1998: Heavenly Musician

Sandstone | H. 43,5; L. 30; P.: 3 | China, Shanxi Province, Yungang (?) Site, before 480, Northern Wei Dynasty (386-535)

MC 10013. Prov. coll. CT Loo, Paris; sale November 1963; coll. go. Paris. Gift of the Society of Friends of the Cernuschi Museum with the contributions of Mr. François Pinault, Mr. and Mrs. Yves Mahé, Mr. Jacques Barrère, the Antoni Laurent Foundation, a group of forty seven amateurs and a credit from the City of Paris to commemorate the centenary of the Cernuschi Museum.

Although its exact provenance is unknown, the work can be closely compared to the sculptures of the Yungang (Shanxi) caves, which were laid out from 460 onwards. The relief was one of the groups of flying and musical deities that could decorate the drop ceilings and the arches surmounting the openings or niches housing the statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva. These minor deities are common to Buddhist and Hindu iconography. Thus, the genius of the Cernuschi Museum belongs to the group of gandharva, musicians in the service of Indra, the king of the gods, who resides in a phantasmic and marvelous city called Gandharvanagara. These beings should not be confused with other mythical creatures such as the kinnara, singers most often provided with a human head and the body of a bird, or else the vidyadhara who, loaded with stage, throw from the top of the heavens flowers and jewels over the gods. The musician of the Cernuschi Museum plays the pipa, a stringed instrument originating in Central Asia but adopted at an early date by China. The Yungang caves present numerous groups of musicians, particularly caves n ° 6, 7, 8 and 16, which are not without affinities with the musician of the Cernuschi Museum. If the drape in large incised folds and the smiling expression of the face are part of Yungang's first style, the emaciated features bear witness to a more recent date, perhaps just before the stylistic change of 480. Few facilities in Yungang present the same characteristics; the circular, almost chubby faces are now in cave 6, the first testimony of the new style. Only the group of caves and niches n ° 11, particularly cave n ° 11A, has sculptures close to the Celestial Musician. This set of particularly poorly preserved caves was preceded by largely missing vestibules, the iconographic program of which we still do not know.