Houston Community News >> Terra-Cotta Warriors Show in Rome
9/21/2006 Rome-- More than 300 items from China, including life-size statues from the famed Terra-cotta Army, go on display Friday in Rome in an exhibition that organizers say features the largest number of terra-cotta warriors ever displayed outside China in a single show.
Covering a thousand years of Chinese history, the show also features statues of animals, infantrymen and chariots, jewelry and bronze objects. The items, including about 15 life-size terra-cotta warriors, are spectacularly immersed in semidarkness. Dozens of smaller figurines are arrayed on pedestals, lighted in otherwise dark rooms.
"What was conceived to adorn a moment of death and burial, now it's a witness to life," Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said Thursday. "Those figures, built a long time ago, today carry a message of hope and friendship between our two peoples." The 2,200-year-old army — buried around the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuang, who ruled from 221-210 B.C. — was one of the greatest archaeological finds of modern times.
The warriors, assembled to guard Qin's tomb during his afterlife, were discovered more than 20 years ago by peasants from a local commune who were sinking wells. The discovery has turned Xian, now the capital of Shaanxi Province in western China, into one of the country's major tourist attractions. Xian is about 660 miles southwest of Beijing.
No two soldiers in the army are alike. Each of the sand-colored statues has a different facial expression and hair style.
"These archaeological items on display ... represent the highest level of crafting production techniques in ancient China," said Li Jianguo, the governor of the Shaanxi province, who attended the show's presentation in Rome.
"These archaeological items on display ... represent the highest level of crafting production techniques in ancient China," said Li Jianguo, the governor of the Shaanxi province, who attended the show's presentation in Rome.
The warriors have also yielded invaluable clues to the dress, weaponry, military organization and physical appearance of the era. Craftsmen are believed to have modeled them after a real army.
Most of the items were supplied by the government-run Shaanxi History Museum. Ma Jinchuan, an official with the museum, said that terra-cotta warriors have been featured in many exhibitions, but never in such a large group. Also on display are more than a hundred 27-inch statues of domestic animals, horses and soldiers. A funerary vest, made of more than 2,000 white jade tesserae, stitched together with hundreds of feet of gold thread, is on display as well.
Maurizio Scarpari, one of the curators of the exhibit, said organizers picked the items after examining several in China; some were newly excavated.
"If we could, we would have brought here half of China," he said. "The idea we wanted to give was the extent, the immensity and the power of the Chinese Empire."
The exhibit, "China: Birth of an Empire," runs at the Scuderie del Quirinale, near the presidential palace in downtown Rome, through Jan. 28.
(Contributed by MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer )