National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

Liang Kai was also good at detailed and solemn figure painting with colors. This picture depicts an image of Sakyamuni who failed to attain wisdom, in spite of a long period of ascetic practices, descending from his abode on the mountain. Its precise and realistic expression of the figure is extremely superb. Its seal, "Liang Kai, painted before his excellency," indicates that it was painted in the Imperial Palace, and it is a masterpiece of Liang Kai's color figure painting. It is thought to be the work recorded as "Sakyamuni descending the mountain after asceticism, together with works of landscape by Liang Kai" in the list of properties owned by the Ashikaga shogun clan, "Catalogue of Imperial Properties and Paintings," and was enjoyed together with two other hanging scrolls, one of which was Snowy landscape. This work was handed down to the Sakai clan in Wakasa.