Lot 7. Rare Extremité de hampe à deux faces en bronze, Fin de la Dynastie Shang - Début de la Dynastie des Zhou Occidentaux, ca. XIe-Xe siècle avant J.-C.; Haut. 15,8 cm. Estimation: 50,000 — 70,000 €. Lot. Vendu 423,000 €. Photo Sotheby's 2015

le tube assez court en forme de D, sculpté sur une face d'un visage humain grimaçant aux yeux figurés par deux mamelons, surmonté d'un grand masque de taotie aux yeux exorbités et aux narines dilatées, couronné de cornes recourbées en forme de C et d'oreilles largement déployées formant des enroulements, le revers sculpté là encore de deux masques, un animal fabuleux au museau pointu et aux yeux en amande sous des sourcils épais se continuant en cornes puissantes, surmontant un masque d'éléphant stylisé à la trompe levée émergeant au centre et formant comme une queue quand l'objet est de profil, patine couleur gris-vert, D.W 37/103.

Provenance: Discovered at Luoyang (according to René Grousset).
Collection of Léon Wannieck, Paris (according to René Grousset).

René Grousset, La Chine et son Art, Paris, 1951, Image © Librairie Plon, Paris, 1951

Note: This unusual bronze finial is one of several examples known to exist in Western collections formed at the same time as the David-Weill Collection in the 1930s. Only five other finials of the same size and design are recorded, the first from the Pillsbury Collection, is illustrated in Alain Priest, Chinese Bronzes of the Shang (1766-1122 B.C.) through the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-906), New York, 1938, cat. no. 124, the second, in the collection of the British Museum, London, published in William Watson, Handbook to the Collections of Early Chinese Antiquities, London, 1963, pl. 12; two other examples from the Avery Brundage Collection, are shown in Rene-Yvon Levebvre d'Argence, Bronze Vessels of Ancient China in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1977, pl. XXIV.B and C. A fifth example is illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji: Diaosu bian, Beijing, 1988, vol. 1, pl. 99. A related bronze staff finial cast with a slightly different human face below the large animal mask, was sold at Sotheby's London, 6th April 1976, lot, 12, and is now in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, published in Giuseppe Eskenazi, A Dealer's Hand. The Chinese Art World through the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi, London, 2012, p. 178, pl. 7.  

The rarity of this bronze finial, and the five companion pieces, lies in their elaborately conceived design. Cast like a sculpture in the round, each finial features four different heads, one side dominated by a large animal mask with prominent eyes and large coiled horns surmounting a realistically depicted human face with a wide crescent-shaped mouth, the reverse side of the finial cast with an elephant head with a projecting coiled trunk below a large head of what appears to be a feline or rodent. Viewed from the sides, the finial shows all four heads in full profile. Holes on the lower part of the base indicate that these finials may have served as a finial for a wooden stave or pole. 

The most striking feature of this bronze finial is the representation of a realistically rendered grimacing human face with a prominent nose, eyes and a wide, crescent-shaped mouth with small openwork-teeth. Human faces are rarely depicted on Shang or Western Zhou ritual bronzes, yet several important examples are known. A bronze you in the collection of the Musee Cernuschi, Paris, is cast in the form of a feline devouring a human figure; a fang ding cast with four large human faces reputedly found at Ningxiang county, Hunan, see Jessica Rawson, Mysteries of Ancient China, London, 1996, p. 51, fig. 51. Rawson attributes the origins of human faces on ritual bronzes to a Southern Chinese tradition, backed by recently excavated large bronze figures with human faces found in Sanxingdui, Guanghan county, Sichuan. Yet, human faces do appear on chariot and harness fittings of the Shang and Western Zhou periods, compare Rawson, ibid., pp. 114-116. 

Such detail as found on the present finial is unusual for a comparatively small bronze fitting. Close yet less detailed examples have been discovered in tombs of the early mid-Western Zhou period at Baoji, Shaanxi province, see Baoji Yu guo mudi, Beijng, 1988, vol. 2, pl. 215. Other examples in early Western collections include two bronze finials from the gallery stock of Otto Burchard, illustrated in Ludwig Reidemeister, Die Bestaende der Firma Dr. Otto Burchard & Co., Berlin, in Liquidation. Chinesische Kunst, 1. Teil, Berlin, 1935, pl. 29.287; the second from the von der Heydt Collection, in Viktor Griessmaier, Sammlung Baron Eduard von der Heydt Wien, Wien, 1936, cat. no. 122.