Page 169 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Tantra Buddhost Art

This magnificent sculpture of Yamantaka Vajrabharaiva
and Vajravetali is closely related to a group of three larger
fifteenth century Chinese gilt bronze figures of Vajrabhairava
of monumental proportions, including two formerly in the
Gumpel Collection, originally sold at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in
1904, one more recently sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th
November 2016, lot 3234, the other in our New York rooms,
25th March 1999, lot 122. The third example was offered
by the New York dealership Rare Art Inc., see ad., Arts of
Asia, November-December 1975, back cover. The current
bronze, though smaller, is endowed with similarly powerful
iconography, with the extremely unusual touch of the buffalo’s
tongue depicted coiling into the mouth of his consort.
While the iconography of the sculpture has its origins in the
complex systems of Vajrayana Buddhism favoured by the
Tibetans, the style is evolved from the artistic milieu created
around the religious and political contact between China
and Tibet during the early Ming dynasty. The patronage
of Tibetan Buddhism at the early Ming imperial courts is
well documented, reaching its apogee during the reign of
the Yongle emperor Chengzu, where the Tibetan hierarch
Dezhin Shegpa, the Fifth ‘Black Hat’ Karmapa, was especially
favoured by the emperor. They established a patron-priest
relationship (T. cho-yon) in much the same way as Kublai
Khan (1215-1294) had done with the Tibetan Sakya order
hierarch Phakpa (1235-1280) during the Yuan dynasty.
It was during the Yongle period that numerous gilt bronzes
were produced as imperial gifts for visiting Tibetan dignitaries, favour. Sakya Yeshe subsequently represented the Gelugpa
or sent with emissaries to monasteries in Tibet. The majority
of the bronzes from the Yongle workshops were thus small,
easily transportable, personal meditation statues. The court
annals of the Xuande period suggest that the production of
bronzes as gifts to Tibetan monasteries and their hierarchs
was curtailed. And the remaining corpus of Xuande Vajrayana
gilt bronze sculpture bears this out, consisting mostly of
larger bronzes made for use in Lamaist temples within China.
This trend continued in the Zhengtong and Jingtai through to
the reign of Chenghua, where the large scale of many of the
known Vajrayana Buddhist gilt bronzes from these periods
suggests they were commissioned for local temple worship.
Bronzes bearing inscriptions dating them to throughout
the middle of the fifteenth century maintain the basic
style founded in the Yongle/Xuande period. The loose
fit and elegant undulations of the robes on a gilt bronze
Bhaisajyaguru Buddha, dated by inscription to the first year
of the Jingtai dynasty, 1450, echo the style of the earlier
THE HEART OF TANTRA – BUDDHIST ART INCLUDING PROPERTY FROM THE NYINGJEI LAM COLLECTION 167
Ming examples, see Gems of Beijing Cultural Relics Series:
Buddhist Statues 1, Beijing, 2001, pl. 115.
The pedestal of the large bronze figure of Vajrabhairava,
offered by Rare Art, bears an inscription that dates the
sculpture to 1474 of the Chenghua period, and the sculpture
bears numerous stylistic references to the Yongle examples,
such as the Vajrabharaiva from the Speelman collection, sold
in these rooms, 7th October 2006, lot 812.
Vajrabhairava is a major deity in the pantheons of the Sakya
and Kagyu orders of Tibetan Buddhism, both of which
had significant influence at the courts of Yuan and early
Ming dynasty emperors. The deity is represented in an
imperial Yuan period Sakya order kesi mandala now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Watt and Wardwell, When
Silk was Gold, New York, 1997, cat. no. 25. In the Yongle
period, the deity is the subject of a gilt bronze lotus mandala,
see Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Hong
Kong, 2001, vol. II, pl. 350B.
In addition to the Sakya and Kagyu orders, Vajrabhairava
is especially important to the Gelug order founded by Je
Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), who was deemed to be Manjushri
incarnate and for whom the wrathful form of the bodhisattva
was thus highly significant. The head of the Gelug order
received a number of imperial invitations, but was finally
represented at the Yongle court by his disciple Sakya Yeshe
(1355-1435), who was well received in Beijing and found much
at the court of the Xuande emperor. The Gelug order was
the emergent religious denomination in Tibet as the fifteenth
century progressed. Given the supreme importance of the
deity to the powerful Gelugpa order it is more than likely that
the Vajrabhairava was commissioned for a Gelug monastery in
China, for which there would have been imperial endorsement.
And as an important example of fifteenth century Chinese
metalwork it is likely to have been cast in foundries closely
associated with the political and spiritual centre of Tibeto-
Chinese relations, Beijing.
It was not only the founder of the dominant Tibetan Gelug
order, Tsongkhapa, who was identified with Manjushri.
Emperors of China had long promoted the concept of
themselves as the earthly form of the lord of transcendent
wisdom. And thus Vajrabhairava, the all-powerful
manifestation of Manjushri, is symbolic of the ultimate
authority of the emperors. This awe-inspiring statue serves to
enforce the imperial mandate while representing the highest
ideals of the spiritual path to Buddhist enlightenment.