Standing Bodhisattva with Human-Figure Necklace
Pakistan (Ancient region of Gandhara)
Kushan period, 2nd/3rd century
- Medium
- Phyllite
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 150.5 × 53.3 × 19 cm (59 1/4 × 21 × 8 in.)
- Culture
- Gandhara
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Gift of Marilynn B. Alsdorf
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This sculpture of a bodhisattva—probably the future Buddha Maitreya—typifies the Gandharan style, which adopted a Hellenistic idiom apparent in such features as the chiseled musculature of the abdomen and the plush folds of the fabrics draped around the body. He sports an elegant chignon, heavy jewelry, a floral headband, a mustache, and an urna—a whorl of hair between the eyebrows that is one of the special lakshanas (marks) of a Buddha. Bodhisattvas, who entered the pantheon of Mahayana Buddhism around the turn of the first millennium, embarked on the path to enlightenment for the benefit of all humanity.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
