{
"data": {
"id": 147571,
"accession_number": "1973.70",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Bodhisattvas of the Ten Stages in Attaining the Most Perfect Knowledge; The Eight Hosts of Deva, Naga, and Yakshi (\u7b49\u89ba\u4f4d\u5341\u5730\u83e9\u85a9; \u5929\u9f8d\u516b\u90e8\u7f85\u53c9\u5973\u8846), 1454. China, Ming dynasty (1368\u20131644). Pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on silk; painting only: 140.5 x 79.1 cm (55 5/16 x 31 1/8 in.); each overall with knobs: 227.2 x 120 cm (89 7/16 x 47 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1973.70",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Bodhisattvas of the Ten Stages in Attaining the Most Perfect Knowledge; The Eight Hosts of Deva, Naga, and Yakshi",
"title_in_original_language": "\u7b49\u89ba\u4f4d\u5341\u5730\u83e9\u85a9; \u5929\u9f8d\u516b\u90e8\u7f85\u53c9\u5973\u8846",
"creation_date": "1454",
"creation_date_earliest": 1454,
"creation_date_latest": 1454,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"China, Ming dynasty (1368\u20131644)"
],
"technique": "Pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on silk",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Chinese Art",
"collection": "ASIAN - Hanging scroll",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Painting only: 140.5 x 79.1 cm (55 5/16 x 31 1/8 in.); Each overall with knobs: 227.2 x 120 cm (89 7/16 x 47 1/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"painting only": {
"height": 1.405,
"height_inch": 55,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.3125,
"width": 0.791,
"width_inch": 31,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
},
"each overall with knobs": {
"height": 2.272,
"height_inch": 89,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 1.2,
"width_inch": 47,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.25
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "\u5927\u660e\u666f\u6cf0\u4e94\u5e74\u516b\u6708\u521d\u4e09\u65e5\u65bd",
"inscription_translation": "Donated on the third day of the eighth month in the fifth year of the Jingtai reign (1454) of the Great Ming.",
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304517,
"title": "Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting",
"description": "Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 11-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982); The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (December 3, 1982-February 28, 1983).",
"opening_date": "1981-02-11T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 358367,
"title": "Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850",
"description": "Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850. Spencer Museum of Art (August 9-October 31, 1994); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (November 30, 1994-January 29, 1995).",
"opening_date": "1994-08-09T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 318433,
"title": "Taming Tigers and Releasing Dragons: Masterpieces of Chinese Buddhist Art \u2013 Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c",
"description": "Taming Tigers and Releasing Dragons: Masterpieces of Chinese Buddhist Art \u2013 Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 8-August 11, 2019).",
"opening_date": "2019-02-08T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 437443,
"title": "Monk Artisans of the Joseon Dynasty",
"description": "Monk Artisans of the Joseon Dynasty. National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) (organizer) (December 6, 2021-March 6, 2022).",
"opening_date": "2021-12-06T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Ming imperial collection [Jingtai era, 1450\u20131456]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1450-56",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Shunichi Yabumoto Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?-1973",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1973-",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "The grandest of the Buddhist mortuary rites is the Water-Land (shuilu) ritual. This esoteric ceremony is conducted for the salvation of \u201call souls of the dead on land and sea.\u201d The ostentatious ritual was performed for imperial ancestors and high officials from the Song (960\u20131279) to the Ming dynasties and drew large crowds. On the second day of the weeklong ceremony, paintings are hung in the inner altar.
These two scrolls belong to a set of 36 Water-Land ritual paintings that are the finest works of their types known from the Ming period. With their bright, opaque color and fine-line gilt decoration intact and unfaded, both paintings share a remarkable state of preservation.
In the upper right corner of each painting is an imperial seal and an inscription in gold reading: Donated on the third day of the eighth month in the fifth year of the Jingtai reign (1454) of the Great Ming. Written in ink in the lower left corner is the record that they were made on imperial order, probably to present them to the Da Longfu monastery in Beijing.
One scroll represents the Eight Hosts of Celestial Nagas and Yakshis as described in the Lotus Sutra. The other represents Bodhisattvas of the Ten Stages of Enlightenment undergoing the final processes toward Buddhahood. The sinuous curves of scarf and drapery, the layering of garments, and the minute detail all reflect the opulent visual atmosphere that surrounded the Ming worshipper in temples and spirit halls throughout the country.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60472532"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1973.70-the-bodhisattvas-of"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "\u201cThe Year in Review for 1973.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31\u201378.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pp. 66\u201367; Mentioned: p. 79, nos. 200, 203",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152513"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 348",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n368"
},
{
"citation": "Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pp. 153-154, cat. no. 131a-b",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Suzuki, Kei \u9234\u6728\u656c. Chugoku kaiga shi [\u4e2d\u570b\u7e6a\u756b\u53f2 = A History of Chinese Painting]. To\u0304kyo\u0304: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1981.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 4, no. 5a and 5b",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Suzuki, Kei \u9234\u6728\u656c. Chu\u0304goku kaiga so\u0304go\u0304 zuroku [\u4e2d\u570b\u7e6a\u756b\u7e3d\u5408\u5716\u9304 = Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings], \u7b2c 1\u5377. \u30a2\u30e1\u30ea\u30ab\u00b7\u30ab\u30ca\u30c0\u7bc7 [= vol. 1 American and Canadian collections]. To\u0304kyo\u0304: To\u0304kyo\u0304 Daigaku Shuppankai, 1982.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: no. A22-012, p. 1-260",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 61",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Barnhart, Richard M., Mary Ann Rogers, and Richard Stanley-Baker. Painters of the Great Ming: The Imperial Court and the Zhe School. Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "To\u0304kyo\u0304 Daigaku \u6771\u4eac\u5927\u5b66. Kaigai shozai Chu\u0304goku kaiga mokuroku [\u6d77\u5916\u6240\u5728\u4e2d\u56fd\u7d75\u753b\u76ee\u9304. \u30a2\u30e1\u30ea\u30ab\u30ab\u30ca\u30c0\u7de8 = Catalogue of Chinese paintings in foreign collections: America and Canada]. To\u0304kyo\u0304: To\u0304kyo\u0304 Daigaku To\u0304yo\u0304 Bunka Kenkyu\u0304jo Fuzoku To\u0304yo\u0304gaku Bunken Senta\u0304, 1994.",
"page_number": "p. 63",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Weidner, Marsha Smith, and Patricia Ann Berger. Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850. Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1994.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: cat. no. 25, p. 284",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Weidner, Marsha, \"Two Ming Ritual Scrolls as Harbingers of New Directions in the Study of Chinese Painting,\" Orientations (Jan/Feb. 2005), vol. 36, no. 1, p. 64",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 64",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Wang, Chiang-Ling. \"Weiderentdeckte Schatze: Drei Chinesische Thangkas im Ethnologischen Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.\" Baessler-Archiv 62: 117-136.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 129, fig. 15",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pp. 211-217",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Giuffrida, Noelle. Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 154, fig. 86",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan (Korea). Choso\u0306n u\u0306i su\u0306ngnyo\u0306 changin = Monk artisans of the Joseon dynasty: buddhist sculptures and paintings. \uc11c\uc6b8: \uad6d\ub9bd \uc911\uc559 \ubc15\ubb3c\uad00, 2021.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 70-73",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Jang, Scarlett (\u5f35\u73e0\u7389). Art, Politics, and Palace Eunuchs in Ming China, 1368-1644. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2026.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 101\u2013109, fig. 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.6",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.70",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_web.jpg",
"width": "900",
"height": "775",
"filesize": "472164",
"filename": "1973.70_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2928",
"filesize": "4311582",
"filename": "1973.70_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_full.tif",
"width": "7356",
"height": "6335",
"filesize": "139829016",
"filename": "1973.70_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [
{
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_alt0_web.jpg",
"width": "514",
"height": "900",
"filesize": "211689"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_alt0_print.jpg",
"width": "1942",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "2172382"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1973.70/1973.70_alt0_full.tif",
"width": "3619",
"height": "6335",
"filesize": "68806360"
},
"date_created": "2009-03-03T16:38:51",
"annotation": ""
}
],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 147571,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1973-05-07T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1454,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1454",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "cover",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Bodhisattvas of the Ten Stages of Enlightenment; The Eight Hosts of Celestial Nagas and Yakshis",
"Yaksha Generals"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:34:16.829000"
}
}