NEPAL, 11TH-12TH CENTURY

This small and early image likely dates to the Thakuri period of Nepalese art, referred to as the transitional period between the earlier Licchavi styles and the fully developed Malla period style. The image depicts a youthful form of the bodhisattva, Manjushri, seated with his right hand extended in the boon-granting abhayamudra and holding a small seed or fruit and the left holding the stem of a lotus which blooms at his shoulder. The iconography and manner of ornamentation, including the tiger-claw necklace and beaded sacred thread, follow other known examples from the transitional period of Nepalese sculpture; compare, for example, with a bronze figure of a youthful Manjushri in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 1978.394.1). The work can also be compared to a very rare silver figure of Manjushri, originally in the Nyingjei Lam Collection illustrated by D. Weldon in The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, p. 70, fig. 41, and sold at Bonhams Hong Kong, 7 October 2019, lot 808 for HK$ 1,250,625 (approx. US$160,462). The base type, consisting of a waisted double-lotus with vertical stamen emerging at the top, is also typical of the period; see, for example, a gilt-bronze image of Ratnasambhava in the John and Berthe Ford Collection, illustrated on Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 73840.