During the Northern Wei Dynasty, Buddhism was advocated and the wind of carving holes and praying for blessings prevailed. "Stone Statue" is an inscription on the stone statue made at that time, full of superstitious religious color, but its words are the treasures of calligraphy art, which broke the weak calligraphy style of the Southern Dynasties, created a typical monument in the North, and spread to the world with masculine beauty.
Statue, that is, Buddha sculpture. Statues and monuments began in the Northern Wei Dynasty and ended in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Most of them were created by Sakyamuni, Maitreya, Guanyin and Shi Zhi. At first, it was nothing more than carving stones, cliffs, monuments, or temples, and then painting with gold. The sculptor calls himself a disciple of Buddha, a disciple who believes in Buddha, a clear woman and an excellent woman. Self-sculptors are called elephant masters, deputy elephant masters and so on.
The statue is 75 cm high and 39 cm wide. The inscriptions on Longmen statues generally have no calligrapher's name. Only Sun Qiusheng's tablet and inscription are engraved with the calligrapher's name, which is really commendable. Kang Youwei called them calligraphers in Tuesday's Boat, and further pointed out that Zhu Yizhang, the calligrapher of this monument, was better than Sun Qiusheng, commenting that "Zhu Yizhang is more important than Zhu Yizhang".
What font is the stone statue?
The Statue of Shiping was carved in Yang Wen, which is rare in stone carvings of past dynasties, but there are few writers and calligraphers in Weibei.
This tablet is an early work in the heyday of calligraphy art in the Northern Wei Dynasty. The whole tablet body is neat and elegant, which makes the neat and simple style of calligraphy in the Northern Dynasties smooth and elegant. For example, Yang Shoujing's "Pingbei Ji" says: "Gong Ping started with a wide victory." In particular, breaking away from the official pen, boldly innovating, turning softness into rigidity, and turning hiding into dew are really the splendor of the stone carvings in the North Monument.