Page 129 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Tantra Buddhost Art

The Wheel of Perfect Bliss
The distinctive characteristics of this spectacular sculpture
clearly point to its origin at the celebrated monastery of
Densatil, where a magnificent repository of sculptures made
in the Newari style was commissioned by Tibetan patrons
from the 13th century onwards. Sensuously and expressively
modelled, it is decorated with rich mercury gilding and
inset with multi-coloured gems. The tang protruding
from the middle of the back of the Chakrasamvara would
indicate a placement in a larger setting, such as that seen in
photographs taken of a tashi gomang stupa at Densatil in 1948
by the Italian photographer Pietro Mele, who accompanied
Giuseppe Tucci on his expedition to Tibet, as illustrated in
Pietro Francesco Mele, Tibet, Calcutta, 1975, and reproduced
in Olaf Czaja and Adriana Proser, Golden Visions of Densatil: A
Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, New York, 2014, pp. 20-21.
Key stylistic elements on the current figure can also be seen
in the 1948 photograph of similarly conceived sculptures
in situ, including the precise articulation of the garlands of
dripping human heads, clearly visible in images of Vajravarahi,
the skulls on the crown band, the naturalistic rendering of the
bodies, with the athletic movement on their multi-arms and
legs, and the long flowing jewellery with distinctive treatment
of the earrings, bracelets and armlets.
Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi are depicted engaging in the
perfect union of wisdom and compassion in this dramatic
and powerful sculpture. The statue serves as a device for
the visualisation of the Chakrasamvara tantra, a secret
treatise with its origin in medieval eastern India, used by
practitioners to increase their ability to attain the ultimate goal stone and glass inlay, beaded pearls on the lotus pedestal,
of Enlightenment; for a succinct discussion on the content of
the tantra, see John C. Huntington & Dina Bangdel, The Circle
of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art, Columbus, 2003, pp. 264-
268, where Robert A. F. Thurman notes in the foreword, p. 11:
“The arts and sciences of this Tantra are amongst the most
extraordinary things in world culture, products of a tradition
THE HEART OF TANTRA – BUDDHIST ART INCLUDING PROPERTY FROM THE NYINGJEI LAM COLLECTION 127
of accomplished adepts, spiritual artists of universal liberation
who have emanated waves of beauty through the millennia”.
The importance of Chakrasamvara in the Kagyu school, to
which Densatil belonged, is fundamental. Jigten Gonpo (1143-
1217), considered the second abbot of Densatil after Phagmo
Drupa (1100-1170), is recorded as having had a vision of the
Pure Crystal Mountain, situated in the Tibetan district of
Tsari, in which its peak was with Chakrasamvara standing in
a heavenly palace surrounded by a retinue of 2,800 deities.
An inscribed thangka in the Rubin Museum of Art, dated ca.
1200, depicts Chakrasamvara and Vajrayogini standing on a
lotus throne, encircled by the footprints of Jigten Gonpo, is
illustrated in Olaf Czaja and Adriana Proser, Golden Visions of
Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, New York, 2014, pp.
176-177, cat. no. 46.
Compare the rich gilding, the colored stone insets and the full
volumes of fragments probably from the Densatil monastery,
see Amy Heller, Tibetan Art: Tracing the Development of
Spiritual Ideals and Art in Tibet, 600-2000 A.D., Milan, 1999,
pp. 158-159, pls 83-84. Compare also a circa fourteenth
century Tibetan gilt copper group depicting Vajradhara and
prajna, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes,
Hong Kong, 1981, p. 330, pl. XII and p. 365, fig 98E. For
another gilt-bronze figure of Chakrasamvara of comparable
quality and stature, see the example in the Capital Museum,
Beijing, designated as from Densatil Monastery, illustrated
on Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 59818. Compare
also the subtle variations in crown design, bone ornaments,
and supine figures underfoot with another gilt-bronze figure
of Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, dated to the fifteenth
century, sold in our New York rooms, 15th March 2015, lot
1029, and now in an important American collection.
Chakramsavara and Vajravarahi wear the tantric adornments
of the six bone ornaments representing the six paramitas or