NORTHERN QI/SUI DYNASTY, CIRCA AD 570-590

The rigid, frontal pose of this figure, and the arrangement and depiction of the robes and jewelry, are typical of Northern Qi and Sui dynasty stone sculptures of bodhisattvas. A very similar torso of a bodhisattva, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is illustrated by D. P. Leidy and D. Strahan in Wisdom Embodied, Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, p. 172, fig. A13, where it is dated Northern Qi dynasty, mid- to late 6th century. Other comparable Sui dynasty figures of bodhisattvas, also shown wearing a shawl and a diaphanous dhoti folded over at the waist, and carved in a manner similar to that of the present figure, include the torso illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Ancient Chinese Sculpture, Eskenazi, London, 14 June - 22 July 1978, pp. 52-53, no. 15, and the figure illustrated by O. Sirén in Chinese Sculptures in the von der Heydt Collection, Zürich, 1959, pp. 92-93, no. 26.