Afternoon sun illuminates terracotta soldiers in Pit 1 at the Museum of the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of Qin in Xian, China. (Photo by Katherine Calos)
Editor’s Note: “Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China,” is on track to be the second most popular exhibition ever at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (after Picasso). By the time it closes March 11, VMFA Director Alex Nyerges projects that 120,000 visitors will have marveled at the artistry and enormity of the art produced for the first emperor of a newly united China 2,000 years ago. In connection with the exhibition, officials with the VMFA and the Cincinnati Art Museum are traveling in China with a group of journalists this week to see the places where the masterpieces were created and to talk with curators and archaeologists. Freelance writer Katherine Calos is reporting for Richmond magazine about what they are doing and learning. Here is her first post.
Monday morning began cold and bright, thanks to a snow that had cleared the sometimes hazardous air pollution in Xian, where the first remnants of the Terracotta Army were unearthed by farmers in 1974. A faint half-moon hung above the evergreens at our first stop, the Beilin Stele Forest Museum. We stepped around piles of mush to enter a Confucian temple site.
The sound of tapping reverberated through the gallery holding a “forest” of the stone monuments. Artisans were tapping ink onto the ancient stele — massive stone tablets — to make rubbings that would be sold to visitors or possibly contribute to exhibitions like the one in Richmond. On these stele, scribes extolled the emperor’s edicts or accomplishments, favorite poetry or pronouncements.
Time-lapse photography shows a Chinese artisan at the Beilin Stele Forest Museum in Xian, China, preparing to make a rubbing from the Mount Yi stele (stone tablet). The original was created soon after emperor Qin Shi Huang conquered the warring states to create a united China. This duplicate was created in 993 when the original was in ruins. A rubbing from this stone is in the "Terracotta Army" exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (Video by Katherine Calos)
One of the earliest stele dates from the first years of the first emperor, the one who was to be protected in the afterlife by the Terracotta Army. The stele commemorates an inspection tour of his new territory, during which he climbed Mount Yi. The inscription praises his new system of administrative districts.
Rubbings taken from that stele were important in preserving its history. When the original monument from the third century disintegrated, artisans were able to make a duplicate in 993. That duplicate is the source of the rubbing at the VMFA.
The Beilin Museum’s layering of history includes its location in a former Confucian temple, its collection of Buddhist art and a gallery of stone statues – including a lifesize rhino beloved by an empress and immortalized in stone after he died.
Then came the Museum of the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of Qin, a place that’s as big as its name.
Pit 3 offers a view of a cavalryman, now headless, and his horses at the Museum of the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of Qin in Xian, China. (Photo by Katherine Calos)
Three massive pits have been excavated at least in part. The first and largest has yielded an army of 2,000 pottery warriors and horses, and 20 wooden chariots so far. At least 4,000 are estimated to still be underground. The second pit has four groups of mixed military forces such as archers, war chariots and infantry. The third pit includes displays of individual warriors like the ones on loan to the VMFA exhibition. A final building displays the half-size bronze chariots that are replicated for the VMFA Terracotta Army exhibition.
Because of the grand scale and artistry of the emperor’s mausoleum, “we can compare his achievement to other great cultures in the world, for example Alexander the Great and the civilization in ancient Egypt,” archaeologist Zhang Weixing told the museum group through interpreter Li Jian, co-curator of the VMFA exhibition. The VMFA developed the exhibition with the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it will travel next.
When the first figures were unearthed in the 1970s, remnants of paint colors remained visible. A kneeling archer on display shows traces of orange on his clothing, for instance. Since then, most of that pigment has faded from exposure, so that now the army seems almost indivisible from the earth that surrounds it.
Archaeologists hope to study a larger area that covers 50 square kilometers, Zhang Weixing said.
Coming back to the source, Nyerges said he was filled with pride for what his team had accomplished in Richmond, especially in the final gallery that contains the life-size Terracotta Army figures.
“It’s a more impactful experience to see our exhibit than it actually was to stand at the precipice of Pit No. 1,” he said. “I mean that not disrespectfully to the power of it. It’s a majestic, awe-inspiring site.”
