Description
A LARGE ANDESITE BASIN WITH FOUR DEITIES, INDONESIA, CENTRAL JAVA, 9TH CENTURY
Two male and two female standing deities support a lotus-shaped water basin. The figures wear elaborate crowns and jewelry, the goddesses are bare-breasted.
Provenance: Baron Alex Torri, Italy. An Italian private collector, acquired from the above between 1998-2002.
Condition: Extensive weathering, wear and ersoion, some losses. Overall fully consistent with the age and size of this statue.
Weight: 99 kg
Dimensions: Height 73.5 cm
The present statue is almost certainly from Borobudur or a related temple site, such as Sewu or Ngawen in Central Java. Built by the Shailendra dynasty around 825 CE, Borobudur is one of the greatest Buddhist monuments of all time, having one of the largest and most complete ensembles of Buddhist narrative relief panels in the world. Structured as a mandala of stacked platforms representing the three planes of existence in Mahayana cosmology (the world of desire, the world of forms, and the world of formlessness), Borobodur invites pilgrims circumambulating its didactic panels and sculpture to shuck the trappings of their perceived reality and realize their true inherent formlessness.