Record of the Miaoyan Monastery (Huzhou Miaoyansi ji 湖州妙巖寺記),

ca. 1309–10

Zhao Mengfu was a classic example of the literati ideal of a scholar–amateur artist in pursuit of self-cultivation. In spite of the private nature of much of his calligraphy, Zhao also executed many public writings, including Record of the Miaoyan Monastery. The text of this scroll, composed by the scholar-official Mou Yan (1227–1311), is a history of a Buddhist monastery near Zhao’s hometown. The scroll opens with a title piece written in large seal-script characters, a section that would have been engraved at the top of the stela on which the entire inscription would appear. The even, unmodulated strokes of the seal-script title set it off visually from the standard-script characters of the body text. Zhao’s innovative standard script combines the elegant fluidity of Wang Xizhi’s writing (on display in this gallery) and the structural solidity found in Tang dynasty (618–907) calligraphy. Within a few years of Zhao’s death, his standard-script calligraphy had become a popular model for woodblock-printed books.