清乾隆 局部鎏金銅尊勝佛母坐像

the three-headed, eight-armed goddess superbly cast seated on a double lotus pedestal in vajraparyankasana, carrying in the right hands a vishvavajra raised to the chest, Amitabha Buddha seated on a lotus, an arrow and the varada mudra, the left hands holding a noose with the tarjani mudra, the abhaya mudra, a bow and the nidana-kumbha vase of life, her three faces in meditative expression with eyes cast down, framed by large wheel-shaped earrings and wearing a diadem centred with a kirtimurka and seated Vairocana, the hair arranged in an elaborate high chignon, adorned in layered chains of jewellery and wearing a celestial scarf draped across the shoulders with billowing ends, the exposed skin of the goddess gilt, the base unsealed

傳法國私人收藏，收藏蒐集於1970年代

Large powerfully cast bronze images of Tibetan deities were commissioned at the Qianlong court for furnishing Imperial palaces, especially those temples of the Mountain Resort, the Summer Palace at Rehol. Examples still preserved at Chengde include a bronze figure of Amitayus seated on a lotus throne, similarly constructed as the current figure, with cold-gilded face, dated 1785, illustrated by Wang Jiapeng, Buddhist Art from Rehol. Tibetan Buddhist Images and Ritual Objects from the Qing Dynasty Summer Palace at Chengde, Taipei, 1999, pp.52-3, pl. 6.

See also a Central Tibetan prototype, a bronze figure of Ushnishavijaya from the late 17th/early 18th century, illustrated ibid., p.92, pl. 26. The current figure closely adheres to the earlier Central Tibetan example. It is similarly constructed with near-identical positioning of the iconography, crisply cast lotus base left ungilded, and sensitively rendered cold-gilded three heads, with the eight hands arranged in the same manner with their respective implements. For gilt-bronze figures of Ushnishavijaya in Western collections, see an 18th century Tibetan figure in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, illustrated www.himalayanart.org/items/77551, and a Chinese figure from the J.P.H.Y. collection, Belgium, illustrated by Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, pl. 157C.

Ushnishavijaya, 'Victorious Crown Ornament, the goddess of long-life, is one of three special long-life deities along with the Buddha Amitayus and White Tara. Together they are known as the Three Long-life Deities of Tantric Buddhism.. In the words of Jamyang Kyentse Wangpo (1820-1892), Ushnishavijaya is "the colour of an autumn moon; with three faces, white, yellow and blue and eight hands. Each face has three very large eyes. The first right hand holds a visvavajra, second a white lotus with Amitabha residing, third an arrow and the fourth in supreme generosity. The first left holds a vajra lasso, second a bow, third bestowing protection and fourth in meditative equipoise holding an auspicious nectar vase; complete with silks and jewel ornaments, seated in [vajra] posture. Within the outer circle of the stupa, on the right [side of the chaitya], above a moon is Avalokiteshvara with a body white in colour; the left hand holds a lotus. On the left [of the chaitya], above a sun is Vajrapani, blue; the left hand holds an utpala with vajra; standing in a peaceful manner and adorned with silks and jewels."

An Imperial thangka of Ushnishavijaya, commissioned as part of a set for the Xumifushou Temple, a replica of the Tashilhunpo of Tibet, the monastery of the Panchen Lama, built by the Qianlong Emperor to celebrate his seventieth birthday in 1780, was sold in these rooms, 7th April 2015, lot 3653. See also a thangka of Ushnishavijaya in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Cultural Relics of Tibetan Buddhism Collected in the Qing Palace, The Forbidden City Press, Hong Kong, 1992, pl. 19-1; and another thangka of Ushnishavijaya, illustrated in Asian Art Gallery, Chinese Imperial Patronage: Treasures from Temples and Palaces, Vol. II, London, 2005, pp. 106-7, pl. 40, where the authors point out that Rolpal Dorje, the National Preceptor under the Qianlong Emperor and supreme religious authority, dedicated the second floor of the temple to the cult of Ushnishavijaya, and that the largest and most frequent rituals were performed there by a contingent of fifty lamas.