A GOOD PAINTED POTTERY FIGURE OF A COURT LADY

Details

A GOOD PAINTED POTTERY FIGURE OF A COURT LADY
TANG DYNASTY

The slender, elegant figure standing stiffly with arms bent and hands held at the waist in fists with thumbs raised, wearing a gold bead necklace and bracelets, her close-fitting tunic belted below the deep oval collar, with winged projections at each shoulder and ruffles on the upper arm of the long, flared sleeves with foliate borders, the skirt of the tunic painted in front with a foliate panel and in back with green stripes, worn over a blade-shaped panel painted with a foliate spray flanked on either side by long, rippling tabs, which in turn is worn over a long under-skirt striped in orangy red, the cloud-toed shoes projecting from beneath the hem, her face delicately painted with finely drawn details and a small fleur-de-lis on the forehead, her hair dressed in a tall, crescent-shaped wing painted black and bearing traces of gilding, all painted in orangy-red, green, blue and black pigment and white slip with gilt highlights, some repair
15 1/8in. (38.4cm.) high

Lot Essay

A very similar figure of the same size in the Musée Guimet is illustrated by Jean-Paul Desroches, Asie Extrême, Paris, 1993, p. 56, pl. 34, where it is noted that this hairstyle, described as banfanji, appeared in the second half of the seventh century

A representation of a court lady with this hairstyle can be seen in a mural of a group of court ladies in the tomb of Princess Yong Tai, Qian county, Shaanxi province, unearthed in 1960, a copy of which was included in the exhibition, The Silk Road, The Empress Place, Singapore, 1991, Catalogue, p. 66 (figure on far right). Some of the other figures can also be seen wearing similar shoes

Compare, also, the two similar figures with a different hairstyle in the Eumorfopoulos Collection, illustrated by R. L. Hobson in the Catalogue, vol. I, London, 1925, pl. XXVIII, nos. 181 and 182. In the entry for 182, Hobson discusses the toes of the shoes, noting that shoes of this shape appear to have been fashionable with Tang ladies and are "well illustrated in the Toyei Shuko, pl. III, from the famous eighth-century Nara collection". A pair of shoes with shaped, upturned toes is illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji; gongyi meishu; yinran zhi xin (A Complete Collection of Chinese Art; Arts and Crafts; Textiles), vol. 6, Beijing, 1985, p. 140, pl. 128