Page 128 - Chinese Art Bonhams San Francisco December 18, 2017

1015
ANONYMOUS (MING DYNASTY
OR LATER)
Pure Wisdom Bodhisattva
Ink and color on silk, framed and glazed,
the bodhisattva supported by an elaborately
rendered multi-level throne, reversed by a
flaming mandorla beneath a parasol floating
amid multi-colored tufts of cloud and smoke,
the figure seated in dhyanasana, gently
clasping a long-stemmed lotus and bearing a
peaceful expression beneath her high chignon
centered by three small jewels.
61 3/4 x 29 3/4in (157 x 75.6cm) sight
$20,000 - 30,000

無款 清淨慧菩薩 設色絹本 鏡框

Provenance
by repute, purchased in San Francisco in
the 1950s

The current lot was likely one of a set of
images used for a ‘Water-Land Assembly.’
As Patricia Berger explains in The Latter Days
of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism
850-1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii,
1994), ‘of all the tantric rites introduced into
China during the Tang, [the Water-Land
Assembly] struck the most responsive chord
in the hearts of Chinese Buddhists because
it was designed to honor and sustain the
dead (a major Confucian virtue)... An essential
component of the rite was an elaborate suite
of images, representing all the classes of
beings in the Chinese universe,’ (95). The
image of the Qingjing Hui Pusa in the current
lot is a deity described in the Yuanjiao Jing,
a sutra regarded as apocryphal by scholars.
This means paradoxically that despite its
role in a ritual with tantric Indian roots, the
figure depicted in this painting is a purely Han
Chinese creation.

See Op. Cit, 95 no 26 for a Shakyamuni scroll
created as part of a ‘Water-Land Assembly’
set at the Baoning monastery in Shanxi, the
‘most famous of the suites’ (96) dated to
ca. 1460 and created to pray for the safety
of the recently abducted Ming Yingzong
emperor. Note the similarity to the present
lot in the ornate throne, attire, and jeweled
parasol floating in the sky as well as the
overall composition of the image. A possibly
later depiction of Yamantaka offered in these
rooms also likely created for a water-land ritual
shares the similarly-rendered blue and red
flames encircling this deity-- see lot 6437 from
sale 24263 of 28 June 2017.

126 | BONHAMS