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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
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.
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