Page 143 - 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 593

A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF ANANDA , TANG DYNASTY
Estimate: 6,000 - 8,000 USD

A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF ANANDA
TANG DYNASTY
唐 銅鎏金阿難尊者立像

finely cast, the youthful disciple standing with the hands in namaskara mudra, the head held high and the body erect with a simple
draped kasaya exposing one shoulder, mounted to a modern stand, Japanese wood box (4)

Height 2⅞ in., 7.3 cm

Catalogue Note
This small figure of Ananda was likely part of a larger composition of figures, and, alongside his associate Kasyapa, would have
been flanking a central Buddha figure. Such a composition can be seen in the gilt-bronze altar group from the Avery Brundage
Collection, now preserved in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, attributed to the mid-Tang period, and illustrated in René-
Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Sculpture: The Avery Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of San
Francisco, Tokyo and New York, 1974, pl. 93, as well as in Hugo Munsterberg, Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Tokyo, 1967, pl. 118. To the
front right corner of the Brundage composition is a figure of a monk closely resembling the present example. Another similar gilt-
bronze figure of a monk, attributed to the mid- to late 6th century, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of
Harold G. Henderson, 1966, acc. no. 66.155.5. Compare as well a similar figure, once in the May Fook Wah Family Collection,
subsequently in the collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978), and sold in these rooms, 20th March 2019, lot 551.

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