Portable Shrine (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Portable Shrine (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Carved from a solid section of a log, the shrine contains images of protectors of tantric Buddhism—a branch that developed in northern India and became prominent in the Himalayas by the 700s. The central figure in the top row is Padmasambhava (Indian, active in Tibet in the 740s), venerated as the founder of one of the four main Tibetan monastic orders. Incised on the exterior are images of protectors, mantras written in Tibetan script, and a sacred funerary monument called a stupa. Tantric practice emphasizes recitation of mantras that invoke the powers of compassion, wisdom, and protection.

Object facts

• Title: Portable Shrine
• Date: c. 1500
• Culture: Tibet
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: wood with mineral pigments and metal
• Dimensions: Diameter: 16.2 cm (6 3/8 in.); Overall: 25.4 cm (10 in.)
• Collection: Tibetan Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1968.214

A detail from the museum

Tantric practice can be performed alone in any location; this shrine could be used by a traveling practitioner for meditation, visualization, prayer, and recitation of mantras.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Deniker, Joseph and Deshayes, Émile. Catalogue de la première partie des œuvres d'art et de haute curiosité du Tibet: collection G.... Paris: Moreau, 1904.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1968.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 1 (January 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.