Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Su Wu Tending Sheep as Lady Wang Zhaojun Passes By
Hua Yan Chinese
Not on view
This extraordinary composition combines into a continuous narrative the stories of two historical figures separated by time and geography. They have in common a long exile in the Mongolian wilderness, the site of conflict between the nomadic Xiongnu people and Han China (206 B.C.–A.D. 220). Su Wu (ca. 140–ca. 60 B.C.), pictured with grazing goats in the lower right, went to the Xiongnu as an imperial envoy in 100 B.C. Upon refusing to shift his allegiance, he was banished to Lake Baikal in modern Siberia to herd rams. Holding his emissary staff, he gazes across a frigid river at a female rider surrounded by nomadic horsemen. She is Wang Zhaojun (ca. 52–ca. 15 B.C.), chosen (through trickery) to be married off to the Xiongnu chieftain to cement a political alliance in 33 B.C. Su Wu eventually returned home, after nineteen years, but Zhaojun died in the foreign land.
