Mongol Bling: From Xanadu to Tabriz to Venice
Stunning objects, wonderous new materials and technologies, and novel ideas constitute what was the shared Mongol taste for splendour across the four khanates that made up the Great Mongol State from its foundation by Genghis Khan (r. 1206-27) on the Mongolian steppe heartlands, and between eastern China and Korea to Western Asia and Eastern Europe. In spite of their reputation as cannibals and philistines who sowed terror, how did the Mongol overlords reveal themselves to have also forged a dynamic, creative, and aesthetic empire which valued the highly sophisticated cultures of the settled peoples they conquered and in which the arts featured prominently?
This panel focuses on the crosspollinated artistic landscapes that fashioned through local technologies, styles and tastes a distinctively Mongol-inflected regional identity. We invited papers that address through objects and analytics of transcultural possibilities the ways Mongol khans in China, Persia, Central Asia or Russia championed their own local artists to fashion favoured regional styles. How do the extraordinary richness and diversity of the arts produced to serve the local elites reflect and embody the wealth and power of the Mongol state? We envision a panel that contributes to developing of critical new ways to re-evaluate the Eurasian localities—Europe to East Asia, Northern Steppes to insular Southeast Asia—of artistic production in light of the overarching Mongol predilections for prestige conveyed through the charisma of the object.
Session Convenors:
Sussan Babaie, The Courtauld, University of London
Shane McCausland, SOAS, University of London
Speakers:
Ching-fei Shih, Graduate Institute of Art History, National Taiwan University / Needham Research Institute & Visiting Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
A Turning Point? Branding Jingdezhen Blue-and-White Porcelain in the Fourteenth Century with Special Reference of Islamic Market
In this paper, I investigate an important change in the Asian ceramic trade from the thirteenth to fourteenth century in the light of the emergence of Jingdezhen blue-and-white porcelain. It demonstrates how the most influential ceramic product (blue-and-white porcelain) in world history penetrated into the pre-existing ceramics market. This study argues that in the fourteenth century the trade network in Asian ceramics reached a turning point in both its scale and significance. In addition, based upon the evidence from excavated materials, underwater findings and stylistic analysis of trade ceramics, I argue that a tight link developed between workshops, brokers/merchants and their overseas customers, especially in the Islamic market.
Konstance Chuntung Li, Lecturer, Global Creative Industries Programme, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Hong Kong
The Gift of Supreme Divinity: Mongol-Koryo Avatamsaka Sutra in the Vatican Library Collection
Dated to 1346, the Mongol-Koryo Avatamsaka Sutra (Vat.estr.or.1) was first recorded in the Vatican Library Collection in 1414 under the entry of “item unum papirum tartaricorum” (an item of Tartar papers). Originally, this “Tartar” Buddhist manuscript served as a dedicatory gift commissioned by a Yuan courtier that was presented to Emperor Toghon-temür (Ch. Emperor Shundi) (r. 1333-68) for the Great Khan’s well-being and longevity. Completed with luxuriously illuminated frontispiece and dedication, this seven-hundred-years old manuscript penned in gold ink on indigo papers is a prime example of superb craftsmanship that has come to represent 14th century Koryo royal Buddhist objects. Most likely this manuscript was produced by artists associated with the Koryo royal workshop, who were residing at the Great Khan’s capital of Khanbaliq (Ch. Dadu).
Focusing on the Mongol-Koryo Avatamsaka Sutra, this paper explores the multiple cultural and art traditions that converged under the Yuan imperium of the 14th century. I argue that initially the finely ornamented scripture was designed to project the superior knowledge, scholarship, religious merits, and craftsmanship the Great Khan possessed. The sutra attained further levels of significance when it entered the papal collection. The scripture affirms the nature of the multiple nested worlds within worlds, and in its original context positioned the Yuan imperium as the unrivalled Supreme in East Asia. In my interpretation, the entry of the Buddhist imagery in the Papal court may serves to advance the Mongol Empire’s proselyting power to visually substantiate the Mongol Imperium as a cosmopolitan power and its authority on divine and artistic matters.
Eiren Shea, Grinnell College, Iowa, USA
Gold, Jade, and Silk: Dress and Adornment of Local Elites in Northwest China during the Mongol Period
The Wang Shixian clan cemetery in Gansu Province includes 120 tombs which span 14 generations (1243-1616). Wang Shixian, a Jurchen military official who defected to the Mongols during their campaign against the Jin, was rewarded by the Mongols for his service and enfeoffed, after death, as the Prince of Longyou in southern Gansu, where his family cemetery is now located. The cemetery was initially excavated during the 1970s and archaeologists began excavating there again in 2011. In this paper, I focus on materials from the eleven tombs that date to the Yuan dynasty and contain textiles/dress and objects of adornment. I am especially interested in utilizing these tombs as a window into the different ways in which elites living under Mongol rule identified (or not) as Mongol subjects in death and in life. The Mongol period was a time of widespread integration of Mongol courtly motifs into the arts and material culture of a geographically diverse area spanning from the Korean peninsula to present-day Hungary. Dress and objects of adornment found in the Yuan-era Wang family tombs used favored Mongol designs and materials familiar to the pan-Mongol court aesthetic. However, the study of the tombs of individuals reveals information about specific aspects of cultural identity that are glossed over in broader studies of the Mongol Empire or the Yuan dynasty. I hope that examination of specific individuals will reveal some of the complexities inherent to life as an elite in the Mongol period in northwest China.
Margaret Shortle, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, MünchenMuseum for Islamic Art, Berlin,
Performative Tile-work: Takhte Soleyman, Poetry, Landscape and Legacy
Built atop an ancient Sassanian fire temple, Takhte Soleyman, was a summer retreat and palace site, whose appropriation, some six-hundred years after the Arab-Muslim invasions, represents an extraordinary choice for the Mongols in Iran. Today, the site is the only partially surviving settlement of Ilkhanid court life. Its broken tiles are widely dispersed. The palace complex was once sheathed in glazed tiles with figurative images and poetic inscriptions. These decorations formed a new genre of architectural revetment in Iran and seem to present a visual program that echoes the palace’s select location. This paper focuses on the extraordinary juxtaposition of fragmented lines of poetry from the Shahname of Ferdowsi and other poets. Building on Tomoko Masuya’s foundational scholarship, I question the assemblage’s performativity. Given especially Ferdowsi’s emphasis on legacy in the Shahname and the palace site I suggest that that the tiles, their fragmentary inscriptions and repetitive yet non-specific figurative imagery were evocative of the Persian poetic performance. Further, I argue that the Ilkhanid court was deeply attuned to this legacy and that the poetry combined with the palace’s strategic location aim not to position the Ilkhanids as legitimate yet foreign rulers as is often argued, but rather that the Ilkhanids are re-appropriating the legacy of ancient Iranian kingship as a model within which they operate. At Takht-e Soleyman, the Ilkhanid patrons and their local artists were working within established Persianate notions of kingship circulated via poetry and its performance and reinforced via palace decoration.
Mia Ye Ma, University of Cambridge
A Glimpse of “Mongol Taste”: The Mystery of Enshōin Avalokiteśvara Painting
This presentation offers an in-depth study of the Avalokiteśvara Painting in the collection of Enshōin円生院 and a critical analysis of “Mongol taste”. Based on the floral patterns depicted on Avalokiteśvara’s garment, Japanese scholars had previously considered this as a Goryeo work. Denise Patry Leidy argues that the scroll is a Yuan dynasty painting with depictions of icons derived from Tibetan Buddhism. Mahakala Panjaranatha, the protector of the Tent, is rendered in the top left corner of the image. He is thought to serve as a protector for Kublai Khan’s regime and his imperial family. The colour palette of the scroll, on which malachite and azure pigments have been lavishly used, is seemingly reminiscent of the Tangut style presented in the Yulin cave. A further mystery is revealed by the conservation report by Nakashima Hiroshi 中島博. He discovers that a Budai 布袋monk, a semi-legendary figure first created in the Jiangnan area, was depicted on the lower right corner of the image. This presentation argues that the hybrid style of the painting reflects the cultural dynamism of the Mongol period. It was during this period that the Yuan court established close ties with the Goryeo court and the Sakya leadership of Tibet, and the descendants of the Tangut empire became passionate patrons of Buddhist artifacts in the Jiangnan area. Wider art historical background consists of Goryeo Avalokiteśvara paintings, Tibetan Buddhist paintings, Tangut art and Chinese Chan paintings. These are all examined as potential sources of inspirations for making the Enshōin scroll.
Nicoletta Fazio, Curator for Iranian Lands, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
A Technology of Affluence: Crafting Wealth at the Ilkhanid Court. The example of the Textile Collection of MIA, Doha
An eminently nomad population up until the present day, the Mongols have always favoured, for evident practical reasons, objects and belongings that convey maximum social meaning at the minimum weight possible. Lightweight yet precious, gold artefacts and silk textiles naturally turned into ideal vectors to represent status and display wealth among the Mongol elites, a custom that continued under the Mongol Ilkhans, even after they settled in Iran and partially abandoned their nomadic lifestyle. Bolts of silk, mainly plain ones, were used as currency, while the most elaborate, with embroidery and brocade patterns, were cut into robes that still retain much their original beauty despite the passage of time.
The recent reopening of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha has allowed for a substantial reconsideration, and major conservation, of its small yet splendid collection of Mongol silk textiles attributed to Iran and Central Asia. This is a corpus of understudied textiles that deserves attention from scholars and calls for a wider historical recontextualization via comparative technical and stylistic analysis. In this paper, I will present a selection of these textiles, mostly robes, along with few accessories, and offer an overview starting from the actual crafting of these pieces, their technical features and relation to Yuan examples. I will then consider their symbolic, socio-cultural capital, placing them at a centre of a complex network of coeval sources, ranging from visual material to written accounts in Arabic, Persian, and Latin.