4.1.2. The Artists of Han Stone Reliefs

Judging from the available materials, the artists of Han stone reliefs were generally commoners. There are very few records about artists in the official historical records of the Han dynasty. Zheng Wuchang 鄭 午 昌 (1894–1952) provides statistics on this aspect in *Zhongguo huaxue quanshi* 中 國 畫 學 全 史 (A Complete History of Chinese Painting): "We have traceable records of six artists of the Western Han dynasty, namely Mao Yanshou 毛 延

壽, Chen Chang 陳 敞, Liu Bai 劉 白, Gong Kuan 龔 寬, Yang Wang 陽 望, and Fan Yu 樊 育; and six artists of the Eastern Han dynasty: Zhang Heng 張 衡, Cai Yong 蔡 邕, Zhao Qi 趙 歧, Liu Bao 劉 , Liu Dan 劉 旦, and Yang Lu 楊 魯" (Zheng 2009, p. 30). Among these recorded painters, none were stone relief artists, and this indicates the humble background of stone carvers and their lower social status compared with painters in the Han period. The only information available to us about Han stone carvers is contained in the captions (bangti 榜 題) to some stone carvings excavated from Han tombs. They are very brief and contain no biographical information about their creators except their name and occupation, which are given in a very informal or vague way as compared with the biographical accounts of painters in the official histories of the Han dynasty. Based on a close examination of the captions, Wang Jianzhong 王 建 中 offers a list of Han stone carvers in *Handai huaxiang shi tonglun* 漢 代 畫 像 石 通 論 (A General Discussion of Han Dynasty Stone Carvings). He writes: "To sum up, the known stone relief engravers and painters of the Han Dynasty were: Song Weijia 宋 威 甲, Song Wenjia 宋 文 甲, [surname unknown] Yi - 宜, Zhang Boyan 張 伯 嚴, Wei Zheng 衛 政, Wang Shu 王 叔, etc." (Wang 2001, p. 483).

Below is a table (Table 3) drawn on the basis of the materials provided by Wang Jianzhong about Han stone engravers known to us through the captions.


**Table 3.** List of captions with information about stone engravers.
