Rubbing of a Stone from the Tang-Fang Collection (1900–1916): Art, History and Details

Rubbing of a Stone from the Tang-Fang Collection (1900–1916) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This rubbing corresponds in composition with stone reliefs from the east wall in stone chamber 3 of the Wu Liang shrine. The upper register illustrates stories of virtuous women. Read from right to left, the last scene in the upper left corner shows a bed under a roof that is labeled “Virtuous Woman of the Capital.” The story relates that a woman was blackmailed into helping to kill her husband. She pretended to cooperate but took her husband’s place in bed. When the killers realized in the morning that they had decapitated the woman, they abandoned their murderous plan.

Object facts

• Title: Rubbing of a Stone from the Tang-Fang Collection
• Date: 1900–1916
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911) or Republican period (1912-49)
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: Rubbing, ink on paper, horizontal scroll
• Dimensions: Overall: 66.7 x 181.6 cm (26 1/4 x 71 1/2 in.); Rubbing only: 134 x 53.2 cm (52 3/4 x 20 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Chinese Art
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1919.75

A detail from the museum

In the period before photography, life-size rubbings of sculptures and cultural relics from ancient sites were useful study material.

Collection credit

Gift of Yamanaka & Company

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 5 (1919): 97-98.

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.