More than 400 years ago, one day between Jiajing and Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, the quiet monk who practiced in the beautiful Baiyun Cave of Jiuhua Mountain surprised his friend Zhu He.
Without a few words of greeting, Zhu He couldn't wait to take out a special gift that he had brought with him.
It is a beautiful sculpture of Maitreya, although it is only the size of a palm, but the details are vivid: Maitreya has a bare chest and shoulders, a half-draped robe, holding a Buddha bead in his hand, bending his bare feet, sitting with a smile on his face and leaning against a cloth bag;
On Maitreya's body, five naughty children were playing with joy, some of them were pulling Buddha beads, some were pulling cloth bags, some were crossed shoulders and ears, some were itching their feet, and one was holding his hands as he wished, creeping behind Maitreya to scratch his armpits, and the naughty look was really unbearable.
This is a bamboo carved artwork created by Zhu He specifically for his friend Jing Wu monk.
The image of Maitreya's fat head and big ears in the bamboo sculpture is quite similar to that of the monk Jing Wu.
What is amazing is that this Ming Dynasty bamboo carving hundreds of years ago uses a completely three-dimensional circular carving technique, and its multi-dimensional effect is comparable to modern 3D printing technology, which can be called a representative work of 3D elegant art in the Ming Dynasty.
Who is Zhu He who can create such a wonderful bamboo carving artwork?
It turned out that he was Zhu Songlin, the founder of the famous "Jiading School" bamboo carving art. Because of him, China's traditional bamboo carving skills ushered in a qualitative leap in the Ming Dynasty and was derived into an independent and elegant art.
Chinese bamboo carving has a long history, and according to literature, this technique has appeared as early as the Yin Shang period. However, due to the fact that the material is not easy to preserve, bamboo carved artworks are rarely seen in archaeological excavations.
The painted dragon pattern bamboo tenant excavated from the Mawangdui Western Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, is an earlier known bamboo carving, and has a quite decorative pattern.
However, bamboo carving really developed into a mature and elegant art category, until the Jiajing and Wanli years of the Ming Dynasty.
At that time, in the Jiading area of Jiangsu (now Jiading, Shanghai), due to the influence of the surrounding "Wumen School", some sculptors with a literati temperament and poetic background have used knives to write bamboo and create a variety of bamboo carving artworks with a rich humanistic atmosphere, the most representative of which is Zhu Songlin.
Zhu Songlin's real name is Zhu He, and his name is Songlin.
He was proficient in ancient seals since he was a child, obtained the secret method of Miao Seal, carved and carved, good at governing seals, and was good at poetry and painting, so he could organically integrate the Southern Sect painting school and the Northern Sect carving, opening up a new world of bamboo carving art.
His bamboo carvings are widely distributed, covering pen holders, incense sticks, arm rests, head hairpins, poppies, cups, Buddha statues, etc., which are deeply cherished by the world, and people are vying for purchase, and directly refer to the bamboo carved utensils he carved with "Zhu Songlin".
In the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor also took a high look at Zhu Songlin's bamboo ware and praised it as "high branches should be entrusted with high soil, and the gods Mo Ruoshan conveyed the gods"
The appearance of Zhu Songlin made bamboo carvings, which had a history of thousands of years but were not valued, suddenly flourish in the Jiading area.
Later, under the inheritance and promotion of Zhu Songlin's son Zhu Miao and his grandson Zhu Zhizheng, the bamboo carving technique finally matured day by day, forming a distinct style and self-contained "Jiading School" bamboo carving technique, which became the most important representative of Chinese bamboo carving art.
Why was Zhu Songlin able to create a precedent for a generation of bamboo carving techniques? Where are these bamboo carvings?
High is high in the words "deep" and "transparent". Created by Zhu Songlin, the hollow deep penetration carving method, "low and shallow, can be five or six layers", can fully display the rich and vivid picture layers such as landscapes, characters, flowers and birds, pavilions and so on, so that the characters and scenes have a strong authenticity and appeal, which is difficult for ordinary sculptors to reach.
At the same time, Zhu Songlin is also good at carving human statues with round carving methods, especially Buddha statues such as Maitreya and Guanyin. The bamboo carving of Maitreya circle sculpture he made for the monk of Jing Wu is the most convincing representative work.
This bamboo carving is not only delicately carved and vivid, but also the theme is also very interesting. The Five Sons Of Maitreya is a form of statue that is widely spread in our folklore, and its meaning has many meanings.
The most common one is that the five sons represent the five roles of wealth, sex, name, food, and sleep, and the five sons of Maitreya imply that these five kinds of people want to try to win over and tease Maitreya Bodhisattva, but the bodhisattva is as calm as water and is not moved;
There is also a belief that the five children are playing on the body of Maitreya Buddha, showing the joy of the ancestors and grandchildren, taking the meaning of "family rejoicing".
Zhu Songlin sent such a bamboo carving to the Jingwu monk, and it is unknown what kind of meaning it took, but it was called "drama carving" in the "message", which shows that the friendship between the two is extraordinary and should be connected by heart.
Today, this precious round carved bamboo carving has been permanently collected by the Ningbo Museum and has become one of the most representative "treasures of the town hall" of the museum.
Curiously, Zhu Songlin seems to have nothing to do with Ningbo — his ancestral home is Shexian County, Anhui Province, and his long-term living place is Jiading, Jiangsu Province, so most of his surviving bamboo carvings are now in the Nanjing Museum.
So how did this rare five-son play Maitreya round carved bamboo carving come to Ningbo?
This has to mention a collector named Qin Kangxiang.
Qin Kangxiang was born in Ningbo to a wealthy merchant family and was the heir of Shanghai's "Qin Qianzhuang".
Qin Kangxiang (group photo on the far right)
But he was not keen on making money in business, but was obsessed with art collecting. He lived an extremely frugal life, squeezing the tram when he traveled, but he did not hesitate to collect famous seals and bamboo carvings.
At the end of his life, Qin Kangxiang said to his son Qin Bingnian: "The treasures in the family will be sent back to their hometown in the future and left to Tianyi Pavilion." ”
In order to fulfill his father's long-cherished wish, Qin Bingnian donated more than 8,000 cultural relics to the Tianyi Pavilion Museum on behalf of his father several times from 2001 to 2006, including a large number of precious ming and qing dynasty bamboo carving art masters.
After the Completion and Opening of the Ningbo Museum in 2008, a number of bamboo carvings, including this Wuzi Opera Maitreya Circle Sculpture Bamboo Carving, eventually settled here.
Producer | First of all, Hongming
Edit | Yu Xin
Some of the image material is organized from the Internet
If there is any infringement, please contact us in time to delete
-END-