Five Hundred Arhats No.214 · The Venerable Sheltering Cover | Traditional Hand-Painted Chinese Ink Zen Buddhist Figure Painting | 100×50cm

Five Hundred Arhats · No.214 The Venerable Sheltering Cover

'Sheltering cover' means delighting to cover and protect all beings with compassion as a canopy shields things from harm, and also to cover one's own virtue without display; the name marks one who delights to shelter beings and cultivate virtue in secret. The venerable makes a protecting gesture with a warm, reserved look, possessing the warmth of compassionate shelter, containing without showing, glad to guard beings without parading his own merit.

Painted by Li Zongyi in the freehand Chinese ink (xieyi) tradition, the brushwork is fluent and the ink tones layered from dense to pale, capturing the arhat’s spirit in a few assured strokes. The blank paper itself breathes Zen; figure and spirit are one, blending monastic solemnity with the literati’s ease. Each of the Five Hundred Arhats bears its own name and practice, uniting faith, art and collectibility — an original, non-reproducible hand-painted work.

Size: approx. 100×50cm (4.5 square chi) | Traditional hand-painted Chinese ink Zen Buddhist figure painting | On paper