A Sancai Glazed Pottery Figure of a Standing Lady Holding a Child
Chinese, 8th century, Tang period (618-907)

A large Tang dynasty sancai-glazed pottery figure of a lady holding a child, the woman modelled with a full rounded face beneath a high circular coiffure, her features picked out in black and the cheeks heightened with red pigment. She wears a long green-glazed skirt, an amber-glazed upper garment and sleeves splashed with blue, with a similarly blue-glazed scarf falling from the shoulders. The child is held in both arms and forms an integral part of the original modelling.

Large polychrome-glazed figures of Tang women are rare, and the present example is particularly unusual for its subject. Most related female tomb figures are unglazed or shown without attributes, while surviving examples holding objects more often depict birds. The use of blue glaze is also significant, as blue was among the rarer and more costly colours employed in Tang sancai production.

The figure reflects contemporary Tang ideals of feminine beauty, with its full face, elaborate coiffure and composed bearing. The inclusion of the child may also be understood in relation to ideas of family continuity and lineage. Together with the sophisticated sancai technique and the use of costly blue pigment, the figure reflects both the technical ambition of Tang ceramic production and the material prosperity of the period.

A closely related glazed figure of a lady holding a bird, formerly in the collections of Dr Alessandro Campilli and Mario Prodan, shares similar modelling, palette and treatment of the fully glazed base, suggesting that the two figures may have been produced in the same workshop or within the same period.

The figure  has an established provenance, formerly in the Mount Trust Collection, and was exhibited in London in 1955, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1970, and in Tokyo in 1976.