ANDESITE STANDING TARA
INDONESIA, CENTRAL JAVA
9TH CENTURY
H. 79 CMS, 31 INS

A magnificent crowned and jewelled andesite figure of the goddess Tara standing in a slight tribhanga on a double lotus pedestal, wearing an ankle length sampot secured at the waist, her demeanour soft and sensuous, holding a long lotus stem in her right hand and an unidentified object (perhaps a lotus bud) in her left, a circular nimbus behind her head.

The Buddhist female deity Tara comes in many forms and is the counterpart of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara.

The Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide has a closely related Tara, reportedly from Klaten (between Prambanan and Surakarta), Central Java. For two fine examples of Taras at Candi Sari, near Kalasan, Central Java, see plates 120 and 121 in 179 in A.J. Bernet Kempers, Ancient Indonesian Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959.

PROVENANCE: Private English collection.