Ox Head from the Old Summer Palace

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This rat head is one of the 12 animal heads sculpted for the Old Summer Palace in Beijing China. The Twelve Old Summer Palace bronze heads are a collection of bronze fountainheads in the shape of the Chinese Zodiac Animals that was part of a water clock fountain ain in front of the Haiyantang building of the Xiyang Lou area of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. Supposedly designed by Giuseppe Castiglione for the Qianlong Emperor, the statues would spout out water from their mouths to tell the time. The bronze-cast heads of the stone statues were among the treasures looted during the destruction of the Old Summer Palace by Anglo-French expeditionary forces in 1860 during the Second Opium War. Since then, they have been among the most visible examples of attempts to repatriate Chinese art and cultural artifacts. (text credit)