White-Robed Kannon [center of a triptych of White-Robed Kannon and Cranes]

Avalokiteshvara, known in Japanese as Kannon, is one of the most popular deities in Zen Buddhism. From the 1300s through the 1500s, Zen painters in Japan frequently created monochrome ink paintings of Kannon relaxing in nature. Nearly 200 years later, a professional painter, Kano Tan’yū, borrowed from this long tradition for this triptych, showing the deity in the center resting on a boulder beneath a waterfall and gazing down at the waves below. As is common with devotional triptychs, the central deity is flanked by complementary images of birds, in this case cranes with bamboo and a pine tree.