Page 40 - Chinese Decorative Arts: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 55, no. 1 (Summer, 1997)

Buddha with
shakyamuni
Bodhisattvas
Attendant
....................................................................................
Southern to Yuan the seventh and eighth centuries and spread his attendant bodhisattvas have thin physiques,
dynasty, 12th-14th century
Song
Ivory from there to Korea and Japan at that time. with no articulation of the waist or muscula-
H. each lo in. (25.4 cm) In triads, such as this one, the central Buddha ture of the chest, rounded limbs, youthful
approx.
Fletcher Fund, 1934 can be identified both as Shakyamuni and as features, and carefully detailed clothing, char-
in
34.26.1-3 Vairochana, the "resplendent one," who is acteristics that find parallels wood, stone,
worshiped as a Buddha in his own right and and bronze sculptures carved in the eleventh
he Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Garland as a manifestation of the historical Buddha. and twelfth centuries. Their broad faces and
Sutra) provides the scriptural basis for Painted and sculpted triads were common features and introspective expressions are in
attended
images of the Buddha Shakyamuni by themes in art associated with the Huayan order keeping with sculptures produced during the
the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, riding
Manjushri, and were first produced in China during the Southern Song period, as is the lack of move-
the Bodhisattva of
a lion, and Samantabhadra, Tang period. This rare ivory triad is distinc- ment in the figures and their mounts. The
Universal Virtue, riding an elephant. This tive for its representation of the mythical qilin beaded jewelry worn by all three, however,
text, which was probably completed in India as a mount for the Buddha, who normally sits is typical of fourteenth and early-fifteenth-
by the third century A.D., was first translated on a elaborate throne. century images from southern China, suggest-
into Chinese in the early fifth century and These three sculptures have been assigned ing a somewhat later date. They were originally
reworked twice in the seventh and in the eighth. dates ranging from the twelfth through the polychromed and gilded and exemplify the best
It was influential in the development of East eighteenth century. Certain stylistic features, workmanship of early Chinese ivory figures.
Asian Buddhist thought, forming the basis for however, suggest a date between the twelfth DPL
the Huayan order that flourished in China in and the fourteenth centuries. The Buddha and
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