“For all Buddhists, the Buddha is a symbol of transcendent wisdom,” Proser says. “Yet the artists tried to create sculptures that looked sympathetic and had a sense of humanity, so that people could more easily relate to them. As a manifestation of the Buddha himself, these sculptures were not only made to inspire awe and respect but to encourage devotees to follow his enlightened example.”

Some of the earliest, best-known Buddha sculptures adorned monasteries and stupas (a mound or dome symbolic of the faith that may also contain Buddhist relics) in the northwestern Indian regions of Mathura and Gandhara (spanning parts of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan) from the first to fifth centuries A.D. Sculpted principally from gray schist and stucco, Gandharan Buddhas display a hybrid Greco-Roman Indian style that developed due to the region’s strategic location at the hub of the ancient Silk Route. Alexander the Great’s invasion in the fourth century B.C. also facilitated the transfer of Greek culture. Classical pleated drapery and realistic, muscular features are among the defining aesthetic characteristics of Gandharan Buddhas.

But it is the bronze and red sandstone Buddha sculptures created under the Gupta Empire in North India from the fourth- to sixth-centuries A.D. that are considered the supreme expression of Buddhist art. “The Gupta Buddha is the ideal Buddha, the prototype that influenced the best Buddha sculptures throughout Asia for centuries,” says New York dealer Carlton Rochell. “All the other succeeding Buddhas pay homage to the graceful, elegant, humanistic Gupta models. No other type of Buddhist sculpture so masterfully integrates such serene spirituality with the dynamic sensuality that is so characteristic of Indian sculpture. Gupta Buddhas, which are among the rarest because so few have survived, display the ultimate synthesis of the human and the ideal.”

Although India was the birthplace of Buddhism, the religion as we know it today is more identified in the popular mind with Tibet, where Buddhists comprise the majority of the population. Bronze Tibetan Buddha sculptures, whether gilded or not, are among the most prevalent on the market. These Buddhas are often more formulaic and stylized than their Gupta precursors, observes Rochell. Given the complex iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Buddha sculptures appear in various guises in addition to the most common traditional Shakyamuni figure. The Medicine Buddha, for example, holds a medicine bowl, whereas Vairochana Buddha is depicted turning the Buddhist wheel of law. The most sought-after Tibetan examples date from the 12th to 15th centuries, the earlier Buddhas displaying a simpler, more humanistic style than the later ones, which are noted for their superb ornamentation and gilding.

Nepalese Buddha sculptures show a distinctive Indian influence, due to Nepal’s close proximity to India, which allowed for a fertile exchange between traveling artists. “Nepalese sculpture reached its zenith from the seventh to 13th centuries with the Newari artists of the Kathmandu Valley, who are considered among the greatest sculptors of Asia,” says Fabio Rossi of Rossi & Rossi in London. “They are noted for their beautiful, naturalistic, slightly youthful representations of the Buddha and had a great understanding of the human form.”

Bronze and stone Buddha sculptures began to appear in Southeast Asia in the sixth century. Khmer (the ancient civilization of present-day Cambodia) Buddha sculptures from the ninth- to 13th-century Angkor period are noted for their pared-down simplicity, restraint and subtle smiles, which endow them with a stunning, ethereal presence. “While there is a consciousness in all Asian cultures that the Buddha was Indian, Buddha sculptures nevertheless incorporated indigenous features and expressions that represented each culture’s own version of ideal beauty,” Proser says. “This ideal is expressed in everything from the shape of the head and eyes to the thickness of the lips, as evident in Khmer examples.”