Embroidered Panel with Daoist Magician

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Daoist magician stands in a spare, rocky landscape holding a bottle from which four tiny bats emanate. The bottle is labeled with the Chinese character fu, or happiness, which is a homophone with the word for "bat." The scene also features trees and flowering shrubs, including tree peonies in the foreground. The collectors' seals along the edges of the work appear to be problematic, except for a small vertical rectangle on the right side, which is the mark of the collector A. W. Bahr, who owned the textile before it entered the Museum's collection.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art