Vajrabhairava

The Vajrabhairava statue today housed at the MUDEC is very different from how it used to look when it was purchased, nine years before being engulfed in the flames caused by a British fire bomb during World War II. In fact, the original inventory sheet described the artifact as follows: “Jutting in overlapping fashion from the top of the skull, we find a manly snarling head with a tiara consisting of five small heads, plus a female head with its own five-palm tiara and hair arranged in two coblike braids. [...] From the belt hangs a sort of tunic with bands assembled as garlands, which alternate with plates decorated with floral spirals. [...] The eight [legs] on the left [...] rest on just as many ducks, while the eight on the right on as many couchant female buffalos (2 ducks have their head painted in red lacquer)”.
In fact, the standard representation of the divinity features a buffalo head surrounded by six devilish heads, above which there is another terrifying face that in turn sits below the serene face of the bodhisa va Mañjuśri, of which Vajrabhairava is a manifestation. The animals being stepped on are usually arranged in two rows and, along with birds and bovines, include celestial beings and vanquished Hindu divinities. The inventory sheet doesn't mention any hand-held attributes, which leads us to believe that they were already missing when the statue arrived to Italy. In addition, recent analyses made during restoration revealed that the statue was originally painted gold with polychrome decorations.
In artistic terms, the statue recalls the typical 15th century Chinese style that was reintroduced under the Qing rule. It probably served as one of the main icons in a major hall of a Lama temple along with another statue in the MUDEC collection, of the same monumental size and made by the same atelier, which represents Guhyasamāja and his yoginī.
There is actually ground to believe that these two sculptures were originally part of a trio. In fact, the divinities they portray are two of the three main yidam or istadevatā (prote ive deities that are object of meditation) of the Gelug school, the third one being Chakrasamvara.