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Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Kings of Hells: Leaf 39

Unknown

1204

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Ming Painting Medieval Religious

Dominant colour

Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes: Kings of Hells: Leaf 39 is a 1204 unspecified by Unknown, a Ming Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1204 · Ming Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a crowded scene of demons torturing naked souls in a fiery underworld. Flames lick the edges, and jagged mountains loom in the background. This painting is one leaf from a 50-page album used to train young artists in 1200s China. Each page showed a different god or hell scene, so apprentices could copy the faces, poses, and details for bigger temple murals. The demons here have the same sharp teeth and wild eyes you’d see in temple paintings of the time. To see more hell scenes like this, look up china, southern song dynasty (1127-1279).

The story of this work

Overview

This extraordinary album has 50 paintings on a variety of religious subjects. They were likely created by several master craftsmen to share with studio apprentices as models for fulfilling commissions. The Jade Emperor and the Daoist pantheon make up the first 26 leaves. The next 14 leaves portray the Buddhist Ten Kings of Hell administering punishments to the dead. The third section, called “Clearing the Mountains,” features divine soldiers, led presumably by the deity Erlang Shen 二郎神, fighting undesirable creatures.

Read the full account in the museum source.