Mirror with Four Running Animals (early 600s): Art, History and Details

Mirror with Four Running Animals (early 600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Inscription: I received a gift: the mirror of the King of Qin. For this, I would have paid willingly a thousand taels of silver. In no way would I use it to unveil your hidden desires. Verily, I only wish to lay bare my own heart.

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with Four Running Animals
• Date: early 600s
• Culture: China, Tang dynasty (618–907)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Diameter: 9.6 cm (3 3/4 in.); Overall: 0.9 cm (3/8 in.); Rim: 0.7 cm (1/4 in.)
• Collection: China - Tang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1995.338

Collection credit

Gift of Drs. Thomas and Martha Carter in Honor of Sherman E. Lee

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chou, Ju-hsi. Circles of reflection: the Carter collection of Chinese bronze mirrors. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000.
• Cahill, Suzanne E. "The Moon Stopping in the Void: Daoism and the LIterati Ideal in Mirrors of the Tang Dynasty." Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 9 (2005): 24-41.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.