Mingsha, which literally means "famous mountains," refers to a group of mountains in China that have been set apart for special veneration since ancient times. Over the centuries, the "famous mountains" as a conceptual term has been continually (re)invented, (re)framed and (re)appropriated by different ideological systems. Treating landscape painting as yet another framing system, in both the symbolic and material sense, this book examines sixteenth-century paintings of famous mountains by three major artists in the light of a diachronic account of the evolution of famous mountains over time...