Page 90 - Indian, Himalaya and Asian Art Bonhams Setp 2015

81
A SCHIST HEAD OF A BODHISATTVA
Ancient region of Gandhara, 3rd/4th century
His coiffure immaculately arranged in a butterfly topknot and ringlets falling across his forehead
in high relief.
12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm) high
$100,000 - 150,000

健陀羅 三／四世紀 片巖菩薩頭像

The luxurious treatment of the voluminous curls across his broad forehead and the tops of his
ears presents the lingering influence of Greco-Roman sculpture on early Buddhist art. Each
terminates with exquisite tail-like twists. This style of topknot is generally assigned to Maitreya,
as in an example from the Avery Brundage Collection ((B60S597), see The Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco: Selected Works, 1994, p. 23).

Gandharan sculptors transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of perfect divine bodies to evoke the
perfection of the divine mind. Compare the head with another superb example in the Norton
Simon Museum of Art (Pal, Asian Art at the Norton Simon Museum, Vol. 1: Art from the Indian
Subcontinent, Pasadena, 2003, p. 63, no. 30). The rare level of quality is also comparable to
one sold at Bonhams, New York, 16 March 2015, lot 57, and another at Christie’s, New York,
19 March 2013, lot 201.

The eyebrow’s sharp ridges also nod to Gandharan sculpture’s evolution towards an
abstracted ideal. In discussion of a 4th-5th century example in The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Behrendt explains that with later works, ‘The face, which is not naturalistic and registers
no emotion, reflects the northern Indian conception of an enlightened being, with abstract
intersecting planes combining to define the forehead...’ (Behrendt, The Art of Gandhara,
New York, 2013, p. 68). He refers to a later example exhibiting a vastly more abstracted
nose with sloped sidewalls (p. 70, no. 53). Also, the topknot does not rest with the same
sense of gravity as the present lot.

Our example also compares favorably to another in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Lener &
Kossak, The Lotus Transcendent, New York, 1991, p. 83, no. 49). There, the proportions are
narrower, and the hair curls are more tightly bunched and not as crisply defined. Also contrast with
a head in the British Museum (Zwalf, Gandhara Sculpture, Vol. II, 1996, pp. 39-41, nos. 53-8).

Its 1968 exhibition catalog entry attributed the present lot to Takhi-i-Bahi. Compare to a
similarly superior standing figure from Takhi-i-Bahi with painstaking curls published in Luczanits
(ed.), Gandhara – Das Buddhistische Erbe Pakistans, Mainz - Bonn, 2008, p. 224, abb. 3.

Published
LeRoy Davidson, Art from the Indian Subcontinent from Los Angeles Collections, UCLA, Los
Angeles, 1968, p. 18, no. 15.

Exhibited
Art from the Indian Subcontinent from Los Angeles Collections, University of California, Los
Angeles Art Galleries, March 1968.

Provenance
Estate of Patrick Doheny (1923-2014), acquired before 1968

88 | BONHAMS