A buyer said to be from China's Fujian province paid $HK116.6m ($20 million) for a large gilded bronze figure of Buddha from the Speelman collection of early Ming Buddhist bronzes offered at Sotheby's.
Sotheby's doesn't tell us much about the owner, apart from saying the works were bought as part of his "personal journey spanning over three decades", and that Jules Speelman and his late father, Alfred, started collecting them at a time when there were doubts about their Chinese origin and they were too esoteric to interest collectors.
