Page 72 - Christies Alsdorf Collection Part 1 Sept 24 2020 NYC

崇聖御寶 - 詹姆斯及瑪麗蓮 ·阿爾斯多夫珍藏

Like virtually all early Buddhist sculptures of stone and
wood, this head and the associated sculpture originally
were embellished with brightly colored mineral pigments,
the colors presumably including saffron, blues, and greens
for the robes, gilding for designs on the robes, pink or
white for the flesh, and black, or possibly blue, for the
hair. (The pigments likely would have been painted onto
an all-over coating of gesso. White in color, gesso was
applied to smooth the stone surface and to render it
chalk-white so that the pigments appear to best advantage
in terms of color and clarity; in addition, held in place by
a binder, mineral pigments adhere better to gesso than to
stone.) Because it was neither carved nor inset with a
cabochon jewel, this Buddha’s urna would have been
painted at the center of the forehead. Often incorrectly
termed a “third eye” or even a caste mark, the urna is
the curl of white hair between the Buddha’s eyebrows
from which issues a ray of light illuminating all worlds. 16

The Buddhist clay sculptures in the Mogao grottoes at
Dunhuang, Gansu province, retain the greatest amount
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of original pigment of all early Chinese sculptures, but
many of the Northern Qi and Sui sculptures excavated
in 1996-97 at the site of the Longxingsi Temple at
Qingzhou, Shandong province, also preserve much of
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their original painting and gilding. Buddhist stone
sculptures from the Tang and earlier periods now
in Western collections that exhibit traces of original
pigment include the pair of Tang bodhisattvas exhibited
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at J.J. Lally & Co., New York, in 2017, and three
sculptures in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums:
a Northern Qi- or Sui-dynasty Seated Buddha in white
marble a Sui Standing Guanyin in grey limestone, and
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a Tang Kneeling Bodhisattva in grey limestone. 22
When under worship in a temple, this sculpture would
have been backed by either a halo or a mandorla, the
circular or lotus-petal-shaped aureole suggesting light
radiating from the deity’s body and thus signaling its
divine status. (Symbolizing divinity, a halo is a circle,
or disc, of light that appears behind the head of a deity;

Fig. 1: Fig. 2:
Standing Buddha Amitabha, Sui dynasty (AD 581-618), Standing Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara,
dated to 585, white marble, 5.78 m (19 ft.) high, Sui dynasty (AD 581–618), white marble,
British Museum, London, 1938,0715.1. 253.6 cm (8 ft. 4 in.) high, Important Cultural
Property, collection of the Tokyo National
圖1： Museum, TC376.
阿彌陀佛立像
中國 隋代 公元585年 圖2：
白色大理石 觀音菩薩立像
高5.78米 (19呎) 中國 隋代 (公元581至618年)
倫敦大英博物館 (館藏號1938,0715.1) 白色大理石
高253.6公分 (8呎4吋)
東京國立博物館 (館藏號TC376)

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