Cleveland Museum of Art

Figure of Daoist Immortal He Xiangu

Date

1700s

Medium

Boxwood

Culture

China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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, and she holds a branch of lingzhi fungus like an oar. The lingzhi she holds is a woody mushroom often used in traditional Chinese medicine and associated with immortality.

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