Seated Buddha (lotus pedestal) (1100s): Art, History and Details

Seated Buddha (lotus pedestal) (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Composed of a number of hollowed-out pieces of wood that were then covered with lacquer and gilding, this sculpture would have served as the principal image of worship in a Buddhist temple hall. The Buddha Yakushi resides in the Lapis Lazuli Paradise of the East, and heals all diseases, including the ailment of ignorance. His left hand once held a medicine jar, while his right hand gestures reassurance. Seated on a lotus pedestal and backed by a mandorla and halo, the Buddha may have once been flanked by the bodhisattvas of the Sun and Moon, Nikkō and Gakkō, and protected by the Twelve Divine Generals, or Junishinshō.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Buddha (lotus pedestal)
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gilded wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 145.4 cm (57 1/4 in.); Figure: 88.2 cm (34 3/4 in.); Pedestal: 57.2 cm (22 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1973.85.c

A detail from the museum

This figure is depicted with a mudra, or hand gesture, that means "have no fear."

Collection credit

Gift of Takako Setsu and her husband, Iwao, in memory of her father-in-law, Inosuke Setsu, and his long friendship with Sherman E. Lee

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1973.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 61, no. 2, 1974, pp. 31–78.
• Yamane, Yūzō 山根有三, Shūjirō Shimada 島田修二郎, and Terukazu Akiyama 秋山光和. Zaigai Nihon no shihō [在外日本の至宝 = Japanese Art: Selections froM Western Collections, vol. 8 ]. Tōkyō: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1979.
• Zenzo Shimizu, "Japanese Sculptures in America and Canada," Bukkyō geijutsu [佛教藝術= Ars Buddhica] , no. 126 (September 1979), part I, pp. 67-88.

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.