夏文彥（約1312-1370）的《圖繪寶鑑》一書出版於一三六六年，可說是當時一本最為精要的中國繪畫全史，提供了一千四百七十八個自第三世紀以來至十四世紀中國畫家的傳記，也介紹了一些重要理論。這本書甫自出版，即擁有不少讀者，並且傳到日本，其時間不晚於十五世紀初期。然而，相對於它在市場上的成功，《圖繪寶鑑》作為一個跨越海洋，溝通中日的藝術文本，它的重要性卻少為近代學者所注意。本文即希望由重新檢視《圖繪寶鑑》此書的編輯與出版出發，觀察它如何成為一本成功的畫學參考書，又對其讀者究竟形塑了何種畫史知識，並探討這些知識在中國與日本的繪畫發展上所起的作用。

Xia Wenyan’s The Precious Mirror of Painting is taken as the focus of this study for its prominent position in the historical Sino-Japanese context. Published in 1366 and brought to Japan no later than the early 15th century, it is a concise, but complete description of the history of Chinese painting, offering 1,478 biographies of painters from the 3rd to the 14th century. Despite recognizing the great popularity it has enjoyed since its first publication, traditional Chinese scholars have revealed a quite negative attitude toward The Precious Mirror of Painting in criticizing the unsystematic manner of its compilation and the irresponsible appropriation in its handling of earlier sources. However, its historical significance as the first reference book on the history of Chinese painting is still worth noting. Despite its shortcomings in compilation, The Precious Mirror of Painting does make considerable contributions in providing useful art-historical knowledge, particularly in its sections on the Southern Song and Yuan painters. This paper especially focuses on Xia Wenyan’s distinctive emphasis on artistic genealogy in carefully enumerating an artist’s models and teachers. His writing is the first among contemporary critical works in giving Li Tang the highest evaluation among Southern Song academy painters and assertively proclaiming Xia Gui to be the most important follower of Li. The establishment of this Li Tang─Xia Gui lineage and the high praises that came along with it must have generated a new wave of interest among the readers of The Precious Mirror of Painting toward this group of painters. It is within this context that many landscape paintings of the Li-Xia style were brought back to Japan. Among them, the pair of Landscape by Li Tang in the Koto-in Temple collection is the most famous. The Precious Mirror of Painting also offers an intriguing description of the genealogy of painters depicting “cloudy mountains.” Painters such as Mi Youren and Gao Kegong are substantially presented in the text as modern art historians would expected, but most interestingly, the monk Yujian is also included in this group and given the most detailed treatment regarding his artistic accomplishment. As a keen observer of the contemporary art circle, Xia Wenyan apparently noticed the popularity of the subject matter in the field and felt a need to offer a framework to explain its historical development. In addition to this, Sesshu’s acquaintance with the text of The Precious Mirror of Painting is also discussed in the paper. As a non-Chinese painter, Sesshu showed a surprisingly high degree of interest in Xia’s “cloudy mountain” genealogy and apparently paid special attention to the biography of Yujian. Although one can never understanding what Sesshu actually learned through his emulation of Chinese models available to him, his concept of ink painting, his sense of painting history and his act of constructing an artistic genealogy for himself are basically derived from Xia’s text. Viewed from this perspective, we could argue that the text of The Precious Mirror of Painting not only set a fundamental guideline for Japanese responses toward ink painting but also functioned as an effective channel connecting China and Japan together in the 15th century.