Standing Shiva Mahadeva (700s): Art, History and Details

Standing Shiva Mahadeva (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This early iconic form of Shiva as the Great God, or mahadeva, embodies his contradictory aspects. Shiva is both a yogi who lives outside of society and a king who rules the world. His yogic qualities can be seen in the matted locks of hair and the cobra that girds his torso, yet he wears a king’s crown. The forward-looking face of Shiva embodies his sovereignty. He grants freedom from fear with the gesture of his upraised right hand; his lowered left hand holds a citrus fruit, used in temple worship. His feminine aspect embodies features associated with creation and nurturing. She emanates as his wife Parvati, here seen as his left face. His right head is Bhairava, whose fearsome face embodies Shiva’s powers of destruction. His two sons, the elephant-headed Ganesha and the warrior Skanda, stand at his feet. Shiva’s vehicle, the bull Nandi, turns his head with a determination in all three of his eyes, which mirror the three eyes of Shiva.

Object facts

• Title: Standing Shiva Mahadeva
• Date: 700s
• Culture: Northern India, Kashmir, 8th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: schist
• Dimensions: Overall: 53 cm (20 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1989.369

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.
• Pal, Pratapaditya, Amy Heller, Oskar von Hinüber, and Gautamavajra Vajrācārya. Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure. Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago in association with University of California Press and Mapin Pub, 2003.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.

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.