Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Not on view
This two-armed Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is one of the grandest images to survive from the early eighth century. His two-armed form suggests he is Padmapani, the lotus bearer. The distinctive aesthetic situates this sculpture within a major corpus of bronze Buddhist images from northeastern Thailand (see cat. nos. 139–42). He has a broad, sensitively modeled face with downcast eyes and a demeanor of calm contemplation. His slender mustache and full lips are contoured with a defining double line. When complete, he could be expected to have carried a gilded-bronze lotus in his left hand and offered boons to devotees with his right.
cat. no. 138
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