The Forbidden City was commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1406. The buildings are primarily constructed of wood.
The Terra cotta warriors were commissioned by Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi in 246 B.C.E. The pieces were individually built by the artisan that was making them as a self-portrait. The pieces were made out of terra cotta, a clay-based ceramic.
Both pieces show the exercise of power by the ruler that commissioned them. One visual similarity in the pieces is the large size of the pieces for its time. There are several thousand life-sized sculptures in the tomb, which was large for its time (the closest civilization that could come close to this at the time was Greece, but Greece was making bronze statues that were less realistic, and not as many). Similarly, the forbidden city was built in 1100, and was 180 acres in total. At the time, Europe was in the Middle Ages and Islam was focusing their resources toward buildings mosques. The ability to control resources enough to build either of these monuments was impressive. Contextually, the pieces were similar in their construction being a product of political power. Qin Shi Huang was the emperor of China at the time of the terra cotta warriors, and he sought to build a large tomb that would require the labor of lots of people. Almost 10,000 artisans made sculptures of themselves as soldiers, and were killed afterwards. Similarly, the ming emperor used the construction of the city to usurp power from his older brothers and gain the emperor’s throne.
The pieces are visually different by being statues versus buildings. The difference is significant because the statues were used as a way of commemoration, while the city was used as a way to seize power. Qin Shi Huang wanted the statues to be built for him after death when he already had power. This can be contrasted with the Ming emperor, who used the building of the city as a way to actually rise to power through a coup. Contextually, the pieces are different because of the way workers were treated while building the pieces. The forbidden city was not renowned for being a city built by brutal slavery, but the artisans who made the terra cotta warriors were forced to by penalty of death. Not only that, but the workers that sculpted themselves were killed after they finished in order to keep the tomb a secret. This showed an exercise of political power because the workers could live or die at the builder’s discretion.
OHS APAH 