Standing Buddha on a High Altar

Viewing notes

A viewer's written impression — not a buyer review or first-hand record

This standing Buddha is gold throughout, his figure tall and slender, set upon a many-tiered altar. His curled hair is black, his eyes lowered; his right hand stands upright before his chest, while his left hangs down lightly holding the robe's edge. The long robe falls straight from his shoulders to his feet, its folds ranked in vertical lines, dropping like water with no flourish to spare. The gold carries a mottled, aged air, darkness settling into the creases like the traces of long devotion. Behind him the aureole is long and narrow, gathering upward into a pointed arch, its whole face dense with spiralling scrolls, with a round halo behind his head besides. The lotus beneath his feet is small, but the altar piles tier upon tier — a hexagonal railed panel, an openwork waist, a carved base — each wider than the last, lifting the figure steadily high. Raised by its altar, the figure stands all the taller: made to stand at the side of a shrine or deep within a space, visible from far away.