preview

Nymph Of The Luo River

Decent Essays

In the Nymph of the Luo River, along with the love story of Cao Zhi (曹植), Gu (顧愷之)was good at depicting characters’ expression and the relationship among them. The placement of people are arranging well; It is obvious to see that the woman on the left side of the hand scroll is the main character. This woman is called “fú fēi” (洛神), her expression suggest a sense of gloominess and sorrow, but at the same time, her waving drapery bring out her unique characteristic and her divine temperament. In the middle of the hand scroll, the emperor Cao is standing there on the riverside, watching fú fēi leaving him. The story is a well known tragedy and it was a master work by Gu Kaizhi. The hand scroll gives rise of the sense of story board, our eyes can follow the story line from right to left, top to bottom. Gu was good at showing character’s emotions, however, he didn’t have a good sense of space and perspective. The ratio between human and trees are not in a reality scale; and …show more content…

The first difference will be the use of material and color. The second will be the space arrangement; in this stone sarcophagus, a better sense of three dimensional space is given. In Nymph of the Luo River, the arrangement of subjects is balanced but lack of the sense of real space and layering. In this stone sarcophagus, with a slightly change on the each subjects, the perspective angle creates foreground, midground and background. However, in terms of the rendering on human and objects, this engraving still gives a flat feeling, thus, it is lack of detail on human. Unlike Gu’s work, this engraving is focusing on craftsmanship on line works rather than the expression of subjects. Therefore, the subject matter seems a little bit over occupied, but the clean line work illustration, decorated frame, and a better ratio on trees and human make this work even more interesting and convincing to look

Get Access