A large hardstone-inlaid gilt-copper alloy figure of Avalokiteshvara, Tibet, circa 14th century

Sotheby's New York, 22nd March 1989, lot 425a. 

Avalokiteshvara is depicted with both hands holding the stems of lotus flowers. The richly gilded figure is adorned with jewelry inset with multi-colored gems and crystals. The bodhisattva wears a plain diaphanous dhoti, a sacred cord (yajnopavita) over his right shoulder and a scarf falling to each side with jewelled pendants at the ends, and stands with a gentle sway of the hips (abhanga) on a lotus base over a scrolling vine support.

This elegant figure is typical of the Nepalese sculptural style that was popular with Tibetan patrons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Compare a similar standing bodhisattva with inset gems and crystal, the scarf with jewelled pendants, and a foliate stem beneath the lotus pedestal, in Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, vol. II, Hong Kong, 2001, fig. 256B. Compare also the Avalokiteshvara Padmapani sold in these rooms, 18th September 2023, lot 103, also with a lotus stem beneath the pedestal. The source of the style is evident in fourteenth-century Nepalese standing figures cast in the Kathmandu Valley, such as the gilt-copper Avalokiteshvara in the Berti Aschmann Collection, illustrated in Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment: The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg Zürich, Zürich, 1995, cat. no. 51. 

The foliate stem projecting from the base of the statue indicates the bronze is from a larger setting. The figure is likely to have been one of a pair of standing bodhisattvas fitted into a separately cast pedestal by means of the projecting foliate stem, and formed a triad with a Buddha or Tathagata at the center, probably a large seated figure with the two bodhisattvas standing on either side. This arrangement is a common theme in early central Tibetan painting, such as a set of three thirteenth-century Nepalese-style Tibetan thangkas depicting seated Tathagatas with attendant bodhisattvas standing on individual lotus stems emerging from the throne, see Steven Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet, New York, 1998, cat. nos 36A, B and C. The composition of the thangkas gives context to this standing gilt-bronze and an indication of the scale of a central Buddha figure in relation to the attendant bodhisattvas. A fifteenth-century central Tibetan gilt-copper Akshobhya Buddha provides evidence of such a triad in this period, see Jeff Watt, David Pritzker et al., Zhiguan Museum of Fine Art, Beijing, 2018, pp 200-213, where the Buddha’s pedestal is cast with additional lotus flowers and stems at either side with slots to facilitate the attachment of a pair of attendants, probably standing bodhisattvas like this figure of Avalokiteshvara.