Anseong Daenong-ri Stone Standing Buddha

This is a stone standing Buddha statue in the style popular during the Goryeo Dynasty. The Daenong-ri Stone Standing Buddha stands quietly by the roadside next to a pine forest in the village, accompanied by a few pine trees.

The large head, disproportionate to the body, is adorned with a hat in the style of a jeongmo (a type of hat worn by Goryeo officials and monks after the Yuan intervention period, originally a hat worn by Yuan nobles). The face lacks volume, with horizontally elongated eyes, a thick nose, and a small closed mouth, while the ears extend down to the shoulders. The robe covering both shoulders forms thick belt-like folds on the upper arms. The statue shows a unique posture, holding a kundika (water bottle) in the right hand and supporting it with the left hand. A bracelet is visible on the left hand revealed beneath the robe, suggesting the possibility that this is a bodhisattva statue rather than a Tathagata statue. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the kundika is an attribute of a bodhisattva, not a Tathagata. The flat expression lacking volume on a pillar-like body, the large head and facial features relative to the body, the hat on the head, and the depiction of the kundika held in one hand are very similar to the expression techniques of the Yongin Mipyeong-ri Medicine Buddha Standing Statue. These expressions show the lineage of the Buddha statue style that was popular mainly in Chungcheong Province and southern Gyeonggi Province during the early Goryeo period, and the work also reflects the local style of late Goryeo Buddha statues in the expression of the face and body without volume, horizontally elongated eyes and thick nose, a straight closed mouth, and arms and hands that appear poorly proportioned relative to their size.