Deity (1100s): Art, History and Details

Deity (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This unidentified sculpture represents a mature male figure with a long beard. His robes, crown-like head ornament, and hair arranged into a topknot resemble the attire and styling of members of the heavenly realm—tenbu in Japanese—of the Buddhist cosmos. The comparatively simple design, along with carving marks purposely left by the sculptor throughout the surface tend to be associated with sculptures of kami, deities venerated at shrines, or jinja.

Object facts

• Title: Deity
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Magnolia wood with traces of color
• Dimensions: Overall: 100 cm (39 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1954.373

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “A Hand and an Image of Wood.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 44, no. 1, 1957, pp. 3–9.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.