Page 141 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

brought back by a returning pilgrim. Under the influence of the
mystical Mahayana sects, an attempt was even made to incorpo-
rate the dome of the stiipa into a timber pagoda; none survives in
China, but the twelfth-century Tahoto of Ishiyamadera is a Japa-
nese example of this odd misalliance.
Until the dissolution of the monasteries in 845, their insatiable de- BUDDHIST
mands for icons, banners, and wall paintings absorbed the ener- SCULPTURE:
gies of the great majority of painters and sculptors. Some of the THE FOURTH PHASE
sculptors' names arc recorded: we read in Chang Yen-yuan 's his-
tory, for example, of Yang Hui-chih, a painter in the time of Wu
Tao-tzu, who "finding that he made no progress, took to sculp-
ture, which he thought was an easier craft." Chang also mentions
other pupils and colleagues of Wu who became noted for their
work in clay and stone; indeed, as we shall see, T'ang sculpture in
its extraordinary linear fluidity seems often to have been formed
by the brush rather than the chisel. Very little secular sculpture was
carried out, if we except the guardian figures and winged horses
and tigers that lined the "spirit way" leading to the tombs. The
earliest and most famous example of T'ang funerary sculpture is
the set of panels depicting in relief the six favourite chargers of
T'ang T'ai-tsung, executed, according to tradition, after designs
by the great court painter Yen Li-pen; the style is plain and vigor-
ous, the modelling so flat that the origin of these monumental sil-
houettes in line drawings seems not at all improbable. I J I Charger and his groom. Stone
relieffrom the tomb of the emperor
T'ai-tsung (died 649).

121
ted material