A small bronze figure of Amitabha Buddha, Liao dynasty

Japanese Private Collection.

This small finely cast figure of Amitabha is a rare example of a group of bronzes cast under the patronage of the Khitan Liao; all of which bear a very confident sculptural understanding of the human figure, eloquent vocabulary of drapery and distinctive elaborate lotus thrones. Compare a similar gilt-bronze buddha of the Liao Dynasty, the hands set in a different mudra, sold in these rooms, 21st September 2006, lot 122, from the collection of Muneichi Nitta, Japan, no.C.5-11. Another Amitabha figure is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, exhibited in The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom, Taipei, 1987, pl.94, also originally from the Nitta Group collection. Compare also the limited and equally rare group of bodhisattva figures produced in the same Khitan Liao workshop, illustrated in Saburo Matsubara, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, Tokyo, 1966, pl.302(d), and a Maitreya in the British Museum, illustrated in Wladimir Zwalf, Buddhism: Art and Faith, New York, 1985, no. 294, in which he affirms that the stylistic prototype (on a more massive scale) of this group is to be found within the Lower Huayan Temple, Datong, Shanxi province, dedicated in 1038 in what was the western capital of the Khitan Liao empire.