Tomb brick with archer, deer, tiger, bird, and tree decoration

During the Han dynasty, the architecture of tombs located in present-day Henan province, in Central China, featured hollow bricks made from gray clay formed in large molds. When the surface of each brick was still leather-hard, designs were imprinted using relief stamps. These stamps often illustrated paragons of loyalty or filial piety, historical and mythological stories, and generic scenes of feasting and processions. Pictorial art played a marginal role in the art of China’s Bronze Age, and Han-dynasty artists were still developing basic conventions for rendering figures in space. In this landscape scene, a hunter takes aim with his bow as various creatures roam about a forest, arranged on a blank ground. Only the trees, which take root in a band of repeating diamonds making up the scene’s ornamental frame, find solid anchor.