A superb gilt-bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara, Ming dynasty, circa 15th century

拍品描述

PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION wood stand (2) Height 46.5 cm, 18⅜ in. The bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara holds a wish-fulfilling pearl (cintamani) in his right hand and a water vessel (kundika) in his left, wearing sumptuous robes and regal jewellery including a diadem bearing an effigy of his spiritual progenitor Amitabha Buddha. The bodhisattva is seated in the posture of royal ease (rajalilasana) with his lowered left foot supported by a lotus flower. The inclusion of the kundika in his left hand suggests the bodhisattva is depicted here as Water-Moon (Shuiyue) Guanyin : a kundika is depicted resting on a rocky outcrop beside Water-Moon Guanyin depicted on a fourteenth century painting, in James Watt, The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, fig. 150; iconographically similar to the Nitta Collection’s gilt bronze Guanyin with the kundika resting on an outcrop, illustrated in The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1987, pl. 102. The present Ming Dynasty example perpetuates the iconographic posture of earlier Yuan sculpture. Compare the posture of a Yuan dynasty Guanyin illustrated in Edmund Capon, Art Gallery of New South Wales: Highlights from the Collection, Sydney, 2008, pl. 169. The rajalilasana posture is thought to originate from an episode recorded in the Avatamsaka Sutra, in which the young Sudhana, in his search for true wisdom, visits Avalokiteshvara on Mount Potalaka, where the Compassionate One debates with Sudhana while seated in rajalilasana inside a grotto. The spread of the Avatamsaka Sutra in China from the tenth century saw the concurrent development of this posture in sculpture, see Derek Gilman, ‘A New Image in Chinese Buddhist Sculpture of the Tenth to Thirteenth Century’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 47, 1982-83, pp 32-44.

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