Mandala of the Four Deities of Mt. Kōya (1500s): Art, History and Details

Mandala of the Four Deities of Mt. Kōya (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The two kami, or deities, at the top of this painting are Kariba Myōjin and Niu Myōjin. They inhabit Mount Kōya and are described as son and mother. They are shown here as courtiers, with Kariba in Japanese-style court robes and Niu in robes modeled after court garments of the Tang dynasty. The two kami seated beneath are Kehi Myōjin, portrayed as a lady holding a whisk, and the youthful Miyajima Myōjin, with his hair drawn up in loops, playing a lute (biwa). Hōjō Masako (1157–1225), the wife of the first Kamakura shogun (leader) Minamoto Yoritomo (1147–1199), invited them to Mount Kōya.

Object facts

• Title: Mandala of the Four Deities of Mt. Kōya
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll, ink, color and cut gold foil on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 178.6 x 56.3 cm (70 5/16 x 22 3/16 in.); Painting only: 97.5 x 39.3 cm (38 3/8 x 15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1999.262

Collection credit

Gift of Rosemarie and Leighton Longhi

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.