Abstract
A CHINESE FBESCO OF T'ANG STYLE.—A second fresco from the Moon Hill Buddhist Monastery near Ch'ing Hua Chên in Honan Province has been acquired by the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and is described by Miss Helen E. Fernald in the Museum Journal, vol. 19, No. 2. It comes from the wall which faced the first fresco in the monastery, and is nearly perfect, showing greater intensity of colour and greater massiveness than the first in the central Buddha figure. It is eighteen feet in height and twenty-nine feet long. In design the style is that of the T'arig dynasty. The centre is occupied by a huge figure of Sâkyamuni Buddha seated on the lotus throne. On each side is a huge Bodhisattva sitting European fashion turned ‘three-quarters’ towards the Buddha. In the foreground between the Buddha and the Bodhisattva on each side are two graceful Bodhisattvas. Another Bodhisattva holding a bowl and pomegranate, and a child worshipper, complete a group which is surrounded by a number of military-looking figures in armour and jewelry, probably devas. In colour the whole is magnificent. The painting appears to belong to a convention of grouping which became traditionally established in sculpture and painting early in the T'ang dynasty, representing the Buddha with two attendant Bodhisattvas, and a host of other adoring beings. Although very few early Chinese frescoes exist to-day, it is recorded that enormous numbers of them were painted during the T'ang period and earlier. Probably they were destroyed in the rising against foreign religions in the ninth and tenth centuries.
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Research Items. Nature 122, 744–746 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122744a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122744a0