A Rare and Important Gilt-Copper Alloy Figure of The Teaching Virupa, Tibet, 16th Century

Good morning and welcome to our upcoming auction, Fine Chinese Art, on April 10th and 11th, 2025. And right now we'll be looking at an interesting piece. It's teaching Virupa, a very nice and heavily cast Tibetan figure from the 16th century. And with a nice and original gilding, you can see the shine and some of the wear here. As I said, it's quite heavy. It also has a sealing plate. Sometimes these are a bit later than the actual piece because they have been resealed at some occasion. I don't know about this one. Could be from the period, could be later. This is after a very famous figure from Sunam Gyaltsen, attributed to Sunam Gyaltsen, which was from the Jules Spielmann collection and sold at Bonham's last year for over a million euros. That is about a hundred years earlier. And this is not Sunam Gyaltsen, this is after him. There is a very similar piece in the museum in Beijing, in the Guanfu Museum, which has the same size and also approximately the same weight and the same dating. The difference is just that the inlaid jewelry on the one in the Guanfu Museum is from turquoise and here it's from gilt beads. And that is quite unusual, they did it, but you don't find a lot of pieces. But make no mistake, the jewelry is not cast within the piece, but it's actually inlaid gold beads. You can see them here. And the funny thing is that the gilding on these beads here, all over the figure, is a bit different than the main gilding. You have also some nice casting patches. Here's a big one and there's a few smaller ones here and there. And very good incision work, also some red pigment left here and very fine incision work here around the beard and other areas. And as I said, it's quite heavy, it has 3.5 kilograms with a height of roughly 24 centimeters, so this is pretty significant. And it's quite rare because large figures from the 16th century don't appear frequently on the market. It has an estimate of 6 to 12 thousand euros, which I think is quite attractive and could go higher, of course, but you're very welcome to bid on it in our upcoming auction, as I said, on April 10th, 11th, in 2025. Good luck in bidding.