Yangjiawan terracotta army

The Yangjiawan terracotta army (Ch: 杨家湾兵马俑) is a small funeral terracotta army of the Western Han period, which was excavated in Yangjiawan, in the region of Xianyang, Shaanxi, a few kilometers north of Xi'an. The terracotta army belong to auxiliary tombs to the mausoleum of the first Han Emperor Liu Bang at Changling. The terracottas are now on display in the Xianyang Museum. One of the tombs (Yangjiawan 4) is thought to have belonged to the Western Han general Zhou Bo, who died in 169, or his son.[1] The tomb has about 3,000 cavalry statuettes, with an approximate height of 60 cm.[1]

Western Han Terracotta Army of Yangjiawan

Compared to the early and much more famous Terracotta Army of the first Qin dynasty Emperor Qin Shihuang (210 BCE), the terracotta statue of Yangjiawan are much smaller in size, but also much less militaristic, much softer and elegant in their style: "Horse tails curl in fanciful fashion and human figures possess a doll-like innocence".[2][3] All this was possibly in response to the Han perception of Qin Shihuang as a tyrannic ruler.[2] Still, they continue a trend in naturalistic sculpture which was initiated by the Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuang, departing from the much simpler and sparser sculptural tradition of the preceding centuries, as seen in the Taerpo horserider (4th-3rd century BCE) for example.[4]

  • Flag holder
    Flag holder
  • Horserider and foot soldiers, Western Han Terracotta Army of Yangjiawan
    Horserider and foot soldiers, Western Han Terracotta Army of Yangjiawan
  • Large cavalryman
    Large cavalryman
  • A painted soldier
    A painted soldier

References
  1. Chong, Alan (1 January 2011). Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy. Asian Civilisations Museum. p. 56.
  2. Chong, Alan (1 January 2011). Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy. Asian Civilisations Museum. p. 16. Excavations around Han imperial tombs have revealed rich veins of artistic production. Far smaller than the Qin warriors, the figures found at the Han tombs of Yangjiawan and Yangling (pp. 113–29) are very different in feeling. It seems as though the first Han emperors, while retaining the long tradition of burying terracotta figures for the afterlife, wished to separate themselves as much as possible from the First Emperor and his tomb. Just as the Han historian, Sima Qian, exaggerated the cruelty and excess of Shi Huangdi, so Han emperors rejected his burial customs. Many Han soldiers and horsemen are modelled into soft, charming forms. Horse tails curl in fanciful fashion and human figures possess a doll-like innocence. The overall effect of Han military terracottas is entirely different from the unsmiling militarism of the Qin tomb, especially since there are so few figures in comparison.
  3. Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 418–419. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X. After the brief reign of the First Emperor, sculpture lost its prominence almost immediately. For some generations terracotta soldiers were still made for the graves of the Han ruling family, around the capital Chang'an and around Xuzhou, the ancestral homeland of the Han emperors in the modern-day province of Jiangsu (Figure 4). These warriors were only about 50–80 cm tall with simply modelled bodies and without individualized features, some of them nude and originally dressed in cloth uniforms.
  4. Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 415–419. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
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