As mentioned earlier, China's early statues were mostly attached to the base or back of niches. Because they are only used to take notes, and the producers are mostly craftsmen with low education, their book style is mostly rough and not taken seriously. But there are also exquisite works that reflect the characteristics of the times in calligraphy style and font. For example, the Ta Ming written by Cao Tiandu in the first year of Tianan in the Northern Wei Dynasty (466) is now in the National Museum of History in Taipei. It is the style of official script, and the horizontal portrait of China Palace is symmetrically inclined at the left and right ends like the cornices. It is also the result of exaggerated changes in the brushwork of Han Li's Silkworm Head and Goose Tail, which has a strong sense of decoration. On the other hand, the overall emphasis on the front and square cutting brushwork, full of sharp brushwork modeling, full of collision between lines, gives people a strong aesthetic impression. Nishikawa Ning and other scholars believe that the calligraphy style of this kind of statue in the early Northern Wei Dynasty was completely different from that of Erwang, which was popular in the Southern Dynasties at that time, and it was a good trace for the Northern Wei Dynasty to inherit the tradition of "Five Hu Shu Dao". It reflects the fact that the northern part of China has been controlled by foreigners for a long time, and the pace of character transformation is slow. His style and writing style reflected the special spirit of the times and regions at that time.
In 494, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty moved the capital to Luoyang. At this time, the sinicization reached its climax, and the calligraphy style also changed. Longmen Grottoes also became a treasure house of calligraphy art in the Northern Wei Dynasty. Its font is the so-called "Wei stele". The calligraphy of these statues was valued by the world only after the rise of epigraphy and epigraphy in Qing Dynasty. At this time, the famous calligrapher and seal engraver Huang Yi (Komatsu) began to appear in the world. Scholars of epigraphy in Qing Dynasty paid much attention to the four works of Shi, Sun Qiusheng and Wei Lingzang. Later, it was increased to ten, followed by twenty, as a masterpiece in the Longmen statue. However, the most famous of them is the selected four works, such as Stone.
The style of this statue is very similar to that of stone. The pen used is folded in the middle and stretched out, but the degree of tightening is slightly lighter than that of stone, which may also be the reason why the male engraving is different from the female engraving. Regarding the inscription calligraphy in the Northern Dynasties, Bao mentioned in Qing Dynasty that calligraphers should learn with the brushwork of "ten thousand strokes" and "five fingers". Today, Sha Menghai criticized this attitude of "everything is fine", thinking that the calligraphy features of these statues are caused by knife carving, which has nothing to do with brushwork. In fact, no matter whether these statues and inscriptions show brushwork or knife technique, from the perspective of book history research, they have all been recognized as calligraphy works in the Northern Wei Dynasty, and there has been a tendency of southern dynasties under the policy of sinicization.
With people's attention to statues, there was a trend of famous calligraphers writing calligraphy for statues in Sui and Tang Dynasties. Through the famous calligraphy, the high level of portrait calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty was guaranteed, and the portrait calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty was included in the model of calligraphy history at that time. Among them, the most famous one is the Yi Que Buddhist Shrine Monument written by Chu Suiliang (596-658), one of the four schools in the early Tang Dynasty. In fact, compared with other regular scripts in the Tang Dynasty, this tablet is characterized by horizontal, vertical, square and wide structure, so it has a strong sense of courtesy and is similar to Master Meng's tablet. Therefore, Kang Youwei's Talk on Guang Yi and Zhou Shuang holds that "a poetry publication" is one-eighth of the law because of "hanging the pen and doing the writing". "
It is to pay attention to its grandeur and elegance, and think that this is the aesthetic feeling of inheriting the style of the Northern Dynasties. However, although Chu Suiliang is known as the master of the calligraphy style of the Northern Dynasties, his calligraphy style is not the same as that of the Northern Dynasties. The shapes of horizontal, vertical, left-off, left-off and hook strokes seen in this monument are still full of beautiful arcs, rather than the straight and pointed effects in the statues of the Northern Dynasties. The rhythm of lines is soft, deep and delicate, and the conception is accurate and elegant, so as to transcend the North Monument. The writing style of Yi Que Buddhist Shrine Monument adapts to people's love for harmony and nature, and is similar to the writing style of the preface to Sanzang's holy teachings in his later years. Therefore, A Qing writer Liu Xizai commented in "Introduction to Art": "The victory of Europe and danger is drawn up in kindness and holy coke."
In addition to calligraphy, in terms of tablet shape, as mentioned above, the carving of decorative patterns and themes not only inherits the tradition of Han tablets, but also has different designs with the evolution of the times, so it also fully reflects the carving style and aesthetic feeling of different times. For example, Zeng Buchuan's Kuanbian re-determined the excavation age of Binyang Cave 3 in Longmen according to the shape and position design of a stone tablet of a Buddhist niche. And Gang also used the carving styles of decorative themes such as Buddha, Heaven and Man, and God General in the Preface to Sanzang to study the influence of Buddhist statues in Chang 'an area in the early Tang Dynasty on the Northern Zhou Dynasty at the end of the 6th century and the Western Regions at the end of the 7th century. It can be seen that the artistic value of tablet-shaped statues is actually the result of the combination of Buddhist sculpture and calligraphy.