Zaō Gongen (1100s): Art, History and Details

Zaō Gongen (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Zaō Gongen is the deity of Mount Kinpu, in the Yoshino Mountains south of Nara. This fragment is from a votive mirror called a kakebotoke with metal fittings at the top through which a cord could be used to hang it.

Object facts

• Title: Zaō Gongen
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: Gilt bronze with repoussé and incised details
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.8 x 17.8 cm (10 3/16 x 7 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1986.47

A detail from the museum

This votive mirror would have been hung in a temple or shrine.

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1986.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 74, no. 2, 1987, pp. 38–79.
• “Art of Asia Acquired by North American Museums, 1987.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 41, 1988, pp. 95–110.
• Vilbar, Sinéad, and Kevin Gray Carr. Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019.

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.