Page 34 - Bonhams NYC Indian and Himalayan Art March 2019

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A BLACKSTONE STELE OF LASKHMINARAYANA
NORTH INDIA, 10TH/11TH CENTURY
19 1/4 in. (48.9 cm) high
$50,000 - 70,000
At the center of this near-complete composition, Vishnu and Lakshmi embrace each other.
They stand together in elegant tribhanga poses, Vishnu drawing Lakshmi close to him with
his left arm around her back, his left fingers unable to resist touching her fulsome bosom.
Lakshmi bends her right knee to accommodate Vishnu’s hip pressed against hers. She
raises her head toward Vishnu with a charming smile, while he gazes at the viewer, offering
darshan: a means for the viewer to receive the divine couple’s blessings through eye
contact.

Flanking Vishnu’s exquisitely carved lotus halo, diminutive figures of Brahma and Shiva sit
on makaras, each holding attributes and offering boons. Flanking Vishnu and Lakshmi’s legs
are personifications of Vishnu’s symbolic attributes, the chakra and conch. By their feet,
devotees kneel with their heads and hands raised toward the gods. What empty space is
left on the stele is ornamented with thinly incised crosshatches, making the composition’s
celestial inhabitants appear all the more polished.

This stele’s subject is Lakshminarayana, a composite of Lakshmi and Narayana, a common
epithet for Vishnu. Discussing a contemporaneous sandstone stele from 10th-century
Rajasthan, Cummins remarks that depictions of Lakshminarayana are one of few instances
where we see Vishnu in the sensuous tribhanga pose rather than standing straight and
erect (Cummins (ed.), Vishnu, Ahmedabad, 2011, p.80, no.14). She also points out that
Lakshminarayana images offer rare instances of coupled images where a female Hindu
goddess is depicted on the same scale as the male: “Where couples are so equally
represented, they are to be worshipped together, as two halves of a whole.” The present
sculpture raises Lakshmi’s lotus pedestal so that she is closer to Vishnu’s height, without
disturbing her beautiful proportions. This stele also represents their symmetrical relationship
by Vishnu holding Lakshmi’s lotus attribute, and Lakshmi holding Vishnu’s conch.

Both the present sculpture and the Brooklyn Museum example are carved in a style seen
throughout North, Western and Central India in the 10th and 11th centuries, following the
reaches of the Gujara-Pratihara empire. However, subtle stylistic differences such as the
treatment of the god’s necklaces and jewelry find even closer expression in sandstone
steles of Lakshminarayana on the exterior of numerous temples at Khajuraho in Central
India. Compare, for example, Lakshminarayana sculptures on the late-10th century
Parshvanatha temple published in Deva, Temples of Khajuraho, 1990, vol. II, pl.48,
p.446. The present stele is made from a black phyllite stone which was highly prized and
imported from distant regions to be used for sculpture in a temple’s interior. Other closely
related examples in black phyllite depicting avatars of Vishnu are published in Ghosh (ed.),
Fashioning the Divine, Chapel Hill, 2006, pp.102-3, no.12, and Cummins (ed.), op. cit.,
p.153, no.70.

Provenance
Private French Collection, assembled 1950-1970

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