The significance and value of ancient Chinese religious murals in Chinese art history

Ancient Chinese fresco art emerged in the Han and Jin dynasties, flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties, and extended to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Ancient mural painting is a valuable treasure in China's historical and cultural heritage, in the social, religious, architectural, fine arts have historical significance and research value.

Dunhuang, for example, the value of cultural heritage:

Dunhuang cave art is a set of architecture, sculpture, painting in one of the three-dimensional art, the ancient artists in the inheritance of the Han Chinese people in the Central Plains and the Western Brothers on the basis of the fine traditions of the art of the nationalities, absorbing, melting the foreign expression, the development of the Dunhuang local features of the national customs of the Chinese Buddhist artwork for the study of the Chinese ancient Politics, economy, culture, religion, ethnic relations, friendly exchanges between China and foreign countries to provide valuable information, is a cultural treasure and spiritual wealth of mankind.

Architectural art of the existing more than 500 caves in the preservation of paintings, colorful sculpture of 492 caves, there are Zen caves, hall caves, pagodas and temples caves, dome roof caves, "Shadow Cave" and other forms, and a number of pagodas. The largest grotto is more than 40 meters high and 30 meters square in width, and the smallest is less than a foot high.

From the early grottoes preserved in the center of the pagoda pillar type of this foreign form of grottoes, reflecting the ancient artists in the acceptance of foreign art, at the same time, to be digested, absorbed, so that it has become the national form of our country. Many of them are masterpieces of existing ancient architecture.

Colorful plastic art Colorful plastic for the main body of Dunhuang art, there are statues of Buddha, bodhisattva statues, disciple statues, as well as the heavenly kings, vajra, rushes, gods and so on. Color sculpture form is rich and colorful, there are round sculpture, floating sculpture, shadow sculpture, good karma sculpture and so on. The highest 34.5 meters, the smallest only 2 centimeters right (good industry clay and wood stone statues), the richness of the subject matter and craftsmanship, known as the Museum of Buddhist color sculpture.

17 caves in the Tang dynasty Heshi are abhorrent statue of the portrait, and statue painted with a staff after the near servants, statues and murals as a whole, for China's earliest monks, one of the realism of the real statue, has a very high historical and artistic value.

Mural art Dunhuang Grottoes art in the largest number of the richest part of the content is the murals, these murals reflect both religious themes, but also reflect some of the production and labor scenes, social life scenes, for the study of the 4th century to the 14th century of ancient Chinese society provides valuable information. Mogao Grottoes mural paintings also has a high artistic value, the highest level of mural paintings in the Shengtang period. Scholars have called Dunhuang murals a "library on the wall.

The grotto murals are rich and colorful, with a variety of Buddhist scripture stories, mountain and river scenery, pavilions and other architectural paintings, landscape paintings, floral patterns, flying Buddha, as well as a variety of scenes of the production of the working people at that time, which is the sixteen countries to the Qing Dynasty, more than 1,500 years of folklore and historical changes in the art of reappearance.

It can also be found in a large number of mural art that ancient artists, on the basis of nationalization, absorbed the strengths of the ancient art of Iran, India, Greece and other countries, which is a symbol of the developed civilization of the Chinese nation.

The frescoes of various dynasties show different painting styles, reflecting the political, economic and cultural conditions of the feudal society of China, which is a glorious chapter in the history of ancient Chinese art and provides precious image historical materials for the study of ancient Chinese history.

Dunhuang art Guangxu 26 years (1900 AD), in the north wall of the 16 caves was found to be sealed in a hidden room full of storage from the Three Kingdoms, Wei and Jin Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty of the scriptures, documents, embroidery and portraits of about more than 50,000 pieces. Instruments in addition to Chinese writing, LiTeWen, KharosthiWen, back to the bone text, TufanWen, Sanskrit, Tibetan and other nationalities write about one-sixth of the text. The contents of the documents include religious documents of Buddhism, Taoism and other religions, and secular documents such as literary works, contracts, account books, official letters and so on.

The discovery of the art of Dunhuang, famous at home and abroad, it is extremely important to China's ancient literature addendum and collation of research value. Now Dunhuang science has become the discipline of attention of scholars at home and abroad, Dunhuang books are known to the academic community as the four major discoveries of ancient documents in modern times.