Seated Sakyamuni Buddha (500s–600s): Art, History and Details

Seated Sakyamuni Buddha (500s–600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Created during the Unified Silla period, a high point of the spread of Buddhist teachings, this kind of miniature statue was often used as a portable object of devotion by traveling Buddhist monks. This particular Buddhist statue is very similar in style and size to the one in the collection of the National Museum of Korea. See it in the following link: https://www.museum.go.kr/site/main/relic/search/view?relicId=1926

Object facts

• Title: Seated Sakyamuni Buddha
• Date: 500s–600s
• Culture: Korea, Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 CE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: stone
• Dimensions: Overall: 11.4 x 7.6 x 7 cm (4 1/2 x 3 x 2 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1987.188

A detail from the museum

This seated Buddhist deity is Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 30–71.

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.