A rare Chinese wood sculpture has piqued the interest of the international art world. Collectors and art connoisseurs gathered in Paris on Tuesday at Bonham auction house, where the statue of Buddha fetched $2.2 million.

The 12th-century relic is potentially the last remnant of an early collection once commissioned for northern Chinese temples.

Little is known about the figure's new owner, but art experts say the piece was likely snatched up by a buyer looking to return it to China. 

The impressive wood figure stands alone in a dark exhibition hall, the single light illuminating it from the bottom, enhancing its grandeur. The Buddhist Bodhisattva Guanyin statue represents a male deity, seated in a contemplative pose, with an omnipresent glass gaze. It dates back to the 12th Century Jin Dynasty and is surprisingly still largely intact. 

Bonham's Head of Chinese Art, Caroline Schulten, says the sculpture – more than a meter tall – was once part of an elaborate 38-piece collection, originally made to adorn important Buddhist temples in northern China. 

"Today, what we see is only part, the remains of something much more impressive," she says. "But you still see the detailing. It's very rare for a figure of this size to survive – it's more or less complete. The detail still gives a sense of the magnificence." 

There was a lot of interest in this last surviving Chinese relic. Schulten says there are likely only a handful of similar pieces left, and they're mostly museum property. 

Before the auction, visitors to the gallery stood in awe of the 12th-century relic. Interested buyers got closer, inspecting the statue with a magnifying glass and torches to see every crack and splinter and all the finely carved-out detail of the religious symbol.

"For us, for the collectors and for Chinese people, even if they aren't collectors, this is a very important figure because it's compassionate," Schulten explains. "It's a benevolent face, called the Bodhisattva of compassion because he looks down. It's quite remarkable that it survived and is still here after all these years."

The piece was last sold in the 1930s to a family in Boulogne, a suburb near Paris. The relic has since made its way back onto the market after the French family offered to give up the historic heirloom. Schulten says they were unaware of its value. 

"It was always in a prominent position but it was not in a place where people knew what they had," she says. "They didn't know exactly what it was – Chinese, Asian. So in a way, to find out from this commercial value and how early it was, was the biggest surprise for them."

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