# Man, Buffalo, and Calf

- By: Li You (Chinese, active c. 1145)
- Date: 1145
- Medium: album leaf; ink and color on silk
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: Image: 25 x 26.7 cm (9 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.); with mat: 33.3 x 40.5 cm (13 1/8 x 15 15/16 in.)
- Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
- Credit line: Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1960.41)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/cma/1960.41/1960.41_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Here, a herdboy tending a cow with a calf is sitting beneath a tree with his pet myna bird. The painting can be read as a pastoral scene. As the water buffalo helped plow the fields, it was perceived as an animal that endures hard work without gain for itself, often interpreted as a metaphor for the official.

Ox-herding pictures, presented as gifts in court circles, were used for their moral and political rhetoric. The Yijing (Book of Changes) states, The Receptive is the earth, the mother . . . it is a cow with a calf . . . the multitude \[in relation to the ruler\].