White-robed Kannon, early 15th century, Unknown Japanese, 44 15/16 ¡Ñ 20 3/4 in. (114.14 ¡Ñ 52.71 cm) (image)84 3/4 ¡Ñ 27 1/4 in. (215.27 ¡Ñ 69.22 cm) (mount, without roller), Ink on silk, Japan, 15th century, In this medieval Zen devotional painting, Kannon reclines on a rocky seaside ledge at his eternal dwelling, the island paradise of Fudaraku. The anonymous artist, probably a Zen priest-painter, uses carefully gradated washes of diluted ink to suggest the damp surface of the rocky ledge and the mistiness of Kannon¡¦s watery paradise. Numerous forms of the bodhisattva Kannon exist within the vast Buddhist pantheon, including abstruse forms with eleven heads and a thousand arms. The strikingly human form of Kannon seen here, wearing white robes and seated in nature, was popular in the Zen school of Buddhism.