A RARE GILT-BRONZE OF A FOUR-ARMED FIGURE OF AN OFFERING GODDESS

Description:

Tibeto-Chinese, 18th c.
H. 17,8 cm
Standing with legs crossed on a separate cast lotus base, his four arms radiating around his body, each hands showing a from of the vitarkamudra, wearing dhoti tied around the waist by a ribbon knotted to the front, scarf draped around his shoulders with its streamers encircling the arms, bejewelled, his face displaying a serene expression with downcast eyes below arched eyebrows, elongated earlobes set with pierced ear-ornaments, his hair combed in a chignon and secured with a five-leaf tiara. Re-sealed.
Old European private collection assembled by repute in the 1980s, sold Christie's Amsterdam, 23.5.2006, lot 676 and bought by the present owner
Gilt-bronze plaques of this form, decorated with offering goddesses, adorned the stupa at the Densatil monastery
complex, as seen in the photographs taken by Pietry Francesco Mele when he accompanied Giuseppe Tucci on his 1948 expedition to Tibet. These are reproduced in Olaf Czaja and Adriana Proser, Golden Visions of Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, New York, 2014, pp. 38-39. For an example, see Han Shuli, Xizang yishu jicui [A
Treasury of Tibetan Art], Taipei, 1995, pl. 106.
Minor wear and traces of age