© koninklijke brill nv, leiden,  | doi: ./- Religion and the Arts  () – RELIGION and the ARTS brill.com/rart Realms Beyond Half-Open Doors in Chinese Funerary Art Fei Deng Fudan University Abstract This article explores a mysterious but well-studied pictorial subject in Chinese visual art, namely the half-open door. The scene often shows a female figure standing in or emerging from the middle of two door-leaves, suggesting a path or an access to a certain space and also indicating a view incompatible with what the viewer has already seen. This pictorial theme frequently adorns stone sarcophagi and tomb walls in northern China from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. By examining the forms and meanings of the motif, this study attempts to demonstrate the ways in which the half- open door was employed in funerary art and helped people to visualize prevailing ideas about the afterlife. Keywords Song and Jin periods – northern China – funerary art – half-open door – heavenly worlds Doorways constructed with stone or bricks are often seen in decorated tombs in northern China during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Decorated tombs are here defined as tombs that are adorned with elaborate facades in imitation of wooden architecture and with various indoor scenes on the tomb walls. In general, the tombs consist of a stepped path and a single or sometimes double burial chambers of varying sizes and layouts. Wooden architectural elements such as pillars, bracket sets, and eaves are simulated in brick and sometimes enhanced with color. The pictorial scenes in the tombs usually include ban- quets, indoor scenes, filial stories, and household furnishings. The decoration 1 In the last three decades, an increasing number of studies have discussed the materials. Most