The Buddha of Heavenly Virtue (Tentoku Amida Nyorai)

This elegant painting depicts the Buddha of Heavenly Virtue. This is a rare variant of the raigō ("Welcoming Descent") of the Buddha Amida from his Western Paradise to earth to receive the soul of a deceased believer into his heavenly realm. In the standard raigō scene, the large figure of Amida is shown with his smaller attending Bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi, all serenely standing on individual lotus flowers that float on swirling white clouds. But in this version, the standing Amida is set instead in the middle of an ecstatic circle of ten singing and dancing Bodhisattvas, including Kannon and Seishi.

This configuration is said to have been revealed by the Buddha Amida to the founder of the Nembutsu sect in 1117 during meditation on the Lotus Sūtra (a sūtra is a sacred text in Buddhism). Later, this visionary image came to be used as the object of worship in temples of the Nembutsu sect, and such hanging scrolls were often brought to deathbed vigils and funeral services of devotees to promote the rebirth of their souls in Amida’s Western Paradise.

The splendor of Amida’s abode is evoked in such paintings by the rich application of gold. While interior details of the elaborate robes worn by the Buddha and his entourage are finely painted in gold paint, the main folds and contours of individual garments and the saints’ halos are realized in the laborious process of kirikane, in which thin sheets of gold foil are cut into complex patterns and then glued to the surface of the painting.