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Lot Essay
Goddess Scattering Flowers is a powerful and imposing composition, one of only a handful of paintings Zhang produced of this subject. Zhang’s composition is based on a figure repeated in two historic works he saw in the early 1930s: Celestial Rulers of Daoism by Wu Zongyuan (d.1050), and Eighty Seven Divinities, attributed to Wu Daozi (680-c.7600). The importance of this subject within Zhang’s 1930s oeuvre was fully acknowledged in the period. In the preface to an exhibition catalogue published in Nanjing in 1936, art critic Lu Danlin praised a painting by Zhang of a Goddess Scattering Flowers as “the most monumental and the rarest of all Zhang’s works.”
While Zhang’s classical prototypes represented the Daoist pantheon, when Zhang saw this figure he viewed her as a Buddhist deity. In fact, his inscription makes clear that she prompted a profound religious experience in Zhang: Preaching the buddhist law from atop a turquoise nine-tier lotus paltform; Divine flowers refuse to fall from the afflicted. On this chance encounter, with a single smile I enter a state of meditative absorbtion; What is the need for the corpus of scripture transmitted by the Buddha’s disciple Ānanda?
Zhang’s poem describes his experience by alluding to two Buddhist stories: the debate between layman Vimalakīrti and the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and the enlightenment of the Buddha’s disciple Mahākāśyapa. The image of flowers adhering to the robes of the karmically afflicted comes from an episode in the Vimalakīrti sutra. In this scene, a Buddhist goddess throws flowers over the gathered assembly. The blossoms stick to the robes of those not yet enlightened, and cannot be dislodged. In the third line of his poem, Zhang describes how he broke out into a smile on seeing this goddess, and was transported into a meditative state. Zhang’s experience mirrors the sudden awakening of Mahākāśyapa. This occurred when the Buddha silently raised a single flower and Mahākāśyapa responded with a slight smile. In Zhang’s encounter with this female deity in a classical painting, the Goddess Scattering Flowers took on an instructive role similar to that of the Buddha for Mahākāśyapa: she sparked Zhang’s awakening with the single flower raised in her right hand. The painting is a powerful record of Zhang’s deep faith in Buddhism, and of how that faith informed the finest works in his oeuvre.
While Zhang’s classical prototypes represented the Daoist pantheon, when Zhang saw this figure he viewed her as a Buddhist deity. In fact, his inscription makes clear that she prompted a profound religious experience in Zhang: Preaching the buddhist law from atop a turquoise nine-tier lotus paltform; Divine flowers refuse to fall from the afflicted. On this chance encounter, with a single smile I enter a state of meditative absorbtion; What is the need for the corpus of scripture transmitted by the Buddha’s disciple Ānanda?
Zhang’s poem describes his experience by alluding to two Buddhist stories: the debate between layman Vimalakīrti and the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and the enlightenment of the Buddha’s disciple Mahākāśyapa. The image of flowers adhering to the robes of the karmically afflicted comes from an episode in the Vimalakīrti sutra. In this scene, a Buddhist goddess throws flowers over the gathered assembly. The blossoms stick to the robes of those not yet enlightened, and cannot be dislodged. In the third line of his poem, Zhang describes how he broke out into a smile on seeing this goddess, and was transported into a meditative state. Zhang’s experience mirrors the sudden awakening of Mahākāśyapa. This occurred when the Buddha silently raised a single flower and Mahākāśyapa responded with a slight smile. In Zhang’s encounter with this female deity in a classical painting, the Goddess Scattering Flowers took on an instructive role similar to that of the Buddha for Mahākāśyapa: she sparked Zhang’s awakening with the single flower raised in her right hand. The painting is a powerful record of Zhang’s deep faith in Buddhism, and of how that faith informed the finest works in his oeuvre.