Wu Hung - The Wu Liang Shrine : The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art

Stanford, Stanford University Press, (1992). reprint. orig.wrappers. 24x20cm, xxiii,412,(1)p, PAPERBACK. Textual illustrations.. Minor rubbing. Small chip to rear cover edge. VG. ¶ Contents: A Thousand Years of Scholarship: The Wu Family Shrines: Excavations and primary studies of the material remains; A historiography of the study of the Wu family shrines; The Wu Liang Shrine Carvings: A Pictorial Universe: The ceiling: heavenly omens; The gables: the world of immortality; The walls: human history; Epilogue: the ideology of the Wu Liang shrine carvings [" The funerary shrine of the Confucian scholar Wu Liang, created in AD 151, is the most important surviving pre-Buddhist monument in China. That is to say, it is the most important single work of visual art from the centuries that set the patterns of Chinese thought for almost two millennia. The importance of the shrine lies in the beauty of the stone reliefs on its walls and, especially, in the remarkably comprehensive iconography of its nearly one hundred scenes. They constitute, in effect, a coherent symbolic structure of the universe as the Han Chinese conceived it. This structure consists of three sections: the ceiling carvings present the Mandate of Heaven; the scenes on the two gables depict the paradise of the immortals; and the 44 stories related on the walls illustrate the history of mankind, starting with the creators of human culture and ending with a portrait of Wu Liang, who designed his own memorial. The author finds the shrine comparable, in the comprehensiveness and cultural significance of its iconography, to the cathedral at Chartres or the Sistine Chapel..."- Publisher's description].