A large Pala-revival copper alloy figure of Kshitigarbha, Vietnam or China, 19th / early 20th century

The bodhisattva Kshitigarbha is depicted here standing in a flexed posture (tribhanga) holding a fruit in his lowered left hand. The figure is cast in a number of parts in a style evoking early Nepalese standing sculpture, with a color combination resembling the eighteenth-century chocolate-bronze statues with painted bodies bearing Qianlong marks. The face and hair are painted in the Tibetan manner, but the color of the pigments and method of application differ considerably from Tibetan or Chinese traditions. A standing figure in the Museum voor Volkenkunde Rotterdam, published in Hugo Kreijger, Godenbeelden uit Tibet, Den Haag, 1989, p. 40, fig. 20, and another in the National Museum of Vietnamese History, formerly the Musee Louis Finot, illustrated by Claude Pascalis, La Collection Tibetaine, Hanoi, 1935, pl. 7, are similar in sculptural style, jewelry style, size, and execution as to suggest the use of matrices, allowing multiple casts of the model. A copper alloy Chakrasamvara has recently come to light, that has a similar sharply pointed jewelry style and closely related hair and face coloring, sold in our Paris room, 21st December 2023, lot 170. The statue has a fourteen-character inscription incised on the base reading 'produced by the foreign factory/company of bronze casting in the 'Shi chuan' (sic) of Hanoi province, on the eighth year of Duy Tân', corresponding to 1914. The inscription thus suggests there was an early 20th century foundry in Vietnam that was casting Vajrayana Buddhist bronzes with painted details in the Tibeto-Chinese Qing style, which, due to stylistic similarities, may also have been the origin of this standing bodhisattva and the example in the Museum voor Volkenkunde Rotterdam. Others in this local Vietnamese style may possibly include a dark bronze Vajrabhairava with painted details, formerly in the Pan-Asian Collection, with similarly pointed crown style, see The Sensuous Immortals, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1977, cat. no. 111b, compare especially the shape of the topmost crown of the Vajrabhairava with the crown of the Chakrasamvara. And this intriguing style group might explain such anomalies as the explicit erotica displayed in the relatively common Tibeto-Chinese style bronze boxes and covers such as one example at Christie’s Amsterdam, 14th June 1995, lot 127, described as Chinese, 17th/18th century.