Page 48 - Christies IMportant Chinese Art Sept 26 2020 NYC

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
1530
A PAINTED WHITE MARBLE FIGURE OF BUDDHA
TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)
The Buddha is shown seated in padmasana with right hand raised in
abhaya mudra, wearing layered robes falling in graceful folds around the
body, the face is carved with crisp features set in a gentle expression,
and the hair and ushnisha carved with curls, with traces of red, white,
blue and green pigment.
18Ω in. (47 cm.) high

$70,000-90,000
PROVENANCE:
The Arthur M. Sackler Collections, New York, by 1978.
Fine Chinese Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections; Christie's
New York, 18 March 2009, lot 359.
Stylistically, the present figure closely relates to a larger (81.3 cm.)
limestone Buddha from Shaanxi province, with an inscription dating
to AD 639, illustrated by O. Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth
to the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, Bangkok, 1998 ed., pl. 365. Both
figures are clad in simple robes exposing the chest and are seated in
padmasana on similarly draped pedestals with right hands in abhaya
mudra. Both figures also have in common a broad face, with crisply
rendered features, beneath the tight whorls of hair and pronounced
ushnisha.
Also compare a similar, though smaller (35 cm.), Tang-dynasty marble
figure of Buddha, shown in similar pose on a draped pedestal base,
illustrated in Zui To no Bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 1976,
p. 44, no. 3-42.

唐 彩繪石雕佛坐像

(another view)