Bird on a Branch, Yuan-early Ming dynasty 14th century. Album leaf: ink and color on silk, 28.1 x 27.5 cm (painting). Museum Purchase, 1060:1920. © Saint Louis Art Museum 

This exquisite album leaf captures a fleeting moment of tension, just before a bird perched on a branch swoops in on its prey, a tiny insect on a leaf at lower left. The bird, insect, branches, leaves, and buds are rendered with consummate skill and detail, recalling the precision and realism of Northern Song academic court painting of bird-and-flower subjects.

The most famous exponent of this type of pseudoscientific illustration in Chinese painting is Emperor Huizong (1082–1135; r.1100–1125) of the Northern Song. After the reestablishment of the Southern Song painting academy in Lin’an (present day Hangzhou), the most well-known artist to specialize in this type of painting in the late 12th century was Lin Chun, to whom this work was formerly attributed.