Buddha Head

ca. 100 CE-300 CE

While no portrait of the Buddha appears to have been produced during his lifetime, the art of Gandhara proved particularly prolific in this field several centuries later. Located in present-day Pakistan, this kingdom had existed since the first millennium BCE and began its rise after the successors of Alexander the Great, in the 1st–3rd centuries CE, during the period of the Kushan empire. Its art, the best-known of the Graeco-Buddhist schools, offers one of the most significant combinations of Asian and European art. This large head no doubt belonged to a type of sculpture produced in monasteries, where the Enlightened One appears standing, devoid of princely attributes, in the simple robe of a monk.