Gu Kaizhi's Admonitions (c600). The Admonitions Scroll is a Chinese narrative painting on silk that is traditionally ascribed to Gu Kaizhi, but which modern scholarship regards as a 5th to 8th century work that may or may not be a copy of an original Jin Dynasty court painting by Gu. The full title of the painting is Admonitions of the Court Instructress. It was painted to illustrate a poetic text written in 292 by the poet-official Zhang Hua. The text itself was composed to reprimand Empress Jia and to provide advice to the women in the imperial court. The painting illustrates this text with scenes depicting anecdotes about exemplary behaviour of historical palace ladies, as well as with more general scenes showing aspects of life as a palace lady. The painting, which is now held at the British Museum in London, England, is one of the earliest extant examples of a Chinese handscroll painting, and is renowned as one of the most famous Chinese paintings in the world. The painting is first recorded during the latter part of the Northern Song, when it was in the collection of Emperor Huizong of Song. It passed through the hands of many collectors over the centuries, many of whom left their seals of ownership on the painting, and it eventually became a treasured possession of the Qianlong Emperor. In 1899, during the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, the painting was acquired by an officer in the British Indian Army who sold it to the British Museum. The scroll is incomplete, lacking the first three of the twelve original scenes, which were probably lost at an early date. A monochrome paper scroll copy of the painting, complete in twelve scenes, was made during the Southern Song, and is now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing, China. The painting was part of the 2010 BBC Radio 4 series, A History of the World in 100 Objects, as item 39. The Admonitions Scroll was painted to illustrate an eighty-line poetic text written in 292 by the Jin Dynasty official, Zhang Hua. Zhang Hua wrote his Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies as a didactic text aimed at Empress Jia, consort of Emperor Hui of Jin, whose violent and immoral behaviour was outraging the court. It is not known when the first painting in illustration to Zhang Hua's text was made, but a lacquer screen painting from the tomb of a Northern Wei Dynasty official by the name of Sima Jinlong that was excavated in 1986. It includes a panel illustrating the story of Lady Ban refusing to ride in the imperial litter, which corresponds to Scene 5 of the Admonitions Scroll. Although the text accompanying the lacquer painting is not from Zhang Hua's Admonitions, the painting does indicate that anecdotes recorded in Zhang Hua's text were used as subject matter for artists not long after Gu Kaizhi's death. It has been suggested that the original Admonitions Scroll may have been commissioned by the Jin Dynasty imperial court in order to express the dismay of the court officials to the murder of Emperor Xiaowu of Jin by his consort, Lady Zhang, who was never brought to justice. Although the painting was long thought to have been painted by Gu Kaizhi, the painting is not signed or sealed by the artist, and there is no record of Gu Kaizhi having painted such a painting in his biography or in any work which is contemporaneous with his life. The earliest mention of the painting is by the Song Dynasty painter and poet, Mi Fu, who records in his History of Painting that the Admonitions Scroll was in the collection of a palace eunuch by the name of Liu Youfang. Crucially, he also attributes the painting to Gu Kaizhi, but it is not clear whether this attribution was based on documentary evidence or whether this was simply his opinion based on the style of the painting. The next reference to the painting occurs in the Xuanhe Painting Manual, which is a catalogue of paintings in the collection of Emperor Huizong of Song that was compiled in 1120. The manual records the Admonitions Scroll as one of nine paintings in the imperial collection by Gu Kaizhi. This imperial authentication of the painting meant that no-one seriously doubted that the Admonitions Scroll was a work by Gu Kaizhi until modern times. The first suggestion that the painting was not an original Gu Kaizhi painting, but a Tang Dynasty copy, was made in a book written by Hu Jing in 1816. However, it was not until the 20th century that art historians determined on stylistic grounds that the painting cannot have been produced during the Jin Dynasty, and therefore cannot be an original work by Gu Kaizhi.