Lot 248. A limestone head of Guanyin, China, Liao dynasty. Height 12 1/2  in., 32 cm. Estimate 25,000 — 35,000 USD. Lot sold $47,500 . Photo Sotheby's

finely carved with downcast eyes and heavy lids, beneath gently curved brows flanking the broad nose and small bud mouth, the protruding urna below symmetrical curls at the hairline, secured by a tall triple-leafed diadem tied by ribbons at the back of the head, centered with a figure of Amitabha seated on a lotus surrounded by a flaming mandorla, stand (2). 

Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 22nd September 2004, lot 28.

Notes: A similar stone head is illustrated in Perceval Yetts, The George Eumorfopoulos Collection Catalogue of the Chinese and Corean Bronzes, Sculpture, Jades, Jewellery and Miscellaneous Objects, vol. 3, London, 1932, col. pl. LXXII; another from the J.T. Tai collection was sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 29th April 1997, lot 708; and another example was sold in these rooms, 22nd September 2005, lot 38. A head in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with similar features but a more elaborate crown, is illustrated in Osvald Siren, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to Fourteenth Centuries, New York, 1925, vol. IV, pl. 563C.

In style, the features and headdress of the present lot relate to the painted clay sculptures of the Liao dynasty in Lower Huayansi in Datong, Shanxi province, which are dated in accordance with 1038. See Zhongguo meishu quanji: Wudai Song diaosu, Beijing, 1988, pls. 138-41.  A related Liao dynasty gilt-bronze figure, also with similar features and tall crown, is illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy and Donna Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, 2010, p. 122, no. 26.

Sotheby's. Images of Enlightenment: Devotional Works of Art & Paintings, New York, 16 sept. 2015