RARE DIVINITÉ EN BRONZE PARTIELLEMENT DORÉ XIE-XIIE SIÈCLE | 十一至十二世紀 鎏金銅魁星踢斗立像 | A rare partial gilt-bronze figure of a deity, 11th/12th century

This remarkable figure is cast in a highly dramatic and vivacious pose. He seems to be running, with one leg on the ground and the other raised behind him, his right arm raised high and his left arm before him. His head is turned up and backwards contrasting with the direction his body and legs are moving. His dramatic facial expression with his bulging eyes and wide open mouth, his furrowed forehead with two stubby pointed horns, complements the dynamic pose.

Iconographically, this figure may represent the polestar deity Kui Xing, one of a host of embodied stars who is sometimes associated with the North Star, compare a small gilt-bronze figure of Kui Xing, dated to the Tang dynasty and in the Seattle Museum of Art, illustrated in Hai-Wai Yi-Chen. Chinese Art in Overseas Collections. Buddhist Sculpture, Taipei, 1990, p. 128, fig. 12, and also a bronze figure of Kui Xing dated to the Ming dynasty in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, published in Denise Patry Leidy and Donna Strahan, Wisdom Embodied. Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. 42.

In his facial expression, this figure may also be related to a small figure of the Guardian of the East, attributed to the Dali Kingdom and dated to the 11th/12th century, also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, published ibid., cat. no. 31. Furthermore, the patinated bronze of the present parcel-gilt figure shows a similar orange-brown patina to the figure of the Guardian of the East. Metallurgical analyses carried out on bronze figures from the Dali Kingdom by Paul Jett, Senior Conservator in the Freer Gallery and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institutions, Washington D.C., have revealed significant traces of arsenic, which gives the metal its characteristic colour, see Paul Jett, ‘Technologische Studie zu den vergoldeten Guanyin-Figuren aus dem Dali-Königreich’, Der Goldschatz der drei Pagoden, Zurich, 1991, pp 68-74.