Compare with the large seated gilt-bronze Sakyamuni in The Cleveland Museum of Art dated to the 14th Century, illustrated by Sherman Lee, Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), Sculpture, pl. 18 where the author notes "a work of this quality and size strongly suggests that it originated in the government workshops, under the auspices of the Directorate of "lost-wax" products.

Cf. the scattered emblems of the fan-shaped panel which correspond to the mixed emblems widely found on Yuan blue and white porcelain: the crossed rhinoceros horns, flaming jewel, conjoined wheels, the leaf and the qin. The floral scroll borders and punched ring ground become less dense in Ming Buddhist bronzes. The treatment of the face, the domed pate rising sharply from the forehead, the curly hair and beard, in particular, compares very closely to The Cleveland Museum figure also dpicting the ascetic Sakyamuni.

Ulrich von Schroeder discusses the rarity of the Yuan dynasty bronzes in his volume Indo-Tibetan Bronzes on p. 511, "only three of the illustrated images, which may date from the Yuan Dynasty, are clearly products of Chinese craftsmenship, since they do not follow Nepalese or Tibetan prototypes: Mahakala (fig. 143B), Arhat Bhadra (143C); and Siddhartha (fig. 143E)". The present lot is another such example