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| The "seven men of virtue in bamboo groves" and Rong Qi. | Pictures on bricks have been found in tombs of the Southern Dynasties period in Nanjing and Danyang of Jiangsu Province. Such pictures can be classified as a special type of murals. In producing such a picture, a rough sketch was done first. The sketch, if too large for one brick, was then partitioned into several parts, with each part done on a brick. The last step was to put the bricks together like a mosaic on the inner wall of a tomb. Such pictures could be large or small. The
smallest found so far each consist of two or three parts, in comparison to the largest done on more than 100 bricks.
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| A lion carved on bricks. The picture was unearthed from a tomb of the Southern Dynasties period at Danyang ,Jiangsu Province. | The earliest of such pictures were found in a tomb built in 348, the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Yong He of the East Jin Dynasty. One of the pictures consists of two bricks put together vertically for a dragon crawling to the right. On the upper part we find the dragon's head and neck and on the lower part, the dragon's body and tail. Between the two parts there is the Chinese character for “dragon”. Another picture in the same tomb portrays a ferocious-looking tiger on three bricks. There is a Chinese character on each corner of the picture. When put together, the four characters form a sentence meaning "roaring tiger on a mountain". Though small, these pictures epitomize the line-drawing technique characteristic of paintings popular at the time.
As time went by, pictures on bricks became the chief decorations inside imperial tombs and, consequently, they grew increasingly large in size, in many cases comprising several dozen to more than 100 bricks. The largest found so far measures more than two meters long with the picture done on more than 150 bricks. Pictures on bricks have been found in at least five tombs, and most of the tombs have been identified as belonging to emperors of the Chen and Qi dynasties.
The best preserved, and also of the highest artistic value, are a group of two pictures unearthed from a tomb in Xishanqiao of Nanjing. The pictures depict seven most distinguished scholars of the Wei-Jin period (220-420) together with Rong Qiqi, a recluse of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC -476 BC). Like Rong who refused to get involved in politics, the Wei-Jin scholars despised officialdom and were fond of a life free from politics. They often gathered in bamboo grovecs for drinking of wine and recitation of poems, hence their collective reference as the "seven men of virtue in bamboo groves".
The pictures, or the two parts of the same picture inlaid on the walls facing each other, are 2.4 meters long each. They depict the eight persons in two groups - with inscriptions indicating that Wang Rong, Shan Tao, Yuan Ji and Ji Kang are on one part and Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Yuan Xian and Rong Qiqi, on the other. All sitting on the ground, they are separated by willow, ginkgo or poplar trees and each part, in itself, can be a complete picture. This way of composing the whole piece obvious bears evidence to influence of Han Dynasty pictures. But,unlike Han Dynasty pictures, the pictures of the Wei-Jin period do not have borders. Thanks to those trees of diverse species that separate the persons, the pictures look lively. |
