Polo Player (late 600s-early 700s): Art, History and Details

Polo Player (late 600s-early 700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

An exercise for military troops, polo was also fashionable among men and women of Tang China, and this polo player is actually a woman dressed in a man's riding habit. It is in keeping with the exuberance of the Tang dynasty that such sporting figures of daily life should be among objects for the afterlife.

Object facts

• Title: Polo Player
• Date: late 600s-early 700s
• Culture: China, Tang dynasty (618-907)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: painted earthenware
• Dimensions: Overall: 31.2 cm (12 5/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Tang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1964.181

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Neils, Jenifer. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.
• Neils, Jenifer. “The Twain Shall Meet.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 72, no. 6, October 1985, pp. 326–359.
• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

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.