.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Of all the magnificent sculpture coming from the Indo-Himalayan region, Nepalese works of art are most revered for their aesthetic refinement. Vajravarahi stands poised in the dynamic posture of ardhaparyanka, a one-legged dancing stance where her hips and torso sway with an unencumbered energy. These ritualized conventions of posture and expression, rarely deviated from, come from earlier models from eastern India, the form which is shown here is nearly identical in form and gesture (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.142.356). From this mid-dance pose, she upraises a crescent-shaped flaying knife (kartika) over her head, an emblematic implement used to sever cosmic delusion. Her left hand is pulled tightly to her chest to cradle a skull cup (kapala) meant to hold transcendent bliss. On top of the glow from the heavy copper patina is a deep layer of gilding, further enhanced by the remaining inlays of colored glass on her adorning crown and jewelry. The atmosphere of opulence about this Vajravarahi, with accessories curving around her sensuous form, is far from overstated. Rather, there is a fluidity between embellishment and flesh in a tenor that imparts the celestial status of her earthbound appearance.
This aesthetic balance of form and texture is achieved in part because of a cultural reverence for making images of gods as devotional objects. In Nepal, female goddesses—even within the wrathful, esoteric currents of Tantric Buddhism—were depicted with round breasts, youthful bodies, and a refined, idealized beauty carried over from long-standing Indic influences that viewed the divine and the sensual as inseparable entities. In the Kathmandu Valley, Vajravarahi, the “Diamond Sow,” held a paramount position as a supreme dakini of wisdom and the consort to Chakrasamvara. While her iconographic template requires terrifying attributes, the Newar artist has humanized this wrathful manifestation. Another period example of Vajravarahi, sharing this expression, sold at Christie’s, New York, 20 March 2019, lot 601. Beneath her stamping right foot lies a prostrate human figure in complete surrender whose limbs go limp across the lotus base, a symbol of vanquished ignorance and ego. The goddess herself, though, radiates an enlightened presence rather than one of pure terror.
Triumphs of artistic expressions, as exemplified in this Vajravarahi, often directly correlate to a kind of opulence within the context of widespread regional influence. Along these lines, the Early Malla period was the most prosperous in the history of the Kathmandu Valley, for which the most withstanding result was an aesthetic one. An enduring legacy for this fertile valley nestled along the Himalayas would be as makers of beauty, a visual idiom that neighboring empires consistently sought to adopt (see H. Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment, 1995, pp. 164-65, no. 109). It is a beauty, as seen here, hard to contend with and one dependent on merging counterpoints— mass and line, contour and ornament, expression and restraint— which renders this dancing goddess both earthly and sublime.
This aesthetic balance of form and texture is achieved in part because of a cultural reverence for making images of gods as devotional objects. In Nepal, female goddesses—even within the wrathful, esoteric currents of Tantric Buddhism—were depicted with round breasts, youthful bodies, and a refined, idealized beauty carried over from long-standing Indic influences that viewed the divine and the sensual as inseparable entities. In the Kathmandu Valley, Vajravarahi, the “Diamond Sow,” held a paramount position as a supreme dakini of wisdom and the consort to Chakrasamvara. While her iconographic template requires terrifying attributes, the Newar artist has humanized this wrathful manifestation. Another period example of Vajravarahi, sharing this expression, sold at Christie’s, New York, 20 March 2019, lot 601. Beneath her stamping right foot lies a prostrate human figure in complete surrender whose limbs go limp across the lotus base, a symbol of vanquished ignorance and ego. The goddess herself, though, radiates an enlightened presence rather than one of pure terror.
Triumphs of artistic expressions, as exemplified in this Vajravarahi, often directly correlate to a kind of opulence within the context of widespread regional influence. Along these lines, the Early Malla period was the most prosperous in the history of the Kathmandu Valley, for which the most withstanding result was an aesthetic one. An enduring legacy for this fertile valley nestled along the Himalayas would be as makers of beauty, a visual idiom that neighboring empires consistently sought to adopt (see H. Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment, 1995, pp. 164-65, no. 109). It is a beauty, as seen here, hard to contend with and one dependent on merging counterpoints— mass and line, contour and ornament, expression and restraint— which renders this dancing goddess both earthly and sublime.