Flying Apsaras Playing Cymbals

Merchants trading in Silk Road goods, South and Central Asian Buddhist proselytizers, and pilgrims who had traveled to India to study Buddhism at its source brought countless paintings, scriptures, and small bronze sculptures to China and Tibet. These later served as the inspirations for works commissioned by local patrons. Few early Chinese and Tibetan bronze sculptures, and even fewer Indian prototypes, survive, as later generations melted them down to make coins, weapons, or new icons. The fine statues on display here may have been objects of devotion that were set in portable shrines, like the Korean example in the case to the right, for worship in lay people’s homes.