AN IMPORTANT GILT-COPPER FIGURE OF PRAJNAPARAMITA Nepal,... Lot 23

AN IMPORTANT GILT-COPPER FIGURE OF PRAJNAPARAMITA Nepal, 16th c. H.17 cm (o.S.) Seated in vajrasana with her principle hands showing varadamudra and vitarkamudra, both other hands raised holding ratna and manuscript, wearing sari tied around the waist with a belt, the buckle set with beads, scarf draped around her shoulders, jewellery set with mainly turquoise beads, her face displaying a serene expression with downcast eyes below arched eyebrows that run into the nose-bridge, raised third eye at her forehead, elongated earlobes with ear ornaments, her hair combed in a chignon, secured with tiara decorated with a pair of pattras and swaying ribbons towards the end and a flaming halo behind her head, the base with two pins for attachment to the lotus base. Wood stand. Old South German private collection, acquired in the early 1990s Prajnaparamita is the personification of Buddhist wisdom in divine female form, manifest in the eponymous ‘Perfection of Wisdom’ Prajnaparamita sutra. Although the sutra is ubiquitous in the performance of Buddhist studies and meditation practice in the Himalayan region, Nepalese sculptural representations of the deity are extremely rare, cf. an example in a private collection, in Jan van Alphen, Cast for Eternity, Antwerp, 2005, p. 119, cat. 33. Compare the modelling, physiognomy, and jewelry style with a Nepalese Manjushri and Prajna dated 1571 in Pratapaditya Pal, The Arts of Nepal: Sculpture, Leiden/Köln, 1974, pl. 40, and another dated 1575 in the Norton Simon Museum, see Pratapaditya Pal, Art from the Himalayas & China, Newhaven and London, 2003, pp. 96-7, cat. 62.- Wear, slightly chipped, very minor damages due to age