Yang Xi
Although no autograph copies of Yang Xi's famous calligraphy have survived, one well-documented stone rubbing version of the revealed "Huangting jing" (黃庭經, Yellow Court Scripture) has been given special attention. The Song dynasty connoisseur and critic Mi Fu (1051-1107) analyzed four manuscripts of the "Huangting jing", and said the best one was written on a silk scroll with a provenance that he traced back to the early 8th century. Mi disagreed with a former owner Tao Gu (陶穀, 903-970) who said that Wang Xizhi wrote the manuscript, and concluded it was a superb example of calligraphy from the Six Dynasties period. The Ming dynasty calligrapher and painter Dong Qichang (1555-1636) was so impressed by the Mi Fu manuscript that he made a copy, recommend it as the best model for studying "kaishu" script, and included it as the first example in his classic "Xihong tang fatie" (戲鴻堂法帖, Calligraphy Compendium of the Hall of the Playful Goose). Dong's colophon attributed the calligraphy to Yang Xi himself and described it as "the traces of a holy immortal" (Ledderose 1984: 262-263, who calls Dong's attribution to Yang "extremely optimistic").
Palaeography
The oldest example of minuscule cursive writing that has been discovered is a letter on papyrus, found in Egypt, dating from the 4th century. This marks a highly important date in the history of Latin writing, for with only one known exception, not yet adequately explained—two fragments of imperial rescripts of the 5th century—the minuscule cursive was consequently the only "scriptura epistolaris" of the Roman world. The ensuing succession of documents show a continuous improvement in this form of writing, characterised by the boldness of the strokes and by the elimination of the last lingering majuscule forms. The Ravenna deeds of the 5th and 6th centuries exhibit this hand at its perfection.