Page 78 - Chiense works of art sothebys march 14 2017 nyc

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A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF The subtle roundness of the face, arms and torso of this gure
USHNISHAVIJAYA as well as its elegantly moving posture are characteristic
QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD of bronze images commissioned by the Qianlong court for
furnishing the imperial palaces and the several shrines that
superbly cast seated in dhyanasana on a double lotus pedestal, were built during his reign. Stylistically these gures stem
the eight arms held in various mudras, wearing a shawl and from a long tradition of casting Buddhist sculptures following
dhoti hemmed with oral scrolls, its loose folds falling over the Indian and Nepalese prototypes made from the 11th to the 12th
crossed-legs, with a billowing celestial scarf draped around the century. This was the style that prevailed at the Mongol Yuan
arms, adorned in layered chains of jewelry, the three faces in court, which had close ties to Tibet, and continued through the
meditative expression with eyes cast down, framed by large early Ming dynasty and the Qing period.
circular earrings each suspending a leaf, crowned by jeweled
tiaras surrounding a high chignon This gure appears to depict Ushnishavijaya, a female divinity
Height 9⅝ in., 24.5 cm that is the personi cation of ushnisa, the Buddha’s cranial
protuberance. Ushnishavijaya was known in China from the 7th
$ 120,000-150,000 century AD, and it is believed that devotion to this deity was
introduced by the Indian monk Buddhapali. Ushnishavijaya is
depicted with three heads and eight arms, which are meant to
hold a Buddha image, a Vajra, an arrow, a lasso, a bow and a
vase with the nectar of immortality.

A similar gure of Ushnishavijaya, attributed to the 17th
century, was sold in these rooms, 26th March 1996, lot
5; a slightly larger example from the Hermitage Museum,
Leningrad, was included in the exhibition Wisdom and
Compassion. The Sacred Art of Tibet, Asian Art Museum of
San Francisco, San Francisco, 1991, cat. no. 124; and a much
larger example, dressed in a robe decorated with an inlaid

oral motif, still housed at the Summer Palace of Chengde,
was included in the exhibition Buddhist Art from Rehol. Tibetan
Buddhist Images and Ritual Objects from the Qing Dynasty
Summer Palace at Chengde, The Chang Foundation, Taipei,
1999, cat. no. 26. A slightly smaller gure of Ushnishavijaya
similarly seated cross-legged but with a aming mandorla, was
included in the exhibition Wisdom Embodied. Chinese Buddhist
and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. 44.
Compare also a Tibetan bronze sculpture of this deity, in the
Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection
of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Buddhist Statues of Tibet,
Hong Kong 2003, pl. 187.

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