A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE DEPICTING THE CONFESSION BUDDHA SUVIKRANTA JINA Tibet, circa 17th Century

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 13067.

Private Swiss Collection.
Sotheby's New York, 21st September 2007, lot 45. 

A Tibetan inscription at the reverse identifies this figure as one of the thirty-five Buddhas of Confession, Suvikranta (Sanskrit) or Shintu Nampar Nonpa (Tibetan). The Buddhas of Confession represent the omnipresence of Buddha with the power to help sentient beings realize the nature of their sin. This example depicting Suvikranta is sculpted in an archaistic style and pays homage to the classic art of the post Gupta era Licchavi period (c. 300-879) sculpture of Nepal. The early Nepalese and Indian statues that were preserved in Tibetan monasteries were revered as the tangible link to the motherlands of the transmission of the Tibetan Buddhist faith in the seventh century. Thus the early sculpture was interpreted in such bronzes as the Suvikranta where the general character of the sculpture closely resembles these early statues; the large hooked nose and full and protruding lower lip are typical features of Licchavi art. Indeed the original Sanskrit text concerning the thousand Buddhas, which include the thirty-five Buddhas of Confession, is said to have reached Tibet in the seventh century, a time when Nepalese artists created some of the finest early sculpture extant in Tibet, the seventh century wooden carvings of the Jokhang, Lhasa.

What may be another from this series of thirty-five bronzes is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, certainly the same height and very similarly made, see Pratapaditya Pal, Art of Nepal, 1985, p. 117, no. S38. And for a fine gilt and painted Maitreya in The Nyingjei Lam Collection also displaying archaistic reference to Licchavi sculpture, see David Weldon & Jane Casey Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet, Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, p. 120, pl. 27.