Featuring the largest collection of artifacts ever displayed in North America related to Qin Shihuangdi, the First Emperor of a unified China, The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (February 12 – June 26, 2011), is the final stop of an exclusive two-venue Canadian tour.
Beginning 600 years before the birth of Emperor Qin and featuring national treasures and newly discovered artifacts dating as far back as 2,200 years, ‘The Warrior Emperor’ exceeds the size, scope, and content of previous terracotta warrior exhibitions recently organized in the USA and the UK.
Nearly 1/3 of the 240 remarkable objects including funerary figurines; paintings and sculptures; architectural elements; arms and armor; ornaments in jade and gold, and earthenware objects excavated from the largest burial complex in China (the greatest archeological site in the 20th century since King Tut’s tomb) have never been before on public display internationally.
Highlights on view at the MMFA include the following:
Ten of the earliest known, unique, intact, full-sized terracotta sculptures belonging to the First Emperor united for the first time as part of this Canadian tour and among them,
a kneeling archer still bearing traces of pigment never before shown in North America
A spectacular wall painting from the Emperor’s tomb complex, one of the jewels of the exhibition, on display for the first time outside of China as part of this Canadian tour
A life-sized bronze goose, unearthed in 2000 from what is considered the site of the Emperor’s water garden, on display for the first time outside of China as part of this Canadian tour
A helmet and set of armor made of stone plates are some of the most recent discoveries made in the Emperor’s mausoleum, and ranked among China’s national treasures
Life-sized terracotta sculptures comprising generals, warriors, horses and acrobats newly discovered by archeologists working at the still-in-operation dig site in Xi’an
Image: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
www.mmfa.qc.ca