TIBETO-CHINESE, 18TH CENTURY

Tibetan Buddhism was patronized by the Qing emperors, particularly the Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722) and his grandson, the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795), both for personal and political reasons, resulting in a surge in the production of Buddhist sculpture and painting. During the reign of Qianlong, the artisans of the Beijing workshops emulated sculpture from different periods and geographic areas, using as models the bronzes given as gifts from Tibetan dignitaries to the Qing court. Examples of Pala-style sculpture, from ninth-twelfth century Northeastern India, as well as seventeenth-eighteenth century works reviving that earlier style, still remain in The Palace Museum Collection; see, for example, a near identical bronze figure of Saraswati, also in the Pala Revival style, illustrated in Buddhist Statues of Tibet – The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, p. 199, cat. no. 190.