Lot 80
80
A VERY RARE SET OF EMBROIDERED AND PAINTED SILK HANGING SCROLLS
VARIOUS PROPERTIES
A VERY RARE SET OF EMBROIDERED AND PAINTED SILK HANGING SCROLLS

MING DYNASTY, 17TH CENTURY

Details
A VERY RARE SET OF EMBROIDERED AND PAINTED SILK HANGING SCROLLS
MING DYNASTY, 17TH CENTURY
Probably originally set into a twelve-panel screen, each scroll finely painted and embroidered in satin stich, gold and silver-couched outline as well as rare filiments of peacock thread, depicting a continuous horizontal scene of figures at leisure within a palace compound, including a central scene of a high-ranking dignitary and his wife surrounded by attendants in a large open pavilion and being approached by female musicians carrying their instruments, presumably to play before the couple who await them, all set within a tree-studded landscape below clouds enveloping the upper part of the composition and the various architectural structures, the left foreground with a female figure crossing a bridge over a peaceful lake and on the right the entrance to the walled complex showing figures on horseback entering the main gate, the rocks primarily painted in shades of green and blue in the 'blue-green' style, the trees rendered in both paint and thread, the figures all in various Ming period costume finely embroidered with elaborate details, all picked out in deep multicolored threads and bright pigments against a straw-colored silk ground
Each 79¼ x 18¾in. (201.2 x 47.6 cm.), mounted as hanging scrolls (12)

Lot Essay

The quality and style of the embroidery on these scrolls can be compared to the embroidery on twelve panel screen depicting the Eight Immortals, dated to the Ming dynasty in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanjii vol. 7, Beijing, 1987, p. 35. no. 71. See, also, the set of eight embroidered pictures, also dated to the Ming period and depicting the Eight Immortals, included in the O.C.S. exhibition, Arts of the Ming Dynasty, 1955-57, vol. 30, no. 73. The two afore-mentioned comparable examples as well as the present scrolls, are all execptionally finely worked on a very fine silk satin.

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