Galerie Golconda

Fragment from a statuette of Buddha in bronze covered with a brown patina, the missing part being on the left side. Head with a serene expression and small curls surmounted by the cranial knob, the Ushnisha, from which rises a rasmi flame, symbol of the soul’s departure. The eyebrows are drawn in an arc and join at the bridge of the aquiline nose. The eyes are coffee-bean shaped and the lips are full, the earlobes are distended from having worn heavy jewels attesting to Siddhartha’s princely origins. The two lines incised on the neck constitute the “beauty folds”. This statuette was made using the lost wax method

Ayutthaya was the second, prosperous and cosmopolitan capital of the kingdom of Siam, built in 1350 on an island surrounded by three rivers that connected it to the sea. The city was attacked and razed in 1767 by the Burmese army and never was reconstructed. The artists there defined a very specific art of great elegance, moving away from the usual canons followed for the representation of Buddha to invent new idealized forms, more flowing with curves that express the extreme state of serenity reached by Buddha. The flame that is placed on the top of Buddha’s head, the Ushnisha, is a reference to the inner light coming out of him.