A PAIR OF LARGE SANCAI-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURES OF LOKAPALAS

Property from the Collection of THE LATE JOANNE TOOR CUMMINGS

Details

A PAIR OF LARGE SANCAI-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURES OF LOKAPALAS
TANG DYNASTY

Each shown standing in a threatening attitude atop a pierced rockwork base, their right hands pierced to hold a halberd and the left placed on the hip, similarly clothed in well-detailed military garb consisting of dragon-head epaulets, cord-tied breast and back plates and layered tunics bound around the hips by a twist of cloth with a pendent flap in front worn over a long skirt, the glazed details not identical on the two, their fierce faces differently modeled and detailed in black pigment with finely painted beards, mustaches and brows reserved on pink skin tones, one with his hair pulled up into a topknot, the other wearing a dark red leather helmet with upright rim, some restoration
42 7/8 and 40 3/4in. (109 and 103.5cm.) high (2)

Provenance

Highly Important Chinese Tang Pottery, Metalwork and Sculpture from A European Collection, Sotheby's, London, June 10, 1986, lot 7

Lot Essay

Pairs of figures of this type were placed in the entry corridor of tombs, along with pairs of officials and pairs of earth spirits, as evidenced by the location of such figures in the previously undisturbed Tang dynasty tomb of the General An Pu discovered at Longmen, Luoyang. See Robert L. Thorp, Son of Heaven: Imperial Art of China, Seattle, 1988, pp. 199-205. For two similar figures see Illustrated Catalogues of Tokyo National Museum, 'Chinese Ceramics I', p. 50, nos. 191 and 192, as well as the pair of lokapala with hair dressed in a topknot from the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, part of a retinue of ten massive sancai-glazed pottery figures sold in these rooms, December 3, 1992, lot 238. The present figures are larger than any of the aforementioned figures.