Page 167 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

182 Kuanyin. Sculpture in wood and
gesso, painted and gilded. Late Sung or
being sentimental. In this beautiful figure, a potential extrava-
Yuan Dynasry.
gance of effect is held delicately in check by the refinement of
Sung taste.
At another level, Sung sculpture could be anything but refined.
Although, after the mid-T'ang, institutional Buddhism appealed
less and less to the intelligentsia, its doctrines of rewards and pun-
ishments continued to exert their hold on the common people.
Some very down-to-earth Sung religious art was produced for the
edification of the masses. Among the most astonishing examples
of Sung sculptural realism is the figure of a soul suffering the tor-
ments of hell, one of hundreds of reliefs carved by unknown