Lot47: RARE EARLY-MING GILT-BRONZE MANJUSHRI FIGURE, YONGLE MARK AND PERIOD

So, this is slot number 47 from our upcoming auction, Fine Asian Art, on October 17, 2024. This is Manjushri again. We have another one that we just presented from the Jules Spielmann Collection. This is from a private collection in France, in the Paris region, and it's Chinese. It bears the imperial Jungler mark, so a six-character mark, and of the period, of course, so this is in the 1420s, 1430s, about 600 years old to this date. It's an exceptionally rare find, incredibly well-preserved. It's a fire gilt, as they all are, but then it has on top a fine lacquer coating, which is very, very rare, and there are only few examples. In fact, there is a literally near-identical one in the Palace Museum, which is illustrated in this book here. You all have it, probably. It's part of this 40-plus volume library from the Palace Museum, and it shows, yeah, it shows literally the same subject, of course, and the exact same gilding, which is so beautiful, on top of the fire gilding here, where it's worn off in some areas. You can see the fire gilding below, but I personally, I'm a huge fan of these lacquer gildings. They are so incredibly rare, and in most cases, completely worn off, unfortunately, which is not the case here. It's even beautiful on the back side, and we have, of course, the original ceiling here with the typical red paint and the beautifully incised double vajra symbol. It's quite heavy. The x-rays confirm the exceptional precision of the casting. We had quite a few, of course, of the Yongle bronzes over the years, which sold for a lot of money, of course, and we have made x-rays of all of them, and if you compare them, you can see that the copies that are on the market, so many of them these days, the casting quality is terrible, of course, specifically when it comes to the way it's constructed inside. This one is absolutely spectacular. You can see it here. The imagery is, of course, available on zake.at online. Actually, fun is that the Emperor Yongle himself thought to be a reincarnation of Manjushri, which is why this was his favorite subject. I don't know if that is true, of course. I never met him, and I doubt that the scholars and scientists that came up with this theory in the first place ever met him, but it's still an interesting theory. It might be an explanation why this subject was so popular with the sword of wisdom and the sword of power during the Yongle and subsequent Suyonde period. There was one on the auction market only last year, which was a bit smaller. I think this one here has 19, almost 20 centimeters, so it's quite large, and that one had only 17, a bit smaller, not with the lacquer gilding, with the regular fire gilding, as most of them have. From the Claude de Marteau collection, this one sold for roughly 10 million Hong Kong dollars, so that's over a million euros. It was just last year. The imperial mark here is partially obscured by the lacquer gilding, but we removed a part of it to show two most important characters. Those are the Yongle characters, of course, that identify the figure. I think it's another fun fact. There was a few years ago one at Christie's, which had the imperial mark obscured completely by the lacquer, and so was misattributed by the expert as a regular figure. The estimate it went on was 3,000 pounds, but it ended up at over half a million euros, because some of the scholars that were bidding it, of course, know that it's a Yongle figure. It was not Manjushri, it was a model of Guanyin, which is also very nice, and a bit bigger than this one. But of course, Manjushri is very famous and very sought after by the collectors, and so for this reason, it should do well. There's another reason why it should do well, and that is its selling price, because it's only 15,000 euros. I said 15,000, so that's one five with three zeros. It's not a joke. It's actually the starting price, because where we found this, it was not recognized at what it actually is, and so we agreed on a rather low starting price to leave the market, to leave it to the market to decide what the actual value of this piece should be. It comes with a personal recommendation of mine, because it's incredibly beautiful. I hope you can make it to the preview to the exhibition in Vienna to see it, or at least enjoy this video to see the quality of the gilding and the exceptional condition of this piece. So rare to find it. Keep in mind that there is a literally identical piece. We can put them, see them here now next to each other. You see it has exactly the same gilding. It's preserved in the Palace Museum, and I think this makes this probably the best find of the year. Good luck in bidding, and I hope to see you at the auction.