The only surviving murals of the Five Dynasties Buddhist Temple on the mainland are a 21-square-meter work in The Dayun Temple in Pingshun, Shanxi. However, in terms of artistic level, the only surviving mural paintings in Dayunyuan in China are judged to be like clouds and mud compared with the works of Cisheng Temple in Wenxian County, Henan Province, which were lost overseas in the early years.
This batch of artistic treasures representing the highest level of the five generations of murals was once treasured by the famous antique dealer Lu Qinzhai in his apartment in Paris, until the twilight of his life, Lu Gradually donated this batch of ancient painting masterpieces.
The murals of Cisheng Temple are now stored in 7 famous museums and art galleries in Europe and the United States, and in terms of area and quality, the Nelson Museum has purchased the best collections in the early 1950s, including the Standing Posture Offering Bodhisattva And seated Guanyin Bodhisattva Diagram painted during the Later Zhou Guangshun Period (951-954), and the Later Jin Dynasty Standing Posture Holding Lotus Bodhisattva Diagram revealed from the lower part of the Later Zhou Dynasty works.
The superb styling skills displayed in the picture of the spring silkworm spitting silky iron wire are breathtaking: the bodhisattva's plump body, graceful and colorful posture, flower-like hand posture, wu belt fluttering in the wind, exquisite and transparent head light, and suitable coloring, all of which make the viewer dazzled.
How did these exquisite murals end up abroad? In 1962, Wu Laixian and Wu Xuegu, the old men of Dawu Village, once dictated the incident to someone: At that time, there was a Kuomintang Patrol Police Bureau stationed in the east of Cisheng Temple, and Chu Beixuan, director of the bureau, and Wu Desheng and Li Wencheng, patrol officers, colluded with the monks in the temple to steal the murals twice and sold them to illegal businessmen in Beijing.
In 1923, a Beijing profiteer brought 20 or 30 craftsmen to the temple to get paintings, and when the villagers found out, they went to the Wen County Patrol Police Bureau to complain, and Li Zhenjiang, the director of the Patrol Police Bureau, took people to the temple, destroyed part of the frescoes that were taken down, and beat the traitors from Beijing back to the county seat. But two days later, the traitor returned to Dawu Village to get the paintings, and used wooden planks to clip the frescoes and transport them away, and it turned out that he had used the money to "fix" the director of the county town, Director Li.
Judging from the traces left behind, those who stole the murals were intercepted in pieces, slotted to the wall in an unimportant position, and after the grooves were all around, the wooden planks of equal area were selected to be tightly buckled from the outside, and the thin and long iron sheet was shoveled down from the upper groove, which was a very technical job. After shoveling away from the wall, the clip was attached from the inside with a wooden plank, bundled and packed with a straw mat and transported away. Finally, it was sold abroad by antique dealer Lu Qinzhai.
The thousand-year-old mural left her motherland in such an era of war and chaos, and became the collection of some museums in Europe and the United States, although art has no borders, but after all, the Cisheng Temple in Jiaozuowen County, Henan, China is her home! Don't forget this history of cultural relics. Only when the country is rich and strong can there be the safety of cultural relics. (Transferred from Sina Blog Phoenix, the copyright of the graphic belongs to the original author)
Text: Network