Artworks

Entertainers Riding an Elephant

Artwork · Anonymous · 8th century · biwa · Shōsōin

The leather guard on the body of a biwa in the Shōsōin, painted with musicians and dancers riding a white elephant through a mountain landscape of deep gorges — a common theme of Tang painting, the figures in Central Asian dress. 1 Mason 2005, p. 49, fig. 52. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.