Skip to Content
Today Open today 11–8

Wine Container

A work made of bronze.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • A work made of bronze.

Date:

Shang dynasty ( About 1600–1046 BC ), 12th/11th century BC

Artist:

China

About this artwork

The bronze vessels produced with sophisticated casting techniques and intricate designs by Chinese artisans of the late Shang dynasty (c. 1700-c. 1050 B.C.) are achievements unrivaled by any other Bronze Age culture. For the ruling elite of ancient China, prestigious objects made of bronze signified supreme political power as well as devout spiritual beliefs and exalted social status. Foremost among these bronzes are vessels that were made for the preparation and offering of food, wine, and water in ceremonial banquets conducted to seek and repay divine ancestral goodwill. Ancient Chinese wine was fermented from grain rather than fruit and, like beer, is best described as a type of millet ale.
This square-shouldered jar for wine storage is animated by a menagerie of imaginary creatures that have been intricately cast onto the surface in several levels of relief. The most prominent of these is a horned ogre mask (later known as a taotie), whose significance remains one of the great enigmas of early Chinese art. Here the taotie, inverted across the roof-like lid, recurs along the body within pendant triangular blades, each of which also contains a wide-eyed cicada at its tip. The cicada is found often on Chinese bronzes, perhaps because its extraordinarily long life cycle carried associations of regeneration. Confronted pairs of jaunty, stylized birds encircle the neck of the vessel, with similarly disposed dragons—each with down-curved head plume and up-curved tail around the widest part of the body. Birds and dragons are separated by a shoulder band of whorl circles, nose-diving dragons, and four fully sculpted bovine heads, two purely decorative and two surmounting lug handles. Two more such handles were cast on below to facilitate lifting. Compact, sharply cast spirals covering both the relief-cast taotie, dragons, and birds, and their receding background impart a shimmering effect to the surface, now covered with thin layers of cuprite red, malachite green, and azurite blue patina.

Status

On View, Gallery 131

Department

Arts of Asia

Title

Wine Container

Place

China (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1600 BCE–1050 BCE

Medium

Bronze

Dimensions

45 × 24.8 cm (17 3/4 × 9 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Lucy Maud Buckingham Collection

Reference Number

1938.17

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/26647/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share