Footnotes

清乾隆 局部鎏金銅供瓶一對 六字篆書款

Expertly cast and embellished with finely incised decorations, this pair of square altar vases depicts Amitayus emerging from the bud of a winding lotus flower. Here, the Buddha of Immeasurable Life is enclosed within a lotus petal cartouche while surrounded by an assortment of auspicious symbols: the triple gem (triratna); ruyi-shaped clouds, ruyi scepters, and bats (fu) as signs of good fortune; and ring handles in the shape of elephant heads representing the homonym for peace (xiang). The latter motif, when combined with the word for vase (ping), forms the rebus, taiping youxiang, meaning, 'when there is peace, there is prosperity' (compare a blue and white bottle vase with similarly rendered bats and clouds, sold at Sotheby's, London, 11 May 2011, lot 74, as well as a pair of square bronze vases with a six-character mark and period of Qianlong, sold at Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 22 April 2021, lot 3605).

Located at the base of each vase is a six-character mark in seal script, 'Da Qing Qianlong Yu Zhi,' or 'Made by Imperial Order in the Qianlong reign of the Great Qing dynasty.' While such marks are rare even among imperial jade or glassworks, it is even more rare to find this on bronze vessels (for yuzhi-marked examples, see a ruby-red glass bowl and cover, sold at Christie's, Hong Kong, 30 November 2011, lot 3163, as well as two Tibetan Buddhist ritual conch shells, one sold at Christie's, New York, 11 March 2011, lot 118, and the other sold at Christie's, New York, 21 March 2012, lot 815). Based on both the mark and the depiction of the Buddha of longevity, it is likely that these vases were specially made in the imperial workshops as birthday celebration gifts, considering that the Qianlong emperor commissioned numerous Amitayus images in honor of his mother's birthday in 1752, 1762, and 1772 (see one such image of Amitayus, published in von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, 1981, p. 552, no. 158B). Furthermore, a Tibetan and Manchu inscription at the respective base and neck of each vase also suggests that they were intended for a Qing lamasery, either in Yonghegong or in one of the temples within the mountain retreat of Rehol.

Modelling himself on his erudite grandfather, the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722), the Qianlong emperor (1735-1796) actively gifted large groups of objects in foreign and domestic affairs as indication of the empire's prosperity. By the same token, objects inscribed in multiple languages of Manchu, Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian, either to commemorate a military achievement or to express filial piety, were also employed by the emperor to assert his legitimacy as both a devout Buddhist practitioner as well as a universal ruler. For examples of objects with multilingual inscriptions, see a lapis lazuli alms bowl (published by the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Masterpieces of Chinese Tibetan Buddhist Altar Fittings in the National Palace Museum, 1971, pp. 79-80, pl. 26), together with two multilingual steles dated to the Qianlong period in the Yonghegong lamasery (published in Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China, 2003, pp. 34-6).