The Golden Boy’s Surgery

In 1957, Time Magazine reported on a new discovery about this statue, known as “The Golden Boy.” Hearing objects rattling inside, the museum’s founding director Richard E. Fuller became curious and had it x-radiographed. He himself performed the operation to look inside, with museum staff and scholars as witnesses. Fuller placed the wood figure face down and incised through the layers: a top coat of paint over layers of original gilt lacquer. He cut along a path where someone had cut previously—several centuries after this Chinese figure was made, Tibetan monks had re-consecrated it by opening a rectangular section on the back to insert items. Fuller carefully removed all of these items with a pair of surgical tongs.

Minerals, Seeds, Texts, and Body Organs

No, the items inside were not actual body organs. A silk pouch, cotton batting, and a set of five gilt silver ornaments were relics representing vital parts of the body, such as the heart and intestines. Tibetan monks put these inside the Chinese statue to affirm its sacredness. Other deposits included small pieces of sapphire, ruby, and coral; pieces of wood; seeds; and a small round bronze mirror with silk strings in five colors as the tassel.

The ye dharma (Buddhist credo): “The Tathagata Buddha has declared the cause and also the cessation of the things that arise from causes. Such is the teaching of the Great Samana.”

Also found inside were two Buddhist texts on paper. One was the ye dharma printed in Tibetan dbu can script on a round piece of paper. The other was a dharani (spell) in Sanskrit. Even a small fragment of a sutra represented the words of the Buddha and therefore the entirety of his dharma (teachings). Tibetan materials found inside this and other Chinese-made statues let us know that Buddhist texts moved fluidly across geographic borders.

Science and the Golden Boy

Dr. Fuller’s incision around the panel reveals three distinct layers of decoration applied to the wood figure over time. The first and second layers are composed of gray ground, red lacquer, a thin layer of gold, and a transparent coating. The third layer is composed of mineral pigments. This means that “The Golden Boy” was gilded twice before being painted.

Around the panel only, the second and third layers are separated by paper—a yellowed layer and a white layer—which might have been applied to seal the panel in place after each opening and re-consecration.

Textile fiber identification—of the five-color swatches, the heart-shaped pouch, and the intestines bundle—was conducted by viewing a single fiber of each under a microscope’s transmitted and cross-polarized light sources. The characteristic features observed were compared to known fiber samples to make positive identifications: the intestines bundle is cotton, and the five-color swatches and heart-shaped pouch are silk.

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) identified the inorganic materials, including the five-ornament chain and roll, mirror, gemstones, pigment, and coral. XRF is a noninvasive instrument: a 10mm X-ray beam is emitted from the handheld unit to excite the material at the surface, producing a spectra with peaks for each element present. Each of the five ornaments show prominent peaks for silver with traces of gold, indicating that the ornaments are silver alloy with a gilt layer that has nearly been lost. Coral is recognizable by its distinct shape, and XRF confirmed the identification—only calcium was detected.

The organic materials were observed under the microscope for clues, such as shape and size. Sesame seeds and rice grain are common, but the soy beans were difficult to identify because they have changed color and shrunk with age. The incense sticks were confounding until seen under magnification—powdered material is clearly packed around a stick!