Yixian glazed pottery luohans
At least eight statues were originally found, including one large fragment which was thought to have been destroyed in Berlin during World War II, but was rediscovered in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, in 2001.
[4] The circumstances of the find, and the subsequent events as the figures reached the art market, have been the subject of much scholarly investigation, without being entirely clarified.
The full set of the so-called "Yixian luohans" is thought by most scholars to have had figures for the typical Chinese main grouping of Sixteen or Eighteen Arhats, although William Watson describes this "usual assumption" as "speculative".
For Watson they are "outstanding examples of the naturalistic pseudo-portrait of the period, displaying to great perfection an idealization of the face", where "only the elongation of the ear-lobes follows [traditional Buddhist] iconography".
In 2011 Derek Gillman tentatively suggested the specific date of 1159, to match the recorded renovation of a large temple in the region, which he proposed as a candidate for their original location.
[15] The figures were reportedly in the hands of Chinese dealers who told the German sinologist Friedrich Perzynski about them in 1912, and subsequently showed him examples, some of which he bought and exported to Europe.
The Metropolitan acquired its two examples separately in 1921, by which time Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and the Matsukata Collection in Japan already had theirs, and a further four were "owned by private collectors and dealers", so making a total of ten figures, "besides a great many small fragments, several hands and feet, and baskets full of broken pieces".
[23] In his 2011 lecture Derek Gillman reported that Stanley Abe, a fellow specialist, had recently been shown it in a storeroom of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
[26] This may explain why William Watson in 2000 wrote that "Five Luohan in sancai pottery are preserved in Western museums", presumably excluding the example in Japan.
[9] The group of nine as listed by Laurence Sickman and others includes the examples from Berlin (as "present location unknown") and Japan (as "Matsukata Collection") but excludes the one now in Paris.
[19] The current Penn Museum webpage lists eight surviving figures, including the "Matsukata Collection" but excluding Paris and Berlin.
[30] Lecturing in 2011, Derek Gillman, then executive director and President of the Barnes Foundation, said there were "nine known examples; there's a tenth which may be part of the group, and three are known, believed, to have been broken".
[34] The statues are assembled from several pieces of glazed terracotta (not stoneware as sometimes said),[35] with their bases made separately, and using a combination of moulded and freely formed "slab-constructed" sections.
