Green Tara
- DATE:
- 18th century
- MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE:
- Gilt copper alloy and turquoise
- CLASSIFICATION:
- Sculpture
- DIMENSIONS:
- 14 1/2 × 10 × 6 1/2 in. (36.83 × 25.4 × 16.51 cm)
- DEPARTMENT:
- Arts of Asia
- LOCATION:
- 305 BUDDHIST GALLERY
- CREDIT LINE:
- Dallas Museum of Art, the Cecil and Ida Green Acquisition Fund
- COPYRIGHT:
- Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art.
- OBJECT NUMBER:
- 2005.28
General Description
Tara is probably the most widely worshipped of all the female deities in the Buddhist pantheon. She is described by the First Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Gendun Drubpa (1391–1474) as “the wisdom, loving compassion, and enlightened activities of all the buddhas arising in the form of a divinely beautiful goddess.” She appears in this 18th-century Tibetan bronze in one of her most popular iconographic forms. With one face and two arms, she sits on her lotus throne with her right leg stretched forward in lalitasana, indicating that she is always rising from her meditations and going forth to assist living beings.
Excerpt from
R. W. Clark, "Green Tara," in The Arts of India, South East Asia, and the Himalayas, Anne R. Bromberg (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 170.