Page 28 - Bonhams Presencer Buddhist Art Collection Oct. 2 2018

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A GILT COPPER ALLOY FIGURE OF BUDDHA
SRI LANKA, KANDYAN PERIOD, 18TH CENTURY
Himalayan Art Resources item no.61620
10 cm (4 in.) high

HK$160,000 - 240,000

斯里蘭卡 康提時代 十八世紀 銅鎏金佛坐像

The overall similarity of this meditating image of Buddha to an
Anuradhapura-period sculpture made an approximate millennia
before, speaks to the conservativeness of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist
tradition. Even before Buddhism was driven out of India, Buddhist
communities in Southeast Asia looked to Sri Lanka for instruction in its
‘purely’ preserved Buddhism. However, as is so often the reason for
stylistic changes in Buddha images, a different treatment of the robe
is adopted as a new foreign ruler from South India strives to create
a distinct dynastic identity in Sri Lanka’s material culture (cf. Phoenix
Art Museum, Guardian of the Flame, Phoenix, 2003, pp.41-9). The
sculpture has unusually rounded folds in the robe, whereas they are
typically thin and wavy, however an imperial image shows precedent
(ibid., p.135). For further Kandyan examples of the sculpture’s oval
face and waisted base, see ibid., pp.137 & 157-8.

Provenance
David Bowden, London, 1990

26 | BONHAMS