DALI KINGDOM, YUNNAN PROVINCE, 12TH CENTURY

细节

A RARE LACQUERED BRONZE FIGURE OF ACUOYE GUANYIN
DALI KINGDOM, YUNNAN PROVINCE, 12TH CENTURY
The tall slender figure shown standing with right hand raised in vitarkamudra and left hand in varadamudra, the hair drawn up under a tiara centered by a figure of Amitabha Buddha seated in dhyanasana, and dressed in an elaborate top knot of narrow braids that fall to the shoulders behind the elongated earring-hung ears, wearing a jeweled ruyi-motif necklace, foliate arm bands and a belt decorated with florets encircling the slim waist above the folded-over top of the dhoti secured by a sash drawn through a jeweled medallion into a bow, the thin fabric of the skirt falling in U-shaped folds to the bare feet and overlaid with another long sash pulled into loops at the hips before trailing down the sides, with a rectangular aperture in the back, covered with gold and dark brown lacquer
17 7/8 in. (45.5 cm.) high, stand and box

来源

Acquired in Paris in 1995.

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拍品专文

It was not until the American scholar Helen Chapin identified a group of bronzes in western collections as being of Yunnanese origin, based on a scroll painting known as the 'Long Scroll of Buddhist Images' by the 12th century Yunnanese artist Zhang Shengwen, which she published in 1944, that the origin of these distinctive Dali or Yunnanese bronzes was first realized. In the late 1970s, restoration work at the Qianxun Pagoda, Yunnan province, uncovered a reliquary deposit which included a gold standing Guanyin similar in style to the present figure. The gold figure with its silver mandorla is illustrated by A. Lutz, 'Buddhist Art in Yunnan', Orientations, February 1992, p. 49, fig. 6. The article goes on to identify the figure as 'Acuoye Guanyin,' who according to legend was an Indian monk who visited Yunnan in the seventh century as an incarnation of Guanyin. In the catalogue entry for a similar, but smaller, figure in the British Museum included in the exhibition, Buddhism: Art and Faith, British Museum, 1985, p. 206, no. 297, W. Zwalf states that these figures were made for the Dali court, appearing to have been made as talismans for the royal family.

A similar bronze in the San Diego Museum of Art bears an inscription ascribing it a Yunnanese provenance and a date between 1147 and 1172. See H. Chapin, 'Yunnanese Images of Avalokitesvara', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 8 (1944-5), pp. 131-186, pls. 3, 4, 5 and 6. Compare, also, the equally fine figure included in the exhibition, Treasures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, China House Gallery, New York, 24 October-25 November 1979, no. 22; and two others from the Musée Guimet and the Freer Gallery of Art illustrated by H. Munsterberg, Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Vermont and Japan, 1967, pls. 58 and 59 respectively.

Other figures of this group have also been published: one in the Brooklyn Museum illustrated on the cover and inside the brochure for the Asian Art Council; one (missing its forearms) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated by R. Kerr, Chinese Art and Design: Art Objects in Ritual and Daily Life, Woodstock, New York, 1991, no. 37; one in the Sumitomo Collection illustrated by S. Umehara, Shin-Shu Sen-Oku Sei-Sho, Kyoto, 1971, p. 180, no. 255; one in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco illustrated in Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculptures in the Avery Brundage Collection, Japan, 1974, pl. 140; and one in the National Palace Museum, illustrated in the catalogue, A Special Exhibition of Recently Acquired Gilt-Bronze Buddhist Images, Taipei, 1996, no. 15. See, also, the slightly larger figure (47.5 cm.) sold in these rooms, 19 September 2007, lot 188.