
Jing Wen
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€3,000 - €5,000
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Cataloguer

Global Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art

International Director

International Specialist

Head of Sale, Specialist
A POLYCHROMED RITUAL CROWN WITH THE FIVE PRESIDING BUDDHAS
TIBET, CIRCA 18TH CENTURY
西藏 約十八世紀 彩繪五方佛法冠
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).
Provenance:
Ashencaen and Leonov, London, 2000s