Page 148 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

as identical in style with two great stucco reliefs which he discov-
ered in the ruins of a monastery in Khotan. The banners also in-
clude a number of paradises and single deities (especially the in-
creasingly popular Kuanyin), painted in warm colours, with a
wealth of detail and floral ornament. The most appealing and
lively parts of these banners are the little panels at the sides, which,
like the prcdclla of a quattrocento altarpiece, tell in miniature the
story of the Buddha's life on earth, generally in a landscape set-
ting. It seems that until Tibetan esoteric Buddhism laid its cold
hand on Tunhuang. the Chinese painters there used a landscape
setting wherever they could. Sometimes, indeed, it dominates the
theme in a thoroughly un-Indian fashion. In Caves 103 (P 54) and
217 (P 70), for example, the old subdivision into superimposed
horizontal scrolls has been replaced by a panoramic landscape of
towering peaks that fills the whole wall. There is still a tendency to
break it up into smaller connected "space cells," and the transition
through the middle distance to the horizon is hardly better man-
aged than on the stone sarcophagus in Kansas City. But other
paintings at Tunhuang, notably the landscape vignettes in Cave
323 (P 137M), show that this problem was successfully solved in
the eighth century.
COURT PAINTING We must return from the rustic pleasures of Tunhuang naturalism
to the splendour of the T'ang court. A famous scroll in Boston
bearing portraits of thirteen emperors from Han to Sui has tradi-
tionally been attributed to Yen Li-pen, the son and brother of two
famous artists, who had been a court painter in attendance (tai-
chao) to T'ai-tsung and rose to the high office of Minister of the
Right under his successor. This handscroll—or part of it. for more
than half is a copy of the Sung Dynasty—is the very epitome of
the Confucian ideal, now restored to its proper place as the pivot
of Chinese society. While each group makes a monumental com-
position by itself, together they form a royal pageant of incompa-
rable dignity. The figures are full, the robes ample, the brush-line
fluent and of even thickness. Arbitrary shading is used with re-
straint to give volume to the faces, more generously in the folds of
the robes, as on the Amitabha in the Kondo at Horyuji.
In recent years our knowledge of T'ang painting has been sud-
denly enlarged by the opening of a group of richly decorated
princely tombs in Ch'ien-hsicn to the northwest of Sian. Is it per-
haps the hand of a pupil of Yen Li-pen that we see in the lovely
paintings that line the tomb of Princess Yung-t'ai? The unfortu-
nate girl was murdered, or forced to commit suicide, at the age of
seventeen by the "emperor" Wu Tse-t'ien. When that monstrous
woman died, the restored emperor built, in 706. a subterranean
tomb for his daughter, of which the walls were adorned with the
figures of serving girls. The drawing is free and vivacious,
sketchy yet perfectly controlled. These paintings, done solely for
1 58 Pilgrims and travellers in a
landscape. Landscape in the boneless the pleasure of the dead princess, bring us closer to an understand-
style. Detail of wall painting in Cave ing of T'ang courtly wall painting as it approached its climax in
217 (P 70). Tunhuang. T'ang Dynasty,
eighth century. the eighth century. Meanwhile, the vast double tomb of Kao-
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