Anthropometric Analysis of Buddha's Face of Korea and Joseon Dynasty in Buddhist Paintings and Comparison with the Beauty's Face of Joseon Dynasty

Kim, Sun Goo; Hwang, Kun; Cho, Hyun Jong

Abstract

The aim of this study is to measure and to analyze the Buddha's face of Korea dynasty and Joseon dynasty in buddhist paintings. We also attempted to compare the Buddha's face with the face of the beauty of Joseon dynasty. Six paintings of the Korea dynasty and ten paintings of the Joseon dynasty were analyzed. Twenty anthropometric items on each paintings were measured and 17 proportional indices were calculated. There was no significant differences between the proportions of the Buddha's face of the Korea and Joseon dynasty except the thickness of the vermilion where the Korea dynasty were thicker than Joseon dynasty. Proportions of the Buddha's face was very similar to that of Beauty of Jeseon dynasty except three points. The differences are as follow. First, Buddha's ears are longer than the beauty's. Second, Buddha's eye inclination was higher than the beauty's. Third, Buddha's vermilion was thicker than the beauty's. The similarity of the proportions of the face of Buddha and the beauty strongly suggest that in the Korea dynasty and Joseon dynasty, the ideal face were regarded as Buddha's face.