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Lot Essay
Buddhist figures depicted with curly hair and beards are commonly associated with Yuan dynasty images of Shakyamuni. A Ming dynasty painting of Shakyamuni under the bodhi tree is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, illustrated by Wai-kam Ho, S. Lee, L. Sickman, and M. Wilson, Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1980, pp. 274-275, cat. no. 210. The curly hair, beard, and downcast eyes of Shakyamuni in the painting are very similar to those on the present figure.
A similarly depicted gilt and lacquered wood figure of Shakyamuni as an ascetic, dating to the late 13th-early 14th century, in the Detroit Institute of Art, is illustrated in Hai-Wai Yi-Chen, Chinese Art in Overseas Collections: Buddhist Sculpture, Taipei, 1986, p. 171, no. 158. A standing marble figure of a luohan, dated by inscription to 1180 of the Jin dynasty, with similar curly beard, mustache and brows, in the Avery Brundage Collection, is illustrated by d'Argencé, et al., Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculpture, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1974, pl. 138, and again in Chinese Art under the Mongols, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, pl. 17.
The interior of the present figure was used to store consecratory materials. X-ray images show that the interior oval cavity of the figure contains at least four items: a disc-shaped object, which is likely a bronze mirror, a diamond-shaped object in the center of the chest, and two other objects. A wood figure of Guanyin, dated to 1282 of the Yuan dynasty, in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also containing consecratory materials including a bronze mirror, is illustrated by D. Leidy and D. Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. 35, pp. 143-44. Another figure in the Met’s collection has a circular depression in the cover of the consecratory chamber indicating that it once held a mirror (see ibid., . 119, no. 24). The shape of the depression on both nos. 24 and cat. no. 35 indicated that the mirrors faced inward towards the front of the body. Leidy notes (p. 119), “the addition of mirrors to a Buddhist sculpture, such as this example, may have been intended to enhance its spiritual potency as well as to protect it. Moreover, it is possible that sculptures with mirrors in them were produced for use in specific, probably Esoteric, ceremonies.”
A similarly depicted gilt and lacquered wood figure of Shakyamuni as an ascetic, dating to the late 13th-early 14th century, in the Detroit Institute of Art, is illustrated in Hai-Wai Yi-Chen, Chinese Art in Overseas Collections: Buddhist Sculpture, Taipei, 1986, p. 171, no. 158. A standing marble figure of a luohan, dated by inscription to 1180 of the Jin dynasty, with similar curly beard, mustache and brows, in the Avery Brundage Collection, is illustrated by d'Argencé, et al., Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculpture, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1974, pl. 138, and again in Chinese Art under the Mongols, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, pl. 17.
The interior of the present figure was used to store consecratory materials. X-ray images show that the interior oval cavity of the figure contains at least four items: a disc-shaped object, which is likely a bronze mirror, a diamond-shaped object in the center of the chest, and two other objects. A wood figure of Guanyin, dated to 1282 of the Yuan dynasty, in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also containing consecratory materials including a bronze mirror, is illustrated by D. Leidy and D. Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. 35, pp. 143-44. Another figure in the Met’s collection has a circular depression in the cover of the consecratory chamber indicating that it once held a mirror (see ibid., . 119, no. 24). The shape of the depression on both nos. 24 and cat. no. 35 indicated that the mirrors faced inward towards the front of the body. Leidy notes (p. 119), “the addition of mirrors to a Buddhist sculpture, such as this example, may have been intended to enhance its spiritual potency as well as to protect it. Moreover, it is possible that sculptures with mirrors in them were produced for use in specific, probably Esoteric, ceremonies.”