Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Procession of Daoist Deities: Leaf 25 (1200s): Art, History and Details

Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Procession of Daoist Deities: Leaf 25 (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

These twelve figures are personifications of the dizhi 地支, or Earthly Branches. Each is accompanied by its corresponding animal in the Chinese zodiac. The Earthly Branches would normally be accompanied by the ten Heavenly Stems, or tiangan 天干, which suggests a missing leaf.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Procession of Daoist Deities: Leaf 25
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 34.3 x 38.4 cm (13 1/2 x 15 1/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2004.1.25

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.
• Chung, Anita. Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: July 27, 2013-January 26, 2014, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.
• 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.