La Cina imperiale delle origini: osservazioni sui contatti artistici con l’Occidente e il mondo nomadico nell’arte delle dinastie Qin e Han

In this paper the author deals with one of Bussagli’s favoured research topics, i.e. the cultural and artistic exchanges between East and West, illustrated through recent finds from China dating to the early imperial period. Artefacts recovered from the tomb of the First Emperor of China and from the early Western Han tombs near Xuzhou will be used to illustrate the continuity of the artistic imports from the West in the period between the 3rd to the mid-2nd century BC, prior to the opening of the so-called ‘Silk Road’ during the reign of Wudi (141-87 a.C.).