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拍品专文
Possessed of extraordinary grace and magnetic presence, this monumental surasundari, or celestial beauty, is a superb embodiment of the sensuous ideal that animated the temple sculpture of medieval Western India. Standing beneath luxuriant foliage laden with mangoes and inhabited by playful monkeys, similar to the guise of the salabhanjika, the ancient personification of feminine beauty, fertility and nature's abundance.
The sculptor has endowed the figure with an exceptionally soft and voluptuous physicality.
Her full, rounded face, small almond-shaped eyes and gently arcing brows complement a body conceived through subtle undulations rather than sharply articulated anatomical divisions. Flesh seems to swell and recede beneath the surface of the marble. Her low, relaxed centre of gravity concentrates the body's weight around the hips and thighs, while the turned feet and flexed right knee introduce a gentle sense of movement. This languorous naturalism gives the figure an immediacy that is at once earthly and transcendent.
Particularly exquisite is the profusion of jewellery cascading across her torso and thighs, its intricate carving providing a brilliant counterpoint to the broad, unbroken expanses of sensuously modelled flesh. Her elaborate coiffure gathers into a jewelled coil beside her right shoulder. The surviving attendant at her left raises his hand towards her, while a fragmentary figure once supported a lota beside her right hand, completing an intimate ensemble of ritual and courtly refinement.
Two remarkably close counterparts reinforce the exceptional position of the present sculpture: the surasundari formerly in the Reinhold H. and Ann Schüepp Collection and now in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich (inv. RVI 300), and another in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 69.247). All three share the same sophisticated orchestration of luxuriant ornament against remarkably full, yielding bodies. Their compelling sensuality was integral to their sacred purpose: images of ideal beauty whose auspicious and irresistible presence enriched the temple exterior and heralded the divine realm within.
The sculptor has endowed the figure with an exceptionally soft and voluptuous physicality.
Her full, rounded face, small almond-shaped eyes and gently arcing brows complement a body conceived through subtle undulations rather than sharply articulated anatomical divisions. Flesh seems to swell and recede beneath the surface of the marble. Her low, relaxed centre of gravity concentrates the body's weight around the hips and thighs, while the turned feet and flexed right knee introduce a gentle sense of movement. This languorous naturalism gives the figure an immediacy that is at once earthly and transcendent.
Particularly exquisite is the profusion of jewellery cascading across her torso and thighs, its intricate carving providing a brilliant counterpoint to the broad, unbroken expanses of sensuously modelled flesh. Her elaborate coiffure gathers into a jewelled coil beside her right shoulder. The surviving attendant at her left raises his hand towards her, while a fragmentary figure once supported a lota beside her right hand, completing an intimate ensemble of ritual and courtly refinement.
Two remarkably close counterparts reinforce the exceptional position of the present sculpture: the surasundari formerly in the Reinhold H. and Ann Schüepp Collection and now in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich (inv. RVI 300), and another in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 69.247). All three share the same sophisticated orchestration of luxuriant ornament against remarkably full, yielding bodies. Their compelling sensuality was integral to their sacred purpose: images of ideal beauty whose auspicious and irresistible presence enriched the temple exterior and heralded the divine realm within.