Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Yu Shinan
Early Tang scholar-official and calligrapher, pupil of the monk Zhiyong, whom Emperor Taizong praised for five excellences and whose Confucius Temple stele survives in copies
A desk holds an unrolled sheet bearing three bold black ink strokes, with a rack of many brushes above it, a stone ink slab and ink stick, a porcelain bowl, a red lacquer box, a dish of red seal paste and a paperweight; a small seated figure shows through a round window onto bamboo.
Also known as Zi Boshi · Wen Yi
Yu Shinan, courtesy name Boshi, came from Yuyao in Yuezhou. He and his elder brother Yu Shiji studied for over ten years under Gu Yewang, and he learned calligraphy from the monk Zhiyong, a seventh-generation descendant of Wang Xizhi. After the Chen fell he served the Sui as a librarian, according to the New Tang History without promotion for ten years, and compiled the encyclopedia Beitang shuchao during that time. When Yuwen Huaji murdered Emperor Yang in 618 and moved to kill Yu Shiji, Yu Shinan clung to his brother weeping and begged to die in his place, in vain. Under the Tang he joined the staff of the Prince of Qin, and later became director of the imperial library and Duke of Yongxing; Taizong praised his virtue, loyalty, learning, prose and calligraphy as five excellences. He died in 638 at eighty, with the posthumous name Wenyi, and his portrait was hung in the Lingyan Pavilion in 643. His Confucius Temple stele survives in rubbings of later recuttings.
Life and times
Dates 558 CE–638 CE