Page 100 - 2020 Sept Important Chinese Art Sotheby's NYC Asia Week

9/2/2020 Important Chinese Art | Sotheby's

Literature
Chen Mengjia, Meidiguozhuyi jielue de woguo Yin Zhou tongqi jilu [Compilation of Yin and Zhou archaic bronzes in America],
Beijing, 1962, no. A16.

出版
陳夢家，《美帝國主義劫掠的我國殷周銅器集錄》，北京，1962年，編號A16

Catalogue Note
This piece is cast with a pictogram on an irregular raised patch of a ding vessel. A number of bronze vessels with this pictogram
are known, including three vessels, two yu and a zun, from the famous ceremonial set reputedly discovered at a tomb in Baoji,
Shaanxi province, and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. nos. 24.72.4, 24.72.3a,b, and 24.72.2a-c. It has been
suggested that the pictogram depicts the sign of a clan, that possibly resided near modern-day Baoji city. The same pictogram is
also inscribed on a fangyi, a rectangular wine vessel, sold at Christie’s New York, 13th-14th September 2018, lot 1106.

This ding is particularly notable for the crisp rendering of its design, with the pendent cicadas and horned dragons in sharp
contrast to the abstract leiwen ground. It falls under Style IV of Max Loehr’s classification system, as exemplified by the clear
division between foreground and background and the sharp contours of the animals. This style is characteristic of the latter period
of the Shang dynasty, when the Shang capital was moved to Yinxu, in present-day Anyang, Henan province.

Tripod vessels with this combination of dragons and pendent cicadas are unusual, although a similar ding, but the dragons with
less elongated bodies and lacking the C-shaped horn, was unearthed at Hutuo village, Wugong county, Shaanxi province, and
illustrated in Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi [Bronzes of Shang and Zhou dynasties unearthed in Shaanxi province], Beijing,
1979, pl. 128, together with a similar ding but decorated with taotie masks instead of dragons, pl. 129. See also a ding with a related
motif in relief, from the Avery Brundage Collection, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in René-Yvon Lefebvre
d’Argencé, Bronze Vessels of Ancient China in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1977, pl. iv (left).

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