Buddha of Infinite Life and Light (Amida Nyorai) (1269): Art, History and Details

Buddha of Infinite Life and Light (Amida Nyorai) (1269) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kōshun (Japanese, active mid-1200s); Koshin (Japanese, active mid-1200s); Joshun (Japanese, active mid-1200s).

The work and its context

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

This ornate Buddha Amida stands in a posture of welcome, greeting the dying who will accompany him back to his Pure Land. Documents inserted into the sculpture’s hollow core around the time of its creation include a copy of the sacred text Amida Sutra, a register of donors who desired to be joined together in generating karmic merit (kechien) through the creation and dedication of the sculpture, and a record asserting that the image was completed over the course of 33 days in 1269 at Shitennōji Temple in Osaka.

Object facts

• Title: Buddha of Infinite Life and Light (Amida Nyorai)
• Date: 1269
• Creator attribution: Kōshun (Japanese, active mid-1200s); Koshin (Japanese, active mid-1200s); Joshun (Japanese, active mid-1200s)
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Cypress with lacquer, color, gold, cut gold, rock-crystal inlaid eyes, and quartz
• Dimensions: Overall: 94.6 cm (37 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1960.197

A detail from the museum

The lead sculptor was Kōshun, who had been granted the lofty title “Bridge of the Law.”

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ikeda, Shōtarō 池田庄太郎. Ikeda Daisendō kobijutsu shūhō 池田大仙堂古美術集芳. Ōsaka: Ikeda Shōtarō, 1941.
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review| 1960.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 47, no. 10, 1960, pp. 223–254.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Divine: And the Terrible.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 48, no. 1 (January 1961): 5–9.

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.