Two Military Door Gods from Mianzhu

Here are a pair of military door god prints from Mianzhu in Sichuan of the familiar seventh-century generals Qin Qiong and Yuchi Gong. They would have been pasted up on front doors to protect the home from bad luck.

Fierce-looking Yuchi Gong on the left, more refined Qin Qiong on the right. Both wield sword-breakers, thick metal batons that could be used like a mace. The costumes are theatrical; flags on their backs represent the banners carried by vast numbers of troops. Mianzhu is apparently the birthplace of Sichuan opera.

Mianzhu’s print workshops specialised in these door gods, designed in a distinctive local style with their bodies twisting inwards. The outline was printed and colours painted on by hand; some studios produced bright, bold and detailed work (as here), others were far more casual, their brushwork downright sloppy.

Shiny glaze painted over the eyes

What is unusual about this pair is that their eyes have been painted over in a clear, shiny glaze which makes them flicker as you move past. In Chinese worship, wooden statues of deities have their pupils painted on in a consecration ceremony called 开光, literally “opening the light”, after which the spirit of the deity is held to be resident in the statue. In the original outline print of this woodblock, the eyes were left blank, and this – combined with the glazed effect – makes me wonder if painting the eyes on these door gods also “activated” them in a similar way.

Woodblock-printed outlines – note the empty eyes

If anyone knows about this, please get in touch!