Wisdom King of Great Awe-inspiring Power (Daiitoku Myōō) (mid-1800s): Art, History and Details

Wisdom King of Great Awe-inspiring Power (Daiitoku Myōō) (mid-1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In Esoteric Buddhism, there is one Buddha at the center of the universe, and four additional Buddhas, each of whom occupies one of the four cardinal directions. These Buddhas also manifest themselves in fierce forms called Kings of Brightness (myōō), or Wisdom Kings. Daiitoku is an avatar of the Buddha Amida and manages the west.

Object facts

• Title: Wisdom King of Great Awe-inspiring Power (Daiitoku Myōō)
• Date: mid-1800s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 250 x 143 cm (98 7/16 x 56 5/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1976.72

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1976.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 2 (February, 1977): 39–78.
• Koyama-Richard, Brigitte. Animaux Dans La Peinture Japonaise. Lyon: Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2020.

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.