scroll painting

Art form practiced primarily in the Far East. The two dominant types are the Chinese landscape scroll and the Japanese narrative scroll. China's greatest contribution to the history of painting, the landscape hand scroll, reached its greatest period in the 10th–11th century with such masters as Xu Daoning and Fan Kuan. The Japanese scroll paintings of the 12th–13th century developed the storytelling potential of painting to its greatest extent. In the earliest, Murasaki Shikibu's literary masterpiece The Tale of Genji, the narrative is told in pictures alternating with text. Eventually the illustration stood nearly alone. Typical subjects were the stories and biographies popular during Japan's Middle Ages.

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