Page 71 - Christies September 13 to 14th Fine Chinese Works of Art New York

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and two legs. In the case of the Eleven-Headed Avalokiteshvara, after struggling Sui Standing Guanyin in gray limestone (1943.53.43), and a Tang kneeling
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to comprehend the needs of so many in distress, the bodhisattva’s head split Bodhisattva in gray limestone (1943.53.36).
into eleven pieces. According to the sutras, upon seeing his spiritual emanation’s
plight, the Buddha Amitabha granted Avalokiteshvara eleven heads to help him When under worship in a temple, each sculpture in the triad would have
hear the cries of those who are sufering. Upon hearing and comprehending been backed by either a halo or a mandorla 背光, the lotus-petal-shaped
those cries, Avalokiteshvara attempted to reach out to all those needing help but aureole 光環 suggesting light radiating from the deity’s body and thus
found that his two arms shattered into pieces. Once more coming to his rescue, signaling its divine status. (Symbolizing divinity, a halo is a circle, or disc, of
Amitabha gave him a thousand arms to reach out to those in need. light that appears behind the head of a deity; a mandorla is a full-body halo.)
That each fgure lacks a tenon between the shoulder blades or at the back
Bodhisattvas often hold a lotus blossom, a universal symbol of Buddhism and of the head to receive a sculpted mandorla suggests that the aureoles were
an appropriate ofering for presentation to a Buddha. When holding a long- painted on the wall behind the fgures. Such integration of painting and
stemmed lotus with the blossom itself appearing near the fgure’s left shoulder, sculpture was a characteristic feature of traditional Buddhist temples. The
Guanyin is known as Padmapani 波頭摩巴尼, or “He Who Holds the Lotus”. aureoles likely incorporated foral designs arranged in a scrolling arabesque,
In other instances, Guanyin might hold a fy whisk 秉拂, an ancient Indian perhaps with an open lotus blossom featured en face directly behind each
symbol representing the “sweeping away” of ignorance and mental aflictions. fgure’s head.
Avalokiteshvara, Maitreya, and other bodhisattvas sometimes also hold a vase,
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a kundika, or a small jar flled with holy water. This pair of sculptures portrays In the standard style of the eighth century, the integrally carved bases comprise
Guanyin with a vase, or kundika, and Dashizhi with a lotus bud at the right four parts: a circular plinth at the very bottom on which rests an inverted lotus
shoulder and a lotus leaf at the right elbow. blossom with well-modeled petals and from which rises a short, cylindrical
shaft embellished with eight spherical lobes, which supports the upright,
Like virtually all early Buddhist sculptures of stone and wood, these two fattened lotus blossom on whose seed pod the bodhisattva stands. The eight
bodhisattvas originally would have been embellished with brightly colored spherical lobes symbolically refer to the Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path, the route
mineral pigments, the colors likely including safron, blues, and greens for the to enlightenment that the Buddha taught. Related bases support the pair of
robes and scarves, gilding for the jewelry, pink or white for the fesh, and black, Tang bodhisattvas that J.J. Lally & Co., exhibited in 2017, the Tang-dynasty
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or possibly blue, for the hair. Indeed, these sculptures retain traces of gilding stone sculpture of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha (Chinese, Dizang Pusa 地藏菩薩)
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and of the gesso ground on which the pigments were applied. (White in color, in the Eisei Bunko Museum, Tokyo 東京永青文庫, the Tang stone sculpture
gesso was applied to smooth the stone surface and to render it chalk-white of a kneeling Bodhisattva in the Harvard Art Museums (1943.53.36), and two
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so that pigments appear to best advantage in terms of color and clarity.) The Tang stone sculptures representing standing bodhisattvas in the collection
Buddhist sculptures in the Mogao grottoes at Dunhuang, Gansu province 甘 of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia (C111 and C112).
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肃省敦煌莫高窟, retain the greatest amount of original pigment of all early Interestingly, among the bases closest to those of the present bodhisattvas
Chinese sculptures, but other Buddhist stone sculptures from the Tang and is that of a Tang Daoist sculpture representing a Seated Laozi 老子, which
earlier periods often exhibit traces of original pigment, as well, such as the pair features the same spherical lobes around the shaft connecting the upper
of Tang bodhisattvas exhibited at J.J. Lally & Co., New York, in 2017, and such and lower lotus blossoms; the similarity serves as a reminder that the same
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as three sculptures in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums: a Northern sculptors and workshops produced sculptures for both Buddhist and Daoist
Qi- 北齊 or Sui-dynasty Seated Buddha in white marble (1943.53.42), a temples, so the styles often are closely related.
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Fig. 3 Gilt-bronze Buddhist altarpiece, Sui dynasty, AD 597. The Freer|Sackler Collection, Fig. 4 Limestone fgure of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin) with eleven heads,
F1914.21a-h. Image © the Freer|Sackler. Tang dynasty, AD 703. The Freer|Sackler Collection, F1909.98. Image © the Freer|Sackler.