Standing Bodhisattva

With its hands now gone, this Bodhisattva image cannot be definitively identified, but it was probably a Guanyin. Carved from multiple pieces of lightweight, water-resistant paulownia wood, this graceful figure was once covered in bright paint. Guanyin was very popular in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when the Jin dynasty ruled northeastern China and the Southern Song dynasty ruled the south. Woodcarvers working in both domains at that period made many nearly life-size images of the Bodhisattva.