Frontispiece Calligraphy “Chenghuai Guandao” – Forbidden City, Beijing

Four large characters in bold running script, Cheng huai guan dao, “Purify the mind to contemplate the Way”, open a mounted handscroll in a case of the Hall of Paintings of the Palace Museum. The phrase, taken from the fifth-century painter Zong Bing, expresses the literati ideal of landscape painting as spiritual contemplation.