his wife, Helen Stamp Leisy

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Tang, Yin 唐寅, Xu Wei 徐渭, and Qiu Ying 仇英. Ming Hua Quan Ji 明畫全集. Hangzhou: Zhejiang da xue chu ban she, 2017.
• Peng, Wei 彭薇, and Clarissa von Spee. Migrations of Memory: The Poetry and Power of Music by Chinese Artist Peng Wei in Collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art = 平沙落雁—音樂的詩意與力量: 中國藝術家彭薇與克利夫蘭藝術博物館合作. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.