Gilt-bronze seated lion

Gilt-bronze seated lion.

A gilt-bronze model of a seated lion, seated on its haunches with open mouth showing its bared teeth and tongue above a triangular beard beneath the flat nose, the prominent bulging eyes set below its thick bushy eyebrows, two curled horns falling onto finely curled mane and long bushy tail tucking in over its back right leg sweeping up over its back, with finely engraved strokes to define the fur, wearing a bell attached to a rope-twist collar, the paws powerfully defined, the animal heavily cast.

China: Tang dynasty (618–907).

Provenance: Dr. Ip Yee, Hong Kong.

Purchased from P. C. Lu & Sons Ltd., Hong Kong, on 29 October Kong 1985.

For an almost identical example of a Tang dynasty gilt-bronze lion, see Eskenazi Ltd., Ancient Chinese Bronze Vessels, Gilt Bronzes and Early Ceramics, 1973, no. 25; another in Loan Exhibition of the Arts of the T'ang Dynasty, no. 375, also in Bluett & Sons, Early Chinese Art: A Catalogue of Early Chinese Bronzes, Jades and Allied Decorative Art from the Cunliffe Collection, pl. XXVII, no. 53, and in Eskenazi Ltd., Early Chinese Art from Private Collections, no. 24; and a further identical Tang dynasty gilt-bronze lion from the Rafi Y. Mottahedeh Collection in Kelley, Tang Dynasty A.D. 618–907: Chinese Gold and Silver in American Collections, p. 98, no. 67.

Dimensions

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance