Antique Elegant Queen Mother of the West, China (16096)

Description

This remarkably beautiful carving is the Taoist Queen Mother of the West, (Xiwangmu, Hsi Wang Mu), the most significant female deity in the Taoist pantheon and highly regarded by all Chinese popular religions. She lives in the Jade Emperor’s golden palace on Kunlun Mountain in a Western Paradise. This Paradise with luxuriant grounds is filled with natural spirits, sparkling brooks, and magical beasts like white cranes and red phoenixes. The fabled peach tree there bears fruit every 3000 years and when it blooms, she holds a banquet with peaches for dessert. Attendance is a Who’s Who of Taoist luminaries: deities and mortals – emperors and Taoist masters- who seek to learn her esoteric doctrines and eat the magic peaches of immortality.

As the oldest Chinese female deity, she was the first to be represented in Chinese art She is regarded as the timeless patron deity of women, a divine teacher who controls the length of people’s lives and is associated with the cultivation of virtue and immortality. She is the supreme matriarch and ancestor of all other female deities and  oversees all immortal women and those in the human world under her rule. She is the only deity who can talk directly to humans and her peach tree with its long roots and tall branches is an intermediary between humans and heaven.

Sitting elegantly on a backless throne atop a hexagonal pedestal, she is portrayed as a mature woman with a firm stare, heavy lidded eyes, and small but resolute chin. Her pendulous ears are a sign of wisdom and deified status. The large, seated phoenix in her headdress which symbolizes the sun has been her key iconographic feature since the Yuan dynasty. The elaborately carved bird adds stability and strength to the image. Her hands are under a finely carved ritual cloth indented to hold a missing object, probably a staff. Described in the famous Classic of Mountains and Oceans, “Xiwangmu rests on a stool and wears an ornament on her head. She holds a staff.”

Carved from dense wood with polychrome, gilt and lacquer intact , it is in excellent condition with a crack on the back from the neck to the base and some losses consistent with age and use.

The image would have been and losses consistent with age and is part of the VA Deities-and-Legends collection.

Click here for the blog Queen Mother of the West Xiwangmu: Taoism’s Iconic Female Sovereign of Immortals