Artworks

Yuima, Kōfukuji

Artwork · Jōkei · 1196 · sculpture · Kōfuku-ji Temple

The lay sage Vimalakirti, a pair with the bodhisattva Monju, after the debate in the Yuima sutra — but Jōkei makes him a robust figure rather than the sick old man of the text, seated on a tall platform backed by a structure draped with brocade, the lion throne Chinese in flavour. An inscription by Jōkei in the chest cavity says he carved it in 1196 in fifty-three days, and that the painter Kōen took fifty days for the surface and colours. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 192–193, fig. 223. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.