Ca. 618-907. Tang Dynasty. A finely modelled terracotta figure of a female court lady. She is depicted standing and attentive, wearing a long dress with a red top and a green skirt. Her hands are hidden in a fold, holding an object. Her facial features consist of thin, slightly arched eyebrows, narrow eyes rimmed with black pigment and a pointed nose. Her small mouth is painted with red pigment. Her hair is neatly combed into a hairstyle consisting of a high topknot. The Tang Dynasty was largely a period of progress and stability in the first half of its reign, until the An Lushan Rebellion and the decline of central authority in the latter half of the dynasty. Funerary offerings were an important status symbol in ancient China. The wealthy were accompanied on their journeys through the afterlife with numerous representations of people, objects and animals. Such terracotta figures were made to serve and entertain the owner, to ensure that their journey to the underworld was a happy one. Terracotta tomb guards appear to have first appeared during the Western Han Dynasty. But it was not until the Tang dynasty that the cultural tradition of displaying wealth in elite tombs reached its peak, with increased production of terracotta statuettes. The Tang Dynasty was an exciting time in Chinese history when trade flourished along the Silk Road and unified China was the richest country on earth. Chang'an (now Xi'an) was the capital of the Tang Dynasty and one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, filled with foreigners who had travelled to China to trade. The influence of foreigners and talented native Chinese, combined with the economic prosperity brought by trade and the new religion from India, Buddhism, created a strong cultural milieu in which poetry and other forms of art flourished. To find out more about the Tang dynasty and its art production, see Yang, X. (1999). The golden age of Chinese archaeology: Celebrated archaeological finds from the People's Republic of China. New Haven; London: Yale University Press; Benn, C. (2002). Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty. Westport: Greenwood Press and Watt, J. C. Y., et al. (2004). China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 A.D. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Size: L:340mm / W:60mm ; 715g. Provenance: From the private collection of a Somerset gentleman; previously in an old British collection, formed before 2000 on the UK /European art markets.