Archaeology Magazine - January/February 2022 - 46

Throughout the Subcelestial Realm, "
praises the emperor for establishing
ponds where Buddhists could release
fish and turtles to build karma. Followers
of both Confucius and Buddha
celebrated Yan's loyalty and integrity.
These characteristics were thought to
be expressed through his unadorned
and simple calligraphy, which stood
in contrast to the ornately beautiful
scripts of earlier masters such as Wang.
Yan lived at a time when the Tang
Spirit way stela
YAN'S ACOLYTE
A
little past midnight on March 17, 2021, art historian Zhao Liguang
was awoken by a phone call from the Xi'an Institute of Cultural Heritage.
A 1,200-year-old stela inscribed with characters by the eminent Tang
Dynasty (a.d. 618-906) calligrapher Liu Gongquan had just been brought to the
institute, and officials there wanted Zhao to examine it immediately.
When Zhao arrived shortly after receiving the call, he saw that the huge stone
tablet was broken into three parts. It had originally measured about nine feet by
three feet and was topped with a decorative dragon-head figure. The tablet was
of a type known as a spirit way stela, a large, inscribed stone erected along ritual
roads, or spirit ways, that lead to tombs belonging to high-level officials. It had
been unearthed the previous day by construction
workers as they were widening a road near the
center of Xi'an.
Zhao examined the fractured surfaces by flashDetail
of spirit way stela
light and, along with two other experts, concluded
that the stela had been pushed over and broken
not long after it was first raised. " It had been sealed
under dirt since then, " says Zhao, " and the carving
is very well preserved. " The spirit way stela's 3,000
or so characters were written by Liu when he was
59 and in full command of his own style, though his
powerful square strokes bear the obvious influence
of the calligraphy master Yan Zhenqing.
The stela memorializes an official named Yang Chenghe, a eunuch who once
wielded considerable military power at the Tang court. However, in a.d. 835,
political rivals exiled Yang to what is today Vietnam, and he was forced to commit
suicide on his journey. The next year, the emperor Wenzong (r. a.d. 826-840)
decided it had been a mistake to have Yang put to death and chose to honor him
posthumously with a noble funeral and burial in a tomb whose spirit way road was
marked by the stela bearing Liu's calligraphy.
Very few original works by Liu survive, and the stela, though fractured, offers
scholars a remarkable chance to examine his work. " The carving of the characters
is very crisp, " says University of Kansas art historian Amy McNair, " which makes
it an unimpeachable example of his style. " Like his predecessor Yan, Liu was considered
a forthright and loyal official, and his style is thought to have expressed
his essential character. Liu served as a calligraphy teacher for the royal family for
two decades and is said to have once told an emperor, " as long as your heart is
upright, your brush will be upright. " -L.X.
46
Dynasty was beginning to decline from
its heyday and was challenged by growing
political instability. While he was a
provincial official in what is today Shandong
Province, Yan was approached by
rebel envoys seeking to enlist him in a
coup led by a general named An Lushan.
Yan then made discreet preparations
for war that went unnoticed by the rebels.
When the rebellion, which lasted
from a.d. 755 to 763 and almost succeeded
in toppling the Tang Dynasty,
broke out, Yan remained loyal to the
emperor. He executed An's envoys and
rallied other officials in his region to the
emperor's cause, leading troops against
the rebel armies. Among those officials
was his nephew Yan Jiming, who was
killed by the rebels.
Consumed with grief, Yan picked
up his brush to draft a speech for his
nephew's funeral in which he unleashed
his emotions. Most of Yan's writing is
preserved on stone stelas for which
he used a formal, standard script. This
work, however, called " Requiem for My
Nephew, " was written in a.d. 758 on
paper in a cursive style known as a running
script. The writing in the requiem
seems to gain momentum as Yan's feelings
became more intense. It is clear
that he stopped writing several times in
order to make changes to words and to
ink his brush, but the work was probably
finished in one sitting. " The draft
was not meant to be published or seen
by others, " says Yu, " but for some reason
it was saved and passed down. " This
scroll, one of just two works in Yan's
hand to survive on paper, is in the collection
of the National Palace Museum
in Taipei and is regarded as one of the
world's great calligraphic masterpieces.
" Because it is a draft, the writing has
ARCHAEOLOGY * January/February 2022
Archaeology Magazine - January/February 2022

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