British Museum, also known as British Museum , was established in 1753. It is the oldest and most magnificent comprehensive museum in the world, and is also one of the four largest and most famous museums in the world. The British Museum is famous for its rich collections and a wide variety of types.
Exhibition Hall No. 33 of the British Museum is a permanent exhibition hall dedicated to displaying Chinese cultural relics. Like the ancient Egypt, Ancient Greek , ancient Rome and India exhibition halls, it is one of the only national exhibition halls in the museum. The Chinese cultural relics collected in the museum cover the entire Chinese art category, from ancient stone tools, Shang and Zhou bronze tools, , Wei and Jin Stone Buddha , Scriptures, to Tang and Song calligraphy and paintings, Ming and Qing porcelain , etc., which are engraved with the pinnacle of various cultures in Chinese history, can be seen here.
Chinese cultural relics were mainly accompanied by the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the invasion of Western powers, resulting in a large number of precious royal and folk cultural relics and buildings being plundered and destroyed by crazy plunder and destruction. burned the Old Summer Palace alone, and British and French coalition forces took away tens of thousands of precious cultural relics, including some bronze statues of the twelve zodiac animals that had not been recovered and cast during the Qianlong period.
The British Museum has many fine Chinese cultural relics collections, some of which can be called national treasure genre , which is an orphan, unique. These precious cultural relics are generally rarely exhibited to the outside world, so there is little knowledge about them outside. Here I will introduce several Chinese cultural relics that can be called the "treasure of the British Museum".
The bronze double sheep lord of the Shang Dynasty, the British Museum's bronze "Treasure of the Pavilion"
The British Museum contains nearly 23,000 cultural relics in my country. One of the cultural relics has its unique shape and long history, and can be called the "Treasure of the Pavilion" of the bronze ware in the British Museum.
British Museum Bronze "Treasure of the Town" Shang Dynasty Bronze Double Sheep Zun
This is the bronze Double Sheep Zun cast in the late Shang Dynasty.
Shuangyangzun was unearthed in Ningxiang, Hunan during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. Zun is an ancient container and is a type of bronze ware. During the Shang and Zhou periods, the images of animals were often applied to bronze ware. The more common shapes were tigers, sheep, cows, etc.
Among the sheep priests in the domestic collection, the Palace Museum in Beijing contains the Three Sheep priests and the National Museum of China contains the Four Sheep priests and the Square priests of , but the only double Sheep priests is collected in the British Museum.
The two sheep are 45 cm tall, and the two sheep are connected together to hold a cylinder together, with a unique shape. The two sheep are facing each other, the sheep's horns are bent and hovering, and the raised eyes are looking forward. There is a hooked beard under the chin, and the abdomen is huge and round. There are four legs under the abdomen, and the two legs are opposite to each sheep's head. The object is as fat as the body, and the two sheep are peaceful and solemn.
Shuangyangzun represents the highest level of bronze ware technology in ancient Shang and Zhou dynasties in my country with its exquisite craftsmanship and vivid shape. Emperor Qianlong was obsessed with bronze, porcelain, calligraphy, and poetry and painting throughout his life. When the Shuangyang Zun was presented to the palace as a local tribute, Emperor Qianlong was immediately attracted by its exquisite shape and heavy sense of history. From then on, the Shuangyang Zun was regarded as a treasure of the Qing Dynasty palace. After the completion of the Old Summer Palace, Shuangyangzun and other important cultural relics collected by the Qing court were moved here.
The Second Opium War broke out in 1860, and the British and French allied forces attacked Beijing. Emperor Xianfeng took Empress Xiaozhen (later Empress Dowager Ci'an), Concubine Yi (later Empress Dowager Cixi), and Crown Prince Zaichun fled to the Rehe Palace in the name of hunting west. After the British and French coalition forces invaded Beijing, they headed straight to the Old Summer Palace. The French commander Bentopian wrote to the Foreign Minister on the same day: "I'll order the French members to take care of the most valuable items in art and archaeology first." The day after the British and French invading army entered the park, officers and soldiers flocked to loot the gold, silver, jewelry and cultural and artistic treasures in the park.
This is an unprecedented catastrophe of cultural relics. The Old Summer Palace began to be built in the later years of Kangxi . After the painstaking management of the six emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng , Qianlong, Jiaqing , Daoguang , and Xianfeng, it collected a large number of orphan cultural relics, including the Double Sheep Zun. As a result, it was robbed by the British and French coalition forces in just two days.
The Double Sheep Lord was hidden in the British Museum and rarely displayed to the public for more than a hundred years. As the "treasure of the town" of the British Museum, the British never thought of returning the Double Sheep Lord to China. In principle, the agreement that latched cultural relics during the war should be returned unconditionally is even more chosen to ignore, which makes the return of the Double Sheep Lord to the motherland a long time ago.
" Female History's Proverbs ", the British Museum's silk painting "treasure of the museum"
" Female History's Proverbs " is the earliest Chinese silk painting in existence today. It is one of the works of the earliest professional Chinese painters that can still be seen. It has a milestone significance in the history of Chinese art and has always been a treasure collected by the courts of all dynasties.
"Historical Proverbs of the Female Historian " is written by Eastern Jin great painter Gu Kaizhi . This person is good at murals. When he was young, he wrote " Vimalakirti " murals in Jiankang (now Nanjing), which caused a sensation in the animation world.
The silk painting category of British Museum "Treasure of the Town" in the Western Jin Dynasty Gu Kaizhi's "Admonition of the Female Historian" (partial)
The creation background of "Admonition of the Female Historian" is very special, and its story originated from the period of Emperor Hui of the Western Jin Dynasty. In 290 AD, after the death of Emperor Wu of Jin, the crown prince, Sima Zhong, succeeded to the throne, and was the , Emperor Hui of Jin. As a typical incompetent monarch in Chinese history, Sima Zhong has been stupid and ignorant since childhood and only seeks pleasure. He is not the source of being an emperor at all.
Sima Zhong once visited Hualin Garden. When he heard the toads croaking, he said to the servants, "Is this called official or private?"The servants said, "This call is the official in the official place, and private in the private place." At the age of famine, countless people died due to famine. Sima Zhong actually asked, "Why don't they eat meat porridge?" It can be seen that Sima Zhong's stupidity and stubbornness had reached an outrageous level.
Sima Zhong's queen Jia Nanfeng is the daughter of Jia Chong , a famous "jealous woman" in history. She used Sima Zhong's stupidity and ignorance to kill the clan of the relative Yang Jun, and gradually controlled the government. Jia Nanfeng was cruel and debauchery, and was dissatisfied with the ministers in the court. Therefore, the minister Zhang Hua collected the deeds of sages and saints in various generations in history and wrote the article "The Admonition of the Female Historian" to show advice and warnings. This article was widely circulated at that time. Gu Kaizhi painted in sections based on Zhang Hua's "The Secret of the Female" and each paragraph has a text of precepts except for the first paragraph. Each paragraph vividly reveals the meaning of the text of precepts, so it is called "The Secret of the Female" Picture.
silk painting "The Admonitions of the Female Historian" has great significance in the history of Chinese painting. This scroll is based on daily life as the theme, and its brushwork is like a spring silkworm spinning silk, with both form and spirit. Gu Kaizhi flexibly used the hairspring drawing technique, making the picture look elegant, quiet, bright and lively. The lines in the picture are circulating and graceful, uniform and beautiful, and the characters' clothes are floating and vivid. The wide dresses on the hem of the female historians are slender and elegant, each pair is equipped with streamers of different shapes and bright colors, showing a floating and elegant style.
"Advisor of the Female Historian" is a masterpiece with exquisite and graphic characters and spirit. It fully demonstrates the aesthetic character of figure paintings in the Wei and Jin Dynasties and represents the highest level of figure paintings in that era.
Tang Dynasty copy "The Admonitions of the Female Historian" (partial)
"The Admonitions of the Female Historian" The original work has been lost, and there are two copies in the existing world. One of them is copied by the Song Dynasty and was collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing. The style and color are not of the best. The other is a copy of the Tang Dynasty. It is said that the "Princess of the Female Secretariat" was spread among the people in the early Tang Dynasty, and the copy of the Tang Dynasty was copied from the original work. Therefore, this copy has always been considered to best reflect Gu Kaizhi's painting style and the original appearance of the "Princess of the Female Secretariat".
The Tang Dynasty copy of "The Admonitions of the Female Historian" should also be written by famous artists, and they have a deep study of Gu Kaizhi's paintings, so the style of painting is so close. The copy was flowed into the people from the palace in the late Tang Dynasty, and was included in the inner palace during the Zhenghe period of the Song Dynasty. In the late Southern Song Dynasty, it was collected by Jia Sidao. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it was also hidden in the cabinet chief Yan Song . It was included in the Qing Palace during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. For more than a thousand years, the "Princesses of the Female Historian" copied in the Tang Dynasty were either collected by the court or privately collected by famous artists. Therefore, there are many inscriptions and seals of famous people, which are rare and top-quality paintings.
1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing and burned the royal gardens of the Qing Dynasty. Captain Johnson stole the "Princess of the Female Historian" in the Summer Palace. In 1902, it was sold to the British Museum for another £25.
Although the British Museum is the oldest museum in the world, the museum is quite backward in painting and painting technology. The British Museum framed it in the form of Japanese paintings. Since the length of "The Proverbs of the Female Historian" reached 348.2 cm, the museum staff who had no experience in mounting actually cut it into three sections and framed it separately, and there was also a slag loss during the process. In order to highlight the key points of the painting, a large number of inscriptions and inscriptions from all generations have been cruelly and ruthlessly cut down. This ignorant and violent frame has been passed down for more than a thousand years. The originally well-preserved "The Admonitions of the Female Historian" has caused irreversible damage.
As the "treasure of the museum" of silk paintings in the British Museum, "The Admonitions of the Female Historian" is stored in the Stein secret room in the museum. It has rarely been exhibited to the public for more than a hundred years. This masterpiece that has been passed down for more than a thousand years has seen very few people, which also adds more mystery to this national treasure.
The British Museum has national treasure-level Dunhuang scrolls and scriptures
Dunhuang murals include Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, Xiqian Buddha Cave , and Anxi Yulin Grottoes. There are 552 grottoes, with more than 50,000 square meters of murals in history. It is also the group of grottoes with the most murals in the world in my country. As an important part of Dunhuang art, Dunhuang murals are famous all over the world for their huge scale, superb skills, rich content and wide range of subjects.
Ancient Chinese murals published by the British Museum for a long time, from Qingliang Temple, Xingtang County, Hebei Province, China, the historical span of Dunhuang murals is very long. From the pre-Qin , it has been excavated from Former Qin , and has gone through eight dynasties including the Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern Wei , Northern Zhou , Sui, Tang, Song, Xixia, and Yuan dynasties. It is the largest group of Buddhist murals in the world.
In addition to a large number of exquisite murals, Dunhuang cultural relics also have countless vivid colorful statues and extremely precious large number of Buddhist scriptures, scrolls, documents, etc.
For thousands of years, Dunhuang murals have been hidden deep in the desolate northwest of China. Until the Daoguang period, the Qing Dynasty was forced to open its doors after the failure of the Opium War. This was why the so-called "Western explorers" went deep into the northwest of China in the name of scientific investigation and wanted to destroy and plunder the Dunhuang murals and secret scriptures.
Among them, the British explorer Stein exchanged 24 boxes of scriptures and 5 boxes of carefully bandaged silk paintings or embroidery from the King of the Mogao Grottoes with just a few silver dollars. After a long-distance transportation of 1 year and 6 months, these precious relics arrived at the British Museum in London in January 1909.
In March 1914, Taoist Wang gave Stein another 570 volumes of Dunhuang documents he had collected for free. It can be said that Stein was the person who stole the most documents of the Dunhuang Sutra Cave. Among the more than 40,000 scriptures and manuscripts in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, the Everbright British Museum has 13,000 pieces in its collection, and the French National Library also has nearly 10,000 pieces, and only one-third of them exist in China. The Dunhuang scriptures have been spent more than a thousand years, and countless eminent monks and masters have worked hard to write, but in the end they were destroyed and plundered by Westerners in just a few decades in the late Qing Dynasty. This is really one of the biggest losses in the history of modern Chinese academic and cultural.
There is a 17.2 square meter Chinese Buddhist character mural on the central wall of the China Hall No. 33 of the British Museum. This is a mural cut directly from Qingliang Temple in Xingtang County, Hebei Province. Although the marks on the edges are still visible to the naked eye, they cannot hide the elegance and luxury of the three "popular and plump" Bodhisattvas.
In addition, the British Museum also collects the earliest version of the Chinese Prami Buddhist scriptures that can be regarded as a national treasure. All Buddhist collections are hardly exhibited to the public. These national treasure-level cultural relics robbed from China are not easily made public from beginning to end.
Other Chinese national treasure-level cultural relics in the British Museum
Among the Chinese bronzes in the British Museum, in addition to the Double Sheep Zun, which can be called the "treasure of the museum", the other two precious bronzes have always attracted much attention from the outside world.
Gui is an vessel used in ancient China to hold cooked rice. It is also used as ritual vessel , round mouth, and double ears. Popular in Shang Dynasty to Eastern Zhou , it is one of the iconic bronze ware in the Bronze Age of China.
National treasure-level cultural relic Western Zhou Kanghou Bronze Gui
931 Unearthed from Weihou Tomb in Xincun, Junxian, Henan Province, the Western Zhou Kanghou Bronze Gui is exquisitely shaped and exquisitely crafted. It is a representative work of bronze ware in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The biggest discovery of this cultural relic is the four lines and twenty-four characters inscriptions cast on the bottom of the vessel, which records the attack of Zhou 1 King Wu of Zhou and ordered Kang Hou to establish the country in Wei, and the Jade Situ made this vessel for his deceased father. Bronze ware with inscriptions cast by Shang and Zhou dynasties is extremely rare, and the cultural value of the Western Zhou Kanghou bronze gui is naturally higher, and it is a real national treasure-level cultural relic.
National treasure-level cultural relic Western Zhou Xinghou Gui
Xinghou Gui was unearthed in Xingtai City, Hebei Province in 1921. It was cast by the Western Zhou Lihou Xinghou to worship his father, Zhou Gongdan (i.e., the younger brother of King Wu of Zhou, Zhou Gongdan ). Like the Kanghou bronze gui in front, they are all bronze ware that was only known in China but not seen in the face of it. The Xinghou Gui is about 20 cm high, and the patterns on the body of the instrument are very exquisite. What is most shocking is the precious inscription of the sixty-eight characters engraved by the bronze ware, which describes in detail the purpose of Xinghou casting this gui, which is to worship his father, Duke Zhou. The words "Son of Heaven", "Emperor", "I" and other words that appear in the inscription were all major discoveries in the archaeological world at that time. Therefore, Xinghou Gui and Kanghou bronze gui are both extremely rare national treasure-level cultural relics. At present, less than ten guis have been unearthed, and the British Museum has already occupied two of them.
The British Museum also contains many paintings by famous Chinese masters, such as "Green Landscape Pictures" by the Tang Dynasty painter Li Sixun, which is a representative work of landscape paintings in the Tang Dynasty. Li Sixun himself is very good at painting green landscapes. His paintings are deeper and powerful, and his subject matter is mostly expressed in secluded places. Therefore, his paintings are more green and green. "Green Landscape Picture" is Li Sixun's only painting that has been passed down to this day. The modified painting was originally an ancient painting collected in the Old Summer Palace of the Qing Dynasty. It has been collected in the British Museum since it was plundered by the British and French coalition forces in 1860.
National treasure-level cultural relic "Huayan Disguised Picture" (partial)
In addition to "Green Landscape Picture", the British Museum also contains three major names: 5th generation Jiangnan School of Painting HTML Representative figure Juran "Magic forests and peaks" and Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting 3 major names: Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting One of the homes, Fan Kuan " with a piano to visit friends" ", Northern Song Dynasty famous painter Li Gonglin " Huayan disguised picture ", Eight great masters , One of the eight great masters of Tang and Song Dynasty Su Shi "Ink Bamboo Picture" and other treasures or solitary works by famous Chinese calligraphy and painting masters. These treasured paintings have two common points: one is the ancient masterpiece collected by the Qing Palace, and the other is transported to the British Museum during the catastrophe of the British and French coalition forces burning the Old Summer Palace in 1860.
postscript
British Museum
According to statistics, China has lost more than 1.6 million cultural relics from major foreign museums, and the cultural relics flowing into private collections are counted in tens of millions. The loss of cultural relics is the most tragic loss in the modern academic and cultural history of China, and it is also a pain that the Chinese have still found to erase.
Many compatriots who have visited the British Museum, the French National Library, and the Tokyo National Museum will stop and ponder whenever they see the top Chinese cultural relics displayed in these museums, and they will not want to leave for a long time. Why do these Chinese cultural relics that should have been quietly staying in the Palace Museum or major local museums appear in foreign museums in large quantities?
There is no doubt that as a long ancient country with a history of 5,000 years and has never had a dynasty, China's historical heritage is orderly, and naturally, behind Chinese cultural relics represent a period of history.
has to admit that in the eyes of Western countries, China, an ancient oriental civilization, is indeed full of endless charm, and has remained unabashed from ancient times to the present. As the British Museum’s first introduction to Chinese cultural relics : "The Chinese have created the most extensive and long-standing civilization in the world..."
In the bones, the shameless Western countries have no intention of returning the plundered Chinese cultural relics to this day. In their eyes, no matter what method they use, they will get it mine. This is a typical robber logic. With the strength of our country's national strength and the strengthening of international influence, I believe that in the near future, more and more national treasures lost overseas will return to the motherland.
Come back, our national treasure!
