Seated Manjusri (1700s): Art, History and Details

Seated Manjusri (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Large-size Buddhist paintings dated to the Joseon period (1392–1910) were once hung behind Buddhist statues, attached to the wall. In the Buddhist pantheon of the Joseon period, Bodhisattva Manjusri appears as a deity attendant to Vairocana Buddha.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Manjusri
• Date: 1700s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 254.9 x 1146 cm (100 3/8 x 451 3/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1919.1020

A detail from the museum

Bodhisattva Manjusri is holding a ruyi scepter to represent ultimate wisdom.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• MacClean, J. Arthur. “A Korean Buddhist Painting of the Korai Dynasty.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 4 (May 1919): 70.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Hwang, Kyu-seong. “A Study on Iconography of Three World Buddhas in the Joseon Dynasty [朝鮮時代 三世佛 圖像에 關한 硏究].” Misul sahak (2006): 221–281.

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.