A rare and important gray schist double-sided figure of Buddha and Maitreya

GANDHARA, 2ND/3RD CENTURY

Details

A rare and important gray schist double-sided figure of Buddha and Maitreya
Gandhara, 2nd/3rd century
Carved as two addorsed figures, one side carved with Buddha seated with his legs in dhayanasana and hands in the gesture of teaching, the other carved with Maitreya seated with his hands folded in his lap suspending the bottle with the elixir of immortality, his face with a benign expression with hair tied in a topknot and wearing multiple necklaces
26½ in. (67.3 cm.) high

Lot Essay

Images of this type are extremely rare. Ingholt illustrates a fragment where the Bodhisattva lacks any attributes, identifying it as a possible image of Siddhartha addorsed to his enlightened self as Buddha. Here the identification as Maitreya is given by the bottle and hairstyle, thus combining the current and future Buddha.
Another closely related example is in the Russek Collection, Switzerland, see R. Russek, Buddha zwischen Ost und West, Skulpturen aus Gandhara/Pakistan, 1986, cat. no. 60, where the Bodhisattva holds a lotus flower and is identified as Avalokiteshvara.

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