A LARGE STONE STELE DEPICTING VISHNU India, Karnataka, Hoysala period, 12th/13th Century

Osenat, Paris Fontainebleau, 19 January 2014, lot 97. 
Formerly in the collection of Musée Gantner, Belfort, France.
Purchased at SINO, Auxerre, France, 1967-68, by repute.

Wear, surface abrasions, staining and areas of heavy accretion throughout. Scattered chips and losses throughout. With protruding tang at bottom, as viewed, which is mounted to metal base.
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The elaborately carved temple bracket depicting Vishnu in his characteristic upright frontal stance as Preserver of the Universe. He carries his attributes conch, discus, mace and lotus in his four hands. He is richly bejeweled and stands on a lotus blossom carved upon the face of the plinth, flanked by diminutive figures of his consorts Sridevi and Bhudevi, also standing atop lotus blossoms. The apex of the bracket bears a kirttimukha from whose gaping jaws emanate the swirling waters of the cosmic ocean upon which Vishnu rests.

Described often as ‘ornate’ and ‘rococo’ the Hoysala style developed independently in the Deccan in the twelfth century. Displaying a unique admixture of Northern and Southern Indian artistic styles, Hoysala sculptures are characterized by deep carving and undercutting as seen in the present lot.  While the abundance of carving seen in Hoysala temples is encountered in Central and Western Indian monuments of the same period the delicacy of the carving and the attention lavished on minute detail is without parallel in any other phase of Indian art.

Vishnu is seen here in his form of Kesava which was popular with the Hoysala Dynasty. The sculpture’s weighty frame is given an additional dimension with embellishments – the overhanging locks of hair framing Vishnu’s face, his multiple layers of necklaces, festooned girdle. Indeed no part of the stone surface is left undecorated. For an even more elaborately carved sculpture of Vishnu as Kesava in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art see J. C. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, London, 1986, fig. 206, p. 265.

Bracket sculptures such as the present lot were produced in wide quantity and variety and were placed in rows ornamenting the outer walls of temples. For an example of the placement of such sculptures in the iconographic program of Hoysala temples see S. L. Huntingdon, The Art of Ancient India: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, New York, 1985, fig. 22.27, p. 560, depicting an outer wall of the Kesava Temple at Belur.