Gilt-bronze Standing Bhaisajyaguru Buddha from Baengnyulsa
Eighth to ninth century
Taller than a person, the Buddha stands with his weight slightly on one leg, his robe falling in long loops from the shoulders, his right hand lowered with the palm open and the left raised. Most of the gilding has worn away, leaving the dark bronze, but traces of gold survive in the folds and the face still has its serene, faintly smiling expression. He is Bhaisajyaguru, the Buddha of Medicine, who vowed to heal the sicknesses of body and mind, and the object he once held in his left hand, now missing, would have been a medicine jar.
Statues of this size in gilt bronze are very rare, because casting a figure nearly two metres tall in one piece required enormous quantities of metal and great skill. Look at the drapery. The robe is drawn tight across the chest and falls in U-shaped folds that alternate between the legs, a pattern that comes from Tang China and appears throughout Unified Silla sculpture. The body beneath is full and rounded, the hips slightly swayed, the face broad with heavy lids. Compare it with the stone Buddhas outdoors and you will see the same ideal of calm, well fed grace that Silla artists pursued in the eighth century, the era of the Seokguram grotto.
The statue stood for centuries in Baengnyulsa, a small temple on the slope of Mount Sogeumgang north of the city, and it was moved to the museum for safekeeping in 1930. Baengnyulsa is the place where, according to legend, the head of the martyr Ichadon fell when he was executed for his Buddhist faith in 527, the event that led Silla to adopt Buddhism. The statue is one of the three great gilt-bronze Buddhas of Korea and the largest in the museum.
Did You Know? Baengnyulsa, the temple the statue came from, is said to stand where the head of Silla's first Buddhist martyr fell in 527.
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