Page 104 - Ming Porcelain Auction March 14, 2017 Sotheby's, NYC

102 SOTHEBY’S NEW YORK 14 MARCH 2017 MING: THE INTERVENTION OF IMPERIAL TASTE

12 Fan Jeremy Zhang Royal

The squatting gure in the radiating medallion bears a strong resemblance to Taste The Art of Princely Courts in Fifteenth
images of Garuda, the Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist King of the Birds. In Indian
and Himalayan traditions, Garuda is depicted with wings, a beak, human arms, century China 2015 66
and either human or eagle-like legs. Myths identify him as the sworn enemy
of snakes, and he therefore serves an apotropaic function. Garuda is also a Steven M Kossak Jane Casey Singer
guardian of wealth and treasures, and is associated with the sun and re. The Sacred Visions Early Paintings from
tomb of Prince Zhuang of Liang (d. 1441) at Zhongxiang (Hubei) contained a gold
plaque bearing an image of Garuda that is strikingly similar to that on the ewer, CentraliTibet 1998
with the King of Birds squatting atop an interwoven network of snakes within a 25
medallion, included in Fan Jeremy Zhang, Royal Taste: The Art of Princely Courts
in Fifteenth-century China, New York, 2015, cat. no. 66 ( g. 3). At the same tormaimeeto
time, Garuda featured prominently in sculptural, painted, and textile arts of the
Himalayas. Any of these might have been transmitted to Jingdezhen for use as a ChineseiSilks Dieter Kuhn
visual source for the gure represented on the present ewer. 8 36 2012

A painted thangka from the latter half of the 13th century shows winged Garudas
on either side of a crossed-vajra on a at pedestal, as illustrated in Steven M.
Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet,
New York, 1998, cat. no. 25. Although the thangka pre-dates the ewer by three
centuries, it is possible that variants of this iconographical pairing continued into
the Ming period and were transmitted to ceramic artisans at Jingdezhen.

The square pattern of the cruciform-and-pedestal motif may have been
borrowed from textiles. The Bhutanese ‘torma meeto’ pattern is necessarily
composed of small blocks due to the interweaving of threads in its construction.
Additionally, there is evidence that Tibetans of the Ming dynasty used quilts of
square patchwork and that contemporaneous Chinese artisans wove checkered
polychrome silks that incorporated animal and auspicious motifs within the
squares, as shown in Dieter Kuhn, ed., Chinese Silks, New Haven, 2012, pl. 8.36.
Whether woven or quilted, Himalayan textiles could have provided the formal
inspiration for the checkerboard pattern found on the ewer. These textiles could
have also supplied the principal imagery applied to the ewer.