Fujiwara no Muchimaro (1200s or 1300s): Art, History and Details

Fujiwara no Muchimaro (1200s or 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This portrait of Fujiwara no Muchimaro (680–737), a grandson of Fujiwara no Kamatari (614–669), includes an image of Buddha Dainichi Nyorai above his head. By situating the image of Dainichi there, this painting would seem to assert that Muchimaro is an avatar of Dainichi. In the same way that kami could be identified with Buddhist counterparts, powerful humans could also be seen as manifestations of Buddhist deities. A similar painting is at Eizanji in Nara, of which Muchimaro is known as the founder. It was once a branch temple of Kōfukuji, the Fujiwara family temple.

Object facts

• Title: Fujiwara no Muchimaro
• Date: 1200s or 1300s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink, color, gold, and cut gold on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 141.3 x 87 cm (55 5/8 x 34 1/4 in.); with knobs: 210.2 x 112.4 cm (82 3/4 x 44 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1983.5

A detail from the museum

The boughs of wisteria appearing in the background symbolize the figure's status as a Fujiwara family member.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “Year in Review for 1983.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 2 (February 1984): 38–79.
• Vilbar, Sinéad, and Kevin Gray Carr. Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019.

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.