J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Ancient Chinese Sculpture: Recent Acquisitions
March 14 - April 5, 2014
12.
A PAINTED AND GILDED STONE FIGURE OF A LUOHAN
Song - Yuan Dynasty, A.D. 12th-14th Century
carved fully in the round, the youthful monk seated with hands clasped beneath his raised right knee and slender body slightly turned, his fine features deftly carved in an intense introspective expression, his trance-like gaze heightened by round protruding eyes and slightly parted lips, his head clean-shaven, his prominent brow with a small raised knob at the center, the face covered with pale traces of pinkish-tan pigments and with black paint over ochre pigment on the head, wearing monastic robes with deep sleeves painted with dark crimson lacquer showing through a layer of gilding, the wide borders painted in cinnabar red and white, the lapels and under-robes showing traces of bright green pigment, the back of the figure finished flush with the back edge of the narrow slab-form seat, with a stepped base and rectangular platform projecting at the front, supporting the lowered left foot, the underside roughly finished and left unpainted revealing the fine-grained red sandstone.
Height 9 3⁄4 inches (24.8 cm)
Luohan are deified monks, followers of the Buddha, who have postponed their elevation to nirvana and chosen to remain in the world to defend the Buddha’s Doctrine. Luohan are usually depicted in groups of sixteen or eighteen or, occasionally as many as five hundred.
A large set of wood Luohan sculptures dated to the Northern Song period preserved at Nanhua Temple in Shaoguan city, Guangdong province, illustrated in Nanhuasi (Nanhua Temple), Beijing, 1990, includes two luohan very closely comparable to the present example, ibid., pls. 99 and 101.
宋 貼金彩繪石羅漢坐像 高 24.8 厘米
