A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF ELEVEN-HEADED AVALOKITESHVARA

The current work, depicting an eleven-headed, eight-armed emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, is executed in the iconographic form first described by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna during the second century CE. The form was later popularized in meditational texts by the Indian pandits Bhikshuni Shri and Jowo Atisha, and thereafter absorbed into the essential iconography of Vajrayana Buddhism. The overall proportions including the slim waist and wide hips, the rectangular ushnisha, the U-shaped sash which falls above the knees, and exuberant use of inlaid stone and glass lozenges are all indicative of the Newar idiom, prevalent throughout Central Tibetan ateliers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; while the square facial features and the wide lotus petals on the base of the sculpture are more commonly found in contemporaneous Tibetan sculpture.

Himalayan Art Resources (himalayanart.org), item no. 24461.