The first piece in the collection comes from the ancient region of Gandhara, an area roughly corresponding to modern day north-western Pakistan. From the first to the third century AD, this region was under the control of the Kushan dynasty, Central Asian people who first invaded Bactria and subsequently settled in North-Western India³.

The Kushan kingdom was centred in two main areas: Mathura, in North-Central India, and Gandhara. Both areas distinguished themselves in the production of remarkable Buddhist artworks. The style of Mathura had a distinctive Indian flare and could be rightly considered the precursor of Gupta sculptural art. Meanwhile, the stylistic rendering of the image of the Buddha in Gandhara was the product of the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s campaigns, yielding a unique fusion of Western art canons and Eastern religious and philosophical concepts. This blend of Greco-Roman stylistic influence and Buddhist subjects led to a very prolific output of sculptures and figural panels, typically carved out of gray schist, the most readily available material in the region, which can be admired in numerous important private and public collections around the world. 

Lot 200 presents several elements of the standardised sculptural canon of Gandharan art including the naturalistically rendered wavy hair tied into a round topknot (ushnisha); the oval face with perfectly arched eyebrows, a straight Greek nose, full bow-shaped lips and deeply cut, stylised eyes; lastly, the heavy-monastic robe (sanghati) with numerous deep pleats, reminiscent in style of a Roman toga. The halo at the back (now in a fragmentary state) and the dot in the middle of the forehead (urna) act as visual reminders that the figure we are looking at is the historical Buddha, Siddhartha, and not one of the many deities of the Greek Pantheon. Another identifying feature would have been the hands and their position (mudra).

The production of Gandharan Buddhist reliefs and sculptures started declining in the third century and completely ceased by the sixth century AD. Nevertheless, the innovative artistic vocabulary introduced by this region’s creations provided an ideal platform for the development and evolution of Buddhist images, not only in India, but throughout the Asian continent⁴.

³ Christian Luczanits in The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara, 2011, p13

⁴ Ibidem, p. 22 - 23

Around the same time, Thailand was a divided country. The period between the 8th and the 12th centuries was quite tumultuous, with the country torn by both Indo-Javanese and Cambodian Khmer influences⁷.  Mon art (the art produced by the inhabitants of Thailand in the first millennium AD) became less and less in demand and it eventually ceased in Central and North-East Thailand in the 10th century under the impact of Khmer influence. Nevertheless, the last stronghold and artistic centre of Mon art, called Haripunjaya (modern Lamphun), continued producing images, especially of Buddhist subjects, right up to 1292-1293, leading to the creation of a new style⁸. 

Haripunjaya sculptures (like our lot 203) are usually characterised by square faces; a thick band framing their faces along the hairline, a feature adopted from Khmer art; slightly swelled heads above the temples, with flatter tops and foreheads; joint, horizontal eyebrows; broad noses; and the hair is worked in small, spiky curls. Differently from the Mon period, when stone was the primary material for sculptures, terracotta and stucco became favoured materials in the Haripunjaya production, as the Wat Kukut stupa (early 13th century) and its five-storey tower housing stucco Buddha images in the Dvaravati style testify⁹. 

When the Thai people took over at the end of the 13th century, considerable changes were introduced. Firstly, the prime materials used in the past such as stone and terracotta were largely replaced by bronze (either plain or often gilt). Secondly, the sources of aesthetic inspiration shifted from the locally available Javanese and Khmer productions to the Indian Pala and Sinhalese canons.