Cultural object
Kneeling Male Figure
Kneeling Male Figure is an 11th-century Khmer bronze of a devotee of Shiva from the Baphuon period at Angkor, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.[1] The museum dates it to about 1010 to 1080.[2]
The object
The man kneels with his hands raised in a gesture of adoration.[1] His eyes, eyebrows, mustache and beard were once inlaid with silver.[1] He wears a lower garment with a low-slung belt.[1] The figure measures 43.2 centimeters (17 inches) high.[2]
The bronze was cast by the lost-wax (cire perdu) method, with the core armature, its inner support, left inside.[2] The museum's catalog reference is 1978.8.[1]
Iconography
A third eye marks his forehead. For the museum, the eye shows that the figure identified himself with Shiva, while his kneeling pose shows that he is a devotee who has taken on aspects of the god's appearance.[1] The style of the garment and belt is typical of the Baphuon period of Khmer sculpture.[1]
Provenance
The figure was made in Cambodia, at the Baphuon in the Angkor region.[1][2] By 1975 it was with Spink & Son, Ltd., of London, which sold it to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1978 through the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund.[3] It belongs to the museum's Department of Indian and Southeast Asian Art. As of 2025 it was not on view.[2]
Exhibitions and publications
The Cleveland Museum of Art has shown the figure in these exhibitions:[3]
- Year in Review: 1978 (February 13 to March 18, 1979)
- Art Nouveau in France (July 12 to November 27, 1988)
- Object in Focus: Kneeling Male Figure (August 15 to October 15, 2000)
- Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee (June 27 to August 23, 2009)
It was first reproduced in Spink & Son's magazine Octagon in autumn 1975, and then in the museum's bulletin "The Year in Review for 1978" (1979), in Oriental Art (spring 1979) and in the museum's members' magazine Cleveland Art (2013).[3] It also appears in two books by Emma C. Bunker and Douglas Latchford, Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art (2004) and Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past (2011).[3]