Although reassembled from large fragments by means of soft soldering (as seen through X-ray analysis), antiquarially concealed by artificial verdigris, its surface retains the silvery metallic luster which it originally displayed. What makes this artifact an authentic masterpiece is, however, the perfect shape of the body which seems to be the “translation” of a bucket made by organic materials – i.e., a base of wood; a body of leather-skin; a handle made by a rope into a much harder metallic object without losing lightness of volume, boldness of profile, and a sense of simple and immediate practicalness. The two little frogs –possibly related to the watery underworld in Shang myths- “climbing” the rope-shaped handle, balance, in their very naturalistic rendering, the fantastic, almost “abstract”, conception of the gui dragons flowing inside the two bands underlying the rim and the foot. As such, the vessel fully represents and transmits the genius and the technical skill of the anonymous Shang bronze-smiths.

History of the Object

The vessel has probably been excavated by clandestine diggers in the Anyang region in the early XX c. and soon after put on the antiquarian market. According to a card in the box containing the vessel, handwritten by Mrs. Margherita Taliani, her husband acquired it in Beijing at an antiquity shop whose owner was Mr. Huang. The object attracted the attention of the specialists when it was already the property of the Ambassador and was first published by a Chinese scholar in 1942 (Huang Jun, Yezhong pianyu san ji, Beijing, 1942: 1.31). Later on, eminent scholars of early Chinese ritual bronzes quoted the vessel, i.e., Max Loehr. Hayashi Minao, and Robert W. Bagley. Only many years after Mr. Taliani passed away, his widow, already in her late eighties, decided to sell to the Italian state the entire lot of archaic Chinese bronzes (vessels, horse and chariot fittings, and weapons) included in the Collection.