125.
A ‘FAMILLE VERTE’ BALUSTER VASE, GUANYIN ZUN
Qing dynasty, Kangxi mark and of the period
48 cm high
Da Qing Kangxi nianzhi six-character mark.
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 5337.
The body of the vase decorated with ‘Famille Verte’ enamels with a flying dragon in persuit of the flaming pearl while a tiger is watching him on a strip of land with grass.
The theme of the paired dragon and tiger has very old origins in Chinese culture, already used from the Neolithic period in funerary contexts. The two animals – one real and the other imaginary – have a strong symbolic meaning related to cosmological theories, the dragon associated with the yin active principle and the tiger with the passive yang, the first connected with spring and the rebirth of life, the second with autumn and decadence.
These alchemic thoughts are recorded in an ancient Daoist text entitled “The Dragon-TigerClassic” which was revisited a number of times during the Ming dynasty, probably inspiring also decoration on seventeenth century porcelain (Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler collection, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Butler and W. Qingzheng, London 2006, pp. 206-207, n. 110, about an early Kangxi period vase with the dragon-tiger motif). From the Han dynasty, the two animals entered in the group of the Four Divine Animals which represent the four cardinal points, the tiger associated with the west and the white colour, the dragon with the east and the blue colour. Furthermore, with the introduction of Buddhism the motif of the dragon and the tiger together took on additional symbolic meanings connected with the doctrine of Indian origin. The dragon was in fact associated with the Naga snake, which protected with its nine heads the original Buddha from a rainstorm, while tigers often appeared in Jataka anecdotes related to the life of Sakyamuni and enlightened monks.
The shape of this vase was very popular during the Kangxi period. It is know as Guanyin zun, “Guanyin vase”, because its slender form resembles in some ways the elegance of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy.
A similar Kangxi vase with a comparable composition of a dragon and a tiger, painted in underglaze blue and red with touches of céladon enamel and enriched by carved details, is in the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore (inv. 49.1649).
