A bronze figure of Shakyamuni Buddha, 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.

The finely modelled bronze image depicts Shakyamuni Buddha seated in the adamantine posture of vajraparyankasana and touching the lotus flower pedestal with his right hand in bhumisparsha mudra. The iconography is associated with Buddha’s triumph over the temptations and distractions offered by the demon Mara before his subsequent enlightenment. Compare the classic sculptural format of the Buddha, aureole, lotus seat and rectangular plinth with a Ratnasambhava Buddha and attendant bodhisattvas in Martin Lerner and Steven Kossak, The Lotus Transcendent: Indian and Southeast Asian Art from the Samuel Eilenberg Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, cat. no. 142.