Page 133 - 2020 Sept Important Chinese Art Sotheby's NYC Asia Week

9/2/2020 Important Chinese Art | Sotheby's

Impo rtant Chinese Art
New York |23 Sep 2020 | 09:00 AM EDT

Lot 587

A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF BUD DHA , SIXTEEN KINGDOMS PE RIOD
Estimate: 20,000 - 30,000 USD

A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF BUDDHA
SIXTEEN KINGDOMS PERIOD
十六國 銅鎏金佛坐像

the seated figure with a high ushinisha and straight hairline above elongated brows and eyes, dressed in a simple robe with
symmetrical pleats along the shoulders and torso, supported on a throne flanked by rudimentary relief-cast lions, wood stand,
Japanese wood box (5)

Height 3 in., 7.6 cm

Catalogue Note
This portable gilt-bronze statue of Shakyamuni represents one of the classic images of early Chinese Buddhist sculpture, and is
one among a series of the earliest Chinese figures to incorporate the new iconography from votive images in India executed in the
Gandharan and Guptan style. Among the largest and most impressive of these figures is the famous Buddha figure, dated 338,
from the Avery Brundage Collection and now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in René-Yvon Lefebvre
d’Argencé, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Sculpture: The Avery Brundage Collection, Tokyo, 1974, pl. 19.

A closely related gilt-bronze figure can be found in the Kuboso Memorial Museum of Art, illustrated in The Art of China: One Man's
Eye, Kuboso Memorial Museum of Art, Izumi, 1984, cat. no. 90. Another similar example of larger size is illustrated in Arts of the
Six Dynasties, Osaka Municipal Museum of Fine Art, Osaka, 1975, cat. no. 3-151. Compare a similar figure from the collections of
Sato Gengen and Sakamoto Gorō, respectively, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 5th October 2016, lot 3201.

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