Cleveland Museum of Art

Figure of Daoist Immortal He Xiangu

Date: 1700s
Medium: Boxwood with colored ivory base
Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 148812

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

He Xiangu is one of the Eight Immortals in the Daoist pantheon. She was thought to have been a real person who lived in the Tang dynasty, originally named He Qiong. As a teenager, she was instructed in a dream to eat powdered mica to become immune from death and to vow to remain unmarried. She did so and became an enlightened practitioner of Daoism. In this delicate carving, He Xiangu is placidly seated in a gnarled and knotty wooden raft amid green-tinted ivory waves. In front of her rests a bamboo basket filled with objects associated with Daoist immortality, while she holds a branch of lingzhi fungus. Her basket contains plants and herbs used by Daoists for attempting to achieve immortality.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
Provenance: ?–1976: (Tokyo Gallery Limited, London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1970–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH