Shuisu Fengmei disappears in winter, and the sound of the broken corner is not a poem, but a saying referring to the zodiac snake. Si Snake, one of the twelve zodiac signs, the sixth of the earthly branches. Snakes are nimble and flexible, and they are often hidden in the grass.
The twelve zodiac signs, also called zodiac signs, are twelve animals in China that match the twelve earthly branches according to the year of a person's birth, including rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, and monkey. , chicken, dog, pig.
Zodiac Art
1. Painting
The Qing Dynasty painter Xu Gu’s "Twelve Screens" was created in 1884. The animals on the screen have different expressions. Different plant backgrounds are constructed according to animal shapes, and the pictures are fresh, cool and full of variety. ?
In 1944, Qi Baishi spent four years completing the ink painting "Twelve Genres". He said in the postscript, "Mr. Hao San has a lot of paintings in his collection, and he wants to retrieve twelve paintings. He has some that he has never seen before. Dragon cannot be painted, so he rejects them. Mr. Fu San ordered the factory to collect two or three paintings in one year." It took four years of hard work to put the paper together," which became a popular story.
In the winter of 1945, Xu Beihong created the "Twelve Zodiac Album" in Panxi, Chongqing. He painted rats, snakes, dragons, dogs, etc. that he had rarely or never painted before. This picture is ink and color on paper, with accurate animal shapes and elegant colors. In 2014, it was sold at the Kuangshi Autumn Auction in Beijing for 46 million yuan. ?
Contemporary Chinese painter Fan Zeng's "Twelve Zodiac Pictures" borrows zodiac allusions to depict ancient Chinese characters in white using his good lines. This painting was sold at the 2004 autumn auction of Rongbaozhai in Beijing for 3.74 million yuan.
2. Pottery figurines
Zodiac figurines are ancient tomb-protecting vessels. They were most popular in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Most were made of pottery, but some were made of iron or stone. In the Song Dynasty, the number of porcelain figurines increased. . The shapes of the figurines are different. The most popular ones are figures with animal heads and human figures standing in robes or figures holding different animals. There are also figures with animals on their shoulders. In the Song Dynasty, it evolved into figures with animal images on their crowns. Zodiac figurines were mostly made in the Song Dynasty. The image of civil servants either wears a court crown or a ben hat on their head, and wears a robe with wide sleeves.
3. Utensils
Zodiac decorations began to be applied to bronze mirrors in the Sui Dynasty. The zodiac is the main pattern, usually arranged in twelve grids, each grid has an animal pattern, often surrounded by the four gods of green dragon, white tiger, red bird, and Xuanwu, or auspicious animals, twining flowers, and Bagua symbols, and the outer edge is usually a zigzag pattern. Since then, there have been bronze mirrors cast with zodiac patterns in all dynasties.