Zhou Jichang

Chinese

Co-created Southern Song Five Hundred Arhats

Zhou Jichang(周季常) was a folk Buddhist painter during the Southern Song Dynasty in China. His exact birth and death years, as well as details of his life, are not recorded in official historical texts. He was from Ningbo, Zhejiang (then called Mingzhou). He was mainly active from the Chunxi to Qingyuan years of the Southern Song (around 1178–1200). Along with his fellow townsman Lin Tinggui, he worked as a painter in the Ningbo area, both creating folk Buddhist paintings. During the Chunxi period of Emperor Xiaozong's reign, they were invited by Yishao, the abbot of Hui’an Temple at Dongqian Lake, and together spent ten years creating the set of paintings known as the "Five Hundred Arhats."