A carved stone head of a bodhisattva Sui dynasty | 隋 石雕觀世音菩薩頭像

A southern German private collection, by repute.

Acquired in an art fair held in the rooms of the Deutsches Museum, Munich, in the mid-1990s, by repute.

傳德國南部私人收藏

傳1990年代中期從慕尼黑德意志博物館中舉辦之藝術博覽會購入

Sumptuously carved with fleshy cheeks, broad arched brows and a large straight nose that leads the eye down to the plump lips, these features exemplify a crucial sculptural transition from the linear and structured depictions of bodhisattvas of the preceding Northern Qi (550-577) and Northern Zhou (557-581) periods to the fully rounded and fleshy forms of the Tang dynasty (618-907). Its oval face and idealized expression, which exude deep spirituality, display an early attempt at naturalism, while its richly carved crown with floral petals is reminiscent of the stylised aesthetic of the preceding dynasties.

The Sui dynasty unified China in 589 after a long period of cultural, political and military fragmentation, which began with the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 AD. Buddhism was seen as a means to unite the empire and consolidate dynastic power, hence Sui rulers began the construction of major religious buildings and commissioned Buddhist images. While stylistically Sui sculptures continue in the traditions established in the preceding dynasties, 'characteristics that were latent in the two preceding styles were brought to full blossom by Sui carvers' (Angela F. Howard, Chinese Sculpture, New Haven, 2006, p. 290). Osvald Sirén in ‘Chinese Marble Sculptures of the Transition Period’, BMFEA 1940, no. 12, p. 490, states that 'The observation of nature seems indeed to have increased as well as the mastery of the sculptural form'. The present head is characterized by features that harmonize the Sui dynasty’s emergent trend toward naturalism with the inherited idealized forms that conventionally conveyed the purity of Buddhist subjects. 

Compare a Sui dynasty polychrome and gild-decorated limestone standing figure of Bodhisattva with a full, oval face crowned by intricate diadems, discovered from Longxing si, Qingzhou, and illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy and Donna Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, fig. 13.