Figure of the Mahasiddha Virupa, gilt bronze, China, Ming dynasty, reign of Yongle, 1403-24

Gilt-brass figure of the Indian ascetic Virupa, seated on an antelope skin, with right leg bent at the knee and resting on the ground with sole upward. His left knee is raised with foot flat on the ground. Head with curly beard and moustache and with separate hair curls in the manner of a Buddha. Virupa's proper right arm is bent, his right hand with palm upwards is held at chest level. A hole in the palm indicates a now missing skull drinking cup, a feature seen on other Virupa images. The left arm is raised, bent at the elbow and the fist clenched in the gesture of holding an object (now missing). This arm has been broken and replaced from the elbow to the hand.

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Robert H.N.Ho Family Foundation Collection

The Virupa was probably obtained by William Fraser in Japan, where he lived between 1848 and 1911. His family lent the figure to the Holburne Museum in Bath in 1918, and a member of the family bequeathed it to them in 1938, together with a Japanese stand on which it sat. The Holburne Museum decided to de-accession the figure in 2009 as it did not fit with the remit of the institution, and the following year it was purchased by the V&A. A technical investigation in 2010-2011 revealed that the left arm of the figure was a later addition and probably created in Japan. This, along with the Japanese stand (acquired by the V&A with the figure but not currently displayed), corroborates the likelihood of the Virupa’s Japanese provenance. It is not yet known when and how the figure arrived in Japan.

For more information, please see ‘A new image of the Mahasiddha Virupa: a major addition to the corpus of early fifteenth-century bronzes’ by John Clarke and ‘A new image of the Mahasiddha Virupa: technical investigations and conservation’ by Diana Heath in Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and its Conservation (eds. David Park, Kuenga Wangmo and Sharon Cather).

This figure represents the Mahasiddha, or great yogic adept Virupa, who lived in 9th century north India. Such figures lived alone or with a consort and became renowned for their unconventional lifestyles.They were revered in Tibet as enlightened beings and often feature in Tibetan lineages as the teachers of Tibetans who journeyed to India to receive Buddhist initiation.

This Virupa is one of the largest and most spectacular surviving works belonging to a group of images produced at the Chinese court during the early 15th century. Close contacts at this time between the Emperor Yongle (1403-1424), who was himself a Buddhist, and Tibetan religious leaders, led to frequent diplomatic and religious exchanges. Visiting Tibetans received similar, though usually much smaller images, which were intended to mark and cement such newly made alliances.

IS.12:1,2-2010