Yixian glazed pottery luohans

The Yixian glazed pottery luohans are a set of life-size glazed pottery sculptures of arhats (called luohan in Chinese) now usually regarded as originating from the Liao dynasty period (907–1125). They were apparently discovered in the early 20th century in caves at Yi County, Hebei, south of Beijing.^[1] They have been described as "one of the most important groups of ceramic sculpture in the world."^[2] They reached the international art market, and were bought for Western collections. 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.^[3]

Others are now in the following collections: the British Museum in London, two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, the Musée Guimet in Paris, and the Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Karuizawa, Japan. Including the example rediscovered in Saint Petersburg, this totals ten figures. There may be fragments from the same set in other collections.^[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.^[5]

Luohan is the Chinese term for an arhat, one of the historical disciples of the Buddha. As Buddhist tradition developed, and especially in the East Asian Buddhist countries, the number of arhats tended to increase, and at least the most important were regarded as, or as almost, bodhisattvas or fully enlightened beings, with a wide range of supernatural powers.^[6] According to Buddhist tradition, groups of 16, 18 or 500 luohans awaited the arrival of Maitreya, the Future Buddha,^[7] and groups were often used in East Asian Buddhist art. 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". These and earlier smaller groupings of six or eight were each given names and personalities in Buddhist tradition.^[8]

This set is exceptional in its quality and the sculpted-from-life individuality of each figure, and it has been suggested that they were also portraits of notable contemporary monks. 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".^[9] The green hair of some of the figures is also a departure from naturalism. The alleged findspot in 1912 seems not to have been the original location of the group, which is unknown, and the set of 16 or 18 figures was probably made to be set on platforms along the walls of a "luohan hall" in a temple.^[10] The openwork rock-like bases were intended to suggest mountains; paintings of luohans often show them perched on small peaks, indicating the mountain retreats of the ascetic monk.^[11]