A dated gilt-bronze figure of a Bodhisattva, Northern Wei dynasty, dated 495
Lot 20. A dated gilt-bronze figure of a Bodhisattva, Northern Wei dynasty, dated 495; 11.4cm., 4 3/8 in.. Estimate 20,000 — 30,000 GBP. Lot sold 25,000 GBP (34,847 EUR). Photo courtesy Sotheby's.
cast standing with the right arm raised, wearing long robes falling into neat pleats, the face with a meditative expression with hair piled up into a high chignon, all before a leaf-shaped mandorla incised to the front with flame-like projections, the reverse with a Buddha seated in a temple flanked by two attendants and accompanied with an inscription, all supported on a domed base raised on a four-legged plinth, the side of the base inscribed and dated to nineteenth year of Taihe (corresponding to 495), wood stand and Japanese wood box.
Exhibited: Tokubetsu tenji Rikuchō jidai no Kondōbutsu [Gilt-bronze statues from the Six Dynasties], Kuboso Memorial Museum of Arts, Osaka, 1991, cat. no. 41.
Literature: Saburo Matsubara, Chūgoku bukkyō chōkokushi ron [Historical discussion of Chinese Buddhist sculpture], Tokyo, 1995, vol. 1, pl. 77d-e.
Note: The inscription on this piece may be translated:
Commissioned by… from Lingzhou county [Hebei province] in memory of his brother who passed away.
The 23rd of the 2nd month of the 19th year of Taihe reign [corresponding to AD 495].
The present piece belongs to a distinct group of bronze bodhisattva cast wearing monastic robes draped in the Hellenistic-influenced Gupta style with long looping swathes of cloth rising from the legs and across the shoulders. Compare four bronze figures of this type with Northern Wei dates between AD 482 and 500, illustrated in Saburo Matsubara, Chūgoku bukkyō chōkokushi ron [Historical discussion of Chinese Buddhist sculpture], Tokyo, 1995, vol. 1, pl. 77, no. a, c and f; and another dated equivalent to AD 484, unearthed in Boxing county, Shandong province, and now in the Boxing County Museum, published in Ji Chong Jian, The Buddhist Bronzes, Taipei, 1994, pl. 40.
Sotheby's. The Soul of Japanese Aesthetics – The Tsuneichi Inoue Collection, London, 13 may 2015