Altarpiece with Buddha Enthroned (mid-1100s): Art, History and Details

Altarpiece with Buddha Enthroned (mid-1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The crown and jewels of this Buddha indicate that he is a transcendent Buddha, not the historical Buddha who lived in the 5th century BCE. Small-scale bronze images of transcendent Buddhas were used in tantric practices as personal meditation images or in ritual settings. Tantric Buddhism was adopted as the state religion during the 12th century in the region of Angkor. A depiction of the tree that references the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment is above the scalloped serpentine form of the niche under which he sits enthroned on an altar. An object interpreted as a lotus bud rests on the hands in his lap as he sits in a posture of meditation.

Object facts

• Title: Altarpiece with Buddha Enthroned
• Date: mid-1100s
• Culture: Cambodia, found in Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, Reign of Suryavarman II, Angkor Wat Period, 1st half 12th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.8 cm (10 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Cambodian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1942.149

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. Buddhist Art. Detroit Institute of Arts, Twenty-Fourth Loan Exhibition, October, 1942. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1942.
• Lee, Sherman E. "A Cambodian Bronze Hoard." Art in America vol. 31, no. 2 (April 1943): 78–83.
• Hollis, Howard. “A Cambodian Bronze Altarpiece.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 31, no. 7 (1944): 138–39.

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.