Stele with Maitreya and Attendants (500): Art, History and Details

Stele with Maitreya and Attendants (500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Buddhist statue steles (zaoxiang bei) were commissioned and donated to be set in temples. The making of Buddhist images allowed for personal devotion and accumulation of merits, but the erection of a stele was also an act of piety or gratitude by individual donors. As indicated by the inscription on the reverse side of this stele, it was commissioned in 500 by a monk for his parents, family, and religious teachers.

Object facts

• Title: Stele with Maitreya and Attendants
• Date: 500
• Culture: China, Northern Wei dynasty (386-534)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gray limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 94.6 x 54.6 cm (37 1/4 x 21 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Northern Dynasties
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1959.130

Collection credit

Gift of Severance and Greta Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai Kam. "The Future Buddha Maitreya in a Northern Wei Stele." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 8 (October 1960): 183-191.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.