Palms Joined on the High Lotus

Viewing notes

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

This golden seated figure presses its palms together, backed by a pointed-arch aureole dense with fine flames and foliage rising to a tip. The crown is ornate, its red flames and red jewels answering one another; black hair lies neat at the brow, a white urna dot sits between the brows, and the face is still, eyes turned inward. Both hands are firmly joined at the chest, holding upright a tiny pagoda between the palms; long ear ornaments hang at the ears and crown ribbons fall along the shoulders. Robes stream down in layers and spread across the crossed legs in broad, easy folds. The seat is the marvel: not a flat platform but a high, swelling sphere of lotus buds — hundreds of small buds packed over its whole surface like scales — resting on a ring of open lotus petals. Figure above, lotus below, the gold gathered and unhurried. It belongs at the principal place of a shrine, quiet and self-possessed, a solemn presence of its own.