Cleveland Museum of Art

Tripod Cauldron (Ding)

Date

1200–1100 BCE

Medium

bronze

Culture

China, Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1046 BCE)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In ancient China, bronze tripods of the type called ding were made in sets of different sizes to be used in rituals in which grain and meat was offered to the spirits of the ancestors. These bronzes were subsequently both collected items and major scholarly preoccupations in Chinese history. They were prized art treasures that provide source materials for Chinese historiography and antiquity studies. Catalogues of archaic bronzes have been published since the Song dynasty. Scholars studied the bronze inscriptions, typologies, and terminologies, and these studies exerted an impact in the field well before the birth of modern art history and archaeology. The vessel shows a band of silkworms and cicadas in two registers.

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