明末 青銅鹿

superbly cast as a stag standing with his head turned towards his back, his antlers realistically rendered with striations and flanked by a pair of perked up ears, his taut muscular body accented with a ridge running along his spine, well pronounced haunches and a tail stylised with ruyi-motifs, his calves lined with tufts of hair above the hooves, the bronze patianted to a faintly variegated dark brown colour

From at least the Shang dynasty onwards painted, carved and modelled figures of deer have been a mainstay of Chinese art.  Early cultures focused on the animal as game but there seems to have been a spiritual component as well. The animal successfully foraged for lingzhi, and was believed to store the fungus’s power within its antlers which then became prized for their medicinal use. Given the connection with the belief in the life prolonging properties of lingzhi, the deer also came to symbolize longevity. The Daoist God of Longevity, Shoulao is often accompanied by a deer along with other symbols emblematic of long life such as crane, pine and lingzhi. In addition, the word for deer, lu, is a homophone for prosperity adding further luster to the already auspicious symbol.

Examples of some of the earlier representations include two small jade stag-form pendants from the Western Zhou dynasty which are illustrated in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pp. 231-231, fig. 12:39 where the author comments that while Shang dynasty models of deer are rare, by the Western Zhou, the animal is more frequently depicted implying that its roots in popular culture had deepened. Rawson also points out that the pose of the stags is unusually sophisticated as both are carved with their heads turned backward, a model similar to the current example.