Chenghua Emperor
Prior to this the cobalt had been brilliant in colour, but with a tendency to bleed in firing; by adding manganese the colour was duller, but the line crisper. Xuande porcelain is now considered among the finest of all Ming output. Enamelled decoration ("such as the one at left") was perfected under the Chenghua Emperor (1464–87), and greatly prized by later collectors. Indeed, by the late 16th century, Chenghua and Xuande era works – especially wine cups – had grown so much in popularity, that their prices nearly matched genuine antique wares of the Song dynasty or even older. This esteem for relatively recent ceramics excited much scorn on the part of literati scholars (such as Wen Zhenheng, Tu Long, and Gao Lian, who is cited below); these men fancied themselves arbiters of taste and found the painted aesthetic 'vulgar.'