Buddha's Conversion of Five Bhiksu (mid-1300s): Art, History and Details

Buddha's Conversion of Five Bhiksu (mid-1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Li Sheng (Chinese, active c. 1324–after 1375).

The work and its context

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

This episode stems from the life of the historical Buddha, who, after his enlightenment, was initially hesitant about preaching his own doctrine. After much personal deliberation and prodding by deities, he finally relented. The first converts were the five guards who served him when he was still a prince. For Li Sheng, this is the pretext of the painting, which moves from the interaction of the bhiksu with the Buddha to a broader awareness of the vast surroundings of the scene.

Object facts

• Title: Buddha's Conversion of Five Bhiksu
• Date: mid-1300s
• Creator attribution: Li Sheng (Chinese, active c. 1324–after 1375)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 26.7 x 110.5 cm (10 1/2 x 43 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1997.92

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E., and Wai-kam Ho. Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; [distributed by the Press of Case Western Reserve University], 1968.
• Ishikawa, Jun 石川淳, Yoshitaka Iriya 入矢義高, Yūjirō Nakata 中田勇次郎, and Hironobu Kohara 古原宏伸. Kō Kōbō, Gei San, Ō Mō, Go Chin [黄公望, 倪瓚, 王蒙, 呉鎮]. Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1979.
• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.

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.