International studio (80.1925)

mceRHACionAL

agree. Professor FerioIIosa, for instance, says that
the native Chinese in the south produced "a more
plastic, a more primitive art, with not the faintest
suggestion of the Graeco-Inchan influence."

In the next dynasty, the Sui (581 to 617),
there is a combination of northern and southern
types. The slenderness of figure characteristic of
the north was retained, but draperies became
simpler and faces, unfortunately, smaller and
rounder. The Wei smile becomes slightly saccha-
rine. But one definite advance was made in the
direction of naturalistic modeling. The Wei had
achieved a sense of movement in the draperies but
under the Sui there was added some sense of the
body beneath the robes. However, the Sui dy-
nasty apart from its Lin ion of northern and south-
ern China politically with the resulting union of
sculptural types, is chiefly important to us as a
prelude to the great T'ang dynasty, the golden
age of Buddhist sculpture in China.

The correct thing to say at this juncture is
that under the T'ang emperors, Chinese sculpture
most nearly approached the Greek ideal of beauty.

A writer in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin
in 1916 said that he had "got himself disliked by
comparing a T'ang pottery horse head to the
famous heads of the Parthenon." He might say
this now with little fear of contradiction. In the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston there is a marble
figure of Amida (the creator of the Western para-
dise), merely a torso, that has the formal sim-
plicity of Greek sculpture. But before bandying
any more words in these comparisons, we must
clearly understand that by Greek is meant the
late Hellenistic age when Greek sculpture was
modified by Oriental traditions. One cautious
author (and who would be otherwise, writing of
early Chinese sculpture?) comments in timid nega-
tion: "The refined estheticism of the T'ang sculp-
tures now known . . . make it unsafe to say that
the critical opinion of the future will assign to
this branch of Chinese art a place lower than that
of any other great nation—always excepting
Greece," but we have reached a point where
Greece is not always excepted.

The figure of Avalokitesvara in bronze gilt
illustrated here belongs either to the late Sui or
early T'ang dynasty; at any rate it probably
belongs to the early part of the seventh century.
About this time many Indian images were again
brought into China and the Indian routes were
kept open because of the marriage of a T'ang
princess to the ruler of Thibet. This bronze statu-
ette seems to bear strong marks of this Indian
influence, especially the face; and the pedestal is
characteristic of T'ang workmanship.

The wooden pillar, made up of four Bod-
hisattvas, is assigned by the Metropolitan Mu-
seum to the beginning of the seventh century,
but by others to the latter part of the ninth cen-
tury. It was one of several supports of a beam in
a temple. It is richly colored, chiefly in blue and
crimson. In speaking of it, one may ignore com-
parisons with anything and be content with the
reflection that in it we see beauty incarnate;
design in its highest perfection and sculptural
rhythm in its most appealing and comprehensible
form.

In the T'ang dynasty the sculptor had at last
learned to represent the body beneath the gar-
ments. The Bodhisattvas of this period retain
the rhythmic beauty of the Wei figures, greatly
simplified. The whole treatment is freer and
easier. This increasing graciousness of pose and
the growing suggestion of femininity led one sour
old Chinese philosopher of the eighth century to
complain that every court wanton imagined she
was a Bodhisattva.

The kneeling figure of a Bodhisattva, with its
lotus flower pedestal, is T'ang sculpture in its
most sublime development. Here the appeal is
not limited to the purely esthetic; there is also the
universal appeal of a deeply religious conception.
It is not necessary, in looking at this, to know
anything of period or type; of this dynasty or that;
of cast or west. The highest possible sophistica-
tion of skill the most consummate power of expres-
sion combine with the deepest piety to produce a
figure that is prayer incarnate. It is true that in
this figure the sculptor has achieved perfect rela-
tionship between drapery and limbs; it is true
that it justifies Lawrence Binyon's statement that
the T'ang figures had "elegance and yet inten-
sity;" it shows unmistakably how, in Chinese
Buddhistic sculpture, aiming at the expression of
contemplation, "the energy of the limbs is sub-
dued to stillness;" but these verbal proofs take
no note of the thrilling emotional quality, the note
of ecstacy which, according to Arthur Machen,
distinguishes art from craftsmanship.

With the beginning of the Sung dynasty we
have that tendency toward too much sweetness
which marked the end of the great period of
Chinese Buddhistic sculpture. In the south espe-
cially this softening reaches the point of definite
weakness and loss of vitality. The Bodhisattva
in wood shows this loss of vigorous treatment.
Figures retain their elegance but lose something
of their intensity. The development of a more
philosophical form of Buddhism is partly respon-
sible for it. In the north some ol the beauties of
T'ang sculpture survived, but in the south they

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