Description
Description: Chinese porcelain bowl with flat rim, decorated in underglaze blue with four horse riders outside and a lady seated below a tree at the bottom. They are related to the story of Wang Zhaojun:
“Wang Zhaojun was one of the four well known beauties of ancient China. She had entered the harem of the Emperor Yuan of the Western Han (48-33 BC). The emperor had a large harem of maidens (3000) and was in the habit of choosing his favored companions by the pictures painted by the court painters. The painters demanded bribes from the maidens to paint a flattering portrait of themselves to increase their chance of being chosen by the emperor. Wang, being confident of her own beauty refused to pay the bribe to Mao Yan Shou who then painted an unflattering portrait of Wang. As a result, Wang was never chosen by the emperor and for several years spent her time waiting and playing her Pipa in the courtyard of the ladies in waiting.
When Huhanxie, the chieftain of the northern barbarous Hun’s tribe Xiongnu asked for one of the princesses for a wife to consolidate the Han relations with Xiongnus, the emperor Yuan reluctantly agreed to this audacious request, but was not willing to give up one of his daughters. Instead, he decided to give up the least desirable of the concubines. He chose Wang Zhaojun from the unflattering portrait painted by Mao Yan Shou. When Wang was presented to Huhanxie, the emperor realized his mistake, but did not go back on his word, sending Wang Zhaojun to be the wife of the barbarous northern chieftain. Mao Yan Shou, all of the court painters and their families were subsequently put to death for deceiving the emperor.
Wang Zhaojun’s story is told in this poem titled ‘Song of Mingfei’:
When Mingfei left the palace of Han,
Face damp with tears, hair hanging loose,
Turning her lowered head she gazed back, expressionless.
And her sovereign could not restrain his anguish.
Blame lay in an artist’s hand,
Few had he seen so pleasing to the eye.
Yet the source of such beauty was not painted;
Mao Yan Shou was killed at once.
Departing, she knew, never to return,
Pitiable in the costume of the Han court.
Her plaintive voice asking for news of the south.
Where only the swan geese flew and returned each year.
Messages sent by her family, ten thousand li,
So that she in the foreign land will not pine.
Close by, Chang’an gate has locked out the beauty,
Life’s aspirations thwarted by neither north nor south.”
In the enlarged pictures of the figures painted on the bowl, we can see the barbarous Xiongnu chieftain while riding back toward North, holding a flag, and then following him is Wang Zhaojun, riding and holding a Pipa, with her face turned back, looking at her house becoming distant. Then the two following guards and, in the last picture, Wang Zhaojun seated lonely under a tree in the garden of her new home, thinking with nostalgia at her far homeland.
The three last pictures are of a painting related to this story, by the Song painter Gong Su Ran, with the details of the Chieftain holding a flag and that of Zhaojun holding a Pipa, with her face turned back.
Dating: 15th century, Chenghua, Ming dynasty.
Size: 15 cm diameter
Provenance: Antiquarian market
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