White-robed Kannon

Description

Kannon (Sanskrit: Avalokitesvara) is a Buddhist deity of Indian origin. In China, where the deity was known by the name Guanyin, the deity lived on an island called Putuo, off the shore of Ningbo, Zhejiang. This popular belief was essentially a translation in Chinese terms of the Indian tradition that Avalokitesvara lived at Mount Potalaka in India. White-robed Guanyin is one of the many aspects of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion. References to the aspect of Guanyin in a white robe are frequent in Chinese literary sources of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The numerous devotional eulogies about Guanyin written by Chan (Japanese: Zen) monks of this period testify to the importance of images of Guanyin in monasteries of this school of Buddhism. Early representations of Guanyin in painting were executed in polychrome. The origins of the tradition of painting Guanyin in ink are obscure, but such paintings are generally thought to have been made by the time of the Chinese artist Li Gonglin (ca.1041-1106). The tradition of painting White-robed Guanyin was adopted by Japanese painters, who took inspiration from Chinese models.