Page 33 - CHRISTIE'S Buddhist Art Japanese Collections 09/14/17

The present votive shrine belongs to a very small corpus of images depicting
a scene from the Lotus Sutra, where, Prabhutaratna, the Buddha from the
previous historical era appears in the sky during a sermon by Shakyamuni
Buddha, reminding his acolytes of the power of previous Buddhas. The
iconography is not found in Indian art, and as such is a wholly Chinese
invention. The present work immediately recalls the famous, and much
more elaborate, gilt-bronze votive altar, dated AD 518, in the Musée Guimet,
illustrated by H. Munsterberg in Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Tokyo, 1967, p. 77,
no, 34. However, there are other known votive groups more closely related
to the present work, including an example in the Nezu Museum, Tokyo,
illustrated in ibid., p. 77, no. 33, and one formerly in the Stoclet Collection,
Brussels, illustrated in Zhongguo liu shi hai wai fo jiao zao xiang zong he tu
mu (Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Buddhist Statues in
Overseas Collections), vol. 1, Beijing, 2005, no. 77.

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