Exhibition Guide
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Tomb Guardian with Lion’s Face (bixie) and Tomb Guardian with Human Face (tianlu)
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Looking at Guardians
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Seeing Brilliant Color
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Seeing Buddhist Imagery?
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Art Object Info
A pair of tomb guardians, one with the head of a lion and the other with the face of a human, would have been placed facing each other on the path leading to the coffin chamber. The pairing of one creature with a lion’s mouth opened in a terrible roar and another silent with fluted ears alert to the smallest sound suggests that fierceness and vigilance were essential to the safety of the departed soul.
During the period of the Western Han (206 BCE–9 CE), tomb guardians took the form of tigers. By the time of the Tang dynasty (618–907), the lion was seen as a more powerful creature. When the Tang Emperor Taizong received a tribute lion in the year 635, he commemorated the occasion by ordering the composition of a poem:
It glares its eyes—and lightning flashes,
It vents its voice—and thunder echos.
It drags away the tiger…
The lion was also closely associated with Buddhism. The voice of the Buddha teaching was equated with its roar, and wherever the Buddha sat was known as the seat of the lion. Here, the lion’s power is combined with the hooves of a horse and the antlers of a deer, a creature associated with immortality.
Sitting on rocky pedestals, erect on their haunches with chests puffed out, these two figures command attention. They are also impressive as examples of ambitious clay sculpture, with the kind of extensive, vivid polychrome decoration that has seldom survived. Higher-firing white earthenware and mineral pigments, elaborate floral medallions, delicately painted beard hairs, and rare raised ornament in the manner of carved stone decoration are all examples of the expert execution that supports the ancient and complex meaning of these guardian figures.
Art Object Info
A pair of tomb guardians, one with the head of a lion and the other with the face of a human, would have been placed facing each other on the path leading to the coffin chamber. The pairing of one creature with a lion’s mouth opened in a terrible roar and another silent with fluted ears alert to the smallest sound suggests that fierceness and vigilance were essential to the safety of the departed soul.
During the period of the Western Han (206 BCE–9 CE), tomb guardians took the form of tigers. By the time of the Tang dynasty (618–907), the lion was seen as a more powerful creature. When the Tang Emperor Taizong received a tribute lion in the year 635, he commemorated the occasion by ordering the composition of a poem:
It glares its eyes—and lightning flashes,
It vents its voice—and thunder echos.
It drags away the tiger…
The lion was also closely associated with Buddhism. The voice of the Buddha teaching was equated with its roar, and wherever the Buddha sat was known as the seat of the lion. Here, the lion’s power is combined with the hooves of a horse and the antlers of a deer, a creature associated with immortality.
Sitting on rocky pedestals, erect on their haunches with chests puffed out, these two figures command attention. They are also impressive as examples of ambitious clay sculpture, with the kind of extensive, vivid polychrome decoration that has seldom survived. Higher-firing white earthenware and mineral pigments, elaborate floral medallions, delicately painted beard hairs, and rare raised ornament in the manner of carved stone decoration are all examples of the expert execution that supports the ancient and complex meaning of these guardian figures.