This is a 14th
century bronze statue standing 7’ 2.5” tall named Walking Buddha. This sculpture depicts Buddha walking with
his right hand in the gesture of reassurance called abhayamudra. Many Buddha images
in the 14th century are in one of three positions; standing, setting,
or lying down, but this depiction of Buddha walking is unique to Thai art in
the 13th century popularized by Sukhothai sculpture.
Copies of this sculpture
are still popular today and usually range from thousands the hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Sale information
of the following sculpture from New York’s Rockefeller Plaza has a price
realized at $112,500, with the follow lot notes:
“ The
'Walking Buddha' is a striking Thai iconic invention emerging in bronze
sculpture in the 14th century. Known at Sukhothai as cankrama ("walking back and forth") it refers to the
pacing of Buddha during the third week after Enlightenment, cf. H. Woodward, The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand,
1997, p. 160ff. The variety of implications include, being a visual
representation of his descent from Tavatimsa Heaven, as well as increasing the
accessibility of the Buddha to the devotee by appearing to move towards him,
with his right hand raised in the fear-abiding gesture. When Shakyamuni
renounced his princely life he dismounted from his horse, Kanthaka, for good to
become a peripatetic mendicant. Buddhist texts describe his constant wandering
from city to city in the course of his teaching exemplifying the important role
that the act of walking had upon the Buddha's life. It is all the more remarkable
that there are no Indian prototypes of 'Walking Buddhas'. In the context of
walking, the footprint also has an important connotation, first emerging in
Gandharan schist sculpture as an ersatz symbol. A Sukhothai bronze image in the
National Museum Bangkok shows a 'Walking Buddha' leaving a footprint behind,
literally leaving his mark as a symbol of spiritual conquest. Large models of
this size and condition are extremely rare; another example is in the
Minneapolis Institute of Art, see R. Jacobsen, The Asian Galleries, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1982, p.
21, ill. upper right; and a much smaller example dated to the 14th century in
the British Museum, cf. W. Zwalf (ed.), Buddhism,
Art and Faith, 1985, cat. no. 251. The dating is consistent with the
result of a thermoluminescence test of the core, Oxford, sample no. 281k15.
“ - Indian and Southeast Asian Art 17 September 1999 New York, Rockefeller
Plaza
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