Conveying the Spirit

In preceding chapters I have been concerned with elucidating the meaning of the Seven Worthies reliefs to the viewers for whom they were intended, and I have argued that they were pictorial symbols for a social ideal. I have also maintained that these are portraits, reliefs intended to be like specific individuals (whose historicity, including Rong Qiqi’s, was not doubted by either the makers or the viewers). The subjects portrayed had therefore to be seen not only as carriers of that ideal, as embodiments of values shared by certain social groups over time, but in ways that evoked a sense