Download File

190 AN EXPENSIVE "MASTERPIECE"
aesthetically, would have suggested
that this
was a product, not of the T'ang dynasty an
age of monumental sculpture but of the Ming
dynasty the great age of choice chinoiseries
and archaistic experiments.
This theory that the figure is Ming tech-
nical evidence supports at least as strongly as
it supports the T'ang attribution. Technique
apart,
artistic consideration makes it clear
that if the work is not T'ang it must be as
late as Ming. That this should be so may at
first seem strange to those who remember that
the T'ang dynasty flourished between A.D. 618
and 906, and the Ming between 1368 and
1643. Yet, in fact, it is far easier to confuse
T'ang with Ming than to confuse a work of
the intermediate Sung period (960-1279) with
either. The mystery is not profound. Through-
out the T'ang and Sung periods Chinese art
was thoroughly alive both ; T'ang and Sung
are vital and original styles. T'ang art
expresses the inspiration of one age, Sung of
another ; Sung follows and differs from T'ang
as quattrocento follows and differs from Giot-
tesque : they
are different and characteristic
modes of a continuous stream of inspiration.
But the Sung dynasty and the Chinese inspiration
collapsed within a hundred years or less
of each other, and for suggestion and direction
the Ming artists looked, not so much into their