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Lot Essay
The pair of rhinoceroses on this mirror bear no resemblance to a real rhinoceros, as by the Tang dynasty the rhinoceros was extinct in China. Although a rhinoceros was sent to the capital city, Chang'an in 796, where the Emperor had it housed in the Shanglin Palace, it is unlikely that anyone outside of the palace would have seen it. Therefore, the artisans who made the present mirror and those like it would have had no idea what a real rhinoceros looked like resulting in the fanciful animals seen on the present mirror, and on a similar and slightly larger (24.9 cm.) octalobed mirror (Fig. 1) illustrated in Ancient Bronze Mirrors from the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2005, pp. 240-1, no. 82. Also illustrated is a rubbing of a mirror of the same pattern excavated at Ping Lian, Gansu province, from a Tang dynasty tomb dated to the fifth year of the Dazong reign of the Xuanzong emperor. Two other similar mirrors are published: one in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, by He Lin in Copper Mirrors - 200 Things You Should Know, Beijing, 2007, no. 55; and one by Wang Shilun and Wang Mu in Zhejiang chutu tongjing (Bronze Mirrors Excavated from Zhejiang), Beijing, 2006, black and white pl. 119.