Seated Amida Buddha

The statue is covered in golden and black lacquer. This type of the Amida Buddha with a full and harmonious face and half-closed eyes in peaceful concentration, seated in the meditation posture (padmasana), hands clasped in the Amida’s meditation gesture (dhyana), appeared repeatedly in Japanese sculpture starting in 1053. In that year, sculptor Jōchō produced the Amida’s ideal likeness in a gold-lacquered wood carving for the Fujiwara family in the Byōdōin Palace in Uji near Kyōto. This statuette of the seated Amida has inlaid glass eyes and a jewel in its hair in the form of a glass bead. It has lost a halo and a lotus base.