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A BRONZE FIGURE OF KSHITIGARBHA CHINA, QING DYNASTY, 18TH-19TH CENTURY 19 5/8 in. (49.8 cm.) high
The present work is part of a small group of nearly identical representations of the bodhisattva, Kshitigarbha (in some cases, the bodhisattva has been misidentified as Maitreya). Two examples are known from museum collections; one, illustrated by C. Pascalis in La Collection Tibétaine, Hanoi, 1935, pl. 7, resides in the National Museum of Vietnamese History (formerly the Musée Louis Finot) in Hanoi, having entered the collection at the turn of the twentieth century. Another example is in the collection of the Museum voor Volkenkunde, Rotterdam, illustrated by H. Kreijger in Godenbeelden uit Tibet, Amsterdam, 1989, p. 40, fig. 20. Another example was sold at Christie’s New York, 23 June 1983, lot 420, and more recently, nearly identical bronzes were sold at Beijing Hanhai, 10 May 2014, lot 2182 and at Bonhams Hong Kong, 27 October 2018, lot 97.
Stylistically, the work corresponds to Nepalese conventions from the early Malla period (circa 1201-1478), although the rich, dark metal, crisp casting details, and the lacquered face are all indicative of an eighteenth or nineteenth-century Chinese Revival work. The concepts of archaism and revivals of earlier styles were common in every media of Chinese art from as early as the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE); written sources explain how ritual bronzes from the Shang dynasty (1700-1000 BCE), already objects of great age during the Song dynasty, were imitated to meet the voracious demands of antique collectors. This trend continued into the Qing dynasty, and was prevalent in the area of Buddhist sculpture. Images gifted to the Qing emperors by Tibetan dignitaries still reside in the Qing Court Collection in Beijing, as do images cast in imitation of these earlier works. See, for example, a seventh or eighth century Kashmiri bronze figure of Buddha, illustrated in Classics of the Forbidden City: Tibetan Buddhist Sculptures, Beijing, 2009, p. 118, no. 53, and an almost identical eighteenth century Chinese imitation of the same work, illustrated on ibid., p. 128, no. 63. As molds were used for casting such images, often several examples could be cast before the mold deteriorated, perhaps explaining why there are several known examples of the present work.