Medicine Master Buddha and the Twelve Divine Generals (1200s): Art, History and Details

Medicine Master Buddha and the Twelve Divine Generals (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

From the 700s, people in Japan began praying to the Medicine Master Buddha (Yakushi Nyorai) for longevity. Yakushi is at the center of this image, flanked by the bodhisattvas of the sun and moon, Nikkō and Gakkō. The Twelve Divine Generals, a group of protective deities, surround him. Yakushi sits in a meditative pose with his right hand in a gesture bestowing fearlessness while his left hand holds a medicine jar. In the upper part of the painting, rectangles simulating decorative paper inscription slips contain excerpts from a sacred text about Yakushi, in which he asks that sick people who speak his name should become well and that all who hear his name might have their purity restored.

Object facts

• Title: Medicine Master Buddha and the Twelve Divine Generals
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll painting; ink, color, gold, and silver on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 151.2 x 84.1 cm (59 1/2 x 33 1/8 in.); Overall: 261 x 106.6 cm (102 3/4 x 41 15/16 in.); with knobs: 261 x 113.3 cm (102 3/4 x 44 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1938.422

A detail from the museum

Each of the Divine Generals has an identifying zodiac animal in his hair or headdress.

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
• Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
• Hollis, Howard. “Yakushi and the Twelve Generals.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 28, no. 4, 1941, pp. 47–55.

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.