Chinese Wood Sculptures of the 11th to 13th cent – Images of Water-moon Guanyin in Northern Chinese Temples and Western Collections

Chinese language Buddhist wood sculptures of Water-moon Guanyin, a Bodhisattva sitting in a leisurely reclining pose on a rocky throne, are housed in Western collections and are thus faraway from their authentic context(s). Not solely are most of them of unknown origin, but in addition lack a exact date. Tracing their sources is tough due to the scant data supplied by artwork sellers in earlier intervals. Thus, solely preliminary investigations into their stylistic growth and technical options have been made thus far. Furthermore, till just lately not one of the Chinese language temples that supplied their authentic context, i.e. their exact place inside these temple compounds and their respective place within the Buddhist pantheon, have been examined in any respect.In her examine, Petra H. Rösch investigates these very features, together with questions concerning the non secular place and performance of the sculptures of this particular Bodhisattva. She additionally seems to be on the technical development, the amassing of Chinese language Buddhist sculptures generally and people made from wooden particularly.She makes use of a mixture of stylistic, iconographical, buddhological, in addition to technical methodologies in her investigation of the Water-moon Guanyin photographs and sheds mild on the Buddhist temples in Shanxi Province, the artworks they as soon as housed, and the non secular practices of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries linked with them.