Ascetic Holding a Skull
c. 500 CE
- Medium
- gilt bronze
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 19.4 cm (7 5/8 in.); Figure: 18.1 cm (7 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Northern Wei dynasty (386-534)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The figure holding the skull has been identified as Mrgasirsa, who sought Buddha’s teaching on how to determine the karma and transmigration of the arhats. Mrgasirsa appears with Vasistha in some of the wall paintings of the Mogao grottoes in Dunhuang.
