INNER MONGOLIA, DOLON NOR, 18TH CENTURY

The present work was likely created in or around the thriving Buddhist center of Dolon Nor in Inner Mongolia. Established in the late 17th century outside the old Mongol capital of Xanadu, Dolon Nor was patronized by the Qing emperors as a center of Buddhist learning and artistic production. It continued to be an important bronze image foundry even into the late 19th century, as noted by the Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky on one of his expeditions to Mongolia in the 1870s (N. Przhevalsky, Mongolia, London, 1876, p. 105). Compare the present example with a stylistically related gilt-bronze figure of Amitayus with a cloisonné-enameled lotus base in the collection of the Beijing Palace Museum, illustrated in Buddhist Statues of Tibet - The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, p. 240, no. 238.