Mingqi - Terracotta - A Large Painted Grey Pottery Figure of a Caparisoned Striding Horse Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577 A.D.) Extremely rare. Perfect piece! Height: 44 cm. Width: 32 cm. - The result of the thermoluminescence test, is consistent with the dating of the item, N. Qi dynasty – Extra test: Pre-dose test has been done: Pre-dose test confirms old firing without any kind of artificial x-ray treatments! Provenance: Dutch private collection, since 1990's. Finely modelled with head slightly tilted to the left accentuating the arched muscular neck and spirited, alert attitude of the horse, richly arrayed in finely detailed trappings including a wrapped plume between the pricked, notched ears, a narrow fringe-hung with pendants below a grid-pattern fitting of bosses molded with florets on the rump, the saddle covered with a long knotted cloth draped over flared mud guards, with traces of white, orange, red and black pigment. This pottery horse is similar stylistically to an example unearthed in Cixian, Hebei province in 1979 from the tomb of an Eastern Wei princess of the Ruru nationality, see Wenwu 1984; 4, pl. 5, fig. 2 and p. 6, fig. 7, no. 3 for a line drawing of the horse. Compare also, two similar Eastern Wei horses, one in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, illustrated by V. Bower and R. Mowry, From Court to Caravan; Chinese Tomb Sculpturesfrom the Collection of Anthony M. Solomon, Cambrige, 2002, p. 92, no. 19, and another included in the exhibition Early Dynastic China: Works of Art from Shang to Song, J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 26 March – 26 April 1996, no. 5.