Page 94 - Christies September 13 to 14th Fine Chinese Works of Art New York

This rare fgure is an apsara, a Buddhist celestial being. These graceful fgures are usually shown
playing a musical instrument, here it is the sheng, a wind instrument, and are subsidiary fgures
placed in Buddhist shrines or as part of a paradise scene. This fgure appears to come from the same
group of apsara musicians as two very similar gilt-bronze fgures in the Fogg Museum, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, dated 6th century, and illustrated by H. Munsterberg in Chinese Buddhist Bronzes,
Vermont/Tokyo, 1967, pls. 95 and 96, where the fgures can be seen playing two diferent instruments,
the pipa and the fute, respectively. These fgures are unusual in that they are shown facing forward
and kneeling rather than the more usual representation of being shown in fight with their scarves and
garments foating behind them, as seen on the well-known Buddhist altar in The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, illustrated ibid. pl. 116. The altar is centered by the fgure of Buddha Maitreya and the apsaras are
shown as if air-borne at the sides of the mandorla behind him.

The present fgure as illustrated in Mayuyama Seventy Years, vol. one, 1976, no. 114.

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