Page 129 - Bonhams IMages of Devotion, Hong Kong Nov 30 2022

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A PAINTED LEATHER RITUAL CROWN WITH THE FIVE Believed to have derived from wooden blade-shaped lobes from
PRESIDING BUDDHAS India, as indicated on a late 7th or early 8th century stone sculpture
TIBET OR MONGOLIA, 19TH CENTURY of Vajrapani (Huntington & Bangdel, Circle of Bliss, 2003, no. 52), the
Himalayan Art Resources item no. 4726 five-fold floral crown became a standard motif in the 13th and 14th
Each panel: 18 x 11.5 cm (7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in.) approx. centuries in Tibet. The earliest known iteration of this type appears on
a preserved lobe dated to the 12th/13th century in the Metropolitan
HKD80,000 - 120,000 Museum of Art, New York (1997.152). Compare with a closely related
example featuring painted buddhas framed within a gilded repoussé
西藏或蒙古 十九世紀 皮質彩繪五佛法冠 border, in the Royal Ontario Museum (HAR 77528).

This five petal crown represents the Five Tathagatas, or Buddhas of Provenance
the Five Directions: Amitabha, Vairocana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava Private California Collection, acquired in Hong Kong in the 1980s
and Amoghasiddhi. Worn during ritual empowerments that transmute
defilements into purity, the crown symbolizes the practitioner as a pure
and perfect being in a likeness akin to the Buddha.

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