ANONYMOUS (JAPAN, 12TH CENTURY)

This scorched fragment is from the Flower Ornament Sutra (Kegonkyo) from Senpukuj, a temple in Osaka. The sutra records the sermons delivered by Shakyamuni Buddha immediately after his enlightenment. At some point, this set of scrolls was damaged by fire; the pieces that survived were mounted as hanging scrolls and sold after World War II. Other examples are in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, a gift of Sylvan Barnet and William Burto in 2014, and the Nezu Museum, Tokyo. The ornate paper and elegant script of the Japanese aristocracy are characteristic of the late Heian period, c. 1100.