Chinese stone funerary carvings from a corner in Gallery 271
Left Lady / Right Lady // limestone tomb panels with figures in relief // Tang dynasty // 8th century CE
The first two photos I took in the room were of these palace ladies carrying what I assume are funerary offerings. I loved their flowing clothes and elaborate hair, and the flowers in the right lady’s bowl are so elegantly carved I probably stared at them for a good 45 seconds straight. I am struck by the clear iconography of the ladies, want to know more about the objects they’re holding. Also I’m intrigued by the (I think mainly vegetal) incisions in the background.
marble mortuary couch: back panel // detailed carving in multiple scenes and registers // Northern Qi Dynasty // 6th century CE
L: details from the left field of carving//R: details from the right field
With these I was particularly interested in the ways that the registers (the horizontal layers of scenes) interacted with the filler decoration that acts as boundaries between them.
On the left I thought it was cool how the bands of motifs are diagonally ajar to accommodate the proportioning of space in the bottom register, and the sky and landscape scene in the upper register benefit from this because the landscape/horizon can be more angular & dramatic as a result. Plus visually the angles of the scene boundaries are vertically inverted and feel balanced to my eyes.
On the right I again noted the off-kilter nature of the banded motifs, but in this instance certain objects and figures interact with them differently. The second figure from the left is touching a something (food?) in a broad, shallow bowl. The bowl overlaps with the alternating bands and vertical trio of dots. The heads of the middle register figures also overlap with this band, and the tops of their heads even overlap with the knees and shins of the kneeling figures above them. The bottom register does not overlap with the these bands (they’re like syntactic dividers but idk what to call them) but the architecture of the columns impacts their composition, in the same way that the right detail does.