Eleven-Headed, Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara) (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Eleven-Headed, Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara) (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

One thousand arms surround the central figure like a radiating halo. Each hand has an eye in the palm to see the suffering of all beings, generating the sense of compassion that this figure embodies. The special form of the central image of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara derives from the mystic vision of a nun named Gelongma Palmo, who was born a Kashmiri princess, but prayed for leprosy to avoid having to marry and became an accomplished nun. While meditating in a cave, she achieved this vision of 11-headed, 1,000-armed Avalokiteshvara, who cured her leprosy and guided her on the path to enlightenment.

Object facts

• Title: Eleven-Headed, Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara)
• Date: c. 1500
• Culture: Western Tibet
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and ink on cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 94.6 x 69.2 cm (37 1/4 x 27 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Tibetan Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1982.147

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Pal, Pratapaditya. "Cosmic Vision and Buddhist Images." Art International vol. XXV/1-2 (January, 1982), pp. 8–39.
• Klimburg-Salter, Deborah E., and Maximilian Klimburg. The Silk Route and the Diamond Path: Esoteric Buddhist Art on the Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes. Los Angeles, CA: Published under the sponsorship of the UCLA Art Council, 1982.
• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review for 1982." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (1983): 3–55.

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.