Cleveland Museum of Art
Nature Divinity (Yakshi)
- Date
- c. 75 CE
- Medium
- mottled red sandstone
- Culture
- India, Mathura, Kshatrapa period (c. 20 BCE–114 CE)
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 143649
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
This powerful figure personifies the ideal of the young mother in the form of a nature goddess associated with birth and nourishment. Her iconic stance with the weight equally distributed on both feet indicates that this statue was an object of worship. Her extraordinary headdress, well preserved in the back, and full complement of jewels and ornaments, point to the idea of wealth, which leads to prosperity. The prominence of the peacock (enemy of serpents) on the back of her headdress suggests she has the power to protect against snakebite.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Provenance
- ?–1968: (William H. Wolff, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1968–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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