n (ca. 1040-1106), for instance
painted the different breeds of horses in the imperial stables. He was
also famous for his Buddhistic figures. Another school, later called the
southern school, regarded painting as an intimate, personal expression.
They tried to paint inner realities and not outer forms. They, too, were
educated, but they did not paint for anybody. They painted in their
country houses when they felt in the mood for expression. Their
paintings did not stress details, but tried to give the spirit of a
landscape, for in this field they excelled most. Best known of them is
Mi Fei (ca. 1051-1107), a painter as well as a calligrapher, art
collector, and art critic. Typically, his paintings were not much liked
by the emperor Hui Tsung (ruled 1101-1125) who was one of the greatest
art collectors and whose catalogue of his collection became very famous.
He created the Painting Academy, an institution which mainly gave
official recognition to painters in form of titles which gave the
painter access to and status at court. Ma Yuean (_c_. 1190-1224), member
of a whole painter's family, and Hsia Kui (_c_. 1180-1230) continued the
more "impressionistic" tradition. Already in Sung time, however, many
painters could and did paint in different styles, "copying", i.e.
painting in the way of T'ang painters, in order to express their
changing emotions by changed styles, a fact which often makes the dating
of Chinese paintings very difficult.

Finally, art craft has left us famous porcelains of the Sung period. The
most characteristic production of that time is the green porcelain known
as "Celadon". It consists usually of a rather solid paste, less like
porcelain than stoneware, covered with a green glaze; decoration is
incised, not painted, under the glaze. In the Sung period, however, came
the first pure white porcelain with incised ornamentation under the
glaze, and also with painting on the glaze. Not until near the end of
the Sung period did the blue and white porcelain begin (blue painting on
a white ground). The cobalt needed for this came from Asia Minor. In
exchange for the cobalt, Chinese porcelain went to Asia Minor. This
trade did not, however, grow greatly until the Mongol epoch; later
really substantial orders were placed in China, the Chinese executing
the patterns wanted in the West.

5 _Military collapse_

In foreign affairs the whole eleventh century was a period of diplomatic
manoeuvring, with every po