Page 70 - Christie's Inidian and HImalayan Works of Art, March 2019

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION
651
A COPPER ANTHROPOMORPHIC FIGURE
INDIA, GANGETIC PLAINS, 2ND MILLENIUM BCE
13æ in. (35 cm.) high
$25,000-40,000

PROVENANCE
Stolper Galleries of Primitive Arts, Amsterdam, 2 December 1966
This rare work in abstracted human shape has a distinctive dome-
shaped head, wide arms which curve inwards, and tapered legs.
Although the function of sculptures such as these is unknown,
they may have been used for religious or decorative purposes. As
unalloyed copper is a soft metal, it is unlikely that these would have
been functional as a tool or weapon.

Figures such as these were discovered in copper hoards throughout
northern India, and have been attributed to an indigenous
culture in the Gangetic Basin during the frst half of the second
millennium BCE.

Compare the style and proportions of the torso with one of three
additional copper anthropomorphs at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (acc. no. 2001.433.5).

Figure a: Anthropomorph, 1500–1000 B.C., India, Copper, H. 11 in. (27.9 cm);
W. 17½ in. (44.5 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel Eilenberg Collection,
Bequest of Samuel Eilenberg, 1998, 2001.433.5
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