Embroidered Welcoming Descent of Amida Triad (1400s): Art, History and Details

Embroidered Welcoming Descent of Amida Triad (1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Buddha Amida arrives here to welcome a person to his Pure Land at the moment of death. A monk, a woman, and a child sit with their hands in prayer, and a beam of light emanating from Amida extends toward them. The inscription at the top indicates that the compassion of Amida Buddha always flows impartially to all those who recite his name, a quote from the Contemplation Sutra.

Object facts

• Title: Embroidered Welcoming Descent of Amida Triad
• Date: 1400s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: Hanging scroll; silk and human hair embroidery
• Dimensions: Embroidery: 109.1 x 37.2 cm (42 15/16 x 14 5/8 in.); Mounted: 173.1 x 49.4 cm (68 1/8 x 19 7/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1966.513

A detail from the museum

The Contemplation Sutra is a sacred Buddhist text often used in Pure Land Buddhism.

Collection credit

Gift of the American Foundation for the Maud E. and Warren H. Corning Botanical Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 54, no. 10, 1967, pp. 302–346.
• Grotenhuis, Elizabeth ten. “Visions of a Transcendent Realm: Pure Land Images in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 78, no. 7, 1991, pp. 274–300.
• Grotenhuis ten, Elizabeth. Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999.

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.