A SMALL GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF BUDDHA, SIXTEEN KINGDOMS PERIOD

This portable gilt-bronze statue of Shakyamuni represents one of the classic images of early Chinese Buddhist sculpture, and is one among a series of the earliest Chinese figures to incorporate the new iconography from votive images in India executed in the Gandharan and Guptan style. Among the largest and most impressive of these figures is the famous Buddha figure, dated 338, from the Avery Brundage Collection and now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in René-Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Sculpture: The Avery Brundage Collection, Tokyo, 1974, pl. 19.

A closely related gilt-bronze figure can be found in the Kuboso Memorial Museum of Art, illustrated in The Art of China: One Man's Eye, Kuboso Memorial Museum of Art, Izumi, 1984, cat. no. 90. Another similar example of larger size is illustrated in Arts of the Six Dynasties, Osaka Municipal Museum of Fine Art, Osaka, 1975, cat. no. 3-151. Compare a similar figure from the collections of Sato Gengen and Sakamoto Gorō, respectively, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 5th October 2016, lot 3201.