A bronze figure of Vairochana 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 Buddha is seated in the adamantine yogic posture of vajraparyankasana on an elegant footed pedestal. The youthful face expresses an inward, meditative bearing. The Buddha’s right hand is raised in the gesture of exposition, vitarka mudra, with the left resting in his lap in the attitude of meditation. Martin Lerner identifies a 9th century Javanese bronze Buddha with this precise combination of mudras as the Transcendental Buddha Vairochana, see 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 139.