Page 28 - Bonhams Indian and Himalayan Art March 2016 New York

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A GILT COPPER FIGURE OF BUDDHA
Nepal, 7th/8th century
3 1/8 in. (7.8 cm) high
$80,000 - 120,000

尼泊爾 七／八世紀 銅鎏金佛像

Published
Benjamin Rowland, The Evolution of the Buddha Image, New York, 1963, fig. 20.
Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, 1981, p. 304, fig. 74E.
David Weldon, ‘Tibetan Sculpture Inspired by Earlier Foreign Sculptural Styles’, in Oriental Art,
Vol. 46, No. 1, 2000, fig 8.
Nancy Tingley, Buddhas, Petaluma, 2009, p. 97, pl. 29.
Nancy Tingley, Celestial Realms: The Art of Nepal, Sacramento, 2012, p.37, no. 2.

Exhibited
The Evolution of the Buddha Image, New York, The Asia Society, 1963.
Buddhas, Sacramento Museum of Art, January 31 – April 19, 2009, no. 29.
Celestial Realms: The Art of Nepal, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento,
10 October 2012 - 10 February 2013.

Provenance
Nasli Heeramaneck Collection, before 1963
Christian Humann, Pan-Asian Collection, before 1977
Robert H. Ellsworth Collection
Christie’s, New York, 21 September 2007, lot 170

The Bonhams seated Buddha featured here exhibits many of the Gupta-inspired Licchavi
period attributes: a diaphanous robe that reveals the contours of the figure beneath, and a
peaceful, inward-focused face. The webbed hands and fleshy lower lip also reflect Licchavi
aesthetic ideals. The sculpture is very similar to a c. 7th-century gilt copper Nepalese sculpture
of the Buddha in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.6 The robe, the shape of the ushnisha,
and lower limbs also resemble those in a c. 6th-7th-century Nepalese stone Buddha in the
Ashmolean Museum.7

A c. 8th-9th-century gilt copper sculpture of a seated Buddha in the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art is also noteworthy for it appears to be a slightly later rendition of the Bonhams
Buddha’s Licchavi style.8 A halo surrounds the head of the Los Angeles Buddha, attaching at
the back of the image. The Bonhams Buddha bears a large tenon at the back, the purpose
of which can only be surmised, but it may have also supported a halo. Another possibility,
proffered by Ian Alsop, is that this small figure may once have been placed inside the now
empty niche of a stone reliquary (chaitya), many of which still adorn the Kathmandu Valley.9
Using the example of a small seated Licchavi Buddha in the Pritzker Collection, Alsop shows
how the image (in the Pritzker example, which still retains a decorative repoussé surround)
would have fit inside the empty niche of a stone chaitya, probably for occasional ritual worship.

1 Vajracarya, “Recently Discovered Inscriptions of Licchavi Nepal”, in Kathmandu Kailash—
Journal of Himalayan Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1973, pp. 117-21.
2 von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, pp. 304-5, fig. 74E.
3 Czuma, “A Gupta Style Bronze Buddha”, in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art LVII
(February 1970), pp. 55-67.
4 Slusser, “On the Antiquity of Nepalese Metalcraft”, in Archives of Asian Art XIX (1975-76), pp.
81-4, fig. 5.
5Rosenfield, “On the Dated Carvings of Sarnath”, Artibus Asiae XXVI (1963), pp. 10-26.
6 Von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, fig. 74E.
7 Heller, Early Himalayan Art, Oxford, 2008, pp. 42-3.
8 Pal, Art of Nepal, Los Angeles, 1985, p. 91.
9 Alsop, “Licchavi Caityas of Nepal: A Solution to the Empty Niche”; http://www.asianart.com/
alsop/licchavi.html

26 | BONHAMS