A FINE CARVED BONE FIGURINE OF A FASTING BUDDHA, GANDHARA, 2ND/3RD CENTURY

拍品描述

A GANDHARAN CARVED BONE FIGURE OF THE FASTING BUDDHA, ANCIENT REGION OF GANDHARA, 2ND/3RD CENTURY A.D. Carved from a section of bone retaining the natural curvature of the shaft, the figure is shown seated in meditation against a tall arched backplate terminating in a radiate nimbus. The emaciated body is rendered with the ribs picked out in sharp parallel ridges across the sunken chest, the collarbones and sternum prominent, and the abdomen drawn in beneath the cage of the ribs. The shoulders are narrow and the arms held close to the body, the hands gathered at the lap to cradle a shallow rounded vessel. A monastic robe falls across the lower body in close-set vertical folds and gathers in a fringed hem above a register of upright lanceolate leaves forming the base. The head is framed by a broad disc-shaped halo, its rim incised with radiating strokes. The face is gaunt, with hollowed cheeks, deep-set eyes beneath arched brows, a straight nose and a short beard rendered by fine incision; the hair is drawn back from the forehead and surmounted by the ushnisha, with an urna at the centre of the brow. The subject is one of the most distinctive iconographic inventions of the Gandharan workshops: the Bodhisattva Siddhartha during the six years of extreme austerity he undertook before the Enlightenment, when, according to the canonical accounts, he reduced his food to a single grain of rice a day and his body wasted to skin and bone. The wasted torso with exposed ribcage, the sunken abdomen, the emaciated limbs and the begging bowl held at the lap are the standard attributes of this episode. The presence of the ushnisha, the urna and the full halo identify the figure as the future Buddha rather than a generic ascetic, and place the image within the sequence of scenes from the life of Shakyamuni that decorated the stupas and monastic complexes of the north-west. Gandharan figures of the Fasting Buddha are most familiar in grey schist on a monumental scale, but the iconography was also transposed into small-scale precious media for personal devotion and for the decoration of portable shrines, reliquaries and furniture. Bone and ivory were favoured for such miniature work, the curvature of the shaft lending itself naturally to a niched or arched composition of this kind. The choice of bone here carries its own significance: the material allowed the dense linear vocabulary of Gandharan drapery and anatomy, developed at architectural scale in stone, to be reduced to a hand-held devotional object while preserving the legibility of every rib, fold and leaf. Such carvings travelled along the trade routes that connected the Kushan territories with Central Asia, the Iranian plateau and the Mediterranean, and survive today only in small numbers. This figure exemplifies the translation of one of Gandhara's signature iconographic types into the intimate medium of carved bone. It preserves, on a miniature scale, the anatomical realism and the Hellenistic-derived treatment of drapery for which the Gandharan workshops of the 2nd and 3rd centuries are known, and stands as a rare survival of the portable devotional sculpture produced alongside the better-attested stone tradition. Height: 10.5cm Height on Stand: 12.2cm

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