Lot 9802. A very rare black limestone carving of a lion, Six Dynasties, 6th century; 2106 cm. Lot Sold 1,280,000 HKD (Estimate 700,000 - 1,400,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026
 

Provenance: A French private collection.
Eskenazi Limited, London, 2010.
Collection of Norman A. Kurland.
Eskenazi Limited, London, 2014.

Exhibited: Tang: Ceramics, Metalwork and Sculpture, Eskenazi Limited, New York, 2021, cat. no. 2.

Npte: This carved lion recalls an earlier lineage of monumental stone guardians that lined the Spirit Road to tombs from around the Eastern Han period (25–220 AD). Paired beasts stood as apotropaic sentinels at entrances, vigilant against malign forces, and smaller figures like this likely protected inner chambers. Yet unlike earlier stylised forms, this lion pulses with vitality: its body drawn taut, its stance alert, its energy immediate, caught between stillness and sudden motion.

The lion itself is not indigenous to China. Its image arrived through contact with lands to the west: India, Iran, Assyria, and the ancient Near East, and was gradually woven into the visual and symbolic fabric of Chinese art. Linked to Buddhism from India, the lion assumed profound metaphorical significance: its roar the resonant voice of the Buddha—vast, commanding—reverberating across realms and awakening sentient beings. As early as the 3rd century BC, lions crowned the pillars of Aśoka in India, projecting imperial authority and spiritual truth. After the Han fell in 220 AD, Buddhism took deeper root in China; with it came lions carved beside Buddhas in caves as guardians, or painted watchful across expansive mural cycles, steadfast and unyielding.

By the Tang dynasty, the lion expanded from sacred into decorative, its image enlivening metalwork and textiles alike. Living lions—rare, foreign, formidable—captured the court’s imagination. They arrived as tribute from distant regions, brought by Tocharians, Persians, and Arabs, each creature a symbol of exotic might and imperial reach. One such gift, presented in 635 to Emperor Taizong from Samarkand, prompted him to order the court official Yu Shinan (虞世南) to compose an ode brimming with awe:

“It glares its eyes—and lightning flashes,
It vents its voice—and thunder echoes;
It drags away the tiger,
Swallows down the bear,
Splits the rhinoceros,
Cleaves the elephant;
It crushes the mighty gaur between gum and palate,
It bends the boa snake between finger and palm…"

(虞世南《獅子賦》; tr. Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963, pp. 84–85)

Carved from black limestone, this lion crouches upon an elongated base: head snapped left in full-throated roar to a distant disturbance, pronounced chest muscles thrusting forward, sinewy musculature rippling beneath smooth time-softened stone, and limbs straining the plinth’s edges, spring imminent yet held in sturdy balance. Despite its ferocity, the well-groomed parted and curling mane, forked beard, and finely striated ruff reveal human hand taming primal ferocity: subdued yet unbowed, and once stood guardian in the home of its previous keeper, Norman A. Kurland, prominent Hollywood literary agent whose discerning and scholarly eye assembled one of the finest private collections of Six Dynasties art.