Artworks

Shaka Triad

Artwork · Tori Busshi · 623 · statue · Hōryū-ji Temple

Tori Busshi’s masterpiece: Shaka seated on a rectangular platform, his robe falling over its front like a waterfall, between two bodhisattvas, before a halo of flames with the Seven Buddhas of the Past. The inscription on the back of the halo says that Suiko and the court commissioned it after the deaths of two court ladies in 621 and during the illness of Prince Shōtoku the next year, for his recovery or rebirth in paradise; he died in 622, and the triad was dedicated in 623. The style of the Wei dynasty of northern China; the bodhisattvas, seen from the side, are half-reliefs made to be seen only from the front. 1 Mason 2005, p. 73, fig. 86, 88. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.