T'ao Ku Presenting a Lyric to   Ch'in Jo-lan T'ang Yin (1470-1523), Ming   Dynasty Hanging scroll, ink and colors on    silk, 168.8 x 102.1 cm

In the early Sung (960-1279), T'ao Ku (903-970) was Minister of Revenue who served as envoy to the small Five Dynasties kingdom of the Southern T'ang. T'ao was condescending to the Southern T'ang ruler. The Southern T'ang officials, angered by his rudeness, came up with a plot to send the courtesan Ch'in Jo-lan in the guise of the Station Officer's daughter to seduce T'ao. Alone in her company and unsuspecting of her identity, T'ao Ku was overcome by her beauty and neglected his official position, indiscreetly writing a poem for her. The next day, the Southern T'ang ruler gave a banquet for T'ao. At the banquet, T'ao again assumed an air of unbending dignity and unapproachability. The ruler then summoned Ch'in Jo-lan to perform a song based on the poem that T'ao had written for her the day before. T'ao was thereupon humiliated and lost his composure.     The figures, trees, plantain, and painting techniques of this work are similar to those in Tu Chin's "Enjoying Antiquities". T'ang Yin met Tu when he traveled to Peking in 1499. At that time, T'ang's style was not like that of Tu's. Thus, the style here belongs to the period after their meeting. Since the brushwork is similar to T'ang's "Sound of Pines on a Mountain Path," dated to 1516, these two works belong to the same period.