Chinese bronzes produced from the latter part of the Song dynasty (12th-13th century) through the end of the Qing dynasty (early 20th century) have long been underappreciated and under-researched. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fine catalogue, Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100-1900 (accompanying the exhibition of the same name running through September 2025), authored by the exhibition’s curator Pengliang Lu, goes a long way to changing this situation.
The Introduction sets out the background to the exhibition, and how bronzes from the lengthy period under discussion came to be termed “later”—an adjective that the author rightly cautions cannot adequately “encapsulate eight centuries of production—having previously not been appreciated as “independent artworks”, dated inaccurately and denigrated due to the wide variation in quality. Lu then considers the historic bias against bronzes from this period, as opposed to the widespread high regard for ancient Chinese bronzes, before attempting to provide a new appreciation of and chronology for these later, archaistic bronzes based on the following five criteria: “technical virtuosity, elegance of form, creativity in integrating diverse influences, historical value, and playfulness.”
In the five brief essays that follow, the author then explores the aesthetic attraction of later Chinese bronzes while also assessing their “cultural and political significance and their profound influence across Chinese art.” Excellent illustrations of the relevant exhibits, loaned by multiple institutions and private collections in China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, the UK and the US, are provided at the end of each essay.
The first essay, “Reconstructing Ancient Rites: Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Ritual Bronzes”, discusses how emperors and scholar-officials from the 12th to the 17th century commissioned ritual bronzes, including some magnificent ritual bells with fascinating inscriptions, for use in Confucian and Daoist ceremonies. The author also notes that not all bronzes were created equal: he discusses the difference in quality between some archaistic ritual bronzes that were poorly cast and “of little aesthetic value”, resulting in the low opinion in which works of this period are sometimes held, and others that were “created with excellent designs, fine casting, and great cultural significance.”
“Tracing a Stylistic Evolution: Southern Song to Early Ming Archaistic Bronzes” illustrates how the forms, decoration and functions of bronzes dating to China’s Great Bronze Age (circa 1700 BCE to the end of the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) were creatively reinterpreted by later bronzesmiths to produce utilitarian yet aesthetically pleasing scholar’s objects. The author notes the difficulties in establishing a stylistic chronology, given that the same patterns and motifs were used repeatedly over long periods, but nevertheless attempts to trace the stylistic evolution of bronze censers (or incense burners) and vases—incorporating antique forms and designs with new elements—from the late 12th to the mid-14th century based on more recent archaeological and shipwreck discoveries.
“Establishing New Standards: Ming Bronze Transformations”, examines developments in bronze production and decoration during the mid- to late-Ming dynasty when naturalism, inlays and new motifs all came to the fore. The author considers developments in a number of production techniques such as blue and white porcelain, lacquerware and cloisonné and examines several imperial gilt-bronze Buddhas and ritual vessels produced during this period, concluding that these bronze products and Ming censers in particular “were of outstanding quality”. The contentious issue of Xuande period bronzes—allegedly the most superior bronze censers produced and desired—is also addressed, with the author concluding that despite the abundance of bronze censers in existence bearing apocryphal Xuande marks, “only a handful of (these) vessels were demonstrably produced from the early Ming imperial workshops” and that it is against these examples that all other Xuande marked vessels must be judged.”
Finally,the development of fashionable items during the late Ming period led to the bronzesmiths themselves becoming brand names representing quality products. The book cites the example of Hu Wenming, based in Yunjian (now Songjiang, a suburb of present-day Shanghai), who produced top-quality bronze items (often with gilding in high relief) during the Wanli period (1573-1620) although he most likely supervised a workshop.
“Living with Bronzes: Ming-Qing Literati Taste” describes how the scholar-literati class increasingly used and enjoyed a diverse range of bronze objects to the point that they became indispensable objects in their daily lives. The author considers the form and function of these items, including desk accoutrements, incense paraphernalia and miscellaneous objects, making comparisons to examples found in contemporaneous paintings and collection catalogues produced by the palace or for the connoisseur.
The final essay, “Harmonizing with Antiquity: Archaistic Bronzes of the Qing Dynasty”, considers how the deep scholarly appreciation of archaic bronzes during the mid- to late-Qing period led to many new bronze commissions. The author describes how Emperor Qianlong, a prodigious collector of all forms of art, decided to redesign ritual bronze vessels for the autumn and winter ritual ceremonies with an eye to antique styles, eventuating in outstanding new examples of the genre, as well as the production of numerous sets of sixteen bells used in state ceremonies. A later development and the last hurrah in Chinese bronze production was the incising of “epigraphic evocations of the past” on bronze objects, which reflected the Qianlong emperor’s “ambitions to preserve and celebrate China’s grand cultural heritage.”
This volume is a delight and one to which interested readers will likely dip into on a regular basis. It does however lack a bibliography—a major omission for a volume of such academic heft and intent. More prosaically, dimensions and marks are not provided underneath the photo of each piece, but in a section at the back of the book entitled “Works in the Plates”, leading to constant page-turning back and forth. Photos of the smaller pieces, such as paperweights, water droppers and flower vases, are not life-sized but enlarged; while this does provide additional welcome detail, it takes away the “feel” of the actual piece.
Recasting the Past is a sweeping achievement, both as an exhibition and in expanding the literature and our understanding of what have to date been classified loosely as “later Chinese bronzes”. In managing to assemble for the first time a collection of more than 200 diverse bronze objects from the period for the exhibition and in identifying and selecting the five criteria on which he has based his reevaluation of the genre, Pengliang Lu has taken a huge step forward in providing a realistic chronology and rectifying previous misconceptions.
These later bronzes, created under differing artistic, cultural and economic conditions over almost a millennium, are not mere reproductions: many are superb artworks created by bronzesmiths who have creatively “reinterpreted archaic shapes and decorative motifs” to produce objects of high cultural and aesthetic value.