LIAO DYNASTY (AD 907-1125)

The present figure belongs to a corpus of small gilt-bronze figures of Buddhas and bodhisattvas with integral lotus bases, all dated to the Liao dynasty. Compare, for example, with a slightly larger example in the National Museum, Amsterdam, with a similarly treated crown, illustrated in Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Buddhist Sculptures in Overseas Collections, vol. 7, Beijing, 2005, p. 1299, as well as a small bodhisattva sold at Christie's New York in The Sublime and the Beautiful: Asian Masterpieces of Devotion, 20 March 2014, lot 1609. The present figure, however, is most closely related to a larger example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by Denise Leidy in Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 123, cat. no. 26. Leidy notes that such images of Vairochana likely formed the central figure of a Vajradhatu mandala (Diamond Realm), a tantric aspect of Buddhism developed in India in the preceding centuries. She also notes that the distinctive, tall crown with lotus embellishments, followed those worn by the Liao rulers.