Page 84 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

proper mount for the Bodhisattva ManjusrT (Chinese, Wenshu Pusa), the
Bodhisattva of Transcendent Wisdom. Both its continuing presence in
Buddhist art and its appearance as decoration on a variety of foreign luxury
goods imported from afar over the fabled Silk Route sustained Chinese
interest in the lion in succeeding centuries. Under these dual influences,
depictions of lions came to grace a variety of secular goods during the Tang
dynasty, appearing not only on the decorated backs of bronze mirrors 3
and in the inhabited vine scrolls of gold and silver objects but indepen-
4
dently as sculptures in marble and ceramic ware. 5 Lions also appear as the
principal decorative motif on some Tang silver vessels, such as the shallow
silver bowl - excavated in 1970 from a mid-eighth-century site at Hejiacun,
near Xi'an - that features two confronting lions on its floor, each lion
grasping a floral scroll in its mouth. 6 By the late Song and Yuan dynasties,
lions were often shown at play, sometimes with a brocaded ball, 7 a theme
that commanded great popularity in the decorative arts of the Ming and
Qing, from lacquer and jade to ceramics and bronze. Interspersed with
sprigs of lingzhi fungus and grasping each others' tails [compare 13], the
lions on the Clague box are very much in the late Ming mode.
The floral motif on the inside of the cover reflects a genre of paint-
ing - cut branches set against an unembellished background - that arose
in the Southern Song period, as seen in a small painting by Zhao Mengjian
(1199-about 1267), now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei; in ink on
paper, the album leaf represents one branch each of pine, bamboo, and
blossoming plum, the so-called Three Friends of Winter/ arranged to form
8
a bouquet. Also by Zhao Mengjian, a handscroll in ink on paper portraying
a bed of flowering narcissus plants, 9 now in The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, represents the ancestor of the narcissus designs that orna-
ment a number of Ming lacquer and jade covered boxes, 10 and thus the
distant ancestor of the narcissus on the cover of the Clague box. Deriving
ultimately from Song painting, floral bouquets remained a popular feature
of Ming decorative arts, those of the late Ming characteristically including
a branch of lingzhi fungus. Many late Ming lacquers display a flowering
sprig or blossoming cut branch, 11 and a white jade plaque in the Chih-jou
Chai Collection, Hong Kong, reliably attributed to the late Ming period,
features a motif of narcissus, bamboo, and lingzhi fungus, 12 providing a
context for the design on the interior of the Clague box cover.
First appearing about the sixth century BC, China's earliest inlaid
bronzes were typically decorated with inlays of copper and semiprecious
stones (usually turquoise and malachite) arranged in angular patterns;

1 10 C H I N A ' S R E N A I S S A N C E IN B R O N Z E