Fire-gilded bronze. Tibet, presumably 18th to 19th cent.
Fantastic and elaborately sculptured bronze depicting the „guardian of treaures“ who is also a guardian goddess, Kubera, also named Jambhala and Vaishravana. The appropriate name here would be Jambhala, as he is holding up the lemon jambhara with one hand. He is sitting relaxed on top of a lion, which appears more as a fantastic hybrid creature with the curved horns of a mountain goat and the beak of a Garuda. Jambhala is wearing a tiger fur apron, plenty of jewellery, a crown with skulls as well as the heavenly girland, and has a third eye in the expressive face. On the wide lotus pedestal is a symbolic animal, the pearl-spitting nakula (a mongoose). A vishvavajra on the closure platform. HEIGHT 28 CM, WIDTH BASE 22 CM
From an Austrian private collection