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Anonymous (Ming dynasty or later) Pure Wisdom Bodhisattva
Sold for US$18,750 inc. premium
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Anonymous (Ming dynasty or later)
Ink and color on silk, framed and glazed, the bodhisattva supported by an elaborately rendered multi-level throne, reversed by a flaming mandorla beneath a parasol floating amid multi-colored tufts of cloud and smoke, the figure seated in dhyanasana, gently clasping a long-stemmed lotus and bearing a peaceful expression beneath her high chignon centered by three small jewels.
61 3/4 x 29 3/4in (157 x 75.6cm) sight
Footnotes
無款 清淨慧菩薩 設色絹本 鏡框
Provenance
by repute, purchased in San Francisco in the 1950s
The current lot was likely one of a set of images used for a 'Water-Land Assembly.' As Patricia Berger explains in The Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1994), 'of all the tantric rites introduced into China during the Tang, [the Water-Land Assembly] struck the most responsive chord in the hearts of Chinese Buddhists because it was designed to honor and sustain the dead (a major Confucian virtue)... An essential component of the rite was an elaborate suite of images, representing all the classes of beings in the Chinese universe,' (95). The image of the Qingjing Hui Pusa in the current lot is a deity described in the Yuanjiao Jing, a sutra regarded as apocryphal by scholars. This means paradoxically that despite its role in a ritual with tantric Indian roots, the figure depicted in this painting is a purely Han Chinese creation.
See Op. Cit, 95 no 26 for a Shakyamuni scroll created as part of a 'Water-Land Assembly' set at the Baoning monastery in Shanxi, the 'most famous of the suites' (96) dated to ca. 1460 and created to pray for the safety of the recently abducted Ming Yingzong emperor. Note the similarity to the present lot in the ornate throne, attire, and jeweled parasol floating in the sky as well as the overall composition of the image. A possibly later depiction of Yamantaka offered in these rooms also likely created for a water-land ritual shares the similarly-rendered blue and red flames encircling this deity-- see lot 6437 from sale 24263 of 28 June 2017.














