Description
At the city of Angkor in Cambodia, the end of the 12th century saw the climax of a long period of temple building. Jayavarman VII, a Buddhist (unlike his predecessors who worshipped the Hindu gods), came to the throne in 1181 and undertook a massive program of construction across his empire, which came to include a substantial portion of modern Thailand. Among the various strands of Jayavarman's Buddhism were some of apparent Burmese origin; it was largely these that in the course of the 13th century brought about a shift of outlook that resulted in the demise of Cambodia's traditions of monumental temple architecture.
This image of the standing Buddha, made somewhere in present-day Thailand, belongs to a group of images that represent the little understood Buddhist culture that emerged in the course of the 13th century, especially in the city of Lopburi. There are older Cambodian sources for many of the elements: the pose is a revival of one first used in the 10th century; the open eyes and type of crown have 12th-century sources, as does the flaring robe. On the other hand, the quality of softness- in the chest, in the Buddha's left hand, and in the incised ornament of the belt- are legacies of the early 13th-century style.
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