A Study On The Portrait Of Stone Filial Piety In The Han Dynasty

During the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties(two Han Dynasties),China advocated the custom of luxurious burial,so people built a large number of tombs and decorated them with portrait stones or bricks carved with various patterns and images.People also used filial piety paintings on the portrait stone or bricks and the images implying “loyalty,filial piety,chastity and righteousness” to carry out moral education and publicity and boost filial piety.The portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings came into being under a certain economic,political and cultural backgrounds.They are the developmentachievements of filial piety culture in the period from the Pre-Qin period to the Han Dynasty.It is closely related to the policy of “ruling the country with filial piety” and the system of selecting officials by “recommending filial and honest people” in the Han Dynasty.In the Han Dynasty,filial piety was mainly reflected by the way of supporting and taking care of the parents when they were alive,luxurious burial,and offering sacrifices.Filial piety started from the practice of taking care of the parents.In the ancient times,as family and state were an organic whole body,filial piety was in parallel with loyalty to the monarch,and filial piety was strengthened as a belief.The portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings appeared in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty,mainly in Shandong,Jiangsu,Henan and Sichuan and some in Zhejiang.Especially in the southwest Shandong and north Jiangsu where Confucian culture was developed,the filial piety paintings were more popular and gradually influenced other regions.The art form of portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings had been widely accepted in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty.The artistic features of the portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings are similar,which indicates that the content and form of the portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings had already been fixed,forming a unique artistic style.Based on the research on the relevance between motif and theme of the portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings,it is found that most of the filial piety paintings are single images,and in the narration,a conscious choice or transformation of the text plots was made,so as to illustrate the ethics of filial piety and the unity of loyalty and filial piety.In terms of artistic form,in a portrait stone of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings,a typical scene of a story was often chosen to show the filial piety,with inscribed textual notes to show the content of the story.The location and arrangement of filial piety paintings in the tombs are different,and their significances and functions have both similarity and peculiarity.The portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings reflect the manner of filial piety,and also present the unidirectionality of filial piety and the fraternity from elder brothers to younger brothers,which signify the authority of parents and that the society of the Han Dynasty attached more importance on the tolerance and care from elder brothers to younger brothers.The portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings reflect the common practice of filial piety in the society at that time,and more importantly,they objectively reveal the profound connotation and historical and cultural value of the ideological culture of the two Han Dynasties,so they have the function of serving as historical evidence.The rulers of the two Han Dynasties,learning experience from the fall of states in the pre-Qin period,made use of the wide spreading filial piety stories and engraving and painting forms to promote the filial piety ideology,which laid a solid social ideological foundation for the feudal rulers to realize the purpose of “substituting filial piety with loyalty to the country”..The portrait stones of the Han Dynasties with filial piety paintings are pictorial representations of that era.The ethics of filial piety reflected by them has the rich connotation,and as a foundation for the existence of human nature,they have the significance of consolidating the ethical and moral order of the family and state.There was the eternal life spirit and artistic spirit of the Chinese nation and also feudal dross,and some excesses even had gone beyond the human nature and become tools of the ruling class.From the perspective of art theory,as an aesthetic form of art,they are symbol of morality,and the ethical concept of an era can be consolidated and spread through the form of art,and then form a fashion of the era.