TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)

Stylistically, the present figure closely relates to a larger (81.3 cm.) limestone Buddha from Shaanxi province, with an inscription dating to AD 639, illustrated by O. Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, Bangkok, 1998 ed., pl. 365. Both figures are clad in simple robes exposing the chest and are seated in padmasana on similarly draped pedestals with right hands in abhaya mudra. Both figures also have in common a broad face, with crisply rendered features, beneath the tight whorls of hair and pronounced ushnisha.

Also compare a similar, though smaller (35 cm.), Tang-dynasty marble figure of Buddha, shown in similar pose on a draped pedestal base, illustrated in Zui To no Bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 1976, p. 44, no. 3-42.