Baohuilu and Its Paintings: Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Art

Baohuilu (Treasure of Paintings) is a late Ming period painting catalogue, which recorded over 660 paintings by most famous artists from Three Kingdom (220-280) to Ming dynasty (1368-1644). However, the paintings listed in Baohuilu were posthumously proved to be fake and its author Zhang Taijie (1588-1647?), a high-level literati (Jinshi 1619), was blamed for having forged the whole collection in pursuit of social or economic gains. Even though the paintings recorded were counterfeit, Baohuilu still made an impact on the Chinese art history. Painting in Zhang Taijie's collection even entered the Qing dynasty imperial collection. This lecture will give an in-depth analysis of the book Baohuilu and take three paintings as example to discuss various issues of authenticity in Chinese art.