
Mark Rasmussen
International Director
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International Director
Four aspects make this piece rare among the surviving corpus of Gandharan devotional images. Firstly, it has a distinctive conical ushnisha, similar to a head from Taxila published in H. Ingholt, Gandharan Art in Pakistan, New York, 1957, no. 265. Secondly, the figure survives with both hands intact. Thirdly, the fingers of the right hand are joined by a thin plane of stone which can be interpreted as Buddha's webbed hand, an unusual mahalakshana (sign of a great man) also seen in Mathuran sculpture of the Kushan and Gupta periods. For instance, compare to a Buddha held in the Goverment Museum, Mathura (76.17) published in van Alphen (ed.), Tejas, New Delhi, 2007, p. 161.
Lastly, the chakra carved in his palm also appears on an early bronze sculpture of Buddha in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2003.593.1). Behrendt discusses this feature, with relation to a sculpture from Mathura dated 161 CE, as an example of interactions between the two earliest schools of Buddhist art (Behrendt, The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007, fig. 18 & no. 39, pp. 48-50). The cakra, webbed hand, and presumably conical ushinisha (tip now lost) can also be seen on a closely related example in the Museum fur Indische Kunst, Berlin (MIK I 31, see Doshi (ed.), Treasures of Indian Art: Germany's Tribute to India's Cultural Heritage, New Delhi, 1998, no. 11, p. 24)
Provenance:
Collection of a Prince, acquired before 1970
Christie's, New York, 20 March 2009, lot 1242
Property of a Private Trust