Large Painted Grey Pottery Caparisoned Horse

Large Painted Grey Pottery Caparisoned Horse

Northern Qi dynasty (550-577)

Original pigmets, very important (white, orange, red and black )!

– The result of the thermoluminescence test number 05110705 form R. Kotalla Laboratory, is consistent with the dating of the item.

Provenance: Very important and old German private collection, Mr. W. R., collected before 1995.

Large Painted Grey Pottery Caparisoned Horse, Finely modelled with head slightly tilted to the left accentuating the arched muscular neck and spirited, alert attitude of the horse. Richly arrayed in finely detailed trappings including a wrapped plume between the pricked, notched ears, a narrow fringe-hung strap at the top of the neck, a chest collar hung with tufts and a crouper hung with pendants below a grid-pattern fitting of bosses molded with florets on the rump, the saddle covered with a long knotted cloth draped over flared mud guards, with traces of white, orange, red and black pigment.

This pottery horse is similar stylistically to an example unearthed in Cixian, Hebei province in 1979 from the tomb of a Eastern Wei princes of the Ruru nationality, see Wenwu 1984, pl, 5. fig. 2 and p.6, fig. 7, no. 3, for a line drawing of the horse.