Description: Loess, lacquer, gilding. China, late Ming to early Qing, ca. 17th century
This sculpture of a seated figure comes from the well-known Austrian collection of Wilhelm and Walter Exner and was exhibited in the East Asian Museum in Frankenau (Germany) for many years. It presents a civil-servant deity, possibly from the Daoist trinity of Sankuan, the “three civil servants” of divine rank. This figure of a high-ranking civil servant in Chinese clothing is appropriately wearing a cap on his head and holding a gui, a dignitary scepter, in his hands. The gilded face is very expressive and has inlay eyes (glass) and an open, speaking mouth. The plastic folds of the floor-length robe are well formed and the sleeves very wide at their ends. This heavy sculpture has been molded out of loess soil and gone over using lacquer and partially gilded. Some remnants indicate that the gilding was once more extensive than what remains preserved today.
Dimensions: HEIGHT 71 CM
Condition: Pronounced signs of aging and old repairs.
Provenance: Once part of the Exner collection in Vienna as well as (up to 1964) the former East Asian Museum in Frankenau (Germany)