Maitreya (c. 200s CE): Art, History and Details

Maitreya (c. 200s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The water bottle in his left hand indicates that this figure depicts the bodhisattva Maitreya. It is thought that Maitreya will reach enlightenment after the teachings of the Buddha have been forgotten, in order to spread the teachings again.

Object facts

• Title: Maitreya
• Date: c. 200s CE
• Culture: Pakistan, Gandhara, Kushan period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gray schist
• Dimensions: Overall: 66.3 cm (26 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Gandhara
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1969.61

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ingholt, Harold, and Islay Lyons. Gandhāran Art in Pakistan. [New York]: Pantheon Books, 1957.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1969." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 57, no. 1 (January 1970): 2-50.
• "Art of Asia Recently Acquired by American Museums, 1969." Archives of Asian Art 24 (1970): 86-117.

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.