J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Chinese Archaic Bronzes:
The Collection of Daniel Shapiro
March 14 - April 5, 2014
10.
FANGYI 方彝
Shang Dynasty, 12th Century B.C.
of upright rectangular form with flat sides tapering slightly towards the base, decorated in the center of each side with a large long-horned taotie with raised oval eyes, pointed ears and hooked jaw, and with taotie of very similar design but facing upwards on the roof-shaped cover with gently rounded convex sides, the high hollow foot cast with pairs of serpentine kui dragons with heads turned back toward a small open arch in the center of each side, the wide mouth with a collar of long-tailed birds in confronted pairs below the rim, the decoration all cast in varied relief, embellished with intaglio linear scroll, reserved on a dense ground of squared leiwen spirals, and framed by deeply scored thick vertical flanges projecting from the angles and bisecting the sides of the vessel and cover and continuing along the ridge of the cover, interrupted by a small roof-shaped knop at the center, the surface with pale green patination over reddish cuprite corrosion, a single pictogram cast on the interior base and repeated inside the cover.
Height 8 3⁄4 inches (22.2 cm)
The pictogram may be read as a clan sign.
Provenance
From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Rafi Y. Mottahedeh, New York
Sotheby Parke Bernet, the Mottahedeh Estate Sale, New York, 4 November 1978, lot 318
J. J. Lally & Co., Chinese Archaic Bronzes, Sculpture and Works of Art, New York, 1992, no. 21
A fangyi of closely related form and design discovered in the tomb of Fu Hao (d. circa 1200 B.C.), a favorite consort of the Shang emperor Wu Ding (r. 1250–1192 B.C.), is illustrated in the excavation report, Yinxu Fu Hao mu (Tomb of Lady Hao at Yinxu in Anyang), Beijing, 1980, pl. 18:2.
Another fangyi of very similar form and similarly decorated, from the Collection of Mrs. Walter Sedgwick, is illustrated by Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1962, pl. 18a.
Compare also the fangyi of similar shape, cast with a different version of the same decorative program, from the Ernest Erickson Collection, illustrated by Hearn, Ancient Chinese Art: The Ernest Erickson Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987, pp. 28–29, no. 2, previously published by Karlgren, ‘Some Characteristics of the Yin Art’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1962, No. 34, p. 20 and pl. 17b.
商 方彝 高 22.2 厘米
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