 Experts to fly to US to restore Tang relics
By Lu Hongyan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-15 07:47
XI'AN: The Daming Palace Foundation in Shaanxi's provincial capital is recruiting volunteers to go to the United States to repair two stone horse sculpture reliefs dating back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). The campaign is in response to a request from the University of Pennsylvania, where they are on display. Six horse reliefs once lined the corridor of the Tang emperor Li Shimin's mausoleum. Li owed much of his military success to six horses he rode into combat, so he ordered reliefs of the animals to be carved and placed in his tomb to accompany him in the afterlife. The images, which feature the horses in different poses, are true-to-life specimens of Tang-era sculpture. Smugglers stole the reliefs in 1918 but were stopped by locals in Tongguan, Shaanxi. But the thieves still managed to get two of the artworks to the US, while the other four ended up in Xi'an's Forest of Steles Museum. As the two reliefs were broken into several pieces during transport, the University of Pennsylvania Museum had asked the foundation to send two experts to work with their American counterparts to restore them. Volunteers will sign up from April 16 to May 15. The foundation's deputy secretary-general Sun Fuxi said the US university had earmarked $70,000 for the restoration, which is expected to take a month. "We hope the two horse reliefs will be perfectly repaired and can be exhibited overseas in the future," said Guan Zhaoyi, also deputy secretary-general of the foundation, said.
(China Daily 04/15/2009 page5) |
