Khmer Bronze Buddha Muchalinda Sheltered by the Naga

Bayon Style, Cambodia, late 12th–13th century AD.

A cast solid in leaded bronze and finished by cold work, depicting the Buddha Shakyamuni seated in dhyana mudra with hands resting in his lap upon the coiled body of the serpent king Muchalinda, whose seven cobra hoods rise as a protective canopy behind the head; the Buddha wears the tiered conical diadem and jeweled sampot of the Angkorian crowned Buddha type, a beaded pectoral collar, and an incised belt, and sits atop the three tightly wound naga coils that form the throne, the reverse showing the finely modeled scale pattern of the serpent's body rising to the pierced hood. The composition follows the canonical scene in which, six weeks after the Enlightenment, the naga king emerged from the earth to shelter the meditating Buddha from a violent storm — an iconography that became the principal Buddhist cult image of the Bayon period under Jayavarman VII. Measuring  4-3/8 in. H. + custom stand

The bronze has developed a warm, stable cuprous green-grey patina with scattered malachite accretion, minor surface pitting and old losses consistent with age and burial, small areas of wear to the highpoints of the crown and face, and no meaningful modern restoration; it is mounted on a fitted rectangular black wood display base. Very close comparanda are held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Buddha Sheltered by a Naga, Cambodia, Angkor period, 12th century, bronze, acc. 1990.230, H. 6 1/2 in.), the Musée national du Cambodge, Phnom Penh, the Musée Guimet, Paris, and the Angkor National Museum, Siem Reap, with the type surveyed at length in Peter Sharrock's "Serpents and Buddhas" and in the recent Guimet exhibition "Angkor Royal Bronzes: Art of the Divine" (2025). Ex NY Architect  Alfred De Vido Collection.