拍品专文
The combination of kesi or 'cut-silk', a weft-woven silk, with the use of embroidery to highlight areas of detail, is highly unusual; its overall effect enhances the radiance of the subject matter. Amitayus is the Buddha of Long Life.
Compare the complex bejewelled canopy with similar examples found above the heads of Amitabha and two Bodhisattvas on a woven silk tapestry in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, illustrated Zhu Jian, Treasures of the Forbidden City, 1986, p. 245, no. 97. The imagery of the Beijing tapestry is complex as it depicts a 'Western Paradise' theme of the Pure Land Buddhist sect but it shares the same regulated pictorial concept of space as the seated Amitayus.
The figures and architecture of the Beijing 'Western Paradise' tapestry is arranged in almost in registers reading from the bottom depicting a flowering lotus pond, the mid-section with the seated Amitabha, to the top of the panel decorated with floating Bodhisattvas. In comparison, the Amitayus kesi panel is more simplistic in its spacial arrangement: the square lotus-petal base is tapered to give an impression of visual depth on a carpet-like ground while the background is void to bring the seated figure into prominence.
The depiction of Amitayus with a full face is unusually different to examples in gilt-bronze sculptures where the face is normally slim with a straight pointed nose showing strong influences from Outer Mongolia. Cf. a pair of gilt-bonzes figures of Amitayus sold in these Rooms, 27 April 1998, lot 616.
(US$150,000-200,000)
Compare the complex bejewelled canopy with similar examples found above the heads of Amitabha and two Bodhisattvas on a woven silk tapestry in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, illustrated Zhu Jian, Treasures of the Forbidden City, 1986, p. 245, no. 97. The imagery of the Beijing tapestry is complex as it depicts a 'Western Paradise' theme of the Pure Land Buddhist sect but it shares the same regulated pictorial concept of space as the seated Amitayus.
The figures and architecture of the Beijing 'Western Paradise' tapestry is arranged in almost in registers reading from the bottom depicting a flowering lotus pond, the mid-section with the seated Amitabha, to the top of the panel decorated with floating Bodhisattvas. In comparison, the Amitayus kesi panel is more simplistic in its spacial arrangement: the square lotus-petal base is tapered to give an impression of visual depth on a carpet-like ground while the background is void to bring the seated figure into prominence.
The depiction of Amitayus with a full face is unusually different to examples in gilt-bronze sculptures where the face is normally slim with a straight pointed nose showing strong influences from Outer Mongolia. Cf. a pair of gilt-bonzes figures of Amitayus sold in these Rooms, 27 April 1998, lot 616.
(US$150,000-200,000)