Shakyamuni coming down from the mountains

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art