During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, artistic changes were more reflected in the art of calligraphy, and regular script really appeared. Although the change of painting art is not as remarkable as calligraphy, the change of social atmosphere and the rise of Buddhist worship make the original simple and clear painting more complicated. Cao Buxing founded Buddhist painting, and his disciple Wei Xie developed on this basis. As one of the symbols of the maturity of painting, Gu Kaizhi, Zhang Sengyou and other famous painters have appeared in the south, and there are also, Cao, Tian Sangliang and so on in the north. The identity of the painter gradually entered the writing of history books and began to play an increasingly important role in social life.
During this period, figure painting (including Buddhist figure painting) and animal painting developed most prominently, while other disciplines of China painting were far from mature. The landscape in Luoshen Fu handed down from the Eastern Jin Dynasty was only used as the background for the story painting of characters, and the gradual independence of landscape painting did not tend to be completed until the late Southern and Northern Dynasties. The reason for this is also determined by the main task of painting in this period-serving the church and the country, "knowledge depends on painting mirrors." This is also a major feature of painting at that time.