Text translation: When a black bear climbed out of its cage, Lady Feng rushed forward.
How could she have been without fear? She knew she might be killed, yet she did not care.
This scene illustrates the story of Lady Feng, a consort of Emperor Yuan of Han (r. 48–33 BC), who in 38 BC placed herself in the path of a bear that had escaped from its cage during a wild animal fight show before the emperor, in an attempt to save the emperor's life – the bear was killed by the guards, and Lady Feng survived.
This is the first surviving scene in the British Museum copy (although the accompanying text is missing), and it shows Lady Feng confronting the bear, but being saved just in time by two guards with spears, and the emperor and two court ladies watching in horror on one side. The lady on the left of the scene is believed to be Lady Fu, who is noted to have run away from the bear in the biography of Lady Feng in the History of the Latter Han, thus indicating that the artist did not base the painting solely on Zhang Hua's text.
About Gu Kaizhi
Born around 345 in Wuxi ( Jiangsu province ) died around 406: one of the painters the most famous Chinese artists and the major artist of Chinese art in the 4th century . Known for his realistic portraits, he is considered the first great scroll painter, whereas previously the great painters mainly executed murals. He lived in the Eastern Jin Dynasty(265-420), South of China. Painter and poet, he is also the author of one of the first treatises on painting, the Notes on the Painting of the Mountain of the Terrace of the Clouds, which is linked to the birth of the painting of countryside.
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