An exquisite gilt bronze Vajrabhairava Mongolia or China, circa 18th century

meticulously cast in numerous sections to portray the Diamond Terrifier, the wrathful manifestation of the bodhisattva Manjushri, stepping in pratyalidha on a lotus pedestal and framed by an arch of fire, with thirty four hands shimmering with a panoply of ritual implements including a flayed elephant skin hanging down his back, his sixteen legs trampling all manner of exotic animals, birds and demons, with fearsome heads glaring in all directions with the face of Manjushri, the Lord of Wisdom, appearing above out of the flaming hair, Vajrabhairava bull's head bellowing at his prajna Vidyadhara, with fangs bared to confront the ignorance and fear of death that are his role to destroy

Extremely good condition with minimum wear to the gilding, some original pigment remaining. The base has a small crack in the gilding between the prostrate figures. The base plate missing. No restoration.
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The bronze belongs to a group of statues that appear to include certain Nepalese, as well as Chinese or Mongolian stylistic elements. All are of very fine quality, some gilded and some un-gilded, and have been dated to either the seventeenth or eighteenth century. While the Vajrabhairava is not Nepalese it does have certain stylistic similarities to seventeenth and eighteenth century Newar bronzes, cf. the jewelry, lotus petals of the pedestal and pierced halo of a Nepalese Sadbhuja Manjushri bearing a Newari inscription dating it to 1727, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 389, no. 106F, and the jewelry design of a Shiva dated 1691, see ibid, p. 283, no. 103F. This may suggest a Newar influenced atelier outside Nepal, possibly in one of the bronze casting centers such as Dolonnor, supplying the rather large demand for Buddhist images in Mongolia and China in the eighteenth century. A parcel gilt Chakrasamvara in the Berti Aschmann Foundation at the Rietberg Museum has a very similar throne base and flaming arch, and the character of the reclining figures on the pedestal, depicted with an allusion to Newar aesthetics, are similar to the Vajrabhairava, see Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment; The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg Z¿rich, Zurich, 1995, p. 169, no. 112. An un-gilded Begtse in The Prince Ukhtomsky Collection at The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg, currently dated like the Aschmann Chakrasamvara to the seventeenth century, again has a very similar pedestal and flaming arch, see Marylin M. Rhie & Robert A.F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion; The Sacred Art of Tibet, London, 1991, p. 307, no 120. A fine gilded Hayagriva in the Mus¿e Guimet, dated to the eighteenth century, is stylistically very close with a flaming arch of different shape but similar in style and with a similar lotus pedestal, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 455, no. 125F. A Chakrasamvara in the Qing Palace, Beijing, is related to the Vajrabhairava in terms of stylistic detail although it is a larger image and made in part from repouss¿ panels, but has a similarly designed flaming arch and related jewelry shapes, see The Palace Museum, Cultural Relics of Tibetan Buddhism Collected in the Qing Palace, Forbidden City Press: The Woods Publishing Company, Hong Kong, 1992, p. 92, no. 64.