Vase with landscape and poem

The landscape scene with a poetic inscription that wraps around the vase resembles an unfurled literati handscroll painting; the verse mentions a figure gazing at the mist that floats over a 'glassy expanse of emerald water." More so than scroll painters, who often favored ink brushwork, artists painting on ceramics tended to emphasize coloristic effects. The calligraphy on this vase is written in standard script, distinct brushstrokes within each character; moreover, each word looks as if it were written inside an imaginary square grid. Most of the poems decorating imperial porcelains are executed in a more cursive style of calligraphy. Some scholars wonder, therefore, if this vase is an early twentieth-century copy of a porcelain from the Qianlong period.