Welcoming Descent of Amida (Amida Raigō) (1300–1333): Art, History and Details

Welcoming Descent of Amida (Amida Raigō) (1300–1333) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In the Pure Land school of Buddhism, Amida Buddha is the focus of worship. Pictured here is the raigō, or the moment when Amida descends with his retinue to welcome a dying person into his Pure Land, called the Western Paradise. Once there, a person can concentrate on becoming enlightened. Images like this one could be placed before a person on their deathbed to help them stay faithful and motivated to attain birth in the Pure Land.

Object facts

• Title: Welcoming Descent of Amida (Amida Raigō)
• Date: 1300–1333
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink, color and gold on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 171.8 x 84.5 cm (67 5/8 x 33 1/4 in.); Mounted: 269.1 x 113.3 cm (105 15/16 x 44 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1953.123

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sano, Emily J., Randall Laird Nadeau, Alison J. Miller, Erin K. Murphy, and Katherine Crawford Luber. Heaven and Hell: Salvation and Retribution in Pure Land Buddhism. 2017. fig. 3.1
• Lee, Sherman. "A Raigō." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 4 (April 1957): 59-63.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.