
Dora Tan
Head of Sale, Specialist
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HK$80,000 - HK$120,000
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Head of Sale, Specialist

International Director

International Specialist

Cataloguer
西藏或蒙古 十九世紀 皮質彩繪五佛法冠
This five petal crown represents the Five Tathagatas, or Buddhas of the Five Directions: Amitabha, Vairocana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava and Amoghasiddhi. Worn during ritual empowerments that transmute defilements into purity, the crown symbolizes the practitioner as a pure and perfect being in a likeness akin to the Buddha.
Believed to have derived from wooden blade-shaped lobes from India, as indicated on a late 7th or early 8th century stone sculpture of Vajrapani (Huntington & Bangdel, Circle of Bliss, 2003, no. 52), the five-fold floral crown became a standard motif in the 13th and 14th centuries in Tibet. The earliest known iteration of this type appears on a preserved lobe dated to the 12th/13th century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997.152). Compare with a closely related example featuring painted buddhas framed within a gilded repoussé border, in the Royal Ontario Museum (HAR 77528).
Provenance:
Private California Collection, acquired in Hong Kong in the 1980s