A Female torso Sandstone Khmer, Baphuon Style

The well-modeled and superbly finished sculpture of a female deity, her youthful body with gently swelling breasts, the body narrowing to a slender waist contrasting the wide shoulders. She wears a diaphanous, finely pleated dhoti rising at the back and dipping forward to below the navel and knotted at the front, one end turned up in a ‘fish tail’, further secured with a decorative sash worn low on her hips and tied at the front. No identifying attributes remain.

Paul Mallon, Paris, thereafter Adolphe Stocklet, Brussels, thereafter Raphael Stora, New York, 1939.

Sculpture of India, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 1939
The Art of Greater India, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1950
Paintings and Sculptures from the Albright Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1961
The Nude in Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1964
Ancient Cambodian Sculpture, Asia House Gallery, New York, 1969
Masterpieces of World Art from American Museums, Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, and National Museum, Kyoto, 1976

Vassar College, Sculpture of India, Catalogue of the Exhibition, 1939, Cat. 22
The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Andrew C. Ritchie (ed.) Catalogue of the Paintings and Sculpture in the Permanent Collection, Buffalo, 1949, pp. 126-127
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art of Greater India, Catalogue of the Exhibition, 1950, Cat. 149
Vancouver Art Gallery, The Nude in Art, Catalogue of the Exhibition, 1964, Cat. 124
Sherman Lee, Ancient Cambodian Sculpture, New York, 1969, Cat. 19, p. 105
Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, and National Museum, Kyoto, Masterpieces of World Art from American Museums, 1976, Catalogue of the Exhibition, Cat. 66

This style of sculpture derives its name from the temple-mountain of the Baphuon, one of the most ambitious constructions undertaken in the Angkor complex by the Khmer monarch Udayadityavarman II in the eleventh century. Compared to the monumental sculptures of the preceding Koh Ker style of the tenth century, Baphuon images were created in a slightly reduced scale. The distinguishing feature of these sculptures is a fluid attenuated line with great care taken towards attaining perfect harmony and balance of form. With their restrained elegance and soft modeling, Baphuon sculptures are imbued with an inner strength and are amongst the most appealing of Khmer works of art.

A definitive stylistic innovation of the Baphuon period was in the treatment of the garments on both male and female deities depicted curving from a high back to fall low at the front revealing the navel. The belt was initially plain, but developed into a more ornamental detail and various patterns and suspended pendants were introduced. The incised pleats of the garment bear traces of gilding. Compare the form and the fine polish with a more complete female figure in the collection of the National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh; see M. Giteau, Khmer Sculpture and the Angkor Civilization, New York, 1966, cat. 7, p. 203.