Exhibition held to mark 100th anniversary of founding of Palace Museum in Beijing
BEIJING, 1 October (BelTA — Xinhua) — This year marks the 100th
anniversary of the founding of the Palace Museum. The opening ceremony
of the exhibition «A Century of Stewardship: From the Forbidden City to
the Palace Museum» was held at the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The
exhibition features 200 pieces (sets) of cultural relics, offering a
multidimensional interpretation of the Chinese civilization and the
evolution of the Palace Museum.
About three thousand years ago, the people
of Sanxingdui cast alloys of copper, tin, and lead into various images,
including giant sacred trees, massive masks, and imposing deities. The
latest research indicated that these bronze artifacts were adorned with
brilliant colors over their golden surfaces.
Ancient bronze
artifacts often have a greenish hue, which is actually the result of
corrosion that occurs after being buried underground for thousands of
years. This greenish tint obscures their original appearance, which was a
dazzling shade of gold.
Through technological analysis,
archaeologists have unveiled the «color code» of Sanxingdui’s bronze
artifacts. The colors discovered so far include black and red. Black is
commonly found in the eyebrows, eyes, and hair of bronze figures and
masks, and is also used to depict special patterns and symbols.
Red
often appears on the petals of bronze sacred trees and in the intricate
grooves of bronze vessels and the clothing of figures.
These
painted designs have been found on hundreds of bronze figures, mythical
beasts, dragon heads, and other artifacts, some of which are even
visible to the naked eye.
«It was previously believed that
painted bronze artifacts in China were mostly seen during the Warring
States Period (475 B.C.-221 B.C.), Qin (221 B.C.-207 B.C.) and Han (202
BC-8 AD) dynasties,» said Liu Baige, a postdoctoral researcher
responsible for the findings at the Sichuan provincial cultural relics
and archaeology research institute.
«The discovery, in large
quantities, and with exquisite craftsmanship and natural materials from
Sanxingdui, has pushed back the timeline for their emergence in China by
nearly a thousand years,» said Liu.
Discovered in the late 1920s
in Guanghan, Sichuan Province, the Sanxingdui Ruins are considered one
of the world’s most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th
century.
