Unknown
Maria Kannon マリア観音
(c. 17 Century)
Metallic Statue
It is a statue of the Virgin Mary (Mother of Jesus) disguised as the Buddhist deity Kannon (Goddess of Mercy). It was made to look like Kannon, however it is not worshipped as Kannon. A Christian cross over the statue neck is often hidden within the statue to conceal the Christian’s faith while they pretended to be Buddhist.
This is a good start but let’s try to make the visitor to your exhibition understand why Kannon may have been chosen as the deity to disguise mother Mary. Can you describe the image further? Do we know any socio-historical information about this object or similar objects? Does this belong to a museum? You can write up to 300 words for an object label.
Hello Zemin! Just a couple of questions that you might want to explore and answer:
– Where was this particular statue found/ used at?
– When was it used? During meditation? Is that why the statue is in that particular posture? What posture is it?
– How big is it?
– Where was it placed during use?
– What are the various elements concealed in the statue for Christians to continue to comfortably worship it as a Christian statue?
🙂
Zemin, this object is really interesting as one would not expect it to have any relations to Christianity with its hidden elements!!! Other than the hidden Christian cross used to portray their faith in this statue, are there any more visual clues or depictions? I do know there are similarities in the depictions of Kannon being flanked by child deities and Mother Mary with baby Jesus. Just like how one of the usual depictions of Kannon is her holding a jar of pure water in her left hand, Christianity also uses elemental symbols such as water (cleansing, purity, baptism), would it be safer to depict it that way? And why not? How would one distinguish a real Kannon statue from the Maria Kannon (when the cross is hidden)? Or there are no way of distinguishing them unless we break it to reveal the cross?
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