A GILT-BRONZE GROUP DEPICTING VAJRABHAIRAVA AND VAJRAVETALIMongolia or Tibeto-Chinese, 18th Century

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 13085.

Private California Collection.
Sotheby's New York, 21st September 2007, lot 52.

Good overall condition. With accretion and wear to polychrome overall. Some scattered bending to ritual implements. Repousse hair element slightly loose.
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This intricate bronze belongs to a group of works that appear to include certain Nepalese, as well as Chinese or Mongolian stylistic elements. All are highly refined, some gilded and some un-gilded, and have been dated to either the 17th or 18th Century. While this Vajrabhairava is not Nepalese it does have certain stylistic similarities to Newar bronzes of the same era, compare the jewelry, lotus petals of the pedestal and pierced halo of a Nepalese Shadbhuja Manjushri bearing a Newari inscription dating it to 1727, in Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 389, no. 106F, and the jewelry design of a Shiva dated 1691, ibid., p. 283, no. 103F. This may suggest a Newar influenced atelier outside Nepal, possibly in one of the bronze casting centers such as Dolonnor, supplying the rather large demand for Buddhist images in Mongolia and China in the 18th Century.

A parcel-gilt Chakrasamvara in the Berti Aschmann Foundation at the Rietberg Museum has a very similar throne base and flaming arch, and the character of the reclining figures on the pedestal, depicted with an allusion to Newar aesthetics, are similar to the Vajrabhairava, see Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment; The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg Zürich, Zürich, 1995, p. 169, no. 112. An un-gilded Begtse in The Prince Ukhtomsky Collection at The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg, currently dated like the Aschmann Chakrasamvara to the 17th Century, again has a very similar pedestal and flaming arch, see Marylin M. Rhie & Robert A. F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion; The Sacred Art of Tibet, London, 1991, p. 307, no 120.

A fine gilded Hayagriva in the Musée Guimet, dated to the 18th Century, is stylistically very close with a flaming arch of different shape with a similar lotus pedestal, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, p. 455, no. 125F. A Chakrasamvara in the Qing Palace, Beijing, is related to the Vajrabhairava in terms of stylistic detail although it is a larger image and made in part from repoussé panels, but has a similarly designed flaming arch and related jewelry shapes, see The Palace Museum, Cultural Relics of Tibetan Buddhism Collected in the Qing Palace, Hong Kong, 1992, p. 92, no. 64.