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Portraits in Mirror: The Sculptural Art of the Virgin Mary and the Bodhisattva Guanyin
Missions Etrangères de Paris
In the heart of Paris’s 7th arrondissement stands the headquarters of the Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP). Founded in 1658, this society of apostolic life is among the oldest French Catholic missionary institutions still in operation.
The collections of the Institut de Recherche France-Asie (IRFA), established by the MEP to preserve, enhance, and disseminate an exceptional documentary and artistic heritage shaped by more than four centuries of exchanges between France and the countries of Asia, bear witness to this history. They comprise historical archives in multiple languages, rare manuscripts, photographs, maps and plans, as well as a rich ensemble of artistic and historical objects gathered by missionaries during their time in Asia.
Drawing on these collections, along with several private holdings, a temporary exhibition brings into dialogue both historical and previously unseen representations of the Virgin Mary in the Christian tradition and the Bodhisattva Guanyin in Buddhism.
On the occasion of this exhibition, we met with its curator, Christophe Decoudun, Senior Lecturer at the Institut Catholique de Paris, a specialist in artistic and religious exchanges in Asia.
Guanyin Gazing at the Moon Reflected on the Water, Li Jinfeng (李锦峰), Blanc de Chine, 21st century, Dehua, China © Chen Yihui / Zheng Yongsong / Private collection
Professor Decoudun, you are a Senior Lecturer at the Institut Catholique de Paris and a specialist in Asian civilizations. Could you tell us about your academic background and the main directions of your research?
After completing, in 2011, a Master’s degree in archaeology and art history of ancient China at Sorbonne Université, alongside a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese at INALCO, I chose to move to China in order to further deepen my command of the language and to prepare a doctoral project for the Sorbonne devoted to the relationship between metaphysics and the arts in the Sinitic world.
During this period, I worked as a French language lecturer in several Chinese universities, which enabled me to fund my doctoral research while becoming durably integrated into the academic world. After obtaining my PhD in 2018, I continued along this path as a lecturer and researcher in the history of China. After spending more than ten years there, I returned to France in 2022. I then began teaching Chinese at Sorbonne Université, as well as courses on Asian spiritualities at the Institut de science et de théologie des religions (ISTR) of the Institut Catholique de Paris.
In 2024, I was appointed Research Engineer at the CNRS to contribute to an ANR-funded project focusing on interactions between Central Asia and the Chinese Empire in Antiquity, based on textual and archaeological sources. That same year, I was named Director of the university diploma “Spiritualities and Philosophies of Asia” at the ISTR, before being appointed in 2025 as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Archaeology within the Faculty of Humanities at the Institut Catholique de Paris.
Your research has long focused on Buddhism and on the transmission of this religion from the Indian world to the Chinese world. In what way does this exhibition mark the opening of a new field of study devoted to Christianity in Asia?
It is true that my work has long centred on Buddhism and on the processes through which this religious tradition was transmitted from the Indian world to the Chinese world. Yet it was by way of an unexpected detour—through porcelain, a field I had previously explored only marginally—that I began to take an interest in Christian art in East Asia.
While studying certain productions, notably the famous Blanc de Chine porcelains from Fujian (in the southeast), which were widely circulated in the early modern period, I was struck by the prominence of Marian imagery. I gradually came to understand that the particular configuration of Christianity in East Asia had been shaped, at least in part, around the cult of the Virgin Mary, a dynamic that continues to the present day.
I then realised that no truly comprehensive study of this subject exists. There are important publications, certainly, but they are often dispersed and fragmentary. Some objects have never been studied in depth; others have disappeared altogether. Entire areas of research—particularly those concerning production techniques, such as those associated with Blanc de Chine—remain to be explored in a systematic way.
This exhibition therefore marks the opening of a new field within my research: not a departure from my work on Buddhism, but rather its comparative extension. For these Christian productions are part of a genuine interreligious dialogue mediated through the arts. Artists draw on reciprocal influences between traditions—especially Buddhist and Christian—to create images that might be described as “hybrid,” yet deeply rooted in the Chinese world.
Guanyin on a Lotus, porcelain, China.
A red stole covers the head (with a high black chignon) and shoulders of the deity, who is dressed in a flowing blue patterned jacket over a green robe.
© N. Xaysourinh / MEP–IRFA Collection
Guanyin, Blanc de Chine with traces of gilding, China
© N. Xaysourinh / MEP–IRFA Collection
You have chosen to place the Virgin Mary and the Bodhisattva Guanyin in dialogue through the theme of the “mirror.” Could you tell us about the genesis of this project and your collaboration with the Missions étrangères de Paris and the Institut de Recherche France-Asie?
At the outset, as I mentioned earlier, my interest lay in a particular feature of Christianity in a Sinitic context: the development of Marian devotion through the production of porcelain. At the same time, I had already been working closely with the Missions étrangères de Paris for three years, notably through seminars, conferences, and my participation on the editorial board of the journal Ad Extra, devoted to missions in Asia. A relationship of trust had been established, and I was therefore invited to examine the collections held at the Institut de Recherche France-Asie (IRFA).
While consulting the inventories and studying the objects, I was struck by the way in which representations of the Virgin Mary and Guanyin seemed to echo one another. They draw upon similar iconographic codes—femininity, benevolence, compassion, motherhood—to the point that some images appear almost to engage in a silent dialogue. It was from this observation that the idea of the “mirror” emerged: not merely as a formal comparison, but as a play of reflections between two religious traditions.
My research then led me to identify two artistic particularities characteristic of the Far East. On the one hand, a form of ambiguity: the reciprocal influences between Mary and Guanyin can at times render interpretation difficult, particularly in contexts where Christianity was prohibited, such as in Japan, where certain images could be deliberately equivocal.
On the other hand, a deeper ambivalence, consisting in the superimposition—or even the conflation—of two identities within a single image, especially in the context of ritual practices. It is precisely these plays of mirrors, ambiguities, and superimpositions that we sought to bring to light in the exhibition, in order to show how art becomes a space of encounter, circulation, and at times transformation of religious figures.
Statuette on a Stand, Young Woman with Crossed Hands, ivory, Japan © N. Xaysourinh / MEP–IRFA Collection
This exhibition is also the result of a collective effort bringing together several specialists. How did this scholarly collaboration make it possible to narrate, through images, the history of the development of Christian representations in East Asia? Which countries are covered in this journey?
To encompass such a vast geographical area and such an extended period, it was indeed essential to combine different fields of expertise and perspectives. The exhibition follows a fairly classical chrono-thematic structure. It begins by returning to the origins of Christianity in China, with the arrival of Nestorianism under the Tang dynasty, at the beginning of what we refer to as the Middle Ages. It then addresses the introduction of a European Marian iconography in the thirteenth century, brought in particular by the Franciscans, alongside the gradual feminisation of representations of Guanyin in Chinese art.
The second section focuses on images produced in East Asia during the early modern period, when representations of the Virgin Mary and Guanyin began to influence one another, under the impetus of Jesuit missions and the trade fostered by the Portuguese and the Spanish in the Far East. We show how these circulations encouraged the emergence of hybrid images at the intersection of European and Asian traditions.
Finally, a concluding section highlights regional particularities: Blanc de Chine porcelain, Japanese productions created in a context where Christianity was prohibited, and more contemporary works from Korea and Vietnam that seek to reconcile European legacies with Asian artistic sensibilities.
To reflect this complexity, we called upon several specialists. Alexis Balmont contributed his expertise on Nestorianism in China; Zheng Yongsong on Blanc de Chine productions; Martin Ramos and Antoine de Monjour on Christianity in Japan; and Pierre-Emmanuel Roux on Korea. This plurality of voices made it possible to contextualise the works with precision and to provide visitors with the necessary keys to understanding these images.
How did you go about selecting the works presented? Could you also tell us a few words about the history of these collections, which remain largely unknown to the general public, beyond the martyrs’ hall located in the crypt of the Church of the Epiphany?
These collections remain largely unknown to the general public, in large part because their formation is the result of complex historical processes that are often poorly documented and still insufficiently studied. The majority of the works were brought back by missionary priests over the course of their stays in Asia. They frequently stem from exchanges with local populations, traditionally closer to Buddhism. These may have taken the form of gifts, but also—within a sometimes constrained Christian context—of more or less fortuitous rediscoveries of objects that had been hidden during periods of persecution or prohibition of the faith.
These collections also include Christian images originating from Europe, which circulated in Asia and belonged to missionaries. Such objects played an essential role in the transmission and dissemination of religious knowledge. In this regard, the marble statue of the Virgin and Child that once belonged to Pierre Aumaître in the nineteenth century stands as one of the most striking testimonies to these circulations between Europe and Asia.
As for the selection of works presented in the exhibition, we proceeded in several stages. Initially, we deliberately cast the net wide, in order to gain as comprehensive a view as possible of the collections held at the Institut de Recherche France-Asie. This phase was essential to understanding both the richness and the heterogeneity of the holdings, well beyond the pieces usually displayed in the martyrs’ hall in the crypt of the Church of the Epiphany.
We then carried out a reasoned selection, prioritising works that could be clearly identified as representations of the Virgin Mary or Guanyin, while favouring a specific medium: sculpture. This choice ensured visual coherence while highlighting the diversity of techniques, materials, and craftsmanship.
Finally, the corpus was refined according to the scientific and narrative relevance of the works, so that they would best serve the exhibition’s argument. The aim was not exhaustiveness, but rather the capacity of the objects to enter into dialogue with one another and to render intelligible, for the visitor, the complex history of Buddhist and Christian imagery in East Asia.
With the development of Jesuit missions in Asia, the first Christian representations in China emerged within a visual landscape already shaped by the cult of Guanyin. Can we identify a turning point at which these two iconographies truly begin to enter into dialogue?
Yes, it is possible to identify a fairly precise turning point, which I describe as a form of “Jesuit didacticism.” From the sixteenth century onward, with the lasting establishment of the Society of Jesus in China, missionaries became aware of a very concrete phenomenon: Chinese populations showed a spontaneous attraction to images of the Virgin Mary, while often assimilating them to the bodhisattva Guanyin, a figure already deeply embedded in the local religious and visual landscape.
Rather than opposing this conflation outright, the Jesuits chose to turn it into a pedagogical tool. They developed precise technical and visual strategies—most notably through the use of engraving—in order to disseminate Marian iconographic models. These images functioned as matrices intended for local reproduction, while still allowing room for interpretation by Chinese artists, who adapted them according to their own aesthetic and cultural codes.
This process gave rise to a fertile interaction between the two traditions. On the one hand, representations of the Virgin Mary gradually adopted features, postures, and attitudes inspired by Asian iconography. On the other, certain images of Guanyin came to be associated with the figure of the child, an element previously specific to Marian representations.
In some cases, this dynamic of exchange resulted in works whose identity became deliberately ambiguous: it is then difficult to determine with certainty whether one is looking at the Virgin Mary or Guanyin. Far from being an anomaly, this indistinction represents the logical outcome of the visual and religious dialogue fostered within the context of missionary activity in Asia.
Guanyin with Child, blue-glazed porcelain, China
© N. Xaysourinh / MEP–IRFA Collection
You emphasize the decisive role played by Chinese artisans in this history. How much interpretive freedom were they afforded? And why does porcelain—particularly Blanc de Chine—occupy such a central place in this process of hybridisation?
During the period of the Jesuit missions, the challenge was twofold: both to transmit the foundations of Christian theology and to foster, among Asian audiences, a genuine receptivity to this new religious tradition. To achieve this, missionaries drew upon the local cultural and visual imagination. This delicate balance left artisans with a real margin of manoeuvre, as they were called upon to translate Christian models into a formal language that would be intelligible and acceptable within the Chinese context. It is precisely this relative freedom that enabled the emergence of hybrid images and encouraged the development of a Catholic sensibility in Asian settings.
This iconographic flexibility, however, tended to diminish from the nineteenth century onward. The Chinese Rites Controversy gave rise to deep divisions within the Church itself, while the European world increasingly imposed itself upon East Asia in a context of political and cultural domination. Western norms then became predominant, and Christianity came to be perceived locally as a form of imported modernity, much as Buddhism had once been. It was only in the early twentieth century that new attempts at hybridisation emerged, seeking to re-establish a more balanced dialogue between Chinese and Western traditions.
Within this visual landscape, porcelain occupies a central place. It constitutes a true archetype, owing to its distinctive technical refinement—unique to China—which fascinated Europeans from an early period. Blanc de Chine undoubtedly represents one of the most accomplished expressions of material sacrality: a purified form, a smooth, flawless surface, and a slightly translucent patina that captures and diffuses light. This purity of the material corresponds to a genuine visual grammar of the sacred.
It is no coincidence that this porcelain was long sought after in Europe, notably by Augustus the Strong, who aimed to produce an equivalent porcelain on the continent. Today, we are witnessing a renewed interest in the influence of Blanc de Chine on European manufactories, alongside technical innovations developed in China to reinterpret this tradition in a more contemporary light. This reciprocal movement is a reminder of how porcelain has been—and continues to be—a privileged medium for artistic and spiritual dialogue between Asia and Europe.
You also emphasize the circulation and transformation of images within the Sinitic world. What were the main vectors of these artistic and religious exchanges? Did the deliberate ambiguity of certain works respond more to commercial, missionary, or spiritual concerns?
The circulation and transformation of images within the Sinitic world were above all grounded in the convergence of commercial, artisanal, and missionary dynamics. From the sixteenth century onward, the establishment of the Portuguese in Macao and the Spanish in the Philippines led to an unprecedented acceleration of transcontinental exchanges along maritime routes. These new networks facilitated not only the movement of goods, but also that of iconographic models, techniques, and religious sensibilities.
In this context, Chinese artisan communities established in Manila played a decisive role. They quickly recognized the economic potential of adapting images to plural markets, capable of appealing both to European patrons and to Asian audiences. This capacity for adjustment gave rise to works with deliberately ambiguous contours, able to circulate across different cultural horizons without being immediately confined to a single, fixed interpretation.
Finally, for the Jesuits and the missionaries who succeeded them, these exchanges represented a major opportunity to develop productions with a didactic purpose. The image thus became a privileged instrument for conveying Christian thought while engaging in dialogue with local visual and symbolic references. Within this framework, ambiguity was not merely a compromise, but a genuine operative principle: it made it possible to address audiences from different cultural backgrounds simultaneously, while preserving multiple layers of interpretation and interaction.
How did periods of prohibition of Christianity in China and Japan foster the emergence of a specific form of iconographic creativity? Did the visual correspondences between Mary and Guanyin enable a clandestine practice of the Christian faith?
The periods during which Christianity was prohibited in both China and Japan paradoxically acted as a powerful catalyst for iconographic creativity. The constraints imposed by repression compelled Christian communities to rethink their visual supports—not as signs of public affirmation, but as ambiguous objects capable of concealing religious practice beneath forms acceptable to the dominant order.
The answer to the second question lies precisely within this logic. In Japan, three main types of representations associated with this clandestine creativity can be identified. The first—and undoubtedly the most widespread—consists in the use of images of Kannon, the Japanized form of Guanyin, to practice Marian devotion in secret. Through a Christian reinterpretation of pre-existing iconographic correspondences (femininity, motherhood, postures of compassion, the presence of fish or clouds), these images could be invested with Christian meaning without arousing suspicion. This visual ambiguity made it possible, well into the twentieth century, to deceive imperial soldiers tasked with tracking down clandestine Christian communities.
A second type corresponds to later works, partly intended for the art market, in which certain representations of Kannon used for Marian devotion were supplemented with elements drawn from Christian iconography, such as a cross affixed to the chest. While the objects themselves may have been authentic in their original use, these additions sometimes reflect a form of retrospective Christianisation: the Christian symbols, though legible, may be described as “apocryphal” in relation to their initial context.
Finally, a third group consists of sculptures of the Virgin Mary that leave no doubt as to their Christian identity. Too explicit to be preserved during periods of persecution, these works were hidden, abandoned, or destroyed: buried, sealed within containers, then walled in or concealed underground, they testify to the limits of ambiguity when confessional legibility became too direct.
Thus, the visual correspondences between Mary and Guanyin did not merely facilitate a clandestine practice of the Christian faith; they gave rise to a genuine iconographic language of concealment, in which ambiguity is neither accidental nor opportunistic, but rather a carefully elaborated visual strategy in response to persecution.
Finally, the Korean case, addressed at the end of the exhibition, does it represent, in your view, a rupture or a continuity within this process of iconographic hybridisation?
In my view, the Korean case is more a matter of continuity than rupture with the forms of iconographic hybridisation observed elsewhere in East Asia. As in China or Japan, image-makers sought to develop a visual compromise between Western references and Asian traditions, adapting Christian forms to local sensibilities.
What does change, however, are the very modalities of this hybridisation. In the Korean context, the garments and physiognomy of sacred figures adopt, in a much more pronounced way, the realism of East Asian cultural features, making their local inscription immediately perceptible. By contrast, the posture, composition, and overall organisation of images of the Virgin and Child remain deeply rooted in a European conception of devotional imagery, inherited from Western models of Marian devotion, and leave no doubt as to the identity of the figures.
Finally, the specificity of the Korean case is also evident in the choice of materials and in the formal treatment of the works. One observes a clear desire for innovation, expressed through a more contemporary approach to the image, both in the techniques employed and in the stylisation of forms. This material and plastic dimension renews the iconographic language without breaking with the fundamental principles of earlier hybridisation.
Thus, the Korean case does not constitute a rupture, but rather a moment of reformulation: it extends an already well-established dynamic of hybridisation while reinscribing it within a specific aesthetic and temporal framework.
Virgin and Child, terracotta, 21st century, South Korea
© N. Xaysourinh / MEP–IRFA Collection
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
From 13 February to 25 April 2026
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. – Free admission
Mission 128 Entrance
128 rue du Bac
75007 Paris
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