Aizen Myōō (early 1300s): Art, History and Details

Aizen Myōō (early 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The Buddhist deity Aizen Myōō channels carnal desire into a lust for spiritual enlightenment. In its principal right arm, this figure once held a vajra, a symbolic weapon used to cut through illusion, while its main left arm still grasps the vajra bell rung to bring one to awareness. The lion’s head in Aizen’s hair holds its mouth open to devour thoughts and desires. Holes along the front of the legs show where the sculpture’s base would have been attached.

Object facts

• Title: Aizen Myōō
• Date: early 1300s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood with black lacquer and red pigments
• Dimensions: Overall: 75 x 59 x 35 cm (29 1/2 x 23 1/4 x 13 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1987.185

A detail from the museum

The torso, head, and legs of this figure were carved from a single block of wood. Four of the arms were carved separately.

Collection credit

Bequest of Elizabeth M. Skala

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 30–71.
• Cunningham, Michael R. "Fierce Salvation: Comments on a Recently Acquired Japanese Sculpture." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 4 (April 1993): 140–143.
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.