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Durga as Mahishasuramardini (the Slayer of the Buffalo Demon)

Indian, Southern
early Chola period
970–1070
Object Place: Tamil Nadu, India

Medium/Technique Green schist
Dimensions Overall: 150 x 61 x 45.7 cm (59 1/16 x 24 x 18 in.)
Mount (Steel round rod armature support / two welded plates): 121.9 x 2.5 cm (48 x 1 in.)
Case (Wooden pedestal opening in back access for armature): 99.1 x 83.8 x 53.3 cm (39 x 33 x 21 in.)
Weight: 367.41 kg (810 lb.)
Credit Line Denman Waldo Ross Collection
Accession Number27.171
CollectionsAsia
ClassificationsSculpture

ProvenanceAbout 1920, acquired near Chidambaram by Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil (b. 1885 – d. 1945), Pondicherry, South India; sent by Jouveau-Dubreuil to C. T. Loo (dealer; b. 1880 – d. 1957), Paris and New York [see note]; 1927, gift of Denman Waldo Ross (b. 1853 - d. 1935), Cambridge, MA, to the MFA. (Accession Date: March 3, 1927)

NOTE: An undated photograph (Jouveau-Dubreuil papers, Archives of the Musée Guimet, Paris) annotated with provenance information and an indication that it went to C. T. Loo, inv. no. 384. French archaeologist Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil and his Indian agent Thangavelu sourced this and many other sculptures in Tamil Nadu in the late 1920s for art dealer C.T. Loo.