# Bodhisattva Guanyin

- Date: late 500s–early 600s
- Medium: sandstone with polychromy
- Classification: Sculpture
- Dimensions: Overall: 138.8 x 38.2 x 27.4 cm (54 5/8 x 15 1/16 x 10 13/16 in.)
- Culture: China, late Northern Qi (550–577) or early Sui dynasty (581–618)
- Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1962.162)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1962.162/1962.162_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The artistic excellence of this bodhisattva is further reinforced by comparable outstanding Chinese Buddhist sculptures excavated at Qingzhou in Shandong Province in 1996—one of the most sensational and significant archaeological finds of the 1900s. Like related types among the Qingzhou finds, this statute has a gently smiling face and meticulous detailing of splendid jewelry. A noticeable difference, however, is the unique yingluo 瓔珞 (mukt hara) worn by the bodhisattva for personal adornment. The somewhat bizarre but imaginative combination of a string of jewels with grotesque animal masks, flying apsara, jade pendants, dragons, and metal ornaments was probably a regional decorative style of Shanxi Province.