Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Mandala of Hiyoshi Sannō
Not on view
This mandala shows small images of Shinto deities worshipped at shrines in the sacred terrain of Mount Hiei, immediately northeast of Kyoto. When it was set up as an imperial capital in the late eighth century, Kyoto was designed to be shielded by Hiei and other mountain peaks at its most cosmologically challenging directions. From ancient times Mount Hiei was associated with worship of the Shinto deity Ōyamakui-no-kami. The monk Saichō (767–822), upon his return from China, established a monastic headquarters for his new Tendai sect of Esoteric Buddhism there in 788. By the medieval period, the mountain was home to a vast Shinto-Buddhist complex of shrines and temples.
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
