The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 17, 2024

Portable Shrine

Portable Shrine

c. 1500
wood with mineral pigments
Diameter: 16.2 cm (6 3/8 in.); Overall: 25.4 cm (10 in.)
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1968.214
Location: not on view

Description

This portable shrine was made from a solid log carved inside and out. Tantric practice can be performed alone in any location; this shrine could be used by a traveling practitioner for meditation, visualization, prayer, and recitation of mantras. The interior is filled with rows of tantric forms of enlightened beings and guardians sculpted in high relief. The central figure of the top row is Padmasambhava (Indian, active in Tibet in the 740s), a tantric yogi and Buddhist saint from a region in present-day northeastern Pakistan. He was instrumental in transmitting tantric teachings to Tibet, and he is venerated as the founder of one of the four main Tibetan monastic orders. The exterior has finely incised imagery of wrathful protectors and a stupa (chorten in Tibetan), a sacred Buddhist monument in the form of a solid hemispherical dome topped by rows of stylized umbrellas. Also carved on the shrine’s exterior are mantras written in Tibetan script, including the most fundamental mantra, om mani padme hum, which is recited specifically to focus the mind and rally the power of compassion.
  • November 21–24, 1904
    (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, France, Collection G... Œuvres d'art et de haute curiosité du Tibet sale, lot no. 791)
    1940s?–1961
    (Eduard Lingero, Belgium, sold to Claude De Marteau)
    1961–1968
    (Claude De Marteau [d. 2017], Brussels, Belgium, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1968–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Deniker, Joseph and Deshayes, Émile. Catalogue de la première partie des œuvres d'art et de haute curiosité du Tibet: collection G.... Paris: Moreau, 1904. Mentioned and Reproduced: lot no. 791, pp. 219–220 gallica.bnf.fr
    Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1968.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 1 (January 1969): 3–50. Reproduced: p. 37; Mentioned: p. 49, no. 151 www.jstor.org
  • Focus: Tantra in Buddhist Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 5-September 15, 2013).
    Year in Review: 1968. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 29-March 9, 1969).
  • {{cite web|title=Portable Shrine|url=false|author=|year=c. 1500|access-date=17 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1968.214