JESUITICA: A costly Jesuit clock
Parts of a water clock fountain designed by Jesuit missionaries have been sold in Paris for €28,000,000 and are triggering a row between Christie’s auction house and China. The two bronze fountain-heads were part of a dozen heads from the Chinese Zodiac, and they marked the time by spouting water. They were looted from the Beijing Summer Palace by British/French forces in the Second Opium War. The buyer turned out to be a patriotic Chinese who refused to pay for them as being stolen property.
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