Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Cao Zhi Composing Poetry
Not on view
This print depicts Cao Zhi (192–232), a renowned poet with a tragic life, as a fragile youth standing on the foreground stairs. Resented for his literary talent by his powerful elder brother, the large figure sitting at the table, he was ordered to compose a poem within the time span of seven steps or suffer capital punishment. The monumental landscape screen transforms the finely detailed terrace into a stagelike space in which the human drama plays out.