# Emperor Xiaowen and his entourage worshipping the Buddha > Northern Wei imperial carvers, Binyang Central Cave, Longmen - ca. 522-23 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/longmen-binyang-workshop/longmen-binyang-emperor-relief-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Northern Wei imperial carvers, Binyang Central Cave, Longmen - **Date:** ca. 522-23 - **Medium:** Limestone with traces of pigment, reassembled from fragments with plaster infill - **Dimensions:** 208.3 x 393.7 cm (H. 82 in.; W. 12 ft. 11 in.) - **Object type:** Sculpture - **Period:** Chinese, Northern Wei dynasty - **Current location:** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 206 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A limestone procession relief, nearly four metres wide, that was cut out of the wall of the Central Binyang Cave at Longmen in the 1930s and reassembled in New York. It shows the Northern Wei emperor Xiaowen and his court carrying offerings towards the Buddha; its companion, the empress and her court, is in Kansas City. The pair were chiselled into more than six thousand fragments on the orders of a Beijing dealer named Yue Bin, working to instructions from buyers abroad, and about four thousand of those fragments reached the United States.The Metropolitan Museum's published provenance for the panel is one line long. It names the cave. It names nothing and nobody between the cave and the museum's own purchase in 1935. When a Chinese documentary team asked the museum for its restoration records in the course of work broadcast in May 2026, the account they published says very little was provided.Roughly 2,300 fragments of the two reliefs never left China and are still in the storerooms of the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute. In 2026 that institute matched a fragment to the wall of the cave, by 3D scanning and printing, at a reported 93.3 per cent fit: the face of Emperor Xiaowen. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 522-23-1930s** Central Binyang Cave, Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, Henan `[documented]` (origin) Carved into the northeast wall of the cave as part of an imperial commission begun by Emperor Xuanwu in 500 and completed in 523. This single line is also the whole of the provenance the Metropolitan Museum publishes for the object. - **1930s** Yue Bin, antiquities dealer, Beijing `[documented]` (removal) Organised the systematic chiselling of the two donor processions into more than 6,000 fragments, working on orders from buyers overseas. About 4,000 fragments left for the United States; roughly 2,300 remained and are held by the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute. Records of Yue Bin's confession, cited in a 2026 documentary, state that genuine fragments were deliberately mixed with fakes to inflate the price. - **1932-1939** The Chinese art market `[documented]` (sale in fragments) The Nelson-Atkins Museum gives this window for its companion panel, describing the relief as vandalised and sold in fragments. The Metropolitan publishes no equivalent step for its panel; no dealer, agent or consignor is named in the museum's own provenance field. - **1935-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased on the Fletcher Fund, 1935; accession 35.146. Reassembled from fragments with plaster infill. No purchase price has been published. On view in Gallery 206 and released as open access. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - Never on public auction. The relief was acquired by purchase, not gift: the Metropolitan's own object record gives the credit line as Fletcher Fund, 1935 for accession 35.146, confirming a museum fund paid for it rather than the panel arriving as a donation. No purchase price, dealer or seller is published anywhere in the sources consulted, including the Metropolitan's own object and provenance pages, which name no intermediary between the Longmen cave wall and the museum's 1935 accession. The absence of a published figure is not evidence that none was paid; it is recorded here as a gap, not filled with a guess. ## Open questions - What proportion of the Metropolitan's panel is original Northern Wei stone and what proportion is twentieth-century plaster and other restoration material? No measured figure has been published by the museum. - What restoration records does the Metropolitan hold for the 1935 reassembly? A documentary team reported in 2026 that very little was supplied on request; whether that reflects thin records or a thin response is not established. - Who bought the fragments for the Metropolitan, and from whom? The museum's published provenance names no dealer, agent or consignor between the cave and the 1935 purchase. - Which fragments in New York and Kansas City are genuine? Yue Bin's confession, as cited in the 2026 documentary, states that fakes were deliberately mixed with genuine pieces to inflate the sale, and no museum has published a fragment-by-fragment authentication. - Can the surviving 2,300 fragments in Longmen and the 4,000 in the United States be reconciled into a single virtual object, and would either museum supply scan data to allow it? - Where does the Metropolitan's twentieth-century rubbing (68.166.1) sit in the sequence - was it taken before or after the panel was removed from the wall? If before, it is a primary record of the pre-looting state. - Did any Chinese authority make a formal restitution demand for these panels, and if so when? The sources consulted record scholarship, film and scanning, but no filed claim. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Emperor Xiaowen and his entourage worshipping the Buddha', accession 35.146. Catalogue entry, curatorial description and the museum's complete published provenance, which reads in full: 'Binyang Cave, Longmen, Luoyang, Henan Province'. Read 4 August 2026. - [2] Whose Culture? (Harvard University), 'Longmen Binyang Central Cave'. Account of the cave's registers, the removal of the two donor processions, the plaster reconstruction of the Metropolitan's panel, and the critique of the Warner and Sickman collecting narrative. - [3] The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, collection record for 'Offering Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court', accession 40-38, with the four-step provenance and the note that the relief was vandalised and sold in fragments between 1932 and 1939. - [4] Yang Feiyue, 'The hunt for an emperor's face', China Daily, 22 May 2026. Reports Yue Bin's organisation of the looting, the 6,000-plus fragments, the 4,000 sent to the United States and the 2,300 retained at Longmen, Yue Bin's confession about mixed fakes, Sickman's plaster reconstruction, the Metropolitan's response to a request for restoration records, Wen Yucheng's six decades of fragment cataloguing, and the 93.3 per cent match identifying the face of Emperor Xiaowen. - [5] Chinatripedia, 'Binyang Caves in Longmen Grottoes', for the 500 start date, the twenty-four-year campaign, the labour figure of over 800,000 workers, the completion of only the central cave within the Northern Wei campaign, and the commemorative purpose relating to Xiaowen's move of the capital and sinicisation reforms. TERTIARY: to be replaced with the Wei shu passage and the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute's own publication. - [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 42707, returning isPublicDomain true and primaryImage DP170138.jpg. Queried and verified 4 August 2026. - [7] Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, digital archive of the Longmen Binyang Central Cave, including photographs of the northeast wall showing the removed donor relief. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.