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6 ? in. (17 cm.) high
The present carving belongs to a group of jade carvings that first appeared in the late Ming to early Qing dynasties, depicting luohan (disciples of Buddha known as arhats in Sanskrit) within a mountainous grotto setting. A selection of the eighteenth-century versions is inscribed with dedicatory or poetic inscriptions linking them to the Qianlong emperor (1736-1795). It is likely that these carvings in jade were inspired by a woodblock print of a jade carving of a luohan in a grotto included in the eighteenth-century catalogue Gu yu tu pu.See two slightly smaller comparable jade carvings of luohan seated against a backdrop of rock faces in the collection of the British Museum, London, illustrated by Jessica Rawson in Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pp. 410-11, no. 29:19 and fig. 1, where, p. 410, the author also gives an enlightening discussion on the context and significance of this group of carvings. Compare, also, with three jade carvings in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, one of Bodhidharma and two of luohan in a rocky setting, illustrated in Later Chinese Jades: Ming Dynasty to Early Twentieth Century from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, 2007, pp. 284-86, nos. 315, 316 and 317.