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Lot Essay
Following the demise of the Chola empire towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Vijayanagara empire became the inheritors of the former’s great sculptural and architectural traditions. By the fifteenth century, the sprawling capital city of the same name was by various accounts one of the most populous and wealthy cities in Asia. Sculpturally, the artisans of the Vijayanagara borrowed heavily from the Chola style, but also established their own precedents. The idealized naturalism of the Chola period was slowly transformed into a more stylized aesthetic with a greater emphasis on dynamism and musculature. Such mannered features can be found in the present sculpture in the exaggerated sway of the tribhanga pose, the sharp ridge of the shins, the full hips and breasts, and the tall, almost conical headdress.
The current figure is the mate to the important bronze figure of Shiva Chandrashekhara from The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, sold at Christie’s New York, 17 March 2015, lot 34 (fig. 1). The two works were on loan together at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from the esteemed collector, Christian Humann, from 1972 until his death in 1981, when Robert Ellsworth purchased them and hundreds of other sculptures and paintings that made up the renowned Pan-Asian Collection.
The Shiva Chandrashekhara and the Parvati are clearly the work of the same workshop and period. The elongated oval face, with angular nose and almond-shaped eyes, surmounted by a particularly tall chignon of hair is shared by both figures. Similarly, the treatment of the multiple belts of each figure, with rounded and rectangular plaques at the front, including one strand that stretches across the front of the thighs, is almost identical. Both figures also share an elongated and particularly waisted double-lotus base over the square plinth, with similarly incised lotus petals. The Shiva figure is taller by about seven inches, which can be accounted for by the swayed posture of the Parvati figure and the slight dimorphism between male and female bronze images from South India. Both figures also share dark patinas.
Few other Vijayangara Parvati figures of this magnitude are known: a highly important and large bronze figure of Parvati, slightly taller than the present work and once on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was sold at Christie’s New York, 21 March 2007, lot 257. Another figure, of similar size and with the same unusual looped earrings, was sold at Christie’s New York, 23 September 2004, lot 48. Two other comparable works, but of later date, reside in the Tanjavur Art Gallery, Tanjavur and at the National Gallery of India, New Delhi, illustrated by C. Sivaramamurti in South Indian Bronzes, New Delhi, 1963, figs. 80a and 80b.
The current figure is the mate to the important bronze figure of Shiva Chandrashekhara from The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, sold at Christie’s New York, 17 March 2015, lot 34 (fig. 1). The two works were on loan together at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from the esteemed collector, Christian Humann, from 1972 until his death in 1981, when Robert Ellsworth purchased them and hundreds of other sculptures and paintings that made up the renowned Pan-Asian Collection.
The Shiva Chandrashekhara and the Parvati are clearly the work of the same workshop and period. The elongated oval face, with angular nose and almond-shaped eyes, surmounted by a particularly tall chignon of hair is shared by both figures. Similarly, the treatment of the multiple belts of each figure, with rounded and rectangular plaques at the front, including one strand that stretches across the front of the thighs, is almost identical. Both figures also share an elongated and particularly waisted double-lotus base over the square plinth, with similarly incised lotus petals. The Shiva figure is taller by about seven inches, which can be accounted for by the swayed posture of the Parvati figure and the slight dimorphism between male and female bronze images from South India. Both figures also share dark patinas.
Few other Vijayangara Parvati figures of this magnitude are known: a highly important and large bronze figure of Parvati, slightly taller than the present work and once on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was sold at Christie’s New York, 21 March 2007, lot 257. Another figure, of similar size and with the same unusual looped earrings, was sold at Christie’s New York, 23 September 2004, lot 48. Two other comparable works, but of later date, reside in the Tanjavur Art Gallery, Tanjavur and at the National Gallery of India, New Delhi, illustrated by C. Sivaramamurti in South Indian Bronzes, New Delhi, 1963, figs. 80a and 80b.