Reflections on the Authenticity of Wang Zhenpeng's The Holy Map of Confucius

This paper is a re-examination of the existing theories about the creator of The Holy Map of Confucius(｢孔子聖蹟圖｣). Although paintings depicting Confucius, revered as the greatest philosopher and educator of Chinese antiquity, date from as early as the Han Dynasty, most of them depict episodic events or representations of Confucius. Unlike these paintings, The Holy Map of Confucius is a kind of great man's picture book or great man's picture scroll, which is a multi-page collection of meaningful events from Confucius' life. The theory that Wang Zhenpeng(王振鵬) of the Yuan Dynasty was the creator of The Holy Map of Confucius, which combines text and images, has been around for more than 100 years, but only recently has it been challenged. In 1445, Deng Chi(鄧棨) stated that the illustrations, descriptions, and Zan(贊) in the Holy Map of Confucius were created by Zhang Kai(張楷), but unfortunately, this source has not been used to identify the creator of The Holy Map of Confucius Advanced researchers who support the theory of Wang Zhenpeng's authorship have relied on the texts attached to the back of the painting as their main source of evidence, but If we carefully observe the explanatory text and Zan on the picture, and the years of birth and death of the people who wrote the postscrip, may lead to the conclusion that the extant Wang Zhenpeng's Confucius Saint Painting is not an authentic work and may be a forgery made by a craftsman.