Page 142 - 2019 September 10th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art Jades, Met Museum Irving Collection NYC

62 A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF
AVALOKITESHVARA
昳 戭 SUI DYNASTY - EARLY TANG DYNASTY
军 挷 standing in tribhanga atop a separately-cast double-lotus
Ⓒ 慹 base, the left hand holding a ‘pure water bottle’ by the hip,
⇅ġġġ 奨 the right arm bent at the elbow and holding a willow branch
枛 by the shoulder, the slender body elegantly attired in a dhoti
䩳 and shawl, a long beaded necklace draping across the bare
⁷ chest suspending a double-pendant and then extending in two
cords down the torso and legs, the body further embellished
with bracelets, armbands, earrings, and a multi-part diadem
surrounding the high chignon, the oval face with downcast eyes
and a serene countenance, wood stand (3)

Height 8¼ in., 20.8 cm

PROVENANCE
Spink & Son, London, 10th October 1988.
Collection of Florence (1920-2018) and Herbert (1917-2016)
Irving, no. 1970.
The iconography of the pure water bottle and the willow branch
identify this Þ gure as Willow Guanyin, whose story can be
traced to an episode in the Dharani Sutra, which describes the
bodhisattva sprinkling water from a willow branch to rid the
city of Vaisali of disease and thereby saving the population. A
gilt-bronze shrine attributed to the Sui to early Tang dynasty
showing the Willow Guanyin ß anked by two bodhisattvas is in
the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and was
exhibited in Yuan cang Yazhou fojiao yishu zhi mei/Imprints of
Buddhas: Buddhist Art in the National Palace Museum Collection,
National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2015, cat. no. 48. See also a
Sui/early Tang dynasty gilt-bronze Þ gure of Willow Guanyin
in the Chang Foundation Collection, published in Jintong fo
zaoxiang tulu/Buddhist Images in Gilt Metal, Taipei, 1993, cat.
no. 28; one attributed to the Northern Qi to Sui dynasty in the
collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco published in
René-Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese
Sculpture: The Avery Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of
San Francisco, Tokyo and New York, 1974, pl. 67; and an early
Tang dynasty example in the same collection published in ibid.,
pl. 81. A Sui dynasty gilt-bronze Þ gure of Avalokiteshvara, with
very similar modeling to the present example, but holding a jewel
rather than a willow branch, is published in Saburō Matsubara,
Chinese Buddhist Sculpture: A study based on bronze and stone
statues other than works from cave temples, Tokyo, 1966, pl.
223.
$ 20,000-30,000
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140 SOTHEBY’S