Shakyamuni and Attendant Bodhisattvas

By Buddhism Now on 9 September 2015 • ( 0 )

元佚名釋迦三尊圖軸

This painting stands midway between the hieratic icons employed in formal temple ceremonies and the informal images that served Chan (or Zen) monks as personal devotional images for use in meditation. The intimate scale, informality of the figures’ poses, and landscape setting link the painting to Chan-style depictions of Shakyamuni — the human origin of the Buddha — as an ascetic descending from the mountains just prior to achieving Buddhahood. In this scene, the Buddhist equivalent of Christ’s Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Shakyamuni offers a parallel to the Chan practitioner’s search for individual enlightenment.

Landscape elements in the painting follow the meticulously descriptive style of the Southern Song Painting Academy. The angular contours of the figures’ fluttering drapery lines are flat and conventionalized, however, and suggest an early fourteenth-century date for the piece.

Unidentified Artist Chinese. Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), late 13th – early 14th century.

With thanks to © Metropolitan Museum of Art