410.
TWO BRONZE MIRROR STANDS SHAPED AS A XINIU
Ming dynasty, 16th-17th century
11,5 x 18 x 7,5 cm and ….
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4804.
The two mirror stands (jingjia) are shaped as a recumbent quadruped with the body of an antelope, hooves and a large horn to the centre of the head, on its back a pair of half-moon protuberance originally thought to hold a bronze mirror, here missing.
Rose Kerr (R. Kerr, Later Chinese Bronzes, London 1990, n. 87), commenting a partially gilded mirror stand with this shape, dated by the author to Song/ Yuan dynasty, interpreted this subject as an allusion to the ancient proverb “the xiniu longs for the moon” (with the mirror representing the moon) which means that miracles can be realized only with mental activity.
The decorative motif of a recumbent single-horn animal has its origin in Central Asia around the seventh century, appearing on Sogdian silver to depict the djeiran, an antelope common in those territories (J. Wirgin, Sung Ceramics Design, Stockholm 1970, pp. 196-198). It was imported through the northern route in China, where it was progressively assimilated with the rhinoceros, an animal which lived in southern China in ancient times but at those times known only through literary reference. The mithycal xiniu – often portayed as gazing at the moon – then came to identify the rhinoceros, even if it was depicted as a djieran .
The xiniu appears already in Jin dynasty on Ding ware (see the dish in the National Palace Museum, Taipei: Decorated Porcelains of Dingzhou. White Ding Wares from the Collection of the National Palace Museum, exhibition catalogue, Taipei 2014, n. II-117) and Yaozhou ceramic items (see the bowl in Palace Museum, Beijing: Kiln Sites of Ancient China, exhibition catalogue, London 1980, p. 103, n. 446), used as a decorative motifs also on textile and other mediums dating to 13th-14th century (see for example the qingbai porcelain water dropper in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London: S. Pierson (edited by), Qingbai Ware: Chinese Porcelain of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, London 2002, pp. 232, n. 130).
Two similar ‘xiniu‘ mirror stands are in the Cernuschi Museum, Paris (M. Maucuer, Bronzes de la Chine impériale des Song aux Qing, Paris 2013, pp. 112-113, nn. 57-58); see also the piece in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Cologne (inv. C 2018, 361).
