museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
XV. Female Daoist Figure in Landscape, by Koboku (active in the first half of the sixteenth century). Hanging scroll, ink on paper. Japanese, Muromachi period, early sixteenth century. 44.5 by 27.9 cm. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. 88.18. Shimmering dark ink seen in this image of a female Daoist immortal renders her anatomy and attributes in a range of subtle ink tones and modulated, highly individualistic brushstrokes. The artist Koboku is especially known through this painting and its pair in the collection of the Kyoto National Museum.
Attributed works:
XVI. Beauty (Bijin) in the Snow. Shiba Kokan (1747-1818). Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk. Japanese, Edo period. 103 by 40.4 cm. Kelvin Smith Fund. 89.68. Shiba Kokan worked in both East Asian and European painting styles. This painting's inscription states that he executed it after the style of the Ming dynasty artist Zhou Chen (c.1450-after 1535). Kokan noted in his diary that he executed his ukiyo-e style paintings in this manner, but it is a rare occasion for art and the written word to corroborate each other.
Attributed works:
XVII. Hannya Retrieving her Arm, by Shibata Zeshin (1807-91). Hanging scroll, ink on paper, dateable to 1840. Japanese, Edo period. 161 by 172.2 cm. Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund. 90.6. This large drawing, executed on many pieces of joined paper, is the sole remaining sketch for Zeshin's panel painting (of the same dimensions) commissioned for a Tokyo shrine. It is this work which scaled Zeshin's career, one of the most productive and varied in later Japanese art. The drawing depicts the tenth-century legend of a monstrous female oni (demon) as she flees from a pursuer. Zeshin's energetic brushstrokes capture the sense of speed and anxiety.
Non-western art unattributed:
I. Standing Buddha. Korea, Unified Silla period, eighth to ninth century. Gilt bronze. H.25.4 cm. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. 88.34. In Korea a peculiarly native interpretation of Buddhist iconography and sculptural style evolved, resulting in some of the finest stone and metal religious icons known in East Asian art. This large standing gilt image reflects distant prototypes of the Tang dynasty (A. D. 618-906) in China, especially those related to monumental stone carvings from the Lung-men caves near Loyang. Such icons were used in Korea either as private devotional images in privileged domestic settings or as statues that monks could easily transport to spread the faith in the countryside.
Non-western art unattributed:
II. Bell (Zhong). China, probably Shaanxi province, Western Zhou dynasty, late ninth century B. C. Bronze. H.70.3 cm. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. 89.3. Bronze bells became increasingly popular among the nobility in northern China in the tenth and ninth centuries B. C., reflecting changes in the function and significance of bronzes and, possibly, the initiation of a new kind of formal music. This monumental piece has a solid shaft and a lenticular, clapperless cavity; its surface combines with orderly relief ornament a sharply-cast, formal 127-character commemorative inscription.
Non-western art unattributed:
III. Ewer. China, Tang dynasty, late seventh to early eighth century. Stoneware with iron-oxide glaze. H.42.1 cm. John L. Severance Fund. 89.2. During the Tang period, Buddhist monks and pilgrims carried religious objects and ideas over the famed 'Silk Road' while merchants trafficked in the luxury goods of the secular world, influencing material culture in both East and West. This protoceladon ewer is an example of a rare transitional type that echoes northern Chinese stoneware of the sixth century.
Non-western art unattributed:
IV. Fowling tower. China, Eastern Han period, first to second century. Earthenware with lead glaze. H.54.3 cm. The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund. 89.71. The imposing central tower of this architectural model, duplicating a post-and-beam construction, is a rich microcosm of Han life. High above the water-fowl, fish, frog, and turtle in the basin, four archers, braced against the railing, take aim at their prey, while a dancer in the central chamber sways to the tune of surrounding musicians.
Non-western art unattributed:
IX. Jar (Hu). China, probably Henan province, Western Han dynasty, late second to early first century B. C. Earthenware with slip and pigment. H.48.2 cm. The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund. 89.15. This bold jar, decorated with a forceful dragon soaring through clouds, copies an existing bronze vessel shape and reflects painted lacquer with fluidly brushed pigments on a black slipped ground. Departing from custom, the remarkably inventive painter who decorated the jar ignored the painted bands and allowed his design to swim across the registers and over much of the vessel's surface.
Non-western art unattributed:
V. Oil lamp. China, probably Henan province, Eastern Zhou dynasty, Warring States period, early fifth century B. C. Bronze inlaid with azurite and malachite. H.23.3 cm.; diam. of base 8.3 cm., Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. 91.8. Lamps and candle stands are not found in Chinese tombs until the late Bronze Age. This lamp is supported by a fabulous phoenix, represented at the moment in which it alights to grasp a pair of intertwined serpents depicted on the lower basin. This ingenious work of narrative sculpture is further enriched by an extremely rare method of inlay: the eyes are coloured blue, and the feathers are rendered in alternating designs of blue azurite and green malachite.
Non-western art unattributed:
VI. Vajrasattva Buddha and Acolytes. Central Tibet, twelfth to thirteenth century. Colour and gold on canvas. 111 by 73 cm. Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund. 89.104. The thanka represents the earliest style of painting that flourished in Tibet, often called 'Kadampa style', in reference to a sect founded in the eleventh century by the Indian monk Atisa and central to early Tibetan Buddhism. The 'Kadampa style' remains under the strong influence of Indian paintings.
Non-western art unattributed:
VII. Cloth of gold. China, after 1220. Lampas, silk and gold thread. Warp: 124.5 cm.; weft: 47.5 cm. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund. 89.50. This textile, woven with winged lions enclosed in roundels and with griffins in the interspaces, is one of the most magnificent silk and gold fabrics to have survived from the thirteenth century. Its overall Persian design is juxtaposed with Chinese elements: the detailing of the lions' wings, the dragons' heads at the ends of the lions' tails, and Chinese clouds in the backgrounds of the roundels. These, together with technical details, suggest that the textile was woven in China by craftsmen who had been sent there from Transoxiana or Khurasan by Ghengiz Khan in 1220-22 A. D.
Non-western art unattributed:
VIII. Three vessels. Tibet, made for the Chinese wife of Emperor Songtsen Gampo, mid-seventh century A. D. Silver with gilding. Vase. H.22.9 cm. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund. 88.67. Beaker. Inscribed, H.10.2 cm. The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund. 88.68. Rhyton. H.30.5 cm. Gift of Mrs Clara Taplin Rankin. 88.69. These exceptional silver vessels appear to be the earliest known Tibetan artefacts. The beaker bears an inscription, in archaic Tibetan, identifying it as a personal possession of Princess Wencheng, the Chinese wife of Songtsen Gampo - an attribution supported by close stylistic comparison with Sasanian and Tang silver. Songtsen Gampo (627-49 A. D.) is identified in Chinese chronicles and literary sources as a monarch who introduced Buddhism to Tibet and established a powerful political empire which he strengthened by marriage alliances with his Chinese and Nepalese neighbours.
Non-western art unattributed:
X. Buddha seated in the 'European Manner'. Southeast Asia, Thailand-Burma, c. ninth century. Bronze with gilding. H.55.1 cm. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. 89.49. This extraordinary bronze is one of the most spectacular known examples of early Southeast Asian Buddhist metal sculpture. The 'European manner' of sitting, with legs pendant, was first popular in India after the Gupta Dynasty and is characteristic for Buddhas of the period. The sculpture is closely related in type and modelling to Gupta prototypes but differs in its facial type, which is Mon, as is the arrangement of drapery between the legs.
Non-western art unattributed:
XI. Lord of human desire (Aizen Myoo). Japan, Nambokucho period, fourteenth century. Wood with lacquer and colour. H.75 by W.59 by D.35 cm. Bequest of Elizabeth M. Skala. 87.185. This image introduces tolerance and compassion into Esoteric Buddhism's rigorous formula of depicting deities as fierce manifestations of the Buddha and uncompromising guides to spiritual salvation. The imposing sculptural power of this figure is in part due to the skilful combination of Buddhist and Shinto aesthetics. The technique - it is carved from a single block of wood, not assembled from multiple pieces of wood - embodies and extols the earlier, revered sculptural tradition of the Heian period.
Non-western art unattributed:
XII. Portrait of a Korean priest. Korea, Choson period, seventeenth century. Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk. 114.7 by 79.7 cm. Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund. 90.16. The subject of this large portrait, identified in the cartouche on the painting but unrecorded in standard Korean historical sources, conforms in composition, attributes, and physiognomy to several paintings in Korean museum collections. They are thought to date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, made as replacements for the thousands of religious icons destroyed by Japanese armies at the end of the sixteenth century. Monk-painters executed such images which were used for religious veneration in Buddhist temples.
Non-western art unattributed:
XIII. Storage jar: Echizen ware. Japan, Muromachi period, fifteenth century. Glazed stoneware. H.49.8 cm. John L. Severance Fund. 89.70 Echizen ware is among the rarest, and most desirable of Japanese medieval stonewares. It is distinguished by a rich brown clay body covered with a natural ash glaze that runs from a yellow-brown to creamy white colour. The body is formed by the coiling method, and paddled vigorously to strengthen the clay joints. This construction method is evident from observing the jar's profile and its robust form.
Non-western art unattributed:
XIV. Brush washer with dragons. China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen kilns, Ming dynasty, Xuande period, 1426-35. Porcelain with underglaze blue decoration. D.18 cm. Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. 64.166. With the rediscovery of underglaze colouring, Chinese potters began decorating porcelains with lively painted designs in cobalt blue for both the export and domestic markets. This elegant object, made for use at a scholar's desk, is decorated with coiling dragons in the cavity, foot, and around the outer wall. While it is unmarked, the attractive tonal range in the blue and the subtly pocked-glaze surface identify this brush washer as a classic Xuande product.
Non-western art unattributed:
XVIII. Tiered box with stand. Japan, Ryukyu Islands, late eighteenth century. Wood with coloured lacquer and gold and incised decoration. H.53 cm. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund. 89.5. Over a wooden core many successive layers of black and red lacquer were applied to provide a ground for the surface design of three dragons and animated foliate patterns. Beyond this vivid painterly approach, the special merits of the tiered box are its size, superb architectonic structure, and high level of craftsmanship. It must be considered a spectacular product of the late eighteenth-century culture of the Ryukyu Islands (known today as Okinawa), undoubtedly made for the royal family.
