A very rare jade 'humanoid figure' pendant Neolithic period, Hongshan culture | 新石器時代 紅山文化玉雕神人

Angus Forsyth, 'The Bei Zu Collection: Appreciation of a European Private Collection of Hongshan Jades', Art & Collection, no. 344, May 2021, pp. 165, fig. 11.

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霍璽，〈北祖藏玉：歐洲私人珍蓄紅山古玉鑑賞〉， 《典藏古美術》，第344期，2021年5月，頁165，圖11

This small pendant is stylistically closely related to three-dimensional Hongshan humanoid figures, as discussed in Angus Forsyth, ‘Five Chinese Jade Figures. A Study of the Development of Sculptural Form in Hongshan Neolithic Jade Working’, Orientations, vol. 21, no. 5, May 1990, pp. 54-63. Forsyth illustrates three figures of comparable silhouette but worked in the round (figs 7-9), all from ancient collections assembled well before systematic excavations made the culture widely known, e.g. from the collection of Louis C.G. Clarke, since 1960 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from the Severance A. Millikin collection, since 1953 in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Fig.1), and from the collection of Ernest Erickson, at least since the 1960s in the Ostasiatiska Museum, Stockholm, respectively. An additional figure in the Palace Museum, Beijing, has been published together with the Fitzwilliam and Stockholm examples in James C.S. Lin, The Immortal Stone. Chinese Jades from the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 15-16.

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本品風格與紅山文化之圓雕人像相關，參考霍璽，〈Five Chinese Jade Figures. A Study of the Development of Sculptural Form in Hongshan Neolithic Jade Working〉，《Orientations》，卷21，第5期，1990年5月，頁54-63，作者研究三件在紅山遺址進行考古發掘之前徵集所得的圓雕人像，比較它們的輪廓（圖7-9），它們包括1960年起存於劍橋菲茨威廉博物館的 Louis C.G. Clarke 舊藏品、1953年入藏克里夫蘭藝術博物館的 Severance A. Millikin 雅蓄，以及1960年代或更早便入藏斯德哥爾摩東方博物館的 Ernest Erickson 藏品。北京故宮博物院另藏一例，與前述菲茨威廉及斯德哥爾摩兩例同載於林政昇，《The Immortal Stone. Chinese Jades from the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century》，劍橋，2009年，頁15-16。