Pensive Bodhisattva (National Treasure 83)
Early seventh century
A young bodhisattva sits with his right ankle resting on his left knee, his right elbow propped on that raised leg, and two fingers touching his cheek. His eyes are lowered and a faint smile plays on his lips. He wears a simple three peaked crown, no jewellery, and a bare torso above a skirt whose folds spill over the seat in long, calm ripples. The pose is called the pensive posture, and it shows the future Buddha Maitreya, or perhaps the young prince Siddhartha, deep in thought about the suffering of the world.
The statue is cast in bronze that was once fully gilded, and traces of gold still glow on the surface. The bronze walls are only a few millimetres thick, an astonishing technical feat for the seventh century. Look at the toes of the right foot, which curl slightly with the tension of thought, and at the way the fingers of the left hand hold the ankle. Nothing is stiff. The body is slender and the surface almost undecorated, so that all attention goes to the face and the gesture.
The statue was acquired in nineteen twelve, and its exact place of origin is unknown, though it is usually associated with the Silla kingdom. A very similar wooden statue at Koryu-ji temple in Kyoto shows how closely Korea and Japan were linked in this period. In twenty twenty one the museum built a special dark, scented room, the Room of Quiet Contemplation, where this figure and its slightly older companion, National Treasure seventy eight, sit side by side on a low platform with nothing else around them. Visitors walk slowly around the two figures in near silence. It is the most loved object in the museum and, for many Koreans, the single greatest work of Korean art.
Did You Know? The bronze is so thin, between two and four millimetres in places, that scholars still debate how the casters achieved it without the figure collapsing.
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