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Lot Essay
This small, well-cast figure is a fine example of a specific group of small sculptures of Shakyamuni Buddha made for personal devotion that found popularity during the fourth to fifth centuries in China. They are some of the earliest free-standing representations of Buddha made in China, and point to the direct spread of Buddhism from India into China. This group of figures retains the stylistic influences of earlier Indian representations, such as the pose, the type of garment with parallel folds, and the treatment of the hair, with wavy curls covering the ushnisha. This iconography is apparent in a seated figure of Buddha in the center of the cover of a Gandharan gilt-bronze reliquary, dated circa 100-150 CE, now in the Peshawar Museum of Art, and illustrated by Denise P. Leidy, Donna Strahan, et al., in Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, p. 7, fig. 4. The robes of this latter figure have a more natural, and fluid appearance, which is characteristic of Gandharan and Mathuran sculpture of second-century date, but these softer lines evolved into the simplified, more abstract linear folds of the robes of the Chinese figures, such as those of one of the earliest-known Chinese figures of this type in the Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which is dated 338 CE, and is illustrated by Hugo Munsterberg in Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Vermont/Japan, 1967, p. 37, pl. 1. The Brundage figure has a plain rectangular base, but other similar figures are seated on a "lion" throne, similar to that of the present figure. These include an example dated to the early fifth century, in the Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art, also illustrated by Munsterberg, pl. 2, and another very similar figure dated to the Sixteen Kingdoms period, late fourth to early fifth century, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Wisdom Embodied, op. cit., pp. 48-50, no. 1. As with the base of the present figure, two lions flank a vase of flowers or a lotus, and this representation, too, is based on Gandharan and Mathuran iconography of second and third century date. Several similar Chinese gilt-bronze figures seated on a similar "lion" throne are illustrated by Saburo Matsubara in Chugoku Bukkyo chokokushi shiron, vol. 1, Early Six Dynasties, Tokyo, 1995, pls. 10-14.