Page 52 - Sotheby's Paris Arts D' Asia, June 11, 2019

This impressive stone head was acquired in nose and full lips recessed into fleshy cheeks is a
1967 from the gallery of Samy Chalom, located prime example of the fully matured style of High
38 Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris. Chalom had Tang Buddhist sculpture. The modelling of the
purchased the head from the family of a certain M. facial features is articulated with vivid realism, the
Raufast, a French collector of Chinese paintings, serene expression of the Buddha endowed with the
works of art and sculpture active in the early decades uttermost spirituality.
of the 20th century.
Stylistically, the head closely follows the style set
The name Raufast was known among Chinese art by the monumental figure of Buddha Vairocana on
specialists in France at the time. Parts of the Raufast the north wall of cave 19 in the Fengxian Temple at
Collection of Chinese art had been sold at auction in Longmen, Henan, built under the emperor Gaozong
Paris in 1961. Years before, Chinese paintings from (r. 628-683) in 676, see Zhongguo meishu quanji:
the Raufast Collection had been exhibited in the Diaosu bian, 11: Longmen shiku diaoke, Shanghai,
Musée Cernuschi in Paris in 1912 and were published 1988, pl. 55. The distinctive hairstyle rendered in
in 1914 by Edouard Chavannes and R. Petrucci, in thick swirls and waves is prevalent in most of the
La Peinture Chinoise. In 1928 M. Raufast had donated surviving Buddha heads from Longmen that are
several pieces from his collection to the Musée dated to the High Tang period, as demonstrated by
Cernuschi. More recently in 2017, a rare large Song several examples published in Chinese Buddhist Stone
dynasty wood figure of a Water Moon Guanyin from Sculpture. Veneration of the Sublime, Osaka, 1995, cat.
the Raufast collection was sold at auction in Paris. nos. 55, 56, 60-62. Throughout the Tang period,
Jean-Claude Moreau-Gobard, a well-known monks and pilgrims travelled to different Buddhist
French specialist on Chinese art, whose opinion cave temples across China, thereby contributing to
the current owner sought before the acquisition the dissemination of Buddhist practices and imagery,
of the head, was impressed by the head and its transmitting variations in iconography and style
provenance considering it an important discovery. from one region to another, as noted in Denise Patry
Moreau-Gobard dated it to the Northern Song Leidy and Donna Strahan, Wisdom Embodied. Chinese
dynasty and linked it to stone sculpture from Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan
Sichuan. However, stylistically this head is more Museum of Art, New York, 2010, pp. 50-52.
representative of Chinese Buddhist stone sculpture In this way, the artistic style that is visible in
from the period that saw the greatest flowering of Longmen provided a rich source of inspiration to
China‘s sculptural arts, the High Tang period under Tang stone carvers in other parts of the empire,
Emperor Xuanzong (r. 713-755). Under Xuanzong’s the influence of the High Tang Longmen style
patronage Buddhism and especially Esoteric clearly visible in the present head. This type of
Buddhism, flourished, the number of newly founded coarse, slightly pinkish stone, likely to be from
monasteries and temples exploded as did Imperial Shanxi province, is particularly conducive for
and private commissions of Buddhist imagery. high quality carving in the round, enabling
intricate and naturalistic detailing of the facial
Buddhist sculpture of this period is characterised by
the very sensuous physical appearance of the deities features as displayed in this head. The head is fully
represented. The present head with his plump face, worked in the round and leaning slightly forward
the elegantly curved almond-shaped eyes beneath suggesting that the head may have been part of a
sharply defined and arched brows, its well-formed large freestanding figure or a figure with the head
detached from the wall.

50 SOTHEBY’S ARTS D’ASIE