MINGQI Statue Han Dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD

Statue representing a standing lady wrapped in a large criss-cross dress with three collars, the braids of which are particularly visible thanks to the rest of the red polychromy.
The head presents a black polychromy at the level of its hair, its eyebrows, its eyes while its mouth is painted in red.
Hands are missing

China, Han Dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD

Terracotta with trace of white, red and black polychromy

H: 68cm

Thermoluminescence test

In Chinese, funerary statuettes of this type are called mingqi, ??.
Representative of the refined and aristocratic society of the Han, they represent the beings who surrounded the deceased during his lifetime (court ladies, servants, warriors and animals), but also his possessions. This funerary corpus is produced in order to accompany its owner in the afterlife.
Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, founding emperor of the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC), was the first to collect in his tomb terracotta representations of his servants in a kind of symbolic sacrifice that would replace the sacrifices real. In 1974, excavations revealed an army of seven thousand statues in his tomb.

The important Chinese tombs continue to present this type of corpus thereafter in less grandiose proportions. These sets are vivid testimonies of daily life in the Middle Kingdom from the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) to that of the Tang (618-907). The use of mingqi did not decline until the 10th century