The identification of this finely-cast and richly-gilt bronze image remains enigmatic; with both arms crossed at the chest, the figure upon first inspection appears to represent Vajradhara, the primordial buddha. However, images of Vajradhara are typically represented holding vajras in each hand, or in some cases, holding the stems of lotus blossoms that support vajras at the shoulders. The present figure, however, holds the stems of lotus blossoms that do not emanate into any iconographical attribute, nor do they appear broken or missing anything. In all other aspects, the present figure has the appearance of a tathagata in the sambhogakaya form – that is, crowned and bejeweled like a bodhisattva.
With its wide, waisted lotus base, flowing drapery spilling onto the top of the base, and the figure’s exaggeratedly pinched waist, the present image most resembles images made during the Yuan dynasty, immediately preceding the canonized iconometry of the early Ming dynasty. With the rise of the Yuan dynasty in 1268, the Mongols had conquered almost all of Asia, from Korea in the northeast to Iran in the southwest, with incursions further west into the Middle East and the steppes north of the Caucuses. The ensuing hegemony saw the confluence of hundreds of different cultures into a short-lived but influential imperial lexicon. As it pertained to Buddhist art, the Mongols readily accepted parts of Tibetan Buddhism, and patronized various temples and building projects throughout greater China, Tibet, and Mongolia. Newari artists from the Kathmandu Valley were invited to travel to China, and they brought with them Newari conventions for depicting the vast pantheon of Buddhist gods. The influence on Buddhist sculpture from the Yuan dynasty has been well-documented; the grotto carvings at Feilaifeng, for instance, which exhibit Newari stylistic idioms, have been discussed by numerous scholars, and recent articles by Phillip Adams and Robert Bigler, among others, have explored the production of gilt-bronzes during this period, which display a syncretism of Newari and Chinese aesthetics.
The present bronze does exhibit some aspects that can be compared to the known corpus of Newari-Yuan gilt-bronzes, including the lotus base type, the treatment of the drapery, especially over the legs and onto the base, and the wide neck and charming facial features; compare the treatment of these aspects in the present work with a gilt-bronze figure of Manjushri dated to the fourteenth century illustrated by R. Bigler in Dynasties and Identities: Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist Art of the 13^th to 15^th Centuries, Zurich, 2017, p. 35, cat. no. 10. However, other features are distinctly unlike the Newari-Yuan figures, such as the pinched waist of the figure, which most closely resembles early Yongle-period gilt-bronzes made in the imperial workshops of Nanjing and Beijing, or the wide, bare shoulders of the present figure. The material itself, which beneath the gilding is a dark, ferrous bronze, is also inconsistent with works made by Newari artisans, and can be compared to works made in the southwestern regions of China such as Yunnan. It is possible the present bronze was made in the border regions between the semi-independent Dali kingdom, which during the Yuan dynasty was ruled by a local king with a Mongol governor, and Tibet, although more research is needed for an exact identification.