Page 48 - Bonhams Image of Devotion Hong Kong December 2, 2021

Several panels are now dispersed throughout important museum and private
collections worldwide and the surviving corpus demonstrates some variation in
style and quality across the roughly 160 years the eight tashi gomang stupas were
built (1270s-1430s). The present panel ranks among the highest quality. These
four dancing goddesses are skillfully modelled with Newari-inspired sensuous
bodies laden with semi-precious stones. Their hair is neatly arranged into a fan-
shaped chignon bound into five vertical sections, each topped with a jewel. The
large, plump lotus petals below their feet are of superior quality. The density of
casting and gilding is characteristic of Densatil sculpture, indicative of the great
wealth of its patrons.

Several other known panels are very closely related to the current lot and likely
from the same stupa, including one sold at Bonhams, London, 8 November
2018, lot 35; another from the collection of David T. Owsley (Czaja & Proser, ibid.,
pp.118-9, no.23); a third published in Huang, Studies on History of gDan-sa-
mthil Monastery of Tibet, 2016, p.358; and a fourth in Ashencaen & Leonov, The
Mirror of Mind, 1995, fig.16. For examples of panels with offering goddesses from
different Densatil stupas, see Bonhams, Hong Kong, 27 May 2012, lot 281, and
London, 8 November 2012, lot 260; Czaja & Proser, op. cit., pp.116-7, nos.21-2;
and von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, 1981, p.430, no.113G.

Provenance
Private Hong Kong Collection

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