Standing Buddha (591): Art, History and Details

Standing Buddha (591) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This bronze Buddha is exceptional, because it carries an inscription on its base that dates its manufacture to the year 591. According to the inscription, the sculpture was dedicated by a nun who was from a village in Nepal, but she probably commissioned it at a workshop in northern India. The Buddha's robe on this image has been left plain, without pleat lines to obscure the beauty of the contours of the body. Only the rippling scalloped clusters of the garment’s hem lend some sense of energy and subtle ornament to the composition.

Object facts

• Title: Standing Buddha
• Date: 591
• Culture: Northern India, Uttar Pradesh
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 46.5 x 15.4 x 13.4 cm (18 5/16 x 6 1/16 x 5 1/4 in.); without base: 35 x 13.8 x 10.5 cm (13 3/4 x 5 7/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1968.40

A detail from the museum

Around the time when this sculpture was made, portable bronzes began to replace relics as the principal sacred commodity circulating in the Buddhist world.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Back Matter." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 10 (1968).
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• "Art of Asia Recently Acquired by American Museums, 1968." Archives of Asian Art 23 (1969): 58–87.

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.