University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 Antiquity Or Innovation? Architecture, Sculptures And Murals In Southern Shanxi Under The Yuan Dynasty Lian Qu University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Qu, Lian, "Antiquity Or Innovation? Architecture, Sculptures And Murals In Southern Shanxi Under The Yuan Dynasty" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3478. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3478 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3478 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Antiquity Or Innovation? Architecture, Sculptures And Murals In Southern Shanxi Under The Yuan Dynasty Abstract The dissertation analyzes the different forms of art - architecture, murals and sculptures - produced in Southern Shanxi from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the early of Ming. The dissertation starts with a case study on the history of Guangshengsi, one of the most prestigious Buddhist monasteries in the region, and one of the best-preserved Yuan architectural complexes of all China. It then examines the extant Yuan architecture of Southern Shanxi, most of which were constructed in two types of structures, diantang and tingtang. It was the tingtang structure that gained increasingly popularity in the first half of the fourteenth century. Surviving Yuan buildings in Southern Shanxi belonged to religious institutions of various kinds, Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, temples and shrines of local beliefs. In many cases, these buildings were decorated with murals and contained religious images in various forms. Unfortunately, because of their high artistic achievements and with few exceptions, murals and sculptures were either lost or found their way to the collections of private collectors and museums.