Ruyilun Guanyin (Cintamani chakra) Bodhisattva Seated on a Lotus Throne
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Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, Nelson-Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, November 7, 1980 – January 4, 1981; The Cleveland Museum of Art, February 7 – April 5, 1981; The Asia Society, December 3, 1981 – February 28, 1982; Tokyo National Museum, October 4 – November 17, 1982, no. 202.
Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have vowed to assist others on their spiritual paths. There are many forms of bodhisattvas. This bodhisattva is known as Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin in Chinese) and can be identified by the small figure of Amitabha Buddha in the center of the high crown. The bodhisattva holds a wheel or ball f loating on clouds, and is further identified as Cintamani (wish-granting jewel) Chakra (wheel of doctrine) bodhisattva, or Ruyilun Guanyin in Chinese.
Ruyilun Guanyin became a figure of worship following the introduction of esoteric forms of Buddhism into China and would have occupied a central space on a temple wall. This figure would have been accompanied by other attendant figures such as the pair to your left.
With C. T. Loo & Co., Paris and New York, stock no. AT-5, March 1948-1952 [1];
Purchased from C. T. Loo, Inc. by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1952.
NOTES:
[1] C. T. Loo/Frank Caro archive, Musée Guimet, Paris, copy of stock card in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files. C. T. Loo & Co. was incorporated as C. T. Loo, Inc. in 1949.
Osvald Siren, “The Chinese Pavilion of C.T. Loo & Co. And Its Fresco Paintings,” Pantheon, Brand II, (July-December, 1928), 547, pl. 69 (repro.).
Osvald Siren, “Chinese Paintings in American Collection,” Part IV (1928), pl. 159 (repro.).
C.T. Loo, “Chinese Frescos of Northern Sung,” exh. cat. (New York: 1949), no.9, no. 1 (repro.).
Laurence Sickman, “An Early Chinese Wall-Painting Newly Discovered,” Artibus Asiae, vol. XV, ½ (1952), 139, fig. 1 (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna, and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. II, Art of the Orient. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 48 (repro.).
Wai-kam Ho et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: the Collections of the Nelson Gallery- Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980), xxxii (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 313 (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 334, fig. 158 (repro.).
