After a nine-minute battle, it sold to an Asian collector.
At more than a metre tall, the monumental figure of Canda Vajrapani – ‘fierce holder of the thunderbolt’ – is considered one of the masterpieces of 13th century Tibetan sculpture and the most important surviving Tibetan brass sculpture of any period.
At the auction on November 29, it had an estimate of HK$22-28m as part of the HK$110m collection of Ulrich von Schroeder, a pre-eminent scholar in this field.
Bonhams’ head of department Edward Wilkinson, said: “The price paid reflects both its high importance as a work of art and von Schroeder’s great standing among collectors.”
A detail of the figure of Canda Vajrapani that sold at Bonhams.
