Geungnak King Saengdo Painting of Anyangam Hermitage

This painting, now enshrined to the right of the main altar in Daeungjeon Hall, bears no production inscription, so its exact date and painter cannot be confirmed, but on stylistic grounds it is thought to have been made in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It is composed of two panels, arranged one above the other. The upper panel shows the Amitabha Triad seated cross-legged on a blue lotus against the background of a lotus pond in paradise, with, amid the pond's blossoming lotuses, a scene of a being undergoing lotus-birth - reborn from within a fully opened lotus flower. The lower panel depicts a banya yongseon-do, a painting of the 'Boat of Wisdom' believed to ferry beings to rebirth in paradise. The banya yongseon-do shows the Buddha and beings bound for paradise riding aboard a dragon boat shaped like a pavilion; before the boat, the Bodhisattva Illowang guides the way to paradise, while behind it stands the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. So accomplished is its iconography that it was even drawn upon, in the early twentieth century, for a painting of Amitabha by the monk-painter Ilseop, and because the words 'Banya Yongseon-do' are inscribed on the left of the painting, it also tells us what such paintings of rebirth in paradise were called at the time. The work survives in good original condition.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산