Lot 3603. Property of the MQ Collection. An extremely rare painted marble niche of a seated Buddha, Northern Qi dynasty (550-577); 43.5 cm. Lot Sold 635,000 HKD (Estimate 500,000 - 1,500,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2025

Provenance: Christie's London, 11th December 1989, lot 246.
Christie's London, 1st December 1997, lot 204.

Literature: The MQ Collection, As I Have Seen: Chinese Ancient Sculpture, Taipei, 2015, pp. 34-41, cat. no. 04.

Note: Masterfully carved with a seated Buddha within a niche and preserved with its original pigments, the current piece is an exceptionally rare example of its type. With a tenon-like projection on the reverse, the niche would once have been fitted into the wall of a temple – a typical construction technique for Buddhist imagery.

The size, execution, and material of the current niche are closely comparable to a group of Buddhist niches from the base tier of the Youju Temple Pagoda, Hebei province. Constructed for the Northern Qi court, the Youju Temple was founded by the monk Biao of Dingguo Monastery, and later expanded under Prince Gao Rui of Zhao Commandery (536-561). According to the Gazetteer of Lingshou County, "Prince Gao Rui of the Northern Qi selected the southern slope of Mount Zhu among the scenic areas of the Taihang Mountains to build Qilin Temple (Youju Temple), establishing over 200 monk residences and housing more than 2,000 monks." An inscription on a stele commissioned by Prince Gao Rui also records that the Temple, with a ‘Buddhist triad’ group, was created in the seventh year of the Tianbao (Wenxuan) reign (556).

Compare a closely related niche, measuring 46 cm in height, currently preserved and on display at Tsz Shan Monastery Buddhist Art Museum, Hong Kong, no. 2017.62. The treatment of the hems around the ankles is also similar to those at the Youju Temple, dated to the seventh year of the Tianbao (Wenxuan) reign, the latter illustrated in Nishimura Takahiro, ‘Reconstructing the Painting Style of Cao Zhongda’, Ritsumeikan Journal of Language and Culture Studies, 2018, pp. 129–160, pls 7a, 7b, and 7c. Compare also a marble ‘Buddhist triad’ niche with an inscription dated to the eighth year of the Tianbao (Wenxuan) reign (557), carved with a similar technique and design, preserved in the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, Osaka, and illustrated in The Yamaguchi Collection: Chinese Sculpture, Osaka, 2013, pl. 035, p. 76.

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 7 May 2025