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A RARE BRONZE FIGURE OF GREEN TARA TIBET OR CHINA, YUAN DYNASTY, 14TH CENTURY 6 5/8 in. (16.8 cm.) high
The present figure of Tara can be associated stylistically with a small corpus of works carried out during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1369), when the influence of Nepalese sculpture was perhaps most salient in China and its environs, and which had a direct influence on the imperial Buddhist sculpture of the early Ming emperors Yongle (r. 1402-1424) and Xuande (r. 1425-1435).
During the Yuan period, the Mongols under Kublai Khan had extended their empire from the steppes of Mongolia across all of Asia and even into parts of Europe. Kublai Khan had been greatly influenced by his personal tutor, the Sakya lama Phakpa (1235-1280), and eventually installed him as the vassal ruler of Tibet, while simultaneously adopting Tibetan Buddhism as the official religion of the empire. As such, the patronization of Tibetan Buddhism throughout China greatly increased, and temples devoted to Tibetan Buddhism were constructed and filled with the necessary images of worship. It was Phakpa who summoned the legendary young Nepalese artist, Anige, to construct a golden stupa in Tibet, and at Kublai Khan’s summoning, Anige later traveled on to China, where he was eventually named the director of all artisan classes of the imperial workshops. Anige’s importance within the Yuan imperial court, as well as the influx of Nepalese craftsmen during this period, greatly influenced the Buddhist art of Yuan China.
There are only a few works of Tibetan-style Buddhist sculpture dated to the Yuan period known: a gilt-bronze figure of Manjushri dated 1305 and a bronze figure of Shakyamuni Buddha dated by inscription to 1336, both in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing and illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum-Buddhist Statues of Tibet, Hong Kong, 2003, p. 220, no. 209, and p. 221, no. 221, respectively. However, a number of uninscribed sculptures, through the work of researchers such as Robert Bigler and Phillip Adams, have been stylistically associated with the Nepalese and Tibetan-influenced Chinese Buddhist sculpture of this period. Such works include a magnificent gilt-bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara sold at Christie’s New York, 21 March 2008, lot 616 (illustrated below), as well as gilt-bronze figure of a bodhisattva illustrated by H. Kreijger in Godenbeelden uit Tibet, Amsterdam, 1989, p. 80, and numerous figures in R. Bigler’s Before Yongle: Chinese and Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist Sculpture of the 13th and 14th Centuries, Zurich, 2015. All of these works share similar bodily proportions, including a pinched waist over wide hips and narrowly-set, benevolent facial features within a wide and nearly rectangular face, and similar treatment of the lotus base, jewelry, and crown. The lotus base of the present figure can in particular be compared to the bronze figure of Shakyamuni Buddha in the Beijing Palace Museum dated to 1336: both bases display somewhat ovular lotus petals separated from the beaded rims at both top and bottom by a small area of undecorated space. The Beijing Palace Museum Shakyamuni and the present work also share an even, brownish patina that is uncharacteristic of Tibetan or Nepalese sculpture of this period.
Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 24544.