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A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF A BODHISATTVA, 唐 銅鎏金觀世音菩薩立像
TANG DYNASTY
Height 7⅛ in., 18.1 cm 來源
紐約蘇富比2004年9月22日，編號7
PROVENANCE
展覽
Sotheby’s New York, 22nd September 2004, lot 7.
《Reflection and Enlightenment: Chinese Buddhist Gilt
EXHIBITED Bronzes from the Jane and Leopold Swergold Collection》，
Reflection and Enlightenment: Chinese Buddhist Gilt Bronzes 休士頓美術館，休士頓，2017-2018年
from the Jane and Leopold Swergold Collection, Museum of 文獻
Fine Arts, Houston, 2017-2018. Leopold Swergold，《Thoughts on Chinese Buddhist Gilt
Bronzes》，阿文圖拉，2014年，編號20
LITERATURE
Leopold Swergold, Thoughts on Chinese Buddhist Gilt
Bronzes, Aventura, 2014, cat. no. 20.
Stood nobly on a waisted lotus pedestal and stepped
hexagonal base, this grand figure is wrapped in a long dhoti
and fluttering scarves. With a kundika in the left hand, and
a willow branch in the right, the figure is easily identified as
the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, worshipped in China by the
name of Guanyin. With the contours of their slender body
well defined in a contrapposto silhouette and their clothes
flowing gently with a ‘wet-drapery effect,’ this grand figure
is characteristic of Buddhist sculpture at the very peak of
production in the Tang dynasty. Bending at the knees, hips
and neck in the regal tribhanga pose (literally the ‘posture of
three’), the deity’s curving torso achieves an almost dancelike
movement. This highly recognizable stylistic element of the
swayed-hip posture became especially popular during the
reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712-756), when sculptures in
general became more dynamic in their design.
Compare a similar bodhisattva image, with relatively large
head and similar treatment of the robes, in the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, illustrated in Ulrich von Schroeder,
Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 501, fig. 142F; a
similar Avalokiteshvara with hexagonal, rather than square,
base in the Harvard Art Museum’s Buddhism and Early East
Asian Buddhist Art exhibition (accession no. 1943.53.61);
another formerly in the Stoclet and Swergold collections,
also with an hexagonal base, dated corresponding to 651, in
Osvald Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to Fourteenth
Centuries, New York, 1925, pl. 419B; and two more figures,
formerly in the Nitta Collection, now in the collection of the
National Palace Museum, Taipei included in The Crucible of
Compassion and Wisdom, Taipei, 1987, pls 79 and 81.
Several figures in this posture bear images of Amitabha in
the crown, while others like the present appear more refined
with only a main jewel in the tiara. Conversely, all known
figures of this type appear to grasp the ambrosia-filled
bottle, the waters of which are thought to illuminate the laity
with bodhi (awareness) when sprinkled using the deity’s
willow-leaf or fly-whisk. Compare one further High Tang
example of this type from the collection of Sakamoto Gorō,
sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 5th October 2016, lot 3219.
$ 80,000-120,000

162 SOTHEBY’S COMPLETE CATALOGUING AVAILABLE AT SOTHEBYS.COM/N11744 A COLLECTING JOURNEY: THE JANE AND LEOPOLD SWERGOLD COLLECTION 163