Page 155 - 2020 Sept Important Chinese Art Sotheby's NYC Asia Week

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

Catalogue Note
Compare a stele of Maitreya of related shape and proportions, with the Buddha in a similar pose with shoulders and hands
also emphasized in higher relief, in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, illustrated in Hai-wai Yi-chen: Chinese Art in
Overseas Collections, Buddhist Sculpture I, Taipei, 1986, pl. 8. Another similar stele with the 'Thousand Buddha' motif at the
back, but with relatively taller attendant bodhisattvas, is in the collection of the Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, included
in Saburo Matsubara, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture: A study based on bronze and stone statues other than works from cave temples,
Tokyo, 1966, pls 77A-D. See two other examples with more columnar figures and linear drapery: the first in the collection of the
Saint Louis Museum of Art, illustrated in op. cit. pl. 9, and the second in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, included in Hai-wai
Yi-chen: Chinese Art in Overseas Collections, Buddhist Sculpture II, Taipei, 1990, pl. 8.

The stylized motif of bottle vases issuing floral and foliate scrolls, carved in the spaces between the figures, is rare. However,
compare a large stele of Shakyamuni with two bodhisattvas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, illustrated in Osvald
Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the fifth to the fourteenth century: over 900 specimens in stone, bronze, lacquer and wood,
principally from Northern China, Thailand, 1998, pls 92 & 93. The narrow sides of this stele are carved in low-relief, depicting a
bottle vase with stylized lotus scrolls emerging out of the mouth. See also a Northern Wei sandstone stele with a cartouche
framing the central Buddha, carved with a bottle issuing leaf-form scrolls, sold at Christie's New York, 19th March 2009, lot 531.

The treatment of drapery is particularly lively in the present piece, seen in the rhythmic, tight folds that fall almost symmetrically
down and flare outwards. Stylistically it is comparable to the drapery found in a stele of a standing Buddha, also attributed to the
Northern Wei dynasty, and illustrated in Sirén, op. cit., pl. 149. The billowing drapery of the attendant bodhisattvas in the present
stele is also rare, imbuing the image with a sense of dynamism and movement.

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