A rare stone head of Avalokiteshvara, Liao - Jin dynasty | 遼至金 石雕觀音首像

Compare a large painted wood head of Avalokiteshvara, depicted wearing a similarly styled diadem centered with a seated Amitabha on lotus against a large circular mandorla, dated to the 8th year of Dading, corresponding to 1168,  illustrated in Osvald Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to Fourteenth Century, New York, 1925, pl. 587. See also a pair of painted wood figures of standing Avalokiteshvara in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, dated to the 8th year of Mingchang (1195), adorned with an elaborate diadem in a similar style, published in Zhongguo meishu quanji. Wudai Song diaosu [The complete series of Chinese art. Five Dynasties and Song sculpture], vol. 5, Beijing, 1988, pl. 179; and a further painted stone example depicting the Purple-Bamboo Guanyin, from the Anyue Grottoes, Sichuan Province, illustrated in Angela Falco Howard et al., Chinese Sculpture, New Haven and London, 2006, fig. 4.26.