Song Dynasty Paintings Database (Work-in-Progress)

database last updated April 5th, 2021

This database contains extant paintings that are dated to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) or equivalent period in China. In this database, "painting" is defined as a portable artifact with silk or paper support, onto which ink or color pigments are applied with a brush. This definition excludes other image-bearing mediums such as murals, ink rubbings, and woodblock imprints.

This database is designed for conducting quantitative analysis on the development of painting formats in the Song dynasty. The preliminary results are under the directory "visualization."

This project is supported by the Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University.

Attributes

• Title: in Chinese, defined by the collecting institutes or transmitted from historical text
• Dynasty: approximate datings based on scholarly consensus, see dynastic tags
• Artists: confirmed, attributed 傳, anonymous 佚名
• Format: the current mounting of the painting
• H: the measurement of the painting's height in centimeter
• W: the measurement of the painting's width in centimeter
• A: the calculated painting's area in square centimeter
• Size: the categorization of painting size based on the benchmark of silk-width 幅, see Size tags
• Institute: the museum where the painting is currently collected
• Nationality: the country/region where the museum is located
• Source: where the painting can be found in a published catalog

Dynastic Tags

Since only a proportion of works have a definite date of origin, I used approximate periodization based on the scholars’ consensus in published sources. There are seven categories of periodization:

• S0: Unspecified period in the Northern Song (960-1127);
• NS1: Early to mid-Northern Song (960-1050);
• NS2: Mid to late-Northern Song (1050-1127);
• SS0: Unspecified period in the Southern Song (1127-1279);
• SS1: Early to mid-Southern Song (1127-1200);
• SS2: Mid to late-Southern Song (1200-1279);
• S: Unspecified period between the Northern and Southern Song (960-1279).

Size Tags

• Small (S): both height and width measured under 55 cm
• Medium (M): both height and width measured between 55 to 110 cm
• Large (L): both height and width measured between 110 to 220 cm
• Extra large/long (XL): height or width exceeds 220 cm

Sources of Data

• Academica Sinica 中央研究院, Tuxiang ziliao ku 圖像資料庫 (Repository of Image Sources), Gongxiang yu shuxiang shiba shiji qian Dongya wenhua yixiang de huiju liuchuan yu bianyi 共相與殊相: 十八世紀前東亞文化意象的匯聚、流傳與變異 (Commonality and Divergence: The Convergence, Transmission, and Variation of Cultural Images of East Asia before the 18th Century), last updated in 2014, accessed by http://eastasia.litphil.sinica.edu.tw/database.php.

• National Palace Museum 國立故宮博物院, Shuhua diancang jiansuo xitong 書畫典藏檢索系統 (Index of paintings and calligraphy collection), accessed by https://painting.npm.gov.tw/.

• Center of Historical Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 中國古代書畫研究中心, Songhua Quanji 宋畫全集 (Complete Collection of Song Dynasty Paintings). 8 volumes. Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2008-2021.

• Compiled by the working group for authenticating historical chinese painting and calligraphy 中國古代書畫鑒定組. Zhongguo Gudai Shuhua Mulu 中國古代書畫目錄 (Illustrated Catalogs of Selected Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy). 24 volumes. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1984-1997.

• Cahill, James. An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1980.

• Compiled by Tōkyō Daigaku Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo Higashi Ajia Bumon Bijutsu Kenkyū Bun'ya 东京大学东洋文化研究所东アジア部门美术研究分野 (Department of East Asian art at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Tokyo University), Chūgoku Kaiga Sōgō Zuroku 中国絵画総合図錄 (Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings). 16 volumes. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1982 - 2013.