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Yang Huizhi
Kaiyuan-era sculptor who trained in painting alongside Wu Daozi, then burned his brushes to work in clay, and was later called the Sage of Sculpture
In an open-air carving yard before a lake and hills, a heap of rough white stone blocks rises at the left, a mat holds a mallet and a row of chisels, unfinished horse figures stand at both sides, a small seated figure sits on a table, and a mason sits among the blocks.
Also known as Sage of Sculpture
- Roles
- Sculptors
Yang Huizhi's origins are unknown. In the Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong he studied the brushwork of Zhang Sengyou together with Wu Daozi. When Wu's fame as a painter eclipsed his own, he burned his brushes and inkstone and turned to sculpture, and his lifelike figures made him Wu's equal: people said that Daozi's painting and Huizhi's sculpture had both caught the spirit of Sengyou's brush. He was later honoured as the Sage of Sculpture, and is said to have written a lost treatise on modelling. The arhat figures at Baosheng Temple in Luzhi, Suzhou, were traditionally attributed to him, though scholars now mostly date them to the Northern Song.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Kaiyuan era of Tang (713–741)