Cheonmado, the Heavenly Horse
Fifth to sixth century
Not currently on display. The original birch bark painting is extremely light sensitive and is shown only for short special displays; a reproduction is normally on view. Confirm the current display status and gallery on the museum website before promising visitors the original.
A white horse gallops across a dark ground, its mane and tail streaming, its legs stretched out, and from its mouth and hooves trail curling tongues of flame or cloud. Around the edge runs a border of honeysuckle scroll. The animal is painted in white and red on sheets of birch bark sewn together, and it is one of the very few paintings that survive from ancient Korea, made more than fourteen hundred years ago. It is small and worn, but the horse is so full of motion that it has become the emblem of Gyeongju.
The object is a mudguard, one of a pair that hung on either side of a saddle to keep mud from splashing the rider's legs. Birch bark was a luxury material associated with the far north, and the painting on it is confident and quick, done with a brush in a few strokes. Look at the tongue, which curls out like a flame, and at the way the tail and mane are drawn as a single flowing shape. Whether the creature is a horse at all has been debated; some scholars see a kirin, a mythical hoofed beast, because of the protrusion on its head, but the name Heavenly Horse has stuck.
It was found in 1973 at the bottom of the tomb that now bears its name, lying among the horse trappings buried with the king. The bark had been kept damp and dark for fourteen centuries, and it began to deteriorate the moment it met the air. For that reason the original is kept in storage and shown only occasionally, for a few weeks at a time, while a facsimile hangs in the gallery. If the original is out when you visit, count yourself lucky and go straight to it.
Did You Know? When the excavators lifted the painting in 1973 they had no idea what it was; the horse only became visible after the mud was cleaned off in the laboratory.
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