This paper takes Dunhuang Grottoes murals in the early and flourishing period of Tang Dynasty as the research object to explore the manifestation of landscapes in Dunhuang murals in the early Tang Dynasty. First of all, this article starts from the compositional elements of landscapes in the murals of the early and flourishing period of Tang Dynasty, and decomposes them into mountains, stones, trees, water and clouds to analyze their element styles respectively. In the early Tang Dynasty, the murals were dominated by shading, supplemented by delineating, while during the flourishing period of Tang Dynasty, the murals inherited the style in the early Tang Dynasty, where both complicated variations and new styles existed and a proper position and respective reflection were also found in the grottoes, which shows that at this time, the grotto art was rich in diversity and maturity, forming a multi-coexistence situation. Secondly, this paper analyzes the portrayal and shaping of the environment in the early and flourishing period of Tang Dynasty. Combining with other elements such as people, animals, ruler paintings, and traffic means beyond the landscape composition, the reference motifs are divided into field, royal court and celestial temple for discussion. Furthermore, the main processing methods of spatial structure during this period are studied, involving the guidance of the sight line in the Grottoes, the segmentation within the wall surface, the spatial representation in the picture, the narrative mode, viewpoint setting, and the relationship between elements so as to find out the origin of history and geographical relationship and their relevance, with a view to sorting out the development vein of Dunhuang mural landscape and the influence it has suffered, and briefly exploring the issues of draft painting and blank space, etc. Finally, this article explores the significance and value of Dunhuang mural landscape in this period to the later Dunhuang murals and related landscape paintings and analyzes the cognition of people to the landscape concept in the painting history and theory of Tang Dynasty reflected by the landscape manifestation in Dunhuang murals. From the narrative function converted to the symbolic meaning, the independent standards of the landscape painting branch are thus discussed.
