A fantastic source for the appearance of early Ming (15thc) warriors. The weapons, armour and clothing are just beautiful.

Notice that the arms, armour stems from the Ming period(the period that the paintings were drawn) instead of the Han period.

In fact, all popular images of the Three Kingdoms are filtered through the arms and armour of the Ming dynasty, because that's when the novel was written. Guan Yu's glaive (dao) is a perfect example.

Well, in all technicality, the except for the fact that they are using Shanwen lamellas, everything on that picture can be found or at least have existed before the Song dynasty.

But that's just me being a nitpicking poohead.



(ok ok. so Zhou Cang was a ming dynasty 'creation' but hey, it doesn't neglect the possibility that someone was named Zhou Cang during the Song dynasty or before right ?)

I thought the Yanyue Dao glaive is not known before the Wujing Zongyao of the Northern Song?

"everything on that picture (can be found) (or) (at least have existed before) the Song dynasty. "

Should be:

"everything on that picture (can be found in) (or) (even existed before) the Song dynasty. "

That makes it much clearer

"No soup for you !!!"

Whats with the black guys in the painting?

They aren't "black guys", they are Chinese. This is how the Chinese depicted themselves in paintings.

Zhou Cang (Guan Yu's fictional glaive-bearer) is traditionally depicted with a swarthy face. The other dark guy reminds me of Zhang Fei, because Zhang is usually given a dark face in popular depictions too. But Zhang wasn't involved in Pang De's capture, so I'm not sure if it really is him.

Larger versions of the same pics here.
http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/chi...9_041504_21.jpg
http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/chi...9_041504_22.jpg

Wow! Great paintings. I like the rich detail on Guan Yu's armor, clothes, facial expression, and facial hair. The weird thing about it is Pang De seems to be smiling while being captured, which is sort of strange. Lol.

Eric

looks more like he is grimacing from having his hair pulled

Now, this armor, would it have physically existed for ceremonial wear? Does any armor like this survive?

All evidence suggests the armour portrayed is historically accurate. See my gallery here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/93862654@N00/...57594347641833/

I have my doubts.
The overall design and structure of the armour is historically correct and consistant with Song-Ming amrour design. However, it seem a bit too decorated to be an actual battlefield armour.

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Wujiang:

I am inclined to agree with you, but would note that it seems that in Europe in antiquity and medieval times decorated armor would be worn in battle.

We have to keep in mind that as long as the decoration didn't compromise the defensive qualities of the armor, it would be acceptable. Most officers or leaders wanted to be noticed, it was how they rallied, inspired, and led their men.

Four problems with this idea.

Firstly, there are no armour examples of the Song-ming era except for paintings and statues. So the 'decorativeness' of this piece is in question.
Secondly, that painting is a misrepresentation of the real Guan Yu and is based on the SGYY. Who knows what else they misrepresented.
Thirdly, the fact that European does it is irrelevent as there is no reference to be drawn. It is like saying because the Chiense used chopstickes therefore there Europeans did too.
fouthly, you absolutely don't want to be standing out with your fancy armour on the battlefield because you can then be easily identified as the Jiang of your army and become target for snipers.

I would however, wont' dismiss the whole idea of having decorative armour entirely based on the first point.

The armor on the painting was mountain pattern armour, it did not exist during 3 kingdoms period I believe.

Conan, the website you found it on, http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/chi...9_041504_21.jpg seems to have a great deal of Chinese art, quite alot to look through.

Was there any other armor from that website?

by the depiction of Zhou Chang in this painting, I'd say he is Indian, not black.

Zhou Chang was an Indian?

actually he is fictional.... he could be alien if he wanted to....

Nothing else in terms of armor AFAIK.