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Mountain Spirit
Fu Baoshi Chinese
Not on view
The heroine of “Mountain Spirit,” an ancient ode from the shamanistic Nine Songs, a literary cycle attributed to Qu Yuan (343–278 B.C.), was a major inspiration for Fu Baoshi’s figure painting. The subject, plausibly identified as a goddess associated with poetic eroticism, manifests herself as “the
clouds of morning and the rain of evening”; hence Fu always portrayed her moving through a turbulent mist-filled sky. Although the text describes her wearing “a coat of fig leaves with a rabbit-floss girdle,” Fu depicts her in a white flowing robe with long fluttering sashes in the manner of Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406). Her rouged cheeks and lips and longing gaze intensify the sensuality of her curved silhouette.
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