From the Wu Dacheng Circle of Bronze Connoisseurs

Regina Krahl

This archaic bronze cauldron of square (fang) ding shape is remarkable for the rendering of its taotie design, which is composed of broad scrolling bands arranged in almost abstract mask formations around slightly raised oval eyes, both in the center and around the corners of the vessel. On account of this taotie style, it can be attributed to the late Shang period, although the basic vessel form and decoration continued into the Western Zhou. The present piece is extremely rare for showing prominent flanges at the four corners.

A fang ding with very similar decoration but lacking the flanges, the Geng Shi Fang Ding, was recovered from Xiaodun in Yinxu, capital city of the Shang at Anyang from the early 14th to the mid-11th century BC, and is illustrated in Yinxu qingtong qi / Bronze Vessels from Yin Xu, Beijing, 1985, pl. 232 and fig. 85: 1 (fig. 1). It is attributed to the fourth period of the site, corresponding to the reign of the last two Shang kings. Another very similar fang ding (fig. 2), also without corner flanges, in The Saint Louis Art Museum is extensively described and discussed in Steven D. Owyoung, Ancient Chinese Bronzes in The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, 1997, no. 16; and a third closely related vessel lacking the flanges, in the collects ion of Tadashi Sengoku, was exhibited at the Osaka Art Club in 2004 and is published in the accompanying catalogue by Junko Namba, Chūgoku ōchō no sui [Essence of Chinese dynasties], Himeji, 2004, no. 27.

Owyoung, who attributes the St. Louis fang ding also to the late Shang period, the 11th century BC, carefully explains the taotie design as being based on earlier Erligang models, but stylistically adapted in the Anyang phase of the Shang (op.cit., p. 77): “Instead of the dense leiwen ground, multiple motifs, and elaborate structure of other Anyang-phase bronzes, this vessel adopts a simpler decoration which is a condensed and rather compacted version of the earlier bronze decorative mode of Loehr Style II. Found on bronzes dating from the 15th to 14th centuries BC, these are pre-Anyang designs in which the zoomorphs are delineated by flat ribbons for their bodies and plain bosses for their eyes. The effect of the decor is sculptural, a design in which the elongated and often flowing ribbons and curls of uneven width are complemented by generous, equally irregular, and visually complex negative spaces. In contrast, the design of spurred curls, S-shapes, and interlocking stemmed C-curls found on the Saint Louis piece is deliberately linear, depending on thin, even, regular lines to simply produce the wide forms that suggest the earlier Erligang-phase model but deny the richness of shadow and light of sculpted forms.”

It is interesting to compare the design on the present cauldron and the three comparisons listed above to other related fang ding, where the design band is composed of thinner lines and more clearly arranged in three horizontal rows, a style that can be attributed to the early Western Zhou period. An intermediary, apparently still of Shang date, is a fang ding from Fufeng in Shaanxi, published in Robert W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler collects ions, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 129, fig. 192; but the Western Zhou style is clearly represented by a related vessel with a rare cover in the Palace Museum, Beijing, the Tian Gao Fang Ding excavated in Baoji, Shaanxi province, previously attributed to the late Shang, but now to the early Western Zhou period, published in Gugong qingtong qi/Bronzes in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1999, pl. 23; and in Gugong jingdian. Gugong qingtong qi tudian/Classics of the Forbidden City. Bronzes of the Forbidden City, Beijing, 2010, pl. 57; another, very similar to the Gugong example, is illustrated in Bernhard Karlgren, ‘New Studies on Chinese Bronzes’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 9, 1937, pl. XXVIII, no. 18, where the author calls this Western Zhou type of taotie motif ‘animal triple band’. On the earlier style of the present vessel, the scroll elements of the taotie motifs are much more freely assembled around the eyes.

The inscription on our fang ding contains a clan sign, which is composed of the pictographs of a human figure and a toad, and the characters fu yi, ‘Father Yi’. A similar clan sign has been interpreted by Hentze as a divine ancestor figure arising from an animal head (Carl Hentze, ‘Antithetische T’ao-t’ieh Motive’, in Herbert Kühn, ed., IPEK. Jahrbuch für Prähistorische & Ethnographische Kunst, vol. 23, Berlin, 1972, pp. 3f. and pl. 3, fig. 18).

The present vessel is recorded since at least the Guangxu period of the late Qing dynasty, when Wu Dacheng (1835-1902) included it in his compilation of bronze inscriptions, published in 1896. Wu was a scholar-official, compiler of the Imperial Han Lin Academy, and renowned collects or of archaic works of art, who discussed and exchanged items with a group of famous contemporary connoisseurs and bronze collects ors such as Pan Zuyin (1830-1930), Chen Jieqi (1813-1884), Wang Yirong (1845-1900) and others. One of whom must have owned the present vessel, since the inscriptions Wu assembled in his Kezhai jigulu came from his own bronzes and those of his friends. Wu himself owned a somewhat different pair of fang ding decorated with confronted dragons on a leiwen ground above the plain band, and with prominent flanged at the corners, which appear in a set of composite rubbings s of archaic bronzes made for Wu by Yin Bohuan, and again in the Kezhai jigu tu, a handscroll of rubbings s done by Wu and others, and are today in the Shanghai Museum, see Wang Tao, Mirroring China’s Past. Emperors, Scholars, and Their Bronzes, The Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London, 2018, cat. nos 146 and 154, and p. 194, fig. 9.

鑄冶商輝•金石緣誼

康蕊君

本青銅方鼎饕餮紋飾細緻精美，橢圓形雙目微突，造型風格抽象，延貫四周。究其饕餮紋風格可斷代商末，而整體器型及裝飾則延見於西周時期。本例四邊扉棱，風格突出，極為罕見。

參考一相類方鼎例，與本品紋飾極為相近，唯欠扉棱，斷代公元前14世紀初至11世紀中葉，於商都安陽殷墟小屯村出土，圖載於《殷墟青銅器》，北京，1985年，圖版232，圖85:1（圖一），屬殷墟文化第四期，即商末最後兩任君主帝乙﹑帝辛時期。再見一方鼎例（圖二），四邊無扉棱，現存於美國聖路易斯美術館，學者Steven D. Owyoung於著作《Ancient Chinese Bronzes》當中曾作詳細論述，聖路易斯，1997年，編號16；另比一例，亦無扉棱，千石唯司收藏，2004年展於大阪美術倶楽部，並載於難波純子著展覽圖錄，《中國王朝の粋》，姫路， 2004年，編號27。

學者Owyoung將聖路易斯美術館收藏之方鼎斷代商末，即公元前 11 世紀，並解釋該鼎饕餮紋設計以二里崗文化雛本為模，風格則取自商代安陽時期（出處同上，頁77）：「此器紋飾較爲簡單，異於安陽時期其他青銅器雷紋地、多紋飾及結構繁雜之特點，相比羅樾二號風格（Loehr Style II），本器紋飾更爲緊凑小巧。 此類紋飾可追溯至公元前 15 至 14 世紀，為安陽時期之前的風格，該時期饕餮紋以浮雕條紋刻畫軀幹，獸目素面凸起，頗具雕塑感。其線條流暢，寬窄相間，紋飾與留白相輔相成，視覺效果繁複精巧。聖路易斯美術館收藏作例紋飾則以鉤形、S形及互扣之C形為主，以纖細均勻的綫條勾勒輪廓，雖具較早的二里崗風格，卻無其光影分明之豐富的雕塑感。」

與上述三例及本品相比較，其他相關方鼎作例之紋飾則綫條較細，清楚分為上、中、下三排，屬西周早期風格。可比一例，風格介於兩者之間，斷代商朝，陝西扶風縣出土，載於羅伯特•貝格利，《Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler collects ions》，華盛頓，1987年，頁129，圖192；再比一例，陝西寳鷄出土田告方鼎，其西周風格突出，鼎蓋甚爲罕見，現藏於北京故宮博物院，曾一度斷代商末，現定為西周初，載於《故宮青銅器》，北京，1999年，圖版 23，以及《故宮經典：故宮青銅器圖典》，北京，2010年，圖版57；另比一例，與田告方鼎相近，圖載於高本漢，〈New Studies on Chinese Bronzes〉，《Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities》，1937年，第9期，圖版XXVIII，編號18，作者形容其西周風格的饕餮紋為「三環獸紋」。本方鼎斷代商末，風格較早於以上作例，故其饕餮紋飾圍繞獸目更具自然分佈之勢。

本鼎鑄一復合族徽「天黽」，由人形及蛙形圖形文字組成。學者卡爾•亨茨認爲，此類復合族徽或為刻畫祖先英靈自獸首升起，（卡爾•亨茨，〈Antithetische T'ao-t'ieh Motive〉，赫伯特•庫恩編，《IPEK Jahrbuch für Prähistorische & Ethnographische Kunst》，柏林，1972年，卷23，頁3f及圖版3，圖 18）。

本鼎著錄可溯至晚清光緒年間，吳大澂（1835-1902）1896年彙編金石銘文成書，已記載此器。吳大澂，翰林院編修，收藏高古金石甚豐，與同時期重要金石鑒藏家如潘祖蔭（1830-1890）、陳介祺（1813-1884）及王懿榮 （1845-1900）等相交甚篤，經常見面或通信，討論及交換藏品。吳大澂著《愙齋集古圖》所錄拓本均來自其本人及友人收藏，故可知本鼎源自吳大澂或其朋友所藏。吳大澂另藏一方鼎，略異於本品，上層紋飾以雷紋地襯對稱龍紋，邊緣出戟突出，可見尹伯圜拓本，亦載於吳大澂及友人手拓之《愙齋集古錄》，現存上海博物館，參考汪濤著《吉金鑒古》，芝加哥美術學院，紐黑文及倫敦，2018年，編號 146 及154 號，以及頁194，圖9。