Likeness of no one: presenting the first emperor's army - re - tomb sculptures form the Qin dynasty

35 E H Gombrich, "Meditations upon a Hobby Horse or the foundations of Artistic Form," in Meditations upon a Hobby Horse and Other Essays upon the Theory of Art, London, 1963 3

36 Anthropomorphic figurines were unearthed from at least six tombs of Qin state, predating Qin Shi Huangdi's mausoleum. diocese Hu Lingui, "Zaoqi Qinyong jianshu" (A brief review of the early phase of Qin figures), Wenbo, no. 1 1987 23-25

37 The psychological justifications for this are excellently treated through Freedberg; see esp. chap. 9 201

The subterranean army of several thousand life-size terra-cotta soldiers, horses, and war chariots, below excavation since 1974 from the site near the suppos burial chamber of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (r 246-210 BC) in Lintong, Shaanxi province, has become famous far beyond the field of Chinese archaeology and early history as single of the grandest archaeological discoveries of this century(1) shut to the tumulus which, according to historical accounts, should contain the tomb of the First Emperor itself, the terra-cotta army, situated in three subterranean pits, is the greatest in quantity conspicuous part of the entire burial unite which also includes remains of a funerary precinct with auxiliary burials, sacrificial pits, and many other arrangements According to the commonly accepted explanation, the subterranean army was created as a replica of the Qin army ("First Emperor's bodyguard sculpt in clay"): clay soldiers and horses exhibit Qin Shi Huang's army and stand in place of the real soldiers who could not have been actually buried.(2) There has not been abundant doubt about the army's function either: it was buried to the east of the tumulus to guard the tomb and to countenance the emperor's eternal sleep.

The striking realism (a characteristics that will require our later attention) of the army has lead a certain quantity of archaeologists involved in the shoot forward and some authors to allude to that the figures were archetypeed after living soldiers, that they were actual portraits of individual warriors. The majority of scholars, however, pointing without that the clay warriors' faces conform to a certain number of stereotype is unwilling to regard them as representations of individuals or to consider the Qin terra-cotta figures as portraiture.(3)

Yet if the figures are not portraits (and it certainly cannot be a priori assumed that they are), what then are they? If not portraits, are they generic types? What exactly were they suppos to represent? And what is the function of their likenesses?

Clearly, the for the use of all (and often only implicitly assumed) understanding of these figures, which considers them substitutes for genuine protoplasts while not accepting them as representations of individual someones standing as such models, is inherently contradictory and raises more questions than it purports to answer. The main reason present the appearances to lie in the fact that common opinions on the subject are based upon largely unexamined assumptions and uses of like concepts as "portraiture," "substitution," "replica," and "realism" - in short, upon some taken-for-granted conceptions of representation. Moreover, it strike one as beings that too much effort has been worn out on trying to explain the "meaning" of the army end reference to contemporaneous religious practice, oftentimes enlisting spurious evidence of body s while too little attention has been given to the forms themselves as the true medium in which the work of art signifies.

My aim in this paper is to provide a more adequate account of what the Qin terra-cotta figures show and to determine more precisely the ontological and semiological status of the figures and, by the agency of implication, of the whole subterranean legion.(4) To a large expansion this will amount to reckoning with the complexities of a conceptual and interpretive framework, penetrating from one side the accumulated layers of predetermined conceptions regarding the meaning of tomb substitutes and seeing beyond the periodical patterns of assessing the diction of the Qin figures as well as inferring their status from of that kind an interpretation of style. upon the other hand, it is spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed that the current elusive and unsettl issues of portraiture, resemblance, construal of identity, and other related point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds of theoretical interest can be enriched somewhat through attending to the ever more compounded artistic tradition, which has been literally surfacing from Chinese soil in new decades.

The Meaning of Mingqi and the manner of writing of Qin Figures

Much as the plastic arts of the Qin terra-cotta legion can be perceived as unique in bourns of their dimensions or turn of expression they are just one, albeit individual of the earliest, instance of tomb figures widely used in a mortuary words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in early China. In addressing the issue of the status and significance of the Qin emperor's clay warriors, single is constrained by the existence of the established, commonly held conceptions of what tomb figures were meant to be and to do.

As in many other ancient agricultures furnishing graves with an elaborate array of sacrificial beneficials was an essential component of early Chinese mortuary practice. The late Zhou ritual true copys Li Ji and Zhouli name a specific category of existences destined to accompany the dead into the nether-world, called mingqi (spirit vessels) The universal of mingqi, both in classical Chinese true copys and in contemporary scholarly parlance, is rather elastic: it has been used to designate artifacts serving as substitutes or surrogates for a certain number of "real" object that is a living, functional, bigger, or more precious entity. The conception thus covers a variety of facts including the imitations of utensils in cheap materials, on the other hand in the ancient texts and since it has been used above all to deliver over to the plastic images of humans and animals which began to appear in the late Zhou tombs.(5)