Buddha of the Future: An Early Maitreya from Thailand

Arts & Photography

Leidy, Denise Patry

Chutiwongs, Nandana

Cutivongs, Nandana

History & Criticism

University of Washington Press

The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist sculpture is the largest in the Western world. In this lavish, comprehensive volume, archaeological discoveries and scientific testing and analysis serve as the basis for a reassessment of 120 works ranging in date from the fourth to the twentieth century, many of them previously unpublished and all of them newly and beautifully photographed. An introductory essay provides an indispensable overview of Buddhist practices and iconography—acquainting us with the panoply of past, present, and future Buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks and arhats, guardians and adepts, pilgrims and immortals—and explores the fascinating dialogue between Indian and Chinese culture that underlies the transmission of Buddhism into China.
In addition to detailed individual discussions of fifty masterpieces—a heterogeneous group including portable shrines carved in wood, elegant bronze icons, monumental stone representations, colorful glazed-ceramic figures, and more—the catalogue presents a ground-breaking survey of the methods used in crafting the sculptures. A second introductory essay and several technical appendices address the question of how early Chinese bronzes, as opposed to those from Gandhara and other westerly regions, were cast; the construction methods used for wood sculptures in China, notably different from those used in Japan; the complex layers of color and gilding on works in all media and their possible significance; and the role of consecratory deposits in wood and metal sculptures. A final appendix publishes the results of an intensive study of the wood material in the collection, classifying every sculpture by the genus of its wood and including a section of photomicrographs of each wood sample—an invaluable resource for researchers continuing to study works of this genre.
As illuminating for new enthusiasts of Chinese Buddhist art as for scholars and connoisseurs, Wisdom Embodied is a glorious tour of the Metropolitan’s unparalleled collection, certain to earn its place as a classic in the field.

Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Strahan, Donna

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist sculpture is the largest in the Western world. In this lavish, comprehensive volume, archaeological discoveries and scientific testing and analysis serve as the basis for a reassessment of 120 works ranging in date from the fourth to the twentieth century, many of them previously unpublished and all of them newly and beautifully photographed. An introductory essay provides an indispensable overview of Buddhist practices and iconography—acquainting us with the panoply of past, present, and future Buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks and arhats, guardians and adepts, pilgrims and immortals—and explores the fascinating dialogue between Indian and Chinese culture that underlies the transmission of Buddhism into China.
In addition to detailed individual discussions of fifty masterpieces—a heterogeneous group including portable shrines carved in wood, elegant bronze icons, monumental stone representations, colorful glazed-ceramic figures, and more—the catalogue presents a ground-breaking survey of the methods used in crafting the sculptures. A second introductory essay and several technical appendices address the question of how early Chinese bronzes, as opposed to those from Gandhara and other westerly regions, were cast; the construction methods used for wood sculptures in China, notably different from those used in Japan; the complex layers of color and gilding on works in all media and their possible significance; and the role of consecratory deposits in wood and metal sculptures. A final appendix publishes the results of an intensive study of the wood material in the collection, classifying every sculpture by the genus of its wood and including a section of photomicrographs of each wood sample—an invaluable resource for researchers continuing to study works of this genre.
As illuminating for new enthusiasts of Chinese Buddhist art as for scholars and connoisseurs, Wisdom Embodied is a glorious tour of the Metropolitan’s unparalleled collection, certain to earn its place as a classic in the field. (This title was originally published in 2010.)

The Silla Kingdom, which flourished in Korea from 57 B.C. to 935 A.D., is known for its intricately crafted ornaments, many in resplendent gold, and for the creation of prominent Buddhist temples. Silla focuses on the striking artistic traditions of the Old and Unified Silla Kingdoms (4th–8th century), and is the first publication in English to explore the artistic and cultural legacy of this ancient realm. Among the topics explored are Korea’s position as the eastern culmination of the Silk Road in the first millennium A.D. and the character and evolution of Buddhism, as illuminated by objects from major monuments, temples, and tombs. The book also presents new research about Silla’s ancient capital, Gyeongju, which is known for the Gyerim-ro Dagger, as well as the pottery, glass, and beads discovered in tombs located there. Featuring over 100 magnificent objects, newly photographed and presented with the latest scholarship, this volume will be a revelation to many, and a lavish introduction to the glory that was Silla.

Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom

Lee, Soyoung

The mandala appears in many forms - painted, made of sand, modelled three-dimensionally or constructed completely in the mind of the meditator. This volume presents the art and philosophy of the intriguing design in 100 examples, including the Copper Palace of Padmasambhava from Bhutan, a painted and gilded star mandala from Japan and the Kalachakra Father-Mother from Tibet. In addition, a history and overview of mandala art throughout the Eastern world is presented, chronicling its development, beginning in India and moving to countries as far afield as Japan and Indonesia. An essay by Robert Thurman, Head of Tibet House, comments on uses of the mandala in Buddhist philosophy and mediation, describing esoteric visualizaiton practices intended to perfect the self. The volume is based on an exhibition at The Asia Society Galleries and Tibet House, New York.

Mandala : The Architecture of Enlightenment

Thurman, Robert A.F.

Gardners Books

Book by Chutiwongs, Nandana, Leidy, Denise Patry, Nandana Chutiwongs, Patry Denise Leidy, Denise Patry Leidy

Buddha of the Future: An Early Maitreya from the Thailand

Nandana Chutiwongs, Patry Denise Leidy, Denise Patry Leidy

Asia Society

A complete color catalogue of 48 stunning mandalas from Tibet, India, China, Japan, and Nepal spanning the 11th to the 18th centuries, as well as more than fifty other images. It also contains an essay by Leidy on mandala imagery and symbolism and as essay by Thurman on the "Architecture of Enlightenment", as well as a glossary and appendices on the significance of these "sacred cosmograms of the Hindu-Buddhist world."

Tibet House U.S.

Four thousand years of Asian art are represented in this introduction to examples of bronzes, ceramics, statuary, textiles and paintings. The Asia Society's Mr and Mrs John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of Asian Art is known to connoisseurs as a select group of masterpieces.

Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection

Abbeville Press

"Mandala" is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "sacred circle that protects the soul." It also refers to the sacred cosmograms that serve as core symbols of all cultures. Westerners have been fascinated for centuries about the mandalas of the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Asia, most often painted geometric diagrams of great beauty and sophistication, that draw the viewer into a realm of balance, harmony, and calm. But such diagrams are actually architectural blueprints of the purified realm of bliss that we can only realize through enlightenment. They represent three-dimensional spaces of personal and communal exaltation, palaces for the regal confidence of love, compassion, and universal satisfaction of self and other. Understanding their role in anchoring the world-picture of a culture or a person provides a new insight into the "mandalas" of our own culture – the national space anchored by the Washington monument and its environs, or the personal cosmological space anchored by the models of the solar system, the DNA double-helix molecule, and the atom. 
This exquisite book, created by the teamwork of an art historian and a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, clears away the veils of confusion and mystification, and reveals the artistic history and meditational function of the sacred mandalas that have graced the Asian civilizations for thousands of years from Mumbai to Japan. It is richly illustrated by color photographs of examples of mandalas from India, Tibet, China, and Japan from the ground-breaking exhibition presented by Tibet House U.S. in collaboration with the Asia Society and the Berkeley Museum of Fine Arts.

Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment

Thurman, Robert

Overlook Books

Mother-of-pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leidy, Denise Patry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Leidy, Denise Patry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leidy, Denise Patry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Buddha of the Future: An Early Maitreya from Thailand

Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom

Mandala : The Architecture of Enlightenment

Buddha of the Future: An Early Maitreya from the Thailand

Mandala : The Architecture of Enlightenment

Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection

Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment

Mother-of-pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer