Lot Essay
The carving of the eyes and the mouth is similar to the features on a large painted stone figure of a seated Buddha at Dunhuang in cave 412, dated to the Sui period, illustrated in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji; Diaosu Bian (The Great Treasury of Chinese Fine Arts; Sculpture), vol.7, Beijing, 1989, p. 48, no. 47, while the shape of the hairline, brow, and low domed usnisa are camparable to a large stone head from Tianlongshan from cave 8, included in the exhibition Chinese Buddhist Stone Sculpture, Veneration of the Sublime, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 1995, p. 55, no. 32; and also to another large stone figure of Buddha, illustrated by Oswald Sirn, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, Stockholm, 1998, vol. II, pl. 296.