Fragment of Mahaparinirvana Sutra
The Practice of Drawing, Worcester Art Museum, November 15, 1951- January 6, 1952.
Arts of the Tang Dynasty, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, January 8-February 17, 1957. No.23.
Chinese Calligraphy, Philadelphia Museum of Art. September 24-?, 1971; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, January 6-February 6, 1972; Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 14-May 7, 1972.
This scroll was reportedly discovered in the Buddhist Grottoes of Dunhuang, in northwest China, where it had remained intact due to the desert climate. The text is a fragmented copy from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra (Sutra of the Great Passing). It tells of the Buddha ending the rebirth cycles, or extinguishing his physical body, a state of being known as nirvana. By this means he attained Buddhahood, which exists in various forms in the universe.
Sutra writing was a specialty for some calligraphers because the perfection of calligraphy was believed to increase religious efficacy. This calligraphy is written in “sutra writing style,” which emphasizes the horizontal shape and the plump final stroke of each character.
With Michelangelo Piacentini (d. 2005), Tokyo, by 1951 [1];
Purchased from Piacentini by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1951.
NOTES:
[1] Piacentini was an Italian art historian based in Tokyo after the Second World War. He studied Italian Renaissance art, while collecting and dealing in Asian objects.
Sekai bijutsu zenshu (Tōkyō : Heibonsha, Shōwa 1928), vol. VIII, 57.
Nihonga taisei [Comprehensive collection of Japanese painting], ed. Bei’u I’zuka (Tōkyō : Tōhō Shoin, Shōwa 6- 1931), vol. XLIX, pl. 31.
Henry Trubner, Arts of the Tang Dynasty, Ars Orientalis, vol. III (1959), 147-152, fig. 4.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959),195.
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. (The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, c1980), 11-12, no.8.
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), 312.
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), 332, No. 155.
