Page 83 - Christies Alsdorf Collection Part 1 Sept 24 2020 NYC

Fig. 2:
A gilt-bronze seated figure of
bodhisattva, early Ming dynasty,
late 14th-15th century, sold
Christie’s London, 14 May 2019,
lot 116.
圖2：
明早期 銅鎏金菩薩坐像， 倫敦
佳士得， 2019年5月14日， 拍品
編號116。
Fig. 3:
Water and Moon (Potala)
Guanyin, China, Five dynasties
(AD 907-960) - Song dynasty
(AD 960-1279), Gilt bronze,
The Severance and Greta Millikin
Purchase Fund 1984.7.
Image Courtesy of The Cleveland
Museum of Art.
圖3：
五代至宋 銅鎏金水月觀音，The
Severance and Greta Millikin
Purchase基金， 館藏編號
1984.7。
圖片提供：克里夫蘭美術館
Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Although it is difficult to know what type of base the 1578-dated, cast-iron White-Robed Guanyin in the
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originally was associated with this sculpture, it is safe to collection of the British Museum. Though unlikely,
say that this figure probably did not rest atop a Chinese- it is also conceivable that sculpture rested on a simple,
style lotus base or on a Tibetan-influenced double lotus short, elliptical block—a downward extension of the
base. An original base for both White-Robed Guanyin leafy mat on which the bodhisattva sits, as it were—as
and Water-Moon Guanyin sculptures, when present, occurs in many Dehua sculptures from a century later,
typically represents the large, flat-topped rock on which such as the Dehua-ware Seated White-Robed Guanyin
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Guanyin sits in his paradise. Although only the bases of by He Chaozong (active c. 1570–1630) in the collection
wooden sculptures usually survive, a ceramic sculpture of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
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from the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang province, dating MO. In terms of context, the sculpture might well
to the Yuan to early Ming period, depicts the Water- have appeared on an altar before a painting featuring
Moon Guanyin seated in the pose of royal ease on a a rocky cliff face and a waterfall, allying it with ink
flat-topped rocky outcropping with craggy sides that paintings of the same subject.
rises from rolling waves below, recalling the imagery
in the previously mentioned painting in the Kyoto As noted by the late Princeton University art
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National Museum; in the collection of the British historian Wen C. Fong (1930–2018), the very formal
Museum, London, the sculpture, which the museum’s presentations of Guanyin from earlier periods were
curators date between 1300 and 1400, suggests the transformed late in the Tang period into the Water-and-
possible appearance of the base on which the present Moon Guanyin, from which derives the closely allied
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bodhisattva originally rested. And a small Water-Moon White-Robed Guanyin. Late Tang paintings depict
Guanyin sculpture that sold at Christie’s, London, on the elaborately costumed and bejeweled Indian-style
14 May 2019 (Lot 121) features a gilt-bronze bodhisattva deity Avalokiteshvara at his abode on Mount Potolaka;
seated in the pose of royal ease atop a rockwork base then, in the 1090s, the famed Northern Song painter Li
in brownish bronze (i.e., without gilding); it is possible Gonglin (1049–1106) transformed the Indian icon into
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that the present sculpture originally sat on a bronze the Chinese image, the White-Robed Guanyin, now
base of similar type, the rockwork base left ungilded residing at his Chinese home, Mount Putuo, an island
to suggest the rock’s rough surfaces and to distinguish believed to be in the East China Sea, to the southeast
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it visually from the bodhisattva. Another possibility is of present-day Shanghai. Without direct Indian
that this sculpture originally appeared on a base in the prototypes and not specifically identified or described in
form of a table-like altar, such as that associated with the sutras, the Water-Moon Guanyin was an indigenous

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