The mingqi traces their origin to a custom, which dates back to the dawn of Chinese civilisation. Whenever a sovereign or a high ranking person died, his near relations and his servants as well as his favourite animals, were sacrificed and joined him in his tomb.

Over the centuries the bloody nature of these sacrifices and the enormous expenses that they incurred, would prompt the Chinese to substitute symbolic figurines made of terra cotta for live sacrifices.

The role of these mingqi, at first purely ritual, became increasingly decorative. The number and the quality of the figurines deposited in the tomb were an indication of the social standing and the wealth of the deceased person.

The subjects that inspired the imagination of the artists are numerous. Court ladies, hunters on horseback, courtesans and dignitaries are called to mind by the anonymous artists with incomparable verve and elegance. The mingqi have, at the same time, a documentary value and a purely aesthetic seduction: they bring an entire society alive again, with its majestic, frivolous or picturesque personages.

But above all, they attest to the genius of the forms and to the continuously renewed inventiveness of the Chinese artists.