Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Kings of Hells: Leaf 35 (1200s): Art, History and Details

Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Kings of Hells: Leaf 35 (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This ink line drawing belongs to a set of leafs illustrating the Ten Kings of Hell. The king here seems to render a verdict on four deceased souls: the plaintiffs are an old couple kneeling in the middle and facing the king, the accused are the younger couple to their left. The man of the latter group bares his upper body. The illustration belongs to a series of 50 ink line drawings that probably served professional artists in workshops as models for mural and silk paintings, commissioned by temples and monasteries.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Kings of Hells: Leaf 35
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 34.1 x 38.3 cm (13 7/16 x 15 1/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2004.1.35

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund in honor of Dr. Ju-hsi Chou and Gift of various donors to the department of Asian Art (by exchange)

Further reading listed by the museum

• Martin, F. R.. Zeichnungen nach Wu tao-tze aus der götter- und sagenwelt Chinas. München: F. Bruckmann a.g, 1913.
• Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.

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.