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PROPERTY FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART Examples of monumental Buddhist sculpture, such as the
current work, with a tapered tang socketed into a separately
A MONUMENTAL GREY SCHIST FIGURE OF carved base, rarely appear at auction. Of particular note is the
SEATED BUDDHA ovoid cushion upon which Buddha sits, incised with circular
Ancient region of Gandhara, Kushan period, motifs which represent lotus seed pods. The tapered tang with
seed pod motif would likely have tted into a separately carved
rst half of 3rd Century lotus throne base; for a complete example of the type, see a
similar example sold at Christie’s New York, 23 September
Height 50 ⅞ in. (129.2 cm) 2004, lot 32.
PROVENANCE The powerful and beautifully proportioned gure of Buddha
is draped in a undulating sanghati which wraps over the right
William H. Wol , 2 December 1961. shoulder, leaving the left shoulder bare. Although the forearms
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, are now missing, it is likely that the hands would have been
1961. raised in dharmachakra mudra or the teaching gesture, based
upon the position of the extant arms and the small area of
EXHIBITED exposed schist at the chest center, where the raised hands
would have been joined to the torso.
“Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India”, The Cleveland
Museum of Art, 13 November 1985–5 January 1986; Asia Compare this style with another large Teaching Buddha
Society Galleries, New York, 13 February–6 April 1986; Seattle from Loriyan Tangai in the northwest Frontier Province of
Art Museum, 8 May–13 July 1986. modern Pakistan, see F. Tissot, Gandhâra, Paris, 1985, g 128,
currently in the collection of the Indian Museum in Kolkata.
On view at The Cleveland Museum of Art, before 23 November Also compare with a seated Buddha at the Kabul Museum, see
1997–13 June 2005. B. Rowland, Art in Afghanistan, 1971, cat. no. 107; and a shrine
of the Teaching Buddha at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, in
LITERATURE A. Foucher, L’Art Greco-Bouddhique du Gandhara, 1905, vol. 1,
‘Oriental Art Recently Acquired by American Museums’, g. 76, p. 192.
in Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, vol. XVI,
Honolulu, 1962, illus. p. 106, g. 10. The current monumental work is a widely-published and
exhibited example of the sculpture created between the
The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 49, June second and third centuries to meet the demand for large
1962, illus. p. 128. Buddhist icons to be placed in niches on temples and
The Human Adventure II, Classical Civilization, Volume II, in monasteries to secure religious merit for donors, in
Grade 5, The Educational Research Council of Greater accordance with the growing popularity of Mahayana Buddhist
Cleveland, 1965–6, illus. p. 48 beliefs. Buddhism ourished in the Gandharan region from the
Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966, illus. p. 228 1st century BCE, reaching its apogee under the mighty Kushan
emperors. The Kushan period, during which the present
S. Czuma and R. Morris, Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early work was created, is considered a golden age of Gandharan
India, Cleveland, 1985, illus. p. 197, g. 108. Buddhist art, during which the construction of stupas or
reliquary mounds, temples, monasteries and sculpture
ᅮ$ 200,000-300,000 dominated the cultural sphere.
Spanning the distance across the Khyber from modern
day Afghanistan in the east and Pakistan in the north, the
Gandharan cultural region served as the central passageway
between Persia, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
The ancient kingdom of Gandhara was a center of signi cant
military and commercial importance, which absorbed and
re ected the dynamic multicultural, artistic and religious
in uence of its numerous conquerors and inhabitants. Situated
between the Indus and Kabul Rivers in the fertile Peshawar
valley, this region was also for many centuries a main corridor
of invasion from within and without. By the rst and second
centuries BCE, after the capture of the Gandharan region by
the Greek and Persian armies of Alexander and the decline
of the Mauryan Empire of Chandragupta and his heirs, an era
of Graeco-Bactrian rule began, thus giving rise to this unique
synthesis of Hellenistic and Indic artistic traditions.
50 SOTHEBY’S
