One day, when the teachings of Gautama Buddha have almost disappeared from the Earth, it is prophesied that a new Buddha, Maitreya, will appear. He will achieve complete enlightenment in just seven days, and will begin to teach the Dharma. His teachings will be similar to those of the Gautama Buddha, and he shall usher in a new age of Buddhism. He currently resides in Tushita heaven, a spiritual plain which is reachable through meditation, and where every Buddha – including the Gautama Buddha – lives before they are reborn on Earth. His coming will be foretold by a number of cosmic events, among which the oceans will decrease in size, allowing Maitreya to traverse them freely. He will be born to a Brahmin couple – Tubrahma and Brahmavadi – in the mythical kingdom of Ketumati (commonly assimilated with the ancient city of Varanasi, north India), and will be 88 Cubits (40 m, 135 ft) tall. Despite the absence of these physical events and characteristics, a number of mortal individuals have claimed to be Maitreya born on Earth. A number of interesting claimants have included a Chinese Empress (Wu Zetian, AD 690 – AD 705), a Korean Warlord (Gung Ye, Tenth Century AD), the founder of Scientology (L. Ron Hubbard, AD 1955), and even, retrospectively, the Prophet Muhammad.

Maitreya is depicted in this figure as a tall, sinuous youth. He sits on a semi-circular throne, with his feet on a stool. He wears a loincloth, which reaches all the way down to his feet, and is decorated with an elaborate belt from which dangles a chain with a floriate roundel. His slender torso is exposed, but elaborately decorated with fine jewellery, and an arrangement of straps which hangs loosely across his chest. His hands are held in the dharmachakra mudra, a hand gesture that is associated with Gautama Buddha’s preached after his enlightenment at Sarnath. It symbolises the setting into motion of a cycle of dharma, appropriately enough for a Buddha who will begin a new age. His face is severe, with a pointed nose and highly arched eyebrows, but his expression is one of calm serenity, with eyes half-closed and mouth upturned into a slight smile. On his forehead, he has the urna, a dot which tells of the wisdom of a Buddha. His ears are weighed down by the heavy gold earrings of the princely class, thus assimilating him with the Gautama Buddha. He wears an elaborate crown, and has his hair styled in a multi-layer usnisha topknot. From each elbow sprouts a lotus; one of them holds a wheel, representing the dharma, and the other a small pot known as kumbha, which symbolises the womb. Around his head is an ovoid halo (pabha) which indicates his divinity.

The late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries AD were times of great security for Buddhism. The Qing Dynasty, which dominated Tibet from the Seventeenth Century, legitimated themselves to the Tibetan people by supporting the Gelug school of Buddhism, exporting it throughout China. With the collapse of the Qing, and the early Chinese Republic, Tibet asserted its independence, under the increasingly powerful Dalai Lama, as the temporal as well as spiritual head of the Tibetan state. As a result, there was a flourishing of Buddhist art in this period. Sadly, with the Chinese invasion of Tibet from AD 1949, and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, Buddhism in Tibet was suppressed, and the artistic fluorescence ceased.