A LARGE AND RARE GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF MAITREYA

Description:

Mongolia, probably 18th cent,
H. 43 cm
Standing in slight tribhanga on a lotus base with his right hand in the vitarkamudra while the left is stretched along his body in the varadamudra, wearing dhoti fastened around the waist with a ribbon knotted to the front, sash across his hips, upavita, his face displaying a serene expression with downcast eyes below arched eyebrows that run into the nose-bridge, smiling lips, elongated earlobes, his blue coloured hairdo combed in a chignon topped with a ratna and set to the front with the minute stupa emblem, the reverse with three closed cavities for relic insertion, wood stand.
According to tradition from an old Bavarian private collection, assembled before 2007
Compare with a gilt-bronze figure of standing Maitreya, school of Zanabazar preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lent by the Harvard Art Museums / Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of John West, 1963 - Minor wear and traces of age