An early Chinese wood sculpture of a Portuguese or Spanish Jesuit

 

Possibly Macao, 17th/early 18th century, indistinctly inscribed at the front of the base

 

H. 22.6 cm

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The figure, carved in East-Asian walnut with a deep-brown aged patina, seems to represent a Jesuit monk with long curly hair, wearing a long coat over trousers and kneeling on a footstool. Sculptures like the present one were probably made for domestic devotion by Westerners or Chinese converted to Catholicism.