486 - SEATED GANESHA INDIA 16TH CENTURY

SEATED GANESHA INDIA 16TH CENTURY Dimensions: Height 4,5 cm Wide 4,6 cm Depth 2,7 cm Weight: 99 grams A remarkably compact bronze Ganesha whose broad ears and rounded body fill almost the entire width of the sculpture. The elephant head is strongly simplified, with the trunk curling across the chest, while four arms project around the body in a tight, almost symmetrical arrangement. The deity sits directly on a low base, one foot visible at the centre below the belly. The dark brown bronze has a smooth, dense surface with lighter rubbed passages on the trunk, ears, hands and knees. At only four and a half centimetres high, the image demonstrates how little is required to make Ganesha unmistakable. Large ears, curved trunk, rounded belly and multiple arms carry the identity of the god even when the finer details of jewellery and attributes are reduced almost to signs. Such miniatures were ideally suited to intimate devotion, where portability and recognisability mattered more than monumental scale. The figure has an appealing immediacy precisely because of its compressed form. It feels less like a reduced version of a large temple bronze than a sculpture conceived specifically for the hand: dense, tactile and easy to grasp, with centuries of wear concentrating on the surfaces most likely to have been touched.