Art Institute of Chicago

Standing Buddha

Burma (Myanmar)

Date

Pagan period, about 12th century

Medium

Bronze inlaid with silver

Culture

Myanmar

Department

Arts of Asia

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This standing bronze Buddha with rare silver inlaid eyes comes from Pagan, the capital city of an eponymous kingdom that flourished in Myanmar (formerly Burma) between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. Situated along the Irrawaddy River, Pagan was once home to thousands of Buddhist temples, monasteries, and stupas. This sculpture exhibits iconographic and stylistic continuities with roughly coeval portable bronze images cast in southeastern India. Note, for instance, the frilled double-hem of the Buddha’s gossamer sanghati (monastic robe), which is a common feature of Buddhist processional bronzes from the coastal entrepôt of Nagapattinam. This sculpture thus attests to the robust networks of exchange across the Indian Ocean.

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