A rare Chinese gilt bronze seated figure of Buddha Liu Song Dynasty dated 444AD

A rare Chinese gilt bronze seated figure of Buddha Liu Song Dynasty dated 444AD, wearing flowing robes, raised on a high plinth before a flaming mandala, the reverse inscribed with seven columns of calligraphy, 28.9cm. Provenance: an English private collection. Purchased in 2002 in Suffolk, previously acquired in 1997 from Gabor Cossa Antiques, Cambridge. Together with an Oxford Authentification Thermoluminescence Analysis Report, sample number C103d98, a metallurgical report by Dr Peter Northover, Oxford, and a condition report from Conservation and Technical Services Limited, London, all of which are consistent with the date of 444AD. The inscription to the reverse translates thus: In the twenty-first year of the Yuanjia reign [AD444], Jupiter is at Jiashen. On the twenty-first day of the third month, the believer Huang Fuzhen made, with great venerations, this Buddha image, to wish that his deceased parents, wife and brothers might meet the Buddha [in heaven] and join often with the Three Holy Treasures. Before state patronage saw large Buddhist sanctuaries hewn into mountains in China, smaller portable bronzes like this one evoked feelings of gentleness, grace, and intimacy, qualities that initially did much to help launch the religion and prepare the way for the later, more awe-inspiring works in stone. An almost identical figure from the George and Mary Rockwell Collection, also dated 444AD, is in the Johnson Museum of Art, New York.