This paper focuses on two points: it will discuss the complex background and reasons for a Ming Painter Shen Zhou(1427~1508)'s absorption by and fascination with the revival of the old painting styles of the Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan as seen through the context of the 15th century painting. And also the particular styles of each Four Great Masters, as well as their macroscopic features will be observed. Shen Zhou's imitation of old painting styles can be seen as having been achieved by locating his creativity at a point between the “vertical lineage”of his highly cultured and historically and artistically connected family, and the “horizontal lineage”of both the revivalist movement taking place at his time. His extraordinary network of acquaintances, which, among other things, gave him access to a great number of works from the Yuan Dynasty and earlier antiquities. Observing Shen Zhou's attitude towards revivalism, we notice his style of making the artist whom he was referring was adopted by later artists and adapted to the point of overtly inscribing “in the manner of □□”on the work itself. In practice, while he followed the old masters, the fact that he seriously considered his own personality when he created through “Xing”(興) also has a thread of connection with the Wang Yangming doctrine's emphasis on “Xin”(心). His attitude toward the painting of actual landscapes was based on tradition, by which he grasped the old masters'style and its complementary relation to nature. Above all, he made efforts to learn directly from the Dong Yuan-Ju Ran(abbreviated as Dong-Ju) and Jing Hao-Guan Tong(abbreviated as Jing-Guan) traditions, as had been his ultimate goal, and yet, since in Shen Zhou's period it was hard to view their actual works, he instead learned through the Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan (he was less influenced by Zhao Mengfu. Differing from Dong Qichang's view that the Four Great Masters all imitated the style of Dong-Ju, Shen Zhou stated consistently that not all of the four imitated Dong-Ju, because, in Shen Zhou's opinion, Ni Zan had instead followed Jing-Guan). Shen Zhou's preference for the Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan was quite different from the dichotomous viewpoint of the Late Ming Dynasty that was to follow. On account of Shen Zhou's adoption of the styles of Wang Meng, Huang Gongwang, Ni Zan and Wu Zhen (who was, relatively speaking, not widely known) as his major influences, they were later named the Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan by Dong Qichang and were deeply revered until the Qing Dynasty. Due to his own tastes, the effects of his elder family members, certain regional features, and the inspiration he drew from the older Wu artists, the influence of the Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan existed even in the early stages of Shen Zhou's painting. However, in Shen Zhou's actual work the styles of Ni Zan and Wu Zhen appear fairly late. In particular, Wu Zhen's influence became possible because Shen Zhou had an opportunity to appreciate a good deal of Wu's work around the 1480s. On the one hand, his early work in the Wang Meng and Huang Gongwang style was based on the work which Shen Zhou could easily appreciate around himself, and yet those early works were immature, as if they were synthetic. On the other hand, while following Wang Fu and Lu Zhi's interpretation of the works of Ni Zan and Wu Zhen, in his latter period Shen Zhou's own works in the style of Ni Zan and Wu Zhen reached a completely unique stage. Also, each painting style of the Four Great Masters contributed variously to the formation of Shen Zhou's painting styles: Wang Meng's dynamic screen process and longer screen format became Shen's screen style; Shen took Huang Gongwang's mountain style as the basic composition while exercising different artistic modes and eclecticism in the same paintings; Ni Zan's composition and motifs were in various ways repeatedly applied in Shen's albums, hand scrolls, and hanging scrolls; and, finally, Shen adopted Wu Zhen's sturdy brush strokes and lyrical atmosphere. However the grave “landscape of the mind”of the Yuan Dynasty painting became rather intimate, tame and exquisite in the works of Shen Zhou. Especially when Shen Zhou used the Wu Zhen style, which was drawn in unprecedented compositions while capturing the main feature of the landscape in the manner of two-dimensional plane paintings, we can see the highest level of his personality among his imitations of the Four Great Masters. Eventually, later painters came to understand Shen Zhou's works as a part of the Four Great Masters of the Yuan tradition, and his paintings by their influence unwittingly changed the image of Yuan dynasty paintings. As a special characteristic of Shen Zhou's imitation of the painting styles of old masters, an eclectic tendency of many different artistic modes is widely seen in most of his works. Also, the intention of the painter was accomplished through his chosen styles and the colophones written on the painting. In an unique deviation, Shen Zhou offered warm and intimate moods by placing peripheral objects of daily life into the painting - an addition to the style of the Four Great Masters. Therefore, Shen Zhou's approach remained unique, while painting after the styles of old masters, fangzuo(倣作), became later an inflexible formal style.