Song: landscape and porcelain

Monumental mountains in ink, a quiet celadon glaze and an emperor who was himself a painter – the Song is regarded as the high point of Chinese art.

After the fall of the Tang and a brief period of division – the Five Dynasties – the Song was founded in 960 and reunited the empire. It was an age of cities, trade, printed books and an educated class of officials selected through examinations.

Landscape painting, shanshui – mountains and water – became the foremost genre. Fan Kuan and Guo Xi painted vast mountains rising out of the mist, with human figures dwarfed beneath them. Under the Southern Song the images became more intimate and lyrical, with empty spaces that breathe.

Ceramics reached a refinement that has never been surpassed. The five famous kilns – Ru, Guan, Ge, Jun and Ding – produced porcelain and stoneware with simple forms and glazes in celadon green, sky blue and ivory white.