Withdrawing his mind, Shen Yu looked at the painting again.
And Pei Yu'an also fell silent at the right time.
The painting is blocked by a layer of special glass and cannot be touched by hand. This also makes Shen Yu unable to tell the age of the paper and can only use visual inspection.
This time Shen Yu looked at it for more than five minutes, and finally found a line of small regular script in the upper left corner of the painting: "The Ming Dynasty painted Yi Yuanji's "Six Apes"."
Look at the price below: 1.5 million yuan.
The so-called "painted by Ming people" is not a name of a person. It means that this painting was painted by someone from the Ming Dynasty.
In other words, Master Zhangyan in the shop can only identify the painting as a Ming Dynasty copy, but he doesn’t know who the author is or what his last name is.
If it were just a Ming Dynasty painting, the price of 1.5 million yuan would be considered too high.
But no matter how Shen Yu looked at it, he felt that this painting should not be from the Ming Dynasty.
It's not that this painting is not good, but it's so good that Shen Yu feels that the era needs to be pushed back. In his opinion, this is probably a Yuan painting, or even a Song painting from the Southern Song Dynasty.< /p>
Why didn’t Shen Yu suspect that this painting was an authentic work by Yi Yuanji?
The answer is also very simple, because Shen Yu has seen Yi Yuanji's authentic work.
As we all know, Song painting is the peak of Chinese painting art. Tang painting is good but it is just a legend after all. However, Song painting has a large number of real works handed down.
Compared with Tang paintings, Song paintings have a tendency to be better than blue. Song paintings are not just about simple writing and painting, but also began to improve, adding charm and interest to the paintings, so that the viewers will be drawn to them at a glance. Love and even admiration.
Let’s put it this way, those who can leave their names among the many great painters of the Northern Song Dynasty are all great masters. Although the painting skills of this "Six Apes" are excellent, it is still inferior to the original work of Yi Yuanji.
Unlike those painters who are famous but have no works handed down to the world, Yi Yuanji does have works handed down, although only a few, and all of them are collected in large museums at home and abroad.
For example, Yi Yuanji has a famous painting called "Cat and Monkey Picture", which depicts a macaque and two tabby cats.
Macaques are naughty by nature. Nowadays, people often see videos of macaques bullying kittens and puppies on some apps. Some brave ones may even attack humans.
The content of "Cat and Monkey Pictures" is the painting of macaques bullying kittens, which makes people itchy in anger.
The content of the painting is a tall macaque with a chain around its neck. Because the monkey is too strong, the chain needs to be connected to a copper rod buried in the ground.
The macaque was holding a tabby cat in its arms. The cat looked ahead in fear and opened its mouth to cry for help. It seemed that it was very afraid of the macaque.
Not far away, there was a tabby cat that looked back in fright. The kitten arched its whole body and turned back to roar and hiss at the macaque, as if to say, please let go of my companion.
But the macaque was really annoying, with a very calm demeanor. He closed his mouth and stood squinting away, without even looking at the kitten. He looked like he could do anything to me, and anyone who looked at that painting would be angry. Macaques bully the weak and shy away from the strong, and have a ferocious temperament. They will fall out at any time, and will frequently pretend to be pitiful and beg for mercy when encountering natural enemies or monkey trainers. This shows that Yi Yuanji's paintings of apes have reached a level of subtlety and perfection.
As long as modern people take one look at "Cat and Monkey Picture", they will immediately be convinced that it is no longer a painting, but a photo taken with a camera.
"Which dynasty and generation do you belong to? Can't you tell just by looking at it?"
Recite silently and watch the Qi.
Whoa!
A ball of pale golden light condensed three inches above the "Six Apes" painting, and then slowly rose up from one inch, rising eight times in a row before gradually settling down.
After a few seconds, the light beam slightly decreased by a small section, and finally turned into a ball of light the size of a walnut, fixed on the sky pole of the painting.
"It turned out to be a precious light as big as a walnut? Eight inches of precious light, one inch for a hundred years, that is eight hundred years, and a little less, wouldn't it be from the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty?
"Famous ape painters in the Southern Song Dynasty include Mao Song, Mao Yi and his son, and Master Fachang. Could this painting be from one of these three famous artists?"
What made Shen Yu even more unexpected was that Mr. Dong and Mr. Zheng actually leaked the treasure!
But think about it, this is not impossible, because Dong Pengcheng and Zheng Congyun are both experts in miscellaneous fields, and they are not particularly proficient in calligraphy and painting. There is another calligraphy and painting appraiser in Wanbaolou, but it is said that the big shot two years ago
Because the heart disease is in a semi-cultivation state.
Mr. Dong even mentioned to Shen Yu several times that he wanted Shen Yu to come to Wanbao Building to help him because Wanlao Building is currently short of a calligraphy and painting appraisal expert.
Yi Yuanji is one of the rare famous figures that Shen Yu particularly likes.
Speaking of which, Yi Yuanji's reputation as a great painter is indeed hard-earned, because for painters, painting apes is a "deviant approach". Painting landscapes, figures, and Taoist immortals is the right way. The worst is painting flowers, birds, cows, horses, fish and insects.<
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Painting apes and painting deer was indeed unique to Yi Yuanji at that time.
This kind of creation of a subject that has never been explored by the ancients, and there are no previous works that can be copied, and it requires supreme courage to think hard about everything.
Painters in the Song Dynasty were also divided into grades, or in other words, they were divided into three, six or nine grades.
The first-class ones are of course the ones who serve in the imperial painting academy of Ouchi, such as the four Southern Song Dynasty painters. These are all masters, and their paintings have been the most expensive from ancient times to the present.
The second class is composed of famous scholar-bureaucrats, such as Liu Cai, the author of Shen Yu's "Playing with Fishes in the Water". Of course, the works of the best among these people are more expensive than those awaiting imperial edicts from the art academy.
The third and worst category are folk painters and painters.
This is not to say that these people's painting skills are not good, but that it is very difficult for folk painters to get ahead.
If Yi Yuanji hadn't endured all the hardships, he wouldn't have been able to become a master.
Ge Hong's "Baopuzi·Duosu" states: "A macaque can live eight hundred years and turn into an ape, an ape can live five hundred years and turn into an ape, and an ape can live a thousand years."
Therefore, it is very auspicious for apes to appear in calligraphy and painting.
In addition, the homophony of monkey is "Hou".
The homophone for cat is "耄".
The homophone of deer is the word "Lu".
These are all Yi Yuanji's strengths. For a time, Yi Yuanji's paintings became auspicious paintings. At the same time, Yi Yuanji also became famous. Many people are proud to own an authentic painting of Yi Yuanji.
Who wouldn’t want to eat the emperor’s salary and live a long life and become a marquis?
It's a pity that Yi Yuanji's life was not good.
In 1064, the first year of the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Song Dynasty, the Xiaoyan Hall in Jinling Palace in Bianjing was built. Emperor Yingzong Zhao Shu loved his talent, so he issued an edict to let Yi Yuanji enter the palace to paint the palace. Yi Yuanji happily went to Beijing according to the order.
But this trip to Bianjing became the end of his life.
He first painted "Flowers, Stones and Rare Birds" in Xiaoyan Hall, and then painted "Yang Deer" on the small screen of Shenyou Hall, both of which were lifelike and wonderful.
After that, Yi Yuanji was ordered to go to the Kaixian Hall of the imperial palace to paint the "Hundred Apes" painting. Emperor Yingzong gave him many rewards before painting. Unfortunately, he died suddenly before the painting of the "Hundred Apes" was completed.
Mi Fu wrote in the history of painting: "Yi Yuanji, the first person after Xu Xi, was good at painting grass, trees, leaves and hearts. Unfortunately, the world only called them roe apes. Unfortunately, some people in the painting academy were jealous of his talent and only asked him to paint roe apes. , competing to be a poisonous person."
This means that Yi Yuanji died because people in the art academy were jealous of his talent and secretly poisoned him.
Of course, it is not certain whether it is true or not. It is also said that Yi Yuanji suffered a sudden illness due to overwork.
Mi Fu may also have heard about it because there is no record of it in official history.
However, Mi Fu was one of the Four Artists of the Song Dynasty, and he usually regarded himself as an unparalleled figure in the country. I don’t know how many well-known painters in the art academy could not catch his eye. To have such a good evaluation from him is enough to know how great Yi Yuanji’s painting skills were. It’s amazing.
But if Yi Yuanji had not been famous, he might not have suffered this disaster.
"Although this painting is a big leak, it is definitely not the leak that the younger Shen family said. With eyesight alone, no more than three people in Chuzhou can see this painting. From this point of view, I am lucky.
"Forget it, let's get this thing first before talking about anything else."
Facing a Song painting, Shen Yu couldn't miss it, even if he knew Mr. Dong.
