430.
A CLOISONNÉ ENAMEL BASIN
Ming dynasty, Wanli period
6 x 30,5 cm
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 5247.
The circular basin with rounded walls and oblique flat rim, the centre of the interior with a round medallion with two peacocks flying amidst flowered sprays, the scene surrounded by a band of ruyi heads, the wall with four lobed reserves on a geometric ground, each of them with a galloping horse, the rim with a band of lozenges, the external surface with a geometric pattern on blue and green ground, the whole decoration enamelled in bright colours arranged inside gilt copper wires.
The natural elegance of the peacock (kongque) and the brilliant tone of its tail are characteristics which attracted the admiration of Chinese people since ancient times. Peacock symbolized nobility and a high social status: an image of this bird was used as the official badge of third and fourth rank of civil servants during the Ming dynasty, while its tail feathers later designated the rank of the public officials of the administration.
The four horses which appears on the interior of the wall of this basin are the so-called tianma, “heavenly horses”, a mythical beast which has been first described in the Liji (“The Book of Rites”), a text written between the Warring States period and the early Han dynasty. According to it, Fuxi – the first legendary ruler of China – composed the Eight Trigrams, the first step toward the invention of writing, after having seen a creature similar to a horse, with the head of a dragon and the body covered with the scales of a fish, emerging from a river.
This story certainly inspired the depiction of galloping horses which flourished already during the Han dynasty and later in the Tang period. During the Ming dynasty, the tianma lost any anatomical reference to the dragon and the fishes, resembling in its aspect a real horse, often carrying books or scrolls which represent the invention of writing and consequently of knowledge.
