Head of a Buddha image

In the 1790s the first monarch of the new kingdom of Siam, with its capital at Bangkok, built an important temple called Wat Phra Chettuphon, known informally as Wat Pho, the "Temple of the Bo Tree." The king had hundreds of old Buddha images from other parts of his realm brought south to line the galleries of the temple.

These images were in a variety of styles; to make them uniform the king had them covered with layers of stucco coated in gilded lacquer. In the 1950s the stucco coatings were removed, and most fragments of them were discarded. This stucco face and at least one other, though, were kept and soon found their way into foreign collections. An impression of the face of the Buddha image that this fragment once covered is preserved on its inner side and it is possible to narrow down which image still at Wat Phra Chettuphon it once belonged to.