Page 30 - Buddhist Sculpture From Anciet China, 2017, J.J. Lally, New York

11. A Gilt Bronze Figure of Avalokitesvara
Sui Dynasty (581–618)
the bodhisattva shown holding a willow branch in the raised right hand and a water vessel in the
left hand held down at the hip, the head turned very slightly to one side and backed by a separate
mandorla cast with tongues of flame around the openwork halo, the black-painted hair behind a
simple diadem decorated with ribbons tied over the ears, wearing long beaded chains hanging
from the shoulders and looped below the knees, a loosely pleated dhoti tied at the waist and a
shawl over the shoulders with long ends draped over the arms and flaring out in pointed folds on
either side of the bare feet, raised on a tiered columnar base, all richly gilded, showing traces of
original pigment including bright red at the lips and with scattered green malachite corrosion.

Height 10 inches (25.4 cm)
A gilt bronze figure of Avalokitesvara on tiered base cast in the same style, holding the same attributes, and with a very
similar mandorla, is illustrated by Leidy and Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, pp. 86–87, no. 12, dated to the late 6th century by the authors and described
as one of the earliest known examples of this unusual iconography. The same sculpture was previously published by
several different scholars including Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Centuries, Vols. I–II., New
edition, Bangkok, 1998, pl. 278.

隋 鎏金銅觀音像 高 25.4 厘米