Buddha Head (1900s): Art, History and Details

Buddha Head (1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This Buddha has a soft and gentle smile, a typical attribute of Korean images of the Buddha. His plum cheeks and soft smile remind us of his childlike purity while his nearly closed eyes show him in a moment of meditation. The empty divot in the middle of the forehead would originally have contained a jewel symbolizing the light emanating from the Buddha. His head is topped with a profusion of snail-shell curls and an ushnisha, a mound symbolizing the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Object facts

• Title: Buddha Head
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: Korea
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: cast iron
• Dimensions: Overall: 41.8 x 33.7 x 32.1 cm (16 7/16 x 13 1/4 x 12 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1997.146

A detail from the museum

The hole or dot between the eyes on a Buddha statue is called the urna, representing spiritual insight.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major African Sculpture, Recent Mark Tansey Painting, and Other Works of Art Enter CMA Collection,” September 16, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

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.