Lintel with Garuda (875–925): Art, History and Details

Lintel with Garuda (875–925) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Garuda is half man, half eagle, and the mount of Vishnu. His nose is beaklike, and his wings are carved in an exuberant foliate manner, like the swirling leaves that grow from the stem that arches across the middle of the panel. The vegetation yields female figures and jewels before it resolves itself into the heads of a cobra. Garuda is the natural enemy of the serpents, so he holds their tails in check. This decorative lintel is carved in the style of those made for a temple dedicated to the past kings of the Khmer territories. Derived from India’s use of purifying life-affirming imagery around doorways, this Garuda lintel has been rendered in a distinctively Khmer style.

Object facts

• Title: Lintel with Garuda
• Date: 875–925
• Culture: Cambodia
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 52.6 x 118.1 x 17.8 cm (20 11/16 x 46 1/2 x 7 in.)
• Collection: Cambodian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1967.37

A detail from the museum

In the foliage below the Garuda are two tiny female figures, the one on the left badly damaged.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

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.
• Marcus, Margaret F. “A Cambodian Sculptured Lintel.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 55, no. 10, 1968, pp. 321–330.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.