A GILT COPPER PEACOCK (VAHANA), TIBET OR TIBETO-CHINESE, 15TH CENTURY

Private Collection, France, before 1993 

Private Collection, Switzerland, 1993-2005

Collection Mr R. De Niet, Belgium, 2005-2015

David Weldon, Ian A. Alsop, Jan van Alphen, and Marcel Nies, Cast for Eternity: Bronze Masterworks from India and the Himalayas in Belgian and Dutch Collections, Antwerp, 2005, no.79 

This superb and extremely rare gilt copper peacock would have served as the mount of a now lost deity, in all probability a form of the Transcendental Buddha. Amitabha, whose vahana, or vehicle, is the peacock. The bird stands upright with its tail raised in a strutting display. The wings are lifted and outstretched and the head has an animated expression as if screeching with open beak and wide, staring, beady eyes. The downy feathers of the legs are finely delineated in engraved patterns, while the wings and the eyes of the tail are cast in relief, the whole sumptuously gilded. Two tendrils emerge from the sides of the lotus on which the bird stands, adding structural support to the sculpture. A triangular motif running along the lower rim of the pedestal beneath the single row of lotus petals – although a most uncommon decorative device – is seen on other fifteenth-century sculpture including Yongle mark and period statues in Tibetan monastery collections.  

Although the peacock was not an imperial commission, the quality and style of workmanship would suggest a similar fifteenth-century date for this lively sculpture. An aperture on the back of the bird has been converted for use as an incense burner but would most probably have originally received the lotus pedestal of the deity. 

RELATED LITERATURE 

Schroeder, Ulrich von, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Switzerland, 2001, pls. 352D-E. p. 1269 and pl.353D. p.1271