Architectural tile with apsara, from the “Porcelain Pagoda”
Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Yongle Period (1403–24)
Not on view
This object comes from the so-called Porcelain Pagoda (destroyed in 1856), a fifteenth-century tower constructed of white porcelain bricks and covered with glazed ceramic tiles. The tower was celebrated for its beauty and ingenuity by Westerners, who learned about it from descriptions and illustrations included in the accounts of envoys and travelers. The tile here depicts an apsara, a form of celestial attendant that appears widely in Chinese Buddhist art.
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