A rare stucco niche with a pensive bodhisattva, Ancient Region of Gandhara, 4th / 5th century

Carlton Rochell, New York.

Sacred and Sublime, New York, 2007, cat. no. 23.

This intricately carved stucco niche appears to depict Siddhartha, the future Buddha pensively gazing out from an arch-shaped architectural niche of distinct Greco-Roman style. A luxuriant flowering bodhi tree is depicted at the right side of the niche, from which a garland-bearing tree goddess watches with vigilance, while a bearded figure, identified as Vajrapani by the vajra in his hand, gazes down from overhead.

For other images of a pensive bodhisattva, see Isa Kurita, Gandharan Art, Tokyo, 2003, pls. 137 and 147. For a comparable architectural niche found at Fayaz-tepe, see Jonathan Tucker, The Silk Road: Art and History, London, 2003, fig. 265.