A MASSIVE CHINESE NORTHERN WEI STYLE GREY LIMESTONE STELE

PROBABLY TANG DYNASTY

Carved with Guanyin standing barefoot on a lotus pedestal with her two attendants, each holding a willow branch and a vase, the robes festooned with sashes crossed over the body and skirt, with ribbons hanging down over the shoulders, backed by a tall peaked mandorla, carved with mirrored feitian holding a sacred pearl, the whole supported by the rectangular base with ruyi and lotus buds, the reverse inscribed with a long religious inscription and with an apocryphal date for the fourth year of the yan chang period (515 AD), 29kg, 58cm.

Provenance: from an English private collection, West Sussex, purchased 1970s in London.

Cf. National Musuem Scotland, Edinburgh, museum reference A.1951.2, for a related Tang dynasty stele with Guanyin and attendant bodhisattvas; see also The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number: 19.16, for another related Northern Wei dynasty stele with Maitreya.