Baohuilu 寶繪錄

Baohuilu 寶繪錄 is a book on painting written during the late Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Zhang Taijie 張泰階, courtesy name Yuanping 爰平, from Shanghai.

The book of 20 juan length was finished in 1633 and presents accompanying words (ti-ba 題跋) to nearly 500 paintings from the Southern Dynasties 南朝 (420-589) to the Ming period. The first fascicle is a general introduction. Juan 2-17 deal with albums (huace 畫冊), and the last three juan treat the topic of hanging scrolls (guafu 掛幅). The name of the book is derived from the fact that Zhang's collection of paintings was stored in his "Lodge of Precious Paintings" (Baohuilou 寶繪樓). Quite a few paintings in Zhang's collection seem to be forgeries, for instance, Cao Buxing's 曹不興 (3rd cent.) Haishu tu 海戍圖, which is not attested in any other books. This is also true for paintings of Gu Kaizhi 顧愷之 (c. 348-405), Lu Tanwei 陸探微 (d. c. 485), Zhang Sengyao 張僧繇 (b. 479) or Zhan Ziqian 展子虔 (c. 545-618) described in Zhang's book.