QING DYNASTY, PALA REVIVAL STYLE, 17TH-18TH CENTURY

Tibetan-style Buddhism was revived to an extraordinary extent under the Qing emperors, both for personal and political reasons, resulting in a surge in the production of Buddhist sculpture and painting. The artisans of the Beijing workshops increasingly emulated sculpture from different periods and geographic areas, using as models the bronzes given as gifts from Tibetan dignitaries to the Qing court. Examples of Pala-style sculpture, from 9th-12th century Northeastern India, still remain in The Palace Museum Collection. Compare with a Pala-period bronze figure of Vajrasattva, illustrated in Cultural Relics of Tibetan Buddhism Collected in the Qing Palace, Beijing, 1992, Catalogue, no. 56 and with a Pala-style Tibetan brass statue of Manjushri (see ibid., Catalogue, no. 53).