NORTHERN QI DYNASTY (550-577)

This finely carved head of a bodhisattva is similar to one of comparable size (15 in.) in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Chinese Buddhist Sculpture from the Wei through the T'ang Dynasties, National Museum of History, Taipei, 1983, pp. 134-5, where it is dated late Northern Qi. It was also illustrated by O. Sirén in Chinese Sculpture: From the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, vol. II, 1925, (1988 ed.), pl. 476 B, where it is dated to the Tang dynasty and ascribed to Henan province. The 'jewel'-centered foliate plaque that centers the crown is very similar to that in the crown of the present head.