- 428
A STONE CARVING OF A LUOHAN CHINA, LIAO / JIN DYNASTY OR EARLIER
Description
- stone
Provenance
Collection of Dr. Otto Jordan, prior to 1955.
Collection of Ludwig Bretschneider, Munich, 1955.
Collection of F. Brandt, Berlin.
Lempertz, 6th December 2013, lot 119.
Literature
Catalogue Note
According to tradition, the first portraits of the sixteen luohan were painted by Guan Xiu, in 891 AD. These portraits have served as templates for luohan portrayals since the Tang dynasty. These paintings are now lost, but are known today from copies made during the Qianlong period.
In 1757 Qianlong made a visit to the Shengyin Temple near Hangzhou, where he saw the paintings of the luohan in person. He was so moved by them that he had his court artist Ding Guanpeng make copies of them, which Qianlong inscribed, making corrections to the names according to current pronunciations and to the numbering of the position of the luohan. These were later inscribed on stone plaques by the head abbot of Shengyin Temple. Rubbings of these plaques are preserved in the Rübel Chinese Rubbings Collection at Harvard Univeristy. A jade screen decorated with these same images, but without Qianlong's amendments to the names and numbering, is illustrated in Nancy Berliner, The Emperor's Private Paradise, Treasures from the Forbidden City, New Haven, 2010, pl. 49.
The current lot closely resembles luohan number three according to Qianlong's numbering, whose name is given as Pindola Bharadvaja. Both the current lot and the rubbing portray a luohan with long eyebrows, weathered, wrinkled face with furrowed brow, protruding cheekbones and a long nose, seated with both feet on the ground holding a bamboo pole. An example of a rubbing of this luohan is included in the Fine Chinese Works of Art sale, 16th and 17th September 2014, lot 540.
Other examples of Song dynasty luohan are illustrated in Osvald Siren, A History of Early Chinese Art, Sculpture, London, 1930, pl. 115A, C and D. Liao and Jin dynasty examples are illustrated in Osvald Siren, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, vol. 4, New York, 1925, pl. 582.