EGY001 ELUOSI GUOLI AIERMITASHI BOWUGUAN CANG GUIZI YISHUPIN. Kuche Art Relics Collected in the State Hermitage Museum of Russia. 俄羅斯國立艾爾米塔什博物館藏龜茲藝術品. Shanghai, 2018. 2, 409 pp. 300 pp. full page colour plates, a few in b/w. Double page map of the Kuche region. 2 vols. 38x27 cm. Cloth. GBP 1,300.00 Large and very weighty two-volume work on the little-known and little-published mural paintings and other artefacts recovered from Silk Road sites in the Kuche (Kucha) area of China's Xinjiang province in the early 20th century by Russian expeditions. The objects are held in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. More specifically, the relics come from the Kizil Buddhist cave complex near Kuche, the cave complex of Kumtura (Kutumula) and from a number of other lesser sites in the Kuche region. The Kizil caves are highly important as they are believed to be the earliest Buddhist cave complex with murals in Xinjiang and the murals are renowned for their quality and sophistication. The mural paintings date from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD and are non-Chinese in style, showing Indian, Persian and Sassanian influences. This work illustrates a fine selection of mural painting fragments, paintings on wood, stucco heads and stucco figures plus some seals, coins, wooden objects etc. It also very interestingly and importantly reproduces an album of watercolours of the mural paintings plus tracing and copies of murals made by members of the Berezovsky expedition team of 1906 together with photographs taken by expedition members. Also material and artefacts relating to the 1909 Oldenburg Expedition to the area. Dual texts in Chinese, Russian and English. Essay: Samosyuk: The Art of the Kuche Buddhist Cave Temples. Produced in an edition of just 300 copies. Very hard to obtain and already out-of-print. Subjects: Silk Road Buddhist Art Item 475 in List 210. URL for this record: hanshan.com/?e/EGY001.HTM Record produced by Hanshan Tang Books, www.hanshan.com. |