Funeral Banner of Lady Dai

Funeral Banner of Lady Dai, Western Han Dynasty, painted silk, unearthed from Tomb No. 1 in Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province, collection of Hunan Provincial Museum. There are various interpretations for the meaning of this silk painting, which is divided into four sections by three parallel lines. The top and bottom represent the heavenly realm and the underworld, while the middle two parts depict the two stages of Lady Dai's existence after death. In ancient ritual books, these two stages are referred to as "corpse" and "coffin." The painting depicts the scene of the deceased's family performing funeral rites, with the "coffin" or the portrait of the deceased depicted above. It portrays the process of the transformation from death to rebirth in the cosmic space, using variations in density and size to create a sense of space in the composition.

This piece is compiled from the Chinese edition of Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting by Foreign Languages Press and Yale University Press, translated by Chen Ying.