The Bronze Sculpture in Shang Dynasty
In China, the legend of nine dings cast by Xia Dynasty written in the ancient document is probably the mark of the first page entering into the Bronze Age. The culture of Xia is sill in the process of exploration, but the Erlitou cultur in the name of Yanshi Erlitou site of Henan province is the late Xia Dynasty. For some bronze sculpture Jue of Erlitou culture, their level of technology has got rid of the primitive state. It has as many as for molds inside and outside from the point of casting marks and the walls of the body are thin and well-distributed. We can not exclude the possibility that China has already mastered the technology of metallurgy and casting. Bronze sculpture showed up along with the establishment of early states, naturally it became a symbol of royal power. A story is going about ding of Xia has undergone Shang and Zhou. Every time a kingdom was falling down and a new one grew up, the bronze sculpture, ding would be transferred into a new emperor. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the royal family falls into a decline, the people of Chu state crossed the boundary of Zhou, they had inquired the weight of the ding. For the ding is the symbol of royal power, it is obvious to reveal their attempt to pretend to the throne of Zhou.
The china bronze sculpture of Shang after the Erlitou can be divided into two stages which are Erligang period and the ruins of Yin Dynasty. The ones in Zhengzhou Erligang are representative of the early Shang Dynasty. Subsequently Gaocheng of Hebei, Wu city of Jiangxi, Panlongcheng of Hubei, Daxinzhuang of Shandong, Yanshi of Henan and other places have also unearthed bronze sculptures which belong to the same period one after another, indicating that its distribution was very extensive. Yin Dyansty Ruins means the late Shang period after the emperor Pangeng of Shang moved the capital to Yin. Since then, the national power grew stronger and stronger, particularly at the time of Wuding, an emperor of Shang, reaching its peak. In order to adapt to Wuding’s theocracy, a large number of complex ritual activities were demanded. In these activities, the ritual bronze sculptures were important props on the altar, so the casting technique of the chinese bronze sculpture had achieved significant and substantial progress at that time. The bronze sculpture with heavy volume and solemn and mysterious ornamentations emerged in large numbers, and then establish the most prosperous period of China’s bronze culture.
Bronze sculpture in early Shang directly carried forward several features of Erlitou culture. For example, the vessels were all thin bodies. However, compared with bronze sculpture of Erlitou, the classifications of the ones in early Shang were significantly increased, such as ding(鼎), li (鬲) and yan (簋) which are food vessels as well as jue(爵), jiao(角), gu(觚), zun(尊), you(卣) and hu(壶) as wine containers plus pan(盘) and yu (盂) and other vessels. There are many features in shape that are easy to distinguish like the dings are more cone fee, most jue have flat bodies while the body of gu is both short and strong.
The decorations on the china bronze sculpture at this stage have no patterns acted as the underneath lining which is the so-called ground-tint. Most decorations are carved as ribbon. Besides, the xianwen, taotie and kuilong wen are common as well. The lines of taotie are round revolving seems to float with unique feature. Inscriptions began to turn up during this period. There started to have pictographic inscriptions serving as family name which were constructed by few characters.
Yin Ruins of Anyang is the capital of the late Shang Dynasty, meanwhile the center of the politic, economy and culture as well as the heart of the casting technique of the bronze sculpture. Numerous bronze sculptures have been found in the Yin Ruins in the 20th century.
In the late Shang Dynasty, the inside walls of bronze sculpture are rather thick, and types are also further increased with a feature of diverse shapes. The ornamentation is rich in content with more prominent changes. The bronze sculpture full of patterns are very popular and most of them will employ the yunlei wen(clouds and thunders) as the ground-tint to fill the space outside of the motif pattern. Moreover, the overlapping patterns named three-plus patterns also emerged. Consequently, the splendid and over-elaborate style has been formed.
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