Newsletter: Winter 2002
Relics from one of the golden eras of Chinese art and culture, these fierce beast figures were always placed in pairs in tombs, which often contained numerous ceramic figures of humans, animals, and supernatural creatures. Because of their position near the tomb entrance and their ferocious demeanor, such figures are thought to have served as "tomb guardian creatures" (zhenmushou), sentinels capable of protecting the deceased from evil spirits. Developed during the Six Dynasties period (222-589) , spirit beast pairs always included one figure with a human face and the other with a bestial face. Such tomb guardians with canine or feline bodies, seated on their haunches with straight forelegs, also were produced in the Tang dynasty. In the early Tang, the beast guardians may have become associated with pairs of deer-like spirits the auspicious tianlu with one horn, and apotropaic bixie with two -which may have resulted in a reassessment of their iconography. Cloven feet replaced paws, and the human-faced guardian was usually shown with one horn and its animal-faced counterpart with two. Tang dynasty ceramic tomb guardians often were fired with colorful lead-silicate glazes known as "three-color" or sancai glaze (examples of which are on view in the Asian galleries on the museum's lower level), or left unglazed and painted with color pigments and gilding. In contrast, the guardian figures... have more human bodies, resembling the standing, supernatural warrior tomb figures that are often shown subduing creatures underfoot. Decorated with paint, gold, and silver, these spirit beasts represent a moment when the earlier animal-bodied and later human-bodied figural traditions came together in the mid-eighth century. It is important to note that these particular guardian types have been found unglazed with painted and gilt decoration, without the use of colorful glazes. They postdate the period of the great sancai funerary tomb sculpture found in imperial tombs from the earlier part of the eighth century.
