TANG DYNASTY (618-907)

Votive gilt-bronze figures of the ‘Teaching Buddha,’ with right hand raised in variants of vitarkamudra, and left hand resting on the knee, became extremely popular from the turn of the eighth century. The delicately cast draped base demonstrated the style of period, see an almost identical figure in comparable style in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom: Special Exhibition Catalogue of the Buddhist Bronzes from the Nitta Group Collection at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1987, p. 173, no 76 (fig. 1). Two closely related gilt-bronze
figures in the collection of the Shanghai Museum are illustrated in S. Matsubara, Chugoku Bukkyo Chokokushi Ron (The History of Chinese Buddhist Sculpture): Tang, Five Dynasties, Sung and Taoism Sculpture, vol. 3, Tokyo, 1995, pl. 720 A and B. Compare, also, a similar but smaller gilt-bronze figure (8 cm. high) from the Collection of Robert H. Ellsworth, New York, sold at Christie’s New York, 20 March 2015, lot 759 (fig. 2).