Yeongam Chukseongam Hermitage Wooden Nabanjonja Statue

Chukseongam Hermitage is a traditional temple founded in the 1920s, in the early years of Japanese colonial rule, originally standing on the coast near Mokpo. When the area was incorporated into the Halla Shipyard complex in the early 1990s, the hermitage was relocated in 1994 to its present site, 1.5 km south of its original location. According to a votive text written in ink on hanji paper (118 cm wide by 26 cm high), the statue was made in 1700, the twenty-sixth year of King Sukjong, at Seongdoam Hermitage in Haenam. The Nabanjonja statue — Nabanjonja being one of the arhats venerated in Korean Buddhist halls as a solitary saint who attained enlightenment without a teacher — has a head of short, tightly curled hair and a full, well-proportioned face, with the eyes, nose and mouth rendered realistically; its hands form the dhyana mudra of meditation. The surface colouring, mainly red and green, gives the statue an antique appearance. It measures 46 cm in total height, 19.5 cm across the shoulders, 22.5 cm across the knees, and 11 cm at the height of the pedestal. Although it represents only one of the Sixteen Arhats, together with the statue of Kasyapa held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States it is regarded as valuable material for the study of wooden sculpture of the late Joseon period. Its establishing the precise date of 1700 also gives it value as a benchmark for research into the history of Buddhist sculpture of that period.

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Where it is

Region

Yeongam, Jeonnam & Gwangju

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료