Nature Divinity (Yakshi) (c. 75 CE): Art, History and Details

Nature Divinity (Yakshi) (c. 75 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This powerful figure personifies the ideal of the young mother in the form of a nature goddess associated with birth and nourishment. Her iconic stance with the weight equally distributed on both feet indicates that this statue was an object of worship. Her extraordinary headdress, well preserved in the back, and full complement of jewels and ornaments, point to the idea of wealth, which leads to prosperity.

Object facts

• Title: Nature Divinity (Yakshi)
• Date: c. 75 CE
• Culture: India, Mathura, Kshatrapa period (c. 20 BCE–114 CE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: mottled red sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 127.6 x 49 x 25.4 cm (50 1/4 x 19 5/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Mathura
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1968.104

A detail from the museum

The prominence of the peacock (enemy of serpents) on the back of her headdress suggests she has the power to protect against snakebite.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• “Art of Asia Recently Acquired by American Museums, 1968.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 23, 1969, pp. 58–87.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1968." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 1 (1969): 3–50.

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.