A small gilt bronze figure of a Bodhisattva China, Tang Dynasty

finely cast standing in elegant tribhanga upon a waisted pedestal with lobed lotus lappets and stepped hexagonal base, all supported on a splayed squared stand with corner legs enclosing a barbed panel at the front, the figure dressed in long dhoti and swathed in fluttering scarves with the right hand holding up a long feathery whisk and the left hand pendent grasping an amphora bottle

Compare a similar bodhisattva image, with relatively large head and similar treatment of the robes, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated by Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p.501, fig.142F. A closely related figure, with hexagonal, rather than square, base and an inscription dated to AD 651, from the Stoclet Collection in Brussels, is illustrated by Osvald Siren, Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to Fourteenth Centuries, New York, 1925, pl.419B. Several figures in this posture bear images of Amitabha in the crown, while others bear only a main jewel in the tiara; although all appear to grasp the ambrosia-filled bottle, the waters of which will illuminate the laity with bodhi or awareness when sprinkled using a willow-leaf or a feathery fly-whisk. Compare also one formerly in the Nitta Collection, now in the collection of the National Palace Museum, included in the Museum's exhibition The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom, Taipei, 1987, pl.79, and another larger figure with similar tribhanga posture, ibid., pl.81