AN EXCEPTIONAL IVORY-COLORED JADE CONG, LATE NEOLITHIC PERIOD, LIANGZHU CULTURE

拍品描述

AN EXCEPTIONAL IVORY-COLORED JADE CONG, LATE NEOLITHIC PERIOD, LIANGZHU CULTURE China, 3200-2300 BC. Of short cylindrical form with a square cross-section, the sides divided into two registers, carved with a pair of confronting, stylized human masks at each corner, each mask comprising two horizontal bars above a shorter oblong bar forming the nose and two finely incised circles forming the eyes. The opaque stone is of a creamy-white ivory color mottled with pale gray inclusions. Alan Hartman (1930-2023) was an influential American art dealer, who took over his parents’ antique business in Manhattan and established the legendary Rare Art Gallery on Madison Avenue, with further locations in Dallas and Palm Beach. His wife Simone (née Horowitz) already served as assistant manager of the New York gallery before the couple married in 1975, and together they built a renowned collection for over half a century and became noted art patrons, enriching the collections of important museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (which opened the Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries in 2013) as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum in New York. Alan Hartman has been described as the greatest antiques dealer of our generation, and was widely recognized as a world authority in Chinese jade, bronzes, and Asian works of art. Dimensions: Width 6.7 cm The Liangzhu culture and its remarkable jade artifacts came to prominence in the late 1980s, when the discovery of several significant cemeteries brought international attention to the richness of their tomb contents. Since then, a wave of new archaeological findings has dramatically transformed our understanding of this late Neolithic civilization. At the Mojiaoshan site, Chinese archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a vast, walled settlement covering 750 acres. This site, the largest known walled settlement from late Neolithic China, includes palatial foundations, jade workshops, habitation zones, and a sophisticated network of internal waterways. Distinguished by their quantity, variety, and superb craftsmanship, Liangzhu jades are among the most iconic artifacts in the history of Chinese civilization. Among them, the jade cong stands out as the most emblematic. These objects feature a square exterior surrounding a circular inner hollow, with each corner serving as a vertical axis for the carving of symmetrical mask motifs. Early examples are typically squat and intricately decorated with deities or animal forms. In contrast, later versions are tall and slender, with stylized facial features dominated by prominent eyes and noses. The arrangement of the confronting rows of faces on the present cong is particularly unusual, yet compositional variations are known within the Liangzhu jade tradition. A comparable brown jade two-tiered cong, carved with animal masks above a row of shamanic figures and subsequently inscribed with an imperial poem by the Qianlong Emperor, is preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing (See Ancient China: The 5000 Year Civilization Demonstrated by Jades, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2019, cat. no. 199). Auction result comparison: Type: Closely related Auction: Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 9 October 2022, lot 110 Price: HKD 3,780,000 or approx. EUR 448,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing Expert remark: Compare the similar form and the confronting faces. Note the size (4.7 cm). Auction result comparison: Type: Closely related Auction: Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 May 2018, lot 3080 Price: HKD 3,700,000 or approx. EUR 469,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing Expert remark: Compare the similar form, color of the jade, and size (6.5 cm).

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