Page 132 - Christies Fine Chinese Works of Art March 2016 New York

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTION

1408

A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF BUDDHA VAIROCHANA
LIAO DYNASTY (AD 907-1125)

The fgure is seated in dhyanasana on a lotus-base raised on a waisted circular pedestal with the
hands held before the chest in vajramudra. He wears heavy, voluminous robes and the face is
surmounted by a tall crown.

3Ω in. (8.9 cm.) high

$20,000-30,000

PROVENANCE

Private collection, New York, acquired prior to 1990.

The present fgure belongs to a corpus of small gilt-bronze fgures of Buddhas and bodhisattvas with
integral lotus bases, all dated to the Liao dynasty. Compare, for example, with a slightly larger example
in the National Museum, Amsterdam, with a similarly treated crown, illustrated in Comprehensive
Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Buddhist Sculptures in Overseas Collections, vol. 7, Beijing, 2005, p.
1299, as well as a small bodhisattva sold at Christie’s New York in The Sublime and the Beautiful: Asian
Masterpieces of Devotion, 20 March 2014, lot 1609. The present fgure, however, is most closely related
to a larger example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by Denise Leidy in Wisdom Embodied:
Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 123, cat. no. 26. Leidy
notes that such images of Vairochana likely formed the central fgure of a Vajradhatu mandala (Diamond
Realm), a tantric aspect of Buddhism developed in India in the preceding centuries. She also notes that
the distinctive, tall crown with lotus embellishments, followed those worn by the Liao rulers.
遼 銅鎏金毘盧遮那佛小坐像

(reverse)

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