Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1764 All Important

After turning over the paintings of the Eight Blessings one by one, Fourth Aunt went to rest, leaving Zhou Zhi alone in the room.

He put on some light music and turned the volume down to a barely audible level, then Zhou Zhi began to adjust the painting silk to make it complete again.

A few days ago, Zhou Zhi had prepared several shades of imitation Song Dynasty silk, which came in handy now. He soaked them one by one and compared them with the base color of the painting to choose the closest one.

After roughly adjusting the painting silk, Zhou Zhi pressed a piece of rice paper on it, brushed it with paste water, then turned it over again, moistened it with water again, and this time began to carefully piece together the details on the back.

This is the final splicing, and it must be seamless. After the splicing is completed, the cracks, wormholes, and rotten parts on the silk surface must be filled one by one with imitation Song Dynasty silk, and the warp and weft must be aligned, in order to achieve "natural work of mending" and no traces of repair can be seen at all.

This is also a very meticulous job. After finishing, a layer of paper is pasted on the back of the picture, then turned over and pasted on the cloth wall, and the original backing paper on the surface is removed. The repair work of a painting silk is completed.

It was not until he climbed up the wall that Zhou Zhi realized that his fourth cousin had been standing beside him for who knows how long: "Fourth cousin is up?"

"You've been up for a while. When I came in, you were fixing the crack on the cypress tree." The fourth cousin smiled and said, "I haven't noticed until now. Elbow is not only skilled now, but also brave."

"The main reason is that I have repaired many famous paintings, so I am not as scared as I was at the beginning." Zhou Zhi laughed and said, "When I first repaired Jing Hao's "Shu Mountain Picture", I was so scared. I kept telling myself that there was nothing here and it was easy to repair, but the tweezers in my hand just couldn't get to the painting."

“Hahahaha…” The fourth cousin laughed: “I told you to be brave at that time, and you didn’t need me to watch you. I thought you were really not afraid!”

After painting the image of Wang Rong on the cloth wall, Zhou Zhi was very satisfied with his restoration skills this time: "I didn't have such a smooth time repairing the silk scroll before. This is the feeling I got after repairing the six-hand scroll."

"You can do it. Practice with Zhao Lingrang's "Geese", Zhao Mengfu's "Washing Horses", and Han Gan's "Horse Nature". Even the seniors are not as lucky as you."

"I didn't let this opportunity down, did I?" Zhou Zhi looked at the wet portrait of Wang Rong on the wall, and said proudly with his hands on his hips: "Now I am not afraid of silk or paper copies anymore."

"Don't be so proud." The fourth cousin was actually pleased and impressed by Zhou Zhi's progress, but he still said, "Your level will be truly tested when you practice Mingjuan."

The restoration was completed quickly in the next few days. The fastest one was my fourth cousin, as the three calligraphy inscriptions were small in size and from a later period, so he was familiar with the process.

By the time Zhou Zhi had repaired the eight paintings on silk, his fourth cousin had already completed the ink for the inscriptions.

Li Zhaoqing's inscriptions and the postscripts by Cai Xiang, Chen Shidao and Xu Qin are now all brand new and fully meet the standards for mounting.

Although it is still in the restoration stage, Zhou Zhi could not help but transmit the digital photos to the capital so that Grandpa Wang and Grandpa Qi could enjoy them first.

To fully preserve the details of a picture, the size after compression is 6M, which is roughly enough to meet the clarity of the image on A3-sized photo paper. The uplink rate of the dial-up MODEN can theoretically reach up to 33.7K, but that is a theoretical value. In fact, in places like Jiachuan, it can only reach a terrible 2K.

That is to say, it takes fifty minutes to transmit a picture, and it takes an entire night to transmit eight pictures of people and three postscripts and four articles.

This is only possible because Zhouzhi has developed two small software programs, automatic dialing and breakpoint resume, which can achieve uninterrupted transmission.

Fortunately, satellite transmission is much faster, thirty-two times faster than current dial-up transmission. The manifestation of production efficiency in information technology can be most clearly reflected in the signal transmission rate.

The reaction in the capital was shock. The discovery of this painting also calmed a huge controversy, namely the issue of the original author of the brick paintings in the four tombs of the Southern Qi Dynasty in Jinling.

In the academic circles before, there was actually some controversy about who the author of the brick painting was. In addition to the Lu theory, there were also the Gu theory and the Zhang theory, which believed that the author might also be Gu Kaizhi and Zhang Sengyou.

Especially Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei and him can be said to be of the same lineage, and their painting styles are very similar. In the absence of sufficient works handed down from generation to generation, it can basically be said that each has his own reasons.

Now, with so many pieces of evidence linked together, the scroll of "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi" in Zhou Zhi's hand can be confirmed as Li Zhaoqing's authentic imitation of Lu Tanwei.

Before reaching this point, there is still a doubt that needs to be clarified, because Li Zhaoqing inscribed on it "Lu Tanwei's Picture of the Sages in the Bamboo Grove, presented to the Academy of Painting by Li Zhaoqing, Fengyi Lang, Hanlin Attending Officer", so judging by the meaning of the wording, it can be understood that it is Lu Tanwei's original painting, which was sent to the Northern Song Palace after Li Zhaoqing discovered it, or it can be understood that Li Zhaoqing was ordered to copy it, and this is the copy submitted after the copying was completed.

There is a similar controversy about the "Five Stars and Twenty-Eight Constellations" now stored in an island country. However, Zhou Zhi solved this problem well based on the production date of the silk. According to the analysis and research of the painted silk, this is a copy from the Song Dynasty.

But there is no point in people in the capital being anxious, as the other three pictures are equally important.

There is a great possibility that the lower volume of Gu Kaizhi's "Biographies of Women of Benevolence and Wisdom" is from the same painting as the upper volume, just like the upper and lower volumes of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". Its discovery can greatly supplement the research on the original painting, and its importance is self-evident.

In addition to the postscript by Mi Fu attached to Cao Buxing's "Image of Ruyilun Bodhisattva", it is also the only work of Cao Buxing handed down from generation to generation. How can you say it is not important?

  There are many works of Zhang Sengyou that have caused a sensation around the world. However, except for the "Five Stars and Twenty-Eight Constellations" copied by Liang Lingzan in Osaka, which is the authentic work handed down from generation to generation, the rest, such as the "Fish Basket Guanyin" collected in the United States, the "Snow Mountain Red Trees" and "Purple Eggplant" in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, are all pseudonymous works, even though they have inscriptions by Zhao Mengfu and Wang Yangming.

The "Hanwu Shooting the Dragon" in Zhou Zhi's hand also faces such a situation. It is very difficult to identify because of the lack of sufficient evidence. Zhou Zhi can only prove that it is a copy from the Song Dynasty, but who copied it and whether it is 100% the famous "Hanwu Shooting the Dragon" by Zhang Sengyou in "History of Painting" are still to be determined.

However, there is a huge difference between this "Emperor Wu of Han Shooting the Dragon" and all the later "Emperor Wu of Han Shooting the Dragon" paintings. That is, the Emperor Wu of Han is not wearing the twelve-tassel crown that is popular in such paintings of later generations, but a crown that reaches the sky.

This is also the only painting of "Emperor Wu of Han Shooting a Dragon" known to Zhou Zhi. This alone greatly increases the authenticity of the painting.