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Dear sir:

What do you think about this buddha head of 26 cm high without estand . Nothern Qi dinasty.It is in very good condition, remaining blue pigment on the hair and gilded on the face ( I think that the face conserve lots of original blue pigment and gold gild under a fine brown cover, paint?, mud?, some ancient protection?). I think that it is good , but???.Thank you.

I just find in a book (china archaeology and art digest qingzhou statues, vol 3 No 1, april 1999) some things that could be interesting on the matter:
Pag 38 Nothern qi statue unearthed in 1987 in southern section of Tuoshan road in Qingzhou , made of limestone:" The coloured painting on this figure is still bright and clear an the exposed areas of the hands,feet and face are covered with gold. SAPPHIRE BLUE has been used for the unisa" WANG WANLI AND LIU HUAGUO
pag 37 Estern WEi Painted bodhisattva, unearthed in 1987 in southern section of Tuoshan road in Qingzhou,caved in limestone:
" The paint was applied in several layers, first a white base coat, then a flesh stone, and finally the other color" WANG WANLI AND LIU HUAGUO.
Pag 32 painted figure dating to the Nothern Qi period discovered in a hoard at Longxing Temple:"his unisa is painted blue.The facial features are delieated in ochre". Liu Huagua and JIA GUANGZHI
In the face I can apreciate diferent layers and I think that the colors are consistent with the article

More Photos, just to help.If somebody needs another view please just say me.

I have a stylistic difficulty with this piece in that the forehead area is too small, i.e. there should be a lot more space between the eyebrow ridge and the start of the hairline to be completely in keeping with the aesthetics of a Northern Qi Buddha. The ears are not particularly fleshy as they should be, rather more angular, and the head whorls of the hair should be better carved, not so roughly executed. My gut feeling is that this is not correct for the period. It should be remembered that copis of Northern Qi were being made as early as the 1910 - 1920's and there are several major museums who have pieces which have only be revealed as being early copies in the last decade or so. I have seen so many copies on the internet, in galleries and sales, that I view most of these stone piece with great scepticism automatically unless stylistically they retain the complete feel of the period. I have seen that there are extremely talented Chinese carvers today who can create a great Biddha face- the problem is they have seen too much of Tang and Song and Ming Buddhas to have a pure early aesthetic of the Five Dynasties - Six Kingdoms period - perhaps the finest period of pure Chinese sculpture in stone. I have viewed rather large collections of sculpture in which over half the pieces were incorrect. So my view on these types of pieces will always be pessimistic - and granted I am working from digital image, not a live viewing in this case. I would welcome a contrary opinion, but given the lack of a scientific means to support the age of stone, it leaves only stylistic elements as a basis for judging. The argumant can always be made that this is a less important piece, that it is provincial, that it is slightly later and copying the style. The only problem is that the style was not really copied as the successive Sui and Tang periods had there own very strong sculptural styles and did not look back at these periods as the paramount style.

Anthony M. Lee
Asian Art Research

I attach a head from the Qingzhou hoard as a reference and an image of a Standing Buddha which is a modern fake to show you an even better example of the element of the period, which nonetheless falls short of being perfect (the hands and body are very clumsy, but the head is getting very close to the ideal.

AML

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