Description:

Ancient Sandstone Ananda
Large sandstone standing figure of Ananda, 9-11 century. His youthful smiling face framed by a halo (damaged) that rises from his shoulders as he stands upon a lotus plinth, his slippered feet visible beneath the vertical pleats of his undergarment and his narrow shoulders covered in the symmertrical folds of his mantle, its upper edge attached by a lotus blossom mount to a braided cord that crosses his left shoulder and trails down his back (extensive surface weathering and chips, loses, nose restored). Height 44 1/8 inches (112 cm). Note. the figure's large head, pose and even the slippers visible beneath the drapery on the lotus pedestal recall classic eighth century prototypes of Ananda. See, for example, the figure unearthed from Wutai Shan, Shanxi in Arts of China, Buddhist Cave Temples, New Researches (Kodansha, 1969), Plate 185, p. 184. However the evenly placed and schematic drapery folds of this lot suggest a later date, comparable to a number of sites at the Beishan caves in Dazu, sichuan. See the Amida of cave 52 (dated 897), the Dizang in Cave 37 (dated 940) and the Dizang in cave 253 (dated 1001) illustrated in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji: Diaosu Bian (Shanghai, 1990), vol.12: 'Sichuan Shiku Diaosu' (1990), plate 112, p. 117, plate 116, p.121 and plate 142, p. 144.