Page 122 - Christie's Important Chinese Art, March 23 to 24 2023 New York

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
1122
A SANDSTONE FIGURE OF A BODHISATTVA
NORTHERN WEI DYNASTY (AD 386-535)
30q in. (77.5 cm.) high

$200,000-300,000
PROVENANCE:
C. T. Loo & Co., Paris, c. 1928.
J. T. Tai & Co., Inc., New York, 30 April 1965.
Arthur M. Sackler (1913-1987) Collections.
Else Sackler (1913-2000).
Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1997.
EXHIBITED:
Champaign, Illinois, Chinese Galleries, Krannert Art Museum, 18 October 1999-June
2009.
Québec, Canada, Asian Galleries, Museé des beaux-arts de Montréal, 2011-2016.
LITERATURE:
Daisy Yiyou Wang, "C.T. Loo and the Chinese Art Collection at the Freer, 1915-1951,"
Arts of Asia, 41/5, September-October 2011, fig. 12.
This finely carved figure of a bodhisattva is most unusual in the depiction of the
ribbons that flutter back onto the mandorla. They are partially undercut so that a
portion of the ribbons is freestanding. Fluttering, free-standing ribbons can also be
seen on the bust of a bodhisattva in the collection of E. Schlieper, Berlin, included
in the Exhibition of Chinese Art, Berlin, 1929, no. 112. This fragment of a figure from
Gongxian which measures 52cm. is dated Northern Wei, 6th century, and the carving
of the face, the hair and the crown are very similar to that of the present figure.
Another smaller figure of a bodhisattva with scarves looped through a disc and
wearing a crown with ribbons rippling back onto a mandorla, in the Imperial Academy
of Art, Tokyo, is illustrated by O. Sirén, Chinese Sculpture, vol. I, 1998 ed., vol. I, pl.
131A. It is dated Northern Wei and identified as being from Shaanxi province. Also,
illustrated ibid., pl. 135, is a seated figure (65 cm.) with a very similar face and long
rippling ribbons which trail onto the mandorla, in the Hayasaki Collection, Tokyo.

With its narrow head, sloping eyes, and folded robes, the figure also bears stylistic
similarities with figures of Buddha found at the Yungang Buddhist grottos, which
date to the 5th century. Compare the figure of seated Buddha from Yungang in the
collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by D. Leidy and D. Strahan,
Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, 2010, pp. 53-54, no. 3b. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
figure is shown wearing a similar garment comprising a long thin shawl that crosses
at the waist with undergarments beneath it. A Northern Wei granite head of a
bodhisattva, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, shown wearing an elaborate
lotus crown similar to that of the present figure, is illustrated by d'Argence, Chinese,
Korean and Japanese Sculpture in the Avery Brundage Collection, Tokyo, 1974, pp.
76-77, no. 24.

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