BUDDHA TORSO.

NORTHERN INDIA.

UTTAR PRADESH, SARNATH AREA.

GUPTA PERIOD, CIRCA 5TH CENTURY.

H. 140 CMS, 55 INS.

A magnificent, life-size pale beige sandstone torso of Buddha, perfectly proportioned and standing in slight tribhanga with his left knee slightly forward, wearing a full-length sanghati clinging to the contours of his body, the right shoulder exposed, with a slightly swelling abdomen, the remains of the right arm apparently raised to form abhayamudra and the left lowered to hold the hem of his robe.

This sculpture was probably once part of a relief. In his 1927 work History of Indian and Indonesian Art A.K. Coomaraswamy writes that Gupta art ‘establishes the classical phase of Indian art, at once serene and energetic, spiritual and voluptuous’. The Gupta style is elevated to a level of perfection at Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh; the site of the Buddha’s First Sermon. The characteristics of the Sarnath School of sculpture include the wearing of a diaphanous robe which accentuates the contours of the body, a softly swelling chest and abdomen and elongated lower limbs. The small number of figures that survive are typically carved in pale beige Chunar sandstone.

For two, more complete examples in the Indian Museum, Calcutta see cat. nos. 203 and 205 in Klimburg-Salter, D. Buddha in Indien: Die frühindische Skulptur von König A??oka bis zur Guptazeit, Exhibition Catalogue, Milan and Vienna: Skira editore and Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1995 – no. 205 has the same sweep of the body. The Cleveland Museum of art has a fine torso of similar date and style – see fig. 72 in R. Craven, Indian Art: A Concise History, London: Thames and Hudson, 1976. The Musée Guimet, Paris has another example – see cat. no. 31 in Amina Okoda, Sculptures Indiennes du Musée Guimet, Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2000.

PROVENANCE: Private English collection.