Fragment of a stupa balustrade pillar depicting a female musician...

Fragment of a stupa balustrade pillar depicting a female musician playing the flute. Red Mathura sandstone, Kushan period, 1st–2nd century CE. Reverse side decorated with a blooming lotus. Base by Kichizo Inagaki bearing the artist’s stamp on the reverse. H. 32 cm. Provenance: Former Paul Guillaume collection. This sculpture appears in a photograph of Paul Guillaume’s salon at 20 Avenue de Messine, published in *Feuilles volantes*, supplements to *Cahiers d’art*, no. 1, 1927. It occupies a central position on the mantelpiece in front of *Woman in a Yellow Blouse*, painted in 1907 by Pablo Picasso. Provenance: Thierry de Maigret auction, 2021. Comments: The art of the Kushan Empire, which flourished in northern India between the 1st and 3rd centuries A.D., marks one of the great moments in Indian sculpture. The workshops of Mathura, using the famous local red sandstone, developed an original style combining Indian heritage with influences from the Hellenistic world and Central Asia. This period saw, in particular, a remarkable flourishing of Buddhist art, with stupas adorned with richly carved ensembles. This fragment of a red sandstone balustrade pillar, most likely from the Mathura region, depicts a female musician playing the flute in high relief. Female figures—musicians, dancers, or yakṣīs—played an important role in the decoration of the balustrades surrounding the stupas. Beyond their ornamental function, they evoked prosperity, fertility, and the celebration of the Buddhist Law, contributing to the monument’s symbolic richness. The side grooves held the horizontal rails of the balustrade (vedikā), while the reverse side is carved with a lotus blooming in a rosette pattern, a motif characteristic of the Kushan pillars of Mathura.