Artwork Page for Descent of the Nine Luminaries and the Seven Stars at Kasuga

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Descent of the Nine Luminaries and the Seven Stars at Kasuga

北斗九曜春日降臨図

mid- to late 1300s

Japan, Nanbokuchō period

(1336–92)
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink, color, gold and cut gold on silk
Measurements
Mounted: 184.5 x 58.5 cm (72 5/8 x 23 1/16 in.); Painting only: 106 x 42 cm (41 3/4 x 16 9/16 in.); with knobs: 184.5 x 63.5 cm (72 5/8 x 25 in.)
Credit Line
Lillian M. Kern Memorial Fund 2015.63
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

A 19th-century copy of this painting in ink and light color exists at the Kyoto City University of Arts.

Description

This medieval religious painting shows celestial beings descending from the heavens into the Kasuga Shrine, a major religious site in Japan's ancient capital, Nara. The moon and the Kasuga mountain range appear in the uppermost portion of the painting, as does a red shrine entrance gate, or torii. In the upper part of the painting, figural representations of the stars in the constellation known as the Big Dipper in the West descend from right to left on cloud banks. In the lower part, the Nine Luminaries (Sanskrit: Navagraha) that emerged from the Vedic tradition—the sun and moon; the planets Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Mercury; and personifications of the fluctuating lunar nodes—descend in similar fashion. The painting uses the "deities in descent" scheme originating in China, as well as the original Buddhist form mandala (Japanese: honjibutsu mandarazu) format prevalent in medieval Japanese Shinto-Buddhist painting, to generate an image connected to the worship of celestial bodies in Esoteric Buddhism.
Vertically long hanging scroll depicting celestial beings descending on light brown clouds against a dark brown sky, a full moon in the upper left. In the upper half the human-like beings extend diagonally down left to right, wearing layered robes with gold patterns, some beings half the the size of others. Arcing left to right in the lower half, the beings also have halos, three of them with red skin and wraps around their waists in contrast with the other beings with light skin tones and wearing robes.

Descent of the Nine Luminaries and the Seven Stars at Kasuga

mid- to late 1300s

Japan, Nanbokuchō period (1336–92)

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