A bronze figure of Manjushri, Java, 9th century

Collection of George Sheridan (1923-2008), acquired in Paris, London and New York from the 1960s onwards, and thence by descent; a passion nurtured from his friendship with Professor Samuel Eilenberg (1913-1998), who donated his collection to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1987.

This elegant bronze figure depicts a bodhisattva seated in vajraparyankasana on an oval lotus pedestal, with his right hand in the boon-granting gesture, varada, the left raised and holding an unidentified attribute. A crescent appears from behind the neck, an attribute often seen in representations of bodhisattvas or deities that are iconographically regarded as youths such as Manjushri and Jambhala, see Jan Fontein, The Sculpture of Indonesia, Washington and New York, 1990, p. 196: the crescent appears on a ca. 9th century silver Manjushri in the Linden-Museum, ibid., cat. no. 47. Fontein observes the crescent behind the necks of Hariti’s children depicted on the stone relief in the entrance porch of Candi Mendut, the 9th century Buddhist temple in Central Java, ibid., p. 200.