The Formless Ultimate Buddha Body
Asian Art
MEDIUM
Color and gold on silk, mounted on a panel
DATES
15th century
DYNASTY
Joseon dynasty
DIMENSIONS
13 3/4 × 6 5/16 in. (35.0 × 16.0 cm)
(show scale)
ACCESSION NUMBER
2019.42.7
CREDIT LINE
Gift of the Carroll Family Collection
CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION
Vertical painting, originally a hanging scroll, with a standing Buddha painted in gold on a dark blue ground. The Buddha has one hand raised in a gesture of reassurance and teaching, the other lowered with palm out in a gesture of wish granting. He stands on a lotus, which is now largely effaced. The Buddha is haloed and has forty-eight rays of light emanating from his body. The skin of the figure is rendered in stippled gold and any other pigment that may have been on the painting has worn away, including most of the Buddha's facial features.
The size and subject of the painting suggest that it was originally displayed in a domestic shrine, possibly as the central panel of three. The 48 rays surrounding the figure suggest that it is Amida / Amitabha, the Buddha worshipped by adherents of the Pure Land School of Buddhism. The 48 rays represent the 48 vows taken by Amida in a previous life, when he was the monk Dharmakara, in which he promises to create a paradisical Buddha-land into which the faithful might be reborn in order to facilitate their quest for enlightenment. Amida is often represented as if he is descending from that paradise to retrieve the faithful as they pass out of the terrestrial world. The use of only gold to render the Buddha against the dark blue "void" suggests that this may be a representation of the "Formless Ultimate Buddha Body" of Amida, meaning the true, unseeable, transcendent aspect of the Buddha, as opposed to the visible, limited form of the Buddha, which he assumes as a favor to his disciples. The tradition of painting gold on a blue ground has its origins in Korean Buddhist manuscript illustration. Some of the gold in this painting appears to have been applied as cut leaf, rather than painted on.
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
The Formless Ultimate Buddha Body, 15th century. Color and gold on silk, mounted on a panel, 13 3/4 × 6 5/16 in. (35.0 × 16.0 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Carroll Family Collection, 2019.42.7 (Photo: , CUR.2019.42.7.jpg)
IMAGE
overall,
CUR.2019.42.7.jpg., 2019
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
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