Sūn Guòtíng 孫過庭
Style name Qiánlǐ 虔禮 (or perhaps personal-name; the convention is unsettled). Native of Wújùn 吳郡 / Chénliú 陳留; the secondary sources are inconsistent. Born ca. 646; died ca. 691. Active in the Wǔ Zétiān period.
The author of the Shūpǔ 書譜 (KR3h0005) — completed Chuígǒng 3 (687) — universally regarded as the foundational systematic calligraphy treatise in the Chinese calligraphic tradition. The work is preserved both as written-text and as the original autograph manuscript (the calligraphic original survives in the National Palace Museum, Tàiběi, and is one of the most celebrated examples of Tang cǎoshū (cursive script) calligraphy). The work’s status as both content-text (calligraphy theory) and form-exemplar (master-example of cursive script) is unique in Chinese cultural history.
Sūn Guòtíng’s Shūpǔ articulates the foundational Chinese calligraphic-aesthetic theory: the zhìyán cuòcǎo (regular-and-cursive flow), the bǐzhèn tǐshì (brush-camp body-configuration), the xīnshǒu xiāngyìng (heart-and-hand mutually-correspondent), the gǔjīn lièbài (ancient-and-modern arranged-and-displayed) — concepts that would shape every subsequent Chinese calligraphic-theoretical discussion through the late imperial period.
His other documented work — Liùshū lùn — is lost.