The Dancing Horse sculpture featured a decorative tassel on its forehead, prompting the Cincinnati Art Museum to undertake a scientific investigation that found it was not original to the piece. Credit: Cincinnati Art Museum
An art museum collaborates with expert chemists to investigate a Tang dynasty dancing horse.
In order to solve a 1,300-year-old mystery, the Cincinnati Art Museum requested help from a University of Cincinnati scientist.
The Chinese dancing horse sculpture at the museum is so lifelike that it seems to be ready to gallop off its pedestal. However, H ou-mei Sung, an expert in East Asian art, questioned the authenticity of a decorative tassel on the terracotta horse’s forehead that resembled the horn of a mythical unicorn.
Pietro Strobbia, an assistant professor of chemistry at the UC College of Arts and Sciences, was contacted by the museum to help establish if the tassel belonged to the original piece.
“Many museums have a conservator but not necessarily scientific facilities needed to do this kind of examination,” Strobbia said. “The forehead tassel looks original, but the museum asked us to determine what materials it was made from.”
Dancing Horse, 608-907 CE, China, Tang Dynasty, earthenware with pigments, Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Carl and Eleanor Strauss, 1997. Credit: Cincinnati Art Museum
Strobbia and his collaborators recently published their findings in the journal Heritage Science.
Sung has seen numerous instances of ancient sculptures honoring the dancing horses that entertained rulers as far back as 202 B.C. But according to her, no others have forehead tassels. Could it have been added at a later time?
“I believed it was a mistake. The tassel wasn’t in the right position,” she said. “These pieces are so old. They often go through many repairs.”
The dancing horse was donated by a collector to the Cincinnati museum in 1997 and originates from the Tang dynasty, when such sculptures were commissioned specifically for the aim of entombing royalty with them after their deaths, according to Sung.
University of Cincinnati assistant professor Pietro Strobbia uses chemistry tools to help museums understand the provenance and origins of ancient masterpieces. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC
Dancing horses were trained to move in time with a drumbeat. Sung said Emperor Xuanzong from the eighth century loved horses so much that he had a stable of more than 40,000. For one birthday celebration, he invited a troupe of 400 dancing horses to perform the “Song of the Upturned Cup.”
“During the dramatic finale, one horse would bend its knees and clench a cup in its mouth and offer wine to the ruler to wish him longevity,” Sung said. “This became a ritual.”
The museum’s terracotta horse is saddled with a blanket and flowing silken material where stirrups often hang. Ten conical tassels adorn the horse in the same reddish color as its short-cropped tail and long mane.
“The making of the sculpture is beautiful. These horses are renowned,” said Kelly Rectenwald, co-author of the paper and associate objects conservator at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
With a background in archaeology and chemistry, Rectenwald said she understands how the latest scientific techniques are helping to shed new light on antiquities.
“We don’t have that kind of scientific equipment here, so partnering with UC has been a great resource,” she said.
Experts in geology, chemistry, and art history from UC’s College of Arts and Sciences, A&S, and UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, DAAP, consulted with the Taft Museum to determine the authenticity of two paintings in its collection. Faculty included Pietro Strobbia, Daniel Sturmer and Christopher Platts and Aaron Cowan, and UC postdoctoral researcher Lyndsay Kissell along with the museum’s Ann Glasscock and Tamera Muente. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC
To answer some of the fundamental questions about the piece, the museum agreed to allow UC’s Strobbia and collaborators such as Claudia Conti at Italy’s Institute of Heritage Science to take 11 tiny samples for analysis.
“We judged the risk was worth the reward to answer the question,” Rectenwald said.
Researchers deployed a battery of molecular, chemical, and mineralogical tests of the masterpiece and its features using cutting-edge techniques such as X-ray powder diffraction, ionic chromatography, and Raman spectroscopy.
Strobbia has always had an interest in art, surrounded by the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Bernini in Italy.
“I think I grew up a little spoiled coming from Rome,” he said.
He and his research partners found that, indeed, the sculpture’s forehead tassel was made of plaster, not terra cotta. It was added to the sculpture using animal glue.
The museum decided to remove the tassel in keeping with what they know about the original artworks, Rectenwald said. Beneath the tassel, Rectenwald found a smooth surface with no sign of scoring one might expect to see under sculptural adornments, providing more evidence that the tassel was a subsequent addition.
Researchers also discovered that two other tassels were repaired at different times, suggesting the sculpture was the subject of multiple restoration efforts over its many centuries, Rectenwald said.
“It was restored at least twice in its lifetime,” she said. “Finding anything new about an artwork is really interesting.”
Now Strobbia hopes to expand on his experience with the Cincinnati Art Museum by offering his chemistry expertise to other museums in the Midwest and perhaps UC’s own art collection.
Collaborations between art historians and scientists give an added dimension to the stories behind these precious masterpieces.
Reference: “Scientific investigation to look into the conservation history of a Tang Dynasty terracotta Dancing Horse” by C. Conti, M. Catrambone, C. Colombo, E. Possenti, K. M. Rectenwald, M. Realini and P. Strobbia, 9 August 2022, Heritage Science.
DOI: 10.1186/s40494-022-00758-7
Source: SciTechDaily
