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Shakyamuni Buddha Attended by Bodhisattvas, Monks, and Apsaras--A Casing Slab from a Buddhist Monument
Shakyamuni Buddha Attended by Bodhisattvas, Monks, and Apsaras--A Casing Slab from a Buddhist Monument

Shakyamuni Buddha Attended by Bodhisattvas, Monks, and Apsaras--A Casing Slab from a Buddhist Monument

CultureChinese
Dateearly 6th century C.E.
MediumBuff sandstone
DimensionsOverall: 27 3/4 × 25 inches (70.49 × 63.5 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number51-27
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • 204
Collections
Exhibition History

Art in Asia and the West, San Francisco Museum of Art, October-December 1957.

The Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 1-May 20, 1984; Art Institute of Chicago, June 30-August 26, 1984; Brooklyn Museum of Art, November 1, 1984-February 10, 1985.

Gallery Label
The principal image represents the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni.  Scantily clad ascetics and robed bodhisattvas attend the Buddha on either side.  The upper left corner depicts the birth of the Buddha from his mother's side through a sleeve.  The opposite corner shows the first steps of the infant.  The donors below, being only partly finished, reveal the sculptor's technique of engraving first the main outlines of the figures and then progressively cutting them away.  The slim attenuation of the figures with angular limbs, the almost grotesque articulation of the faces with long faces, deep cheek and eyebrow planes, long geometric noses, broad flat chins, and exaggerated eyelids with pronounced slits mark a distinctive local school which flourished around Xian during the first quarter of the sixth century.  Handling of the drapery in terms of reiterated parallel pleats is also characteristic.
Provenance

Xian, Shaanxi Province, China;

 

With J. T. Tai (1911-1992), Shanghai, China and New York, by March 1949;

 

Acquired from J. T. Tai by C. T. Loo & Co., New York, NY, stock no. 46300, March 1949-1951 [1];

 

Purchased from C. T. Loo & Co. by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1951.

 

NOTES:

 

[1] C. T. Loo and Frank Caro archive, Musée Guimet, Paris, copy of stock card in NAMA curatorial files.

 

Published References

“Recent Acquisitions” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America.  VI (1952), 70, fig. 20 (repro.).

Silva-Vigier, Life of Buddha (1955), pl. 105 (repro.).

Art in Asia and the West.  San Francisco Museum of Art.  Oct 28-Dec 1, 1957.  Catalog, frontispiece illustration, also no. 14b, p. 32 (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 184 (repro.).

Saburō Matsubara, Zōtei Chūgoku Bukkyō chōkoku shi kenkyū : toku ni kondōbutsu oyobi sekkutsu zōzō igai no sekibutsu ni tsuite no ronkō (Chinese Buddhist Sculptures). (Tōkyō : Yoshikawa Kōkunkan, Shōwa 41 [1966]), 33, fig. 33 (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna, and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. II, Art of the Orient. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 29 (repro.).

Laurence Sickman, “Monsters and Elegance: Nine Centuries of Chinese Sculpture” Apollo, special issue for the Asian art collection in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Vol. XCVII, no. 133 (March 1973), 35, no. 5 (repro.).

Pratapaditya Pal, Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian art (Los Angeles, CA : Los Angeles County Museum of Art, c1984), 79, Cat. 21 (repro.).

Takeuchi Yoshinori, ed. Buddhist Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 295, fig. 18, 21 (repro.).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 303 (repro.).

Matsubara Saburō 松原三郎, Chūgoku Bukkyō chōkoku shiron 中国仏教彫刻史論 (Tōkyō : Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, Heisei 7 1995), Plate Vol. I, 184b (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 314, fig. 96 (repro.).

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