An early gilt bronze figure of a Bodhisattva China, Sui Dynasty, 7th Century

cast with separate lotus pedestal and oval nimbus, the deity standing elegantly with hip slightly thrust forward and the right leg bent beneath, dressed in long robes draped from the shoulder and adorned with ropes of jewels crossing through a ring in the center, the hands expressively held at the right shoulder and left hip, the benign face framed by high triple-foliate crown and the coiled hair surmounted by a flaming jewel, the separate nimbus cast with concentric oval rings and a band of flames interrupted by jewels beneath a peak of tiered garlands

The distinctive lotus base, the ropes of jewels intersecting through a ring, and the flattened incised treatment of the mandorla, all point to a late Sui dynasty date; compare a standing figure illustrated by Matsubara Saburo, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, Tokyo 1966, pl.227(d); also a figure from the Takenouchi collection, published in Osvald Sirén, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, New York, 1925, pl.282 C.