Test of Skill on the Double Seventh Day

Test of Skill on the Double Seventh Day

• Image Number: K2A001607N000000000PAD
• Dynasty: Ming dynasty
• Category: Paintings
• Author: 仇英
• Form: 卷
• Exhibition dimension: 27.9×388.3
• Description:
  Qixi Festival is also called “Qiqiao Festival” and “Daughter’s Day”. The most important custom is women’s begging activities. In the evening of Qixi Festival, women used colored threads to thread seven hole needles, and set incense tables in the courtyard, with melons, flowers, wine, sewing, etc., begging for skills from the Weaver Maid. In the Song Dynasty, they also put a kind of small clay figurine “grinding, drinking, and enjoying” as a sacrifice to gods. This painting is about women begging for skills. The stars hang high in the sky. Women gather in the courtyard to worship against the stars. They sincerely hope that they can be as skillful as weavers. Among them, women thread needles against the stars. The whole painting is mainly line drawing with elegant characters, but the pen is weak and weak, which is different from Qiu Ying’s delicate and delicate brushwork. It should not be his work.