A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [102]
A lady rushes to save the emperor from a ferocious bear
This scroll became the prized possession of many emperors, who may have found it to be a useful aid in subduing troublesome wives and mistresses but who also admired its sheer beauty and used the act of collecting this precious masterpiece as a way of showing just how culturally astute and powerful they were. We know exactly whose courts it was viewed in, because each imperial ruler has left their mark on it, in the form of a stamp carefully placed in the blank spaces around the paintings and the calligraphy. Some of the previous owners have also added their own comments to the scroll. This brings a kind of pleasure you can never find looking at European painting: the sense that you are sharing your delight with people from centuries past, that you are now joining a community of discerning art lovers who have cherished this painting over centuries. For example, the eighteenth-century Qianlong emperor – a contemporary of George III – sums up his appreciation of the scroll:
Gu Kaizhi’s picture of the Admonitions of the Instructress, with text. Authentic relic. A treasure of divine quality belonging to the Inner Palace.
It was such a treasured relic that only very small audiences would ever have been given access to it. That’s true now as well, but for a different reason: the silk that it is painted on suffers greatly if exposed to light, so it is too delicate to be put on display except very rarely. But, although we’re not allowed to put our own stamp on it to record our delight, thanks to modern reproductive technology we can all join the Qianlong emperor and the other people who through the decades have so enjoyed gazing at the Admonitions Scroll. Thanks to the internet, the private pleasure of the Chinese imperial court has become universal.
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Hoxne Pepper Pot
Silver pot, found in Hoxne, Suffolk, England
AD 350–400
For thousands of years western Europeans have been entranced by the spices of the East. Long before curry became a British national dish, we dreamt of transforming our dull island food with exotic flavours from India. For the poet George Herbert the phrase ‘the land of spices’ evoked a metaphorical perfection at once unimaginably remote and infinitely desirable. So it’s perhaps not surprising that through the centuries spice has always been not just high poetry but big business. The spice trade between the Far East and Europe funded the Portuguese and Dutch empires and provoked many bloody wars. Already at the beginning of the fifth century it was a trade that embraced the whole of the Roman Empire. When Visigoths attacked the city of Rome in AD 408, they were induced to leave only on the payment of a huge ransom that included gold, silver, large quantities of silk and one further luxury – a tonne of pepper. This precious spice had made its lucrative way all over the Roman Empire, from India to East Anglia, which is where this object was found.
What we think of as Suffolk the Romans might have called the Far West. Around the year 400, centuries of unprecedented peace and prosperity in Britain were about to end in chaos. Across western Europe the Roman Empire was fragmenting into a series of failed states, and in Britain the Roman leadership was conducting a phased withdrawal. At moments like this it is tricky to be rich. There was no longer any organized military force to protect the wealthy or their possessions, and as they fled they left behind them some of the finest treasure ever found. Our object belongs to a fabulous collection of gold and silver