Footnotes

片岩佛陀像
犍陀羅 約三世紀

Here, an accomplished mason has carved a Buddha of arresting stillness. The 'Enlightened One' calmly gazes downward. The hem of his alluring, pleated robe is gathered in a soft roll clutched by his left hand to keep the garment tort and in place. So adroit is the sculptor's convincing portrayal of weight and balance that one can almost imagine the Buddha shift his weight from the slight contrapposto to step forward, as if contemplatively pacing the Uruvela forest, lost in his newly realized transcendental consciousness. Carved into the plinth below his feet, we are reminded of how the Buddha achieved his spiritual quest: seated in meditation underneath the bodhi tree, with two disciples venerating him on either side.

At the crossroads between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the Buddhist monasteries of the ancient region of Gandhara were pivotal to Buddhism's early spread. Representative of Gandhara's cosmopolitan culture, carved stone monuments, and iconic statuary were created for Buddhist patrons by artists trained in Greco-Roman sculptural traditions. The present work is one such example. Most telling of its Western inheritance is the emphasis on naturalism, seemingly observed from real-life models, seen in the figure's balance and the slackening folds of the heavy monastic robe. Gandharan representations served as prototypes for the earliest Buddha images in China, via Central Asian trade routes. This form of the Buddha, wearing a thick robe covering both shoulders, and grasping a hem in his left hand, is seen in seated images originally incorporated into mortuary practices of the contemporaneous Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE), such as a carving above the doorway of Mahao Tomb l in Leshan, Sichuan Province. Similar examples of this iconic Gandharan trope are held in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Zwalf, Gandharan Sculpture, vol. I, London, 1996. p.81; also p.9, no.1; Behrendt, The Art of Gandhara, New York, 2007, p.51, no.40; respectively).

Provenance
Private Belgian Collection