Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Search the Mountain: Leaf 48 (1200s): Art, History and Details

Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Search the Mountain: Leaf 48 (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This extraordinary album has 50 paintings on a variety of religious subjects. They were likely created by several master craftsmen to share with studio apprentices as models for fulfilling commissions. The Jade Emperor and the Daoist pantheon make up the first 26 leaves. The next 14 leaves portray the Buddhist Ten Kings of Hell administering punishments to the dead. The third section, called “Clearing the Mountains,” features divine soldiers, led presumably by the deity Erlang Shen 二郎神, fighting undesirable creatures.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Search the Mountain: Leaf 48
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 34.1 x 38.4 cm (13 7/16 x 15 1/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2004.1.48

A detail from the museum

Below, a soldier drags two frogs behind him with a rope. Above, a demon drags a fox by its leg; another carries a cow over his shoulders.

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: 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.