In an article by John Larson and Rose Kerr, "A Hero Restored: the Conservation of Guan Di", Orientations, July 1991, dealing with the restoration of a massive lacquered and gilt-wood figure of Guandi in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the popularity of Guandi during the Ming Dynasty is discussed, as well as his various guises; i.e. either dressed in full armor or with a scholar's robes worn over his armor, as in the large gilt-bronze seated figure of Guandi (81cm.), fig. 9, from a temple in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, which bears a dedicatory inscription dated to 1608. The robes worn by this figure, like those of the present example, are cast on the belly with a dragon, and the faces of the two figures are also quite similar

Compare, also, two bronze guardian figures of Ming date and similar massive proportions included in the Exhibition of Buddhist Bronzes from the Nitta Group Collection, National Palace Museum, 1987, Catalogue pl. 120 and 121. Other monumental figures, either in bronze or painted stucco and dressed either in full or partial armor, located in temples in China also relate stylistically to the present example. See the bronze figure of Zhen Wu Dadi or Xuanwu, the god of the North in ancient mythology, dated to the Ming Dynasty, in the Jinding Hall, Wudang Shan, Hebei province, illustrated in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji, vol. 6, Yuan, Ming and Qing Sculpture, Beijing, 1988, no. 117, as well as, figures of various deities in the White Horse Temple, Luoyang and the Shuanglin Temple, The Thousand Buddha Hall, Pingyao county, illustrated op. cit, nos. 8, 9 and 73