A COPPER ALLOY FIGURE OF DEVI


SOUTH INDIA, PUDUKOTTAI, PANDYA PERIOD, 9TH CENTURY6 7/8 in. (17.5 cm) high
|Tall, slender, and light of foot above her circular pedestal, this sculpture's depiction of the female form is in rare contrast to vast majority of fulsome goddesses in Indian art. She stands elegantly poised with one leg bent and unencumbered by ostentatious garments or jewelry. In her raised left hand remains the stem of a flower. She smiles and wears her hair in a delightful rounded bun, while the tilt of her head lends her a demure affect, again in contrast with the greater number of bold Indian icons. Her distinctiveness is in part explained by her rarity as one of few published bronzes from the First Pandyan Empire (6th-10th centuries). The Pandyas are one of three Tamil dynasties in South India, whose art has so far been overshadowed by that of the contemporaneous Cholas and Pallavas. The paucity of published Pandyan bronzes hamper direct comparisons, yet the treatment of her anatomy and garments securely dates her to the 9th century, in keeping with contemporaneous Pallava art (see Sivaramamurti, South Indian Bronzes, New Delhi, 1963, p.26, fig.9a). A 9th-century Pandyan Shiva Nataraja is cast with a similar slender form, facial type, and amount of ornamentation (Guy, Indian Temple Sculpture, London, 2007, p.125, pl.139). Pal reflects on the gentle character exhibited by these diminutive Pandyan bronzes that provide a rare and intimate connection with popular piety in India's distant past (Pal, The Elegant Image, New Orleans, 2011, 117). Her identity, he intuits, might be a queen in divine guise, in line with a Tamil tradition (cf. Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred, Seattle, 2002, pp.122-7, no.14). However, her rounded coiffure and iconography might also allow for the possibility that this elegant woman is a divine consort of one of Vishnu's avatars, such as Krishna's wife Rukmini or Rama's wife Sita (e.g. ibid., pp.189-91 & 200, nos.47 & 52). Regardless of her mysterious identity, this rare treasure of an Indian bronze visually evokes a timeless Indian tradition of sacralizing feminine grace – her attenuated character, stance, and smile somewhat at once redolent of both the famed c.2500 BCE Mohenjo Daro bronze Dancing Girl in the National Museum, New Delhi, and Ramkinker Baij's Sujata at Santiniketan from India's modern art movement. Published Pal, The Elegant Image: Bronzes from the Indian Subcontinent in the Siddharth K. Bhansali Collection, New Orleans, 2011, p.116, fig.26. Provenance Collection of Siddharth K. Bhansali, New Orleans Acquired in London between 1978-83