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Great Daruma

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Great Daruma was a monumental portrait of Bodhidharma, the Buddhist monk of the 5th or 6th century revered in Japan as Daruma, drawn by the painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai on October 5, 1817, in a courtyard beside the Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin temple in Nagoya, Japan. Executed on paper spread across the courtyard, the portrait measured about 59 by 35 feet and showed the monk's head and upper body wrapped in flowing robes, with features on a correspondingly vast scale, eyes some 70 inches wide, a nose about 105 inches long and a mouth roughly 82 inches across. The public spectacle of its creation drew wide attention and helped establish Hokusai's local reputation. The original drawing no longer exists, having been destroyed along with the temple's wooden building during the bombing of Nagoya in May 1945, though a recreation was made in 2017 to mark its bicentennial, with the cooperation of Aichi University of the Arts and the Nagoya City Museum. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Year Created
1817 2
Medium
Ink on paper 2
Location
Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin courtyard, Nagoya, Japan (destroyed 1945) 2
Classification
Genre
Painting 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Great Daruma (Wikipedia)
Genre reference
Quote, Genre reference
Great Daruma was a monumental portrait of Bodhidharma, the Buddhist monk of the 5th or 6th century revered in Japan as Daruma, drawn by the painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai on October 5, 1817, in a courtyard beside the Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin temple in Nagoya, Japan.
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2. Great Daruma - Wikipedia
  • Lead section
    The Great Daruma was a monumental portrait created by Japanese artist Hokusai on 5 October 1817.
  • Description section
    It was drawn on a large expanse of paper, measuring 59 by 35 feet (18 m × 11 m), equivalent to approximately 120 standard tatami mats.
  • Background section
    Hokusai made the Great Daruma in a courtyard beside the Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin Buddhist temple in Nagoya, Japan.
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