A large polychrome stucco fresco fragment of apsara with flower basket China, Yuan / Ming dynasty

finely executed depicting a female apsara, or Buddhist heavenly attendant, flying against waves with unusual long-feathered bird-wings, arching upwards and back with her arms stretched out above her head to turn over a large basket of flowers, the varied blossoms cascading down against the fluttering skirts of her elaborate flowing gown, her bare breasts adorned with flaring jeweled necklaces and her chubby face with delicate features framed by an ornate foliate crown, accented with further fluttering ropes of jewels and ribbons overall

The fresco fragment squared off and in fair condition overall. Abrasion, losses, cracks and holes throughout, but mainly confined to particular areas such as the cracks and abrasion in the rain of flowers and water in the lower center and lower left, clearly visible in the catalogue illustration. The upper half of the fragment in better condition overall with much of the raised gesso work intact. Losses to the lower left, upper left and right corners. Cracks running along most of the upper border, clearly visible in the catalogue illustration. A hole just beside her left hip, approximately one inch in diameter, with fill and color to match, again clearly visible in the catalogue illustration. Otherwise no major intervention overall. The muted coloring faded to an elegant tone. The whole mounted, framed and glazed.
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The present wall painting fragment is exceptionally sophisticated in the handling of the swirling lines and the overall pictorial composition. The details of the flora and fauna is especially noteworthy and in its style it closely follows earlier mural paintings of birds and flowers, such as that found on the north mural from the tomb of Wan Gongshu, dated to 838 A.D., illustrated in Sekai bijutsu taizenshu. Toyo hen, vol. 4, Tokyo, 1997, pls. 147-8. It is also rare to find a fresco painting where the composition is enhanced by molded decoration, which as seen on this piece is especially well preserved.

Tang mural paintings gave inspiration to the present piece and bearing prototypical similarities is a finely drawn section of murals of bodhisattvas in Cave 57, Mogao grottoes, from the early Tang dynasty, illustrated in Whitfield et. al., Cave Temples of Mogao. Art and History on the Silk Road, Los Angeles, 2000, pp. 37. See also the murals of bodhisattvas isolated against a plain ground, forming the backdrop to the famous stucco triad groups in Cave 328, dedicated between 683-704 A.D., ibid., pp. 80-81. The crowded seamlessness of the murals of the 6th century, in which pictorial elements overlap and flow into each other in shimmering masses, develops through the 8th and 9th centuries into a more isolated composition displaying more virtuoso control of figures and its surroundings. This piece appears to follow this late Tang trend.

Two other fresco fragments from this unusual and rather rare series, also depicting apsaras with various attributes including a wrapped pipa lute, a flute, a sheng bamboo pipe, and winged lion, were sold from the collection of Mr. & Mrs. Nathan C Armitage, Spartanburg, South Carolina, in these rooms, 22nd March 2001, lots 19 and 21, and previously Parke-Bernet New York, 18th and 19th October 1945, lot 437 (as a matched pair). Unfortunately, the original location of the temple from whence these particularly intriguing frescoes came is now unknown.

The anonymous painter of this temple fresco has incorporated the extremely rare feature of bird-of-prey feathered wings on the figures, which was not previously associated with these heavenly attendants within the Buddhist iconography. Wall frescoes prior to the Yuan dynasty consistently depict apsaras as slender maidens floating effortlessly amid fluttering ribbons, as may be found within cave complexes in Dunhuang and Yungang. In fact, these winged elements appear likely to have been imported through Islamic manuscripts of the late Abbasid and early Ilkhanid periods, where winged genie derived from Christian angels are incorporated in illuminations during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, during the Yuan empire of the Mongol khans. Alternatively, Central Asian Turkic or Khitan motifs of human-headed birds or kalavinka, which are depicted on textiles, ceramics and metalwork of that similar period, particularly on Buddhist sarcophagus-form reliquaries and their textile wrappings, may also have found their way into Buddhist iconography during the integration of those peoples during the Song and Yuan dynasties.

See also a large section of three bodhisattvas, executed in the 15th century for the Chingliang Si (Temple of Pure Coolness) in Xingdiang xian, Hebei province, now preserved in the British Museum, London, illustrated in W. Zwalf, Art and Faith, London, 1985, pl. 327.