Shōtoku Taishi at Sixteen (1400s-1500s): Art, History and Details

Shōtoku Taishi at Sixteen (1400s-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The 16-year-old prince regent Shōtoku Taishi, garbed in Buddhist vestments, bears an incense burner. He is flanked by two attendants; one carries religious texts in a box and the other holds a nyoi ceremonial Buddhist scepter. The two are sometimes identified as Shōtoku’s younger brother, Prince Eguri, and eldest son, Prince Yamashiro. Shōtoku has come to pray for his father, Emperor Yōmei (reigned 585–87), who is ill and on the point of death. Upon a miraculous recovery, the emperor accepted Buddhism.

Object facts

• Title: Shōtoku Taishi at Sixteen
• Date: 1400s-1500s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 121.9 x 57.5 cm (48 x 22 5/8 in.); Overall: 207.3 x 83.2 cm (81 5/8 x 32 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1964.278

A detail from the museum

One name for Shōtoku is "Prince Stable Door."

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

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.