Frieze with Apsaras (late 1100s): Art, History and Details

Frieze with Apsaras (late 1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Celestial dancers, with their legs drawn up to indicate that they are flying in space, enliven this architectural panel from the Bayon, the main state temple of the Khmer empire. The Bayon was conceived like a pantheon, housing all the divinities worshipped in the territories governed by the Khmer kingdom under King Jayavarman VII, who reigned from 1181 to 1218 across territories in present-day Cambodia and parts of Thailand and Vietnam. At various times in its history, the temple was dedicated to either the Buddha or to the Hindu god Shiva--the central icon in the sanctum was changed accordingly. Ambiguity of sectarian affiliation and the merging and changing of deities was a common occurrence in Cambodian religious practice.

Object facts

• Title: Frieze with Apsaras
• Date: late 1100s
• Culture: Cambodia, Angkor, the Bayon, Reign of Jayavarman VII, late 12th-early 13th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.4 x 87.6 cm (10 x 34 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Cambodian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1938.433

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard. "A Frieze from Angkor." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 27, no. 1 (January 1940): 4–5
• 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.