Page 136 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

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Fig. 4. Buddha Sakydmuni (below); Buddhas Sakyaniuni
and Prabhutaratna (above). Rock carvings. Cave 11,
Yungang, Shanxi Province.

Northern Wei policy of adopting Han culture Fig. 5. Biographies of Virtuous Women. Dated to

intensified, and was reflected in Buddhist sculpture: 484. Painted lacquer screen. Tomb oj Sima Jinlong and his
wife, Shijiazhai village, Datong, Shanxi Province.
the previously common garment that draped both
found among the figures of worshipers in the
shoulders or bared the right shoulder was no longer
Sakyamuni's attire; rather, he was portrayed wearing above-mentioned Yungang and Longmen caves, as

the Confucian scholar's loose gown and wide sash. well as among the earthen burial figures and the
The face and torso also were transformed
paintings and stone carvings in Northern Wei
increasingly from square and powerful to thin and
tombs of the Luoyang years. Among these secular
elongated. The earliest dated example of this new
type of Buddha statue is found on the upper east figures, the earliest known examples from the north

side outside Cave 11 atYungang (No. 11:14, which are the persons painted on a lacquer screen found
is numbered lid by Mizuno Seiichi and Nagahiro
in the tomb of Sima Jinlong and his wife. The
Toshio in ThcYungang Caves). An inscription dated
screen, discovered in the village of Shijiazhai in
to 489 is carved below the grotto. Thereafter,
elaborate flowing drapery and elongated faces and Datong, dates from 474—484 (fig. 1 There is some
figures became the vogue and spread throughout
the Northern Wei domains (fig. 4).TheYungang 5).
cave sculptures from 489 to 524 are the most
representative of this style. In 493 the capital was speculation that this screen may have been
moved from Datong in Shanxi Province, near the
Yungang caves, to Luoyang in Henan Province. The imported from southern China at about that time.
various sculptures from the Guyang Cave at
Longmen near Luoyang similarly display the The scholar's loose robe and sash, elegant
characteristics of this era. During the late Qing
dynasty a carved stone panel donated by one Liu physiognomy, and purity of image characterize
Gen, dated to 524, was unearthed in Dongyipu,
human figures of the Eastern Jin and Liu Song eras.
Luoyang (cat. 152). Some of the figures in the In 847 Zhang Yanyuan of the Tang dynasty

middle of the tablet exquisitely exemplify the (61S—907) compiled the Lidai mingh.ua ji ("Record
slender, linearly rendered figures of relatively late of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties"). 2 In it,
date. Buddhist icons were not the only images in the Jin and Liu Song dynasties are referred to as the
this style: good examples of the same style are Era of Middle Antiquity, and in volume 2 of this
work the painters of the Era of Middle Antiquity

are thus critiqued:

ORIGINS AND TRENDS IN THE DEPICTION OF HUMAN FIGURES