Beschreibung:

A polychrome wood figure of Fudo Myo-o (Acala) Muromachi period (1333-1573), 15th/16th century The figure shown seated cross-legged, modeled with the soft figure of a youth but with a stern facial expression, the upper and lower fangs protruding from the clenched mouth, a lotus crown adorning the figure's head and the hair swept to one side in a braid down the left shoulder and gathered in a double lotus flower tie, a kurikara (Buddhist sword) held in the right hand and a weighted rope in the left (both later additions), the robes draped around his waist and over the left shoulder and decorated with dharma wheel, floral, and geometric patterns in gilt, the upper arms with bands gathered with chrysanthemum bosses, the eyes inlaid in reverse-painted crystal, set on a multi-tiered dais decorated with dharma wheels and roundels of four-pronged vajra punctuated by tightly scrolling vines in black and red lacquer on a gilt ground, the lowest register applied with gilt-copper fittings carved with vines 12 3/4in (32.4cm) high (figure only); 23 5/8in (60cm) high overall Fußnoten Provenance René Guiette (1893-1976) Purchased from James B. Godfrey, New York, 1987 For a similar but larger example of somewhat earlier date, compare the figure of Fudo attributed to Higo Jotei preserved in the Myo-o-in, Kamakura, as the only survivor of a set of five Myo-o and designated as an Important Cultural Property; see Kamakura Kokuhokan (Kamakura Museum of National Treasures), Tokubetsu ten Kamakura mikkyo (Special Exhibition of Esoteric Buddhist Art from Kamakura), 2011, cover illustration. The Jotei figure is one of a group of late Heian- and early Kamakura-period figures of Fudo that set the deity's iconography for centuries to come; the present lot, one of the finest images of the "Immovable One" in an American private collection, admirably preserves the ferocity of earlier prototypes while adding a sense of softness, appropriate to a smaller figure intended for private devotion.