Great Temple in Madurai
- Date:
- 1931
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Dimensions:
- 27.6 × 40.3 cm
- Publisher:
- Yoshida Studio
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Typical Price
Temple and shrine subjects are among the most consistently popular categories in Yoshida's output. Standard jizuri prints of temple subjects cluster around $2,149 (dealer price benchmark from 1stDibs), with Chion-in Temple Gate listed at $3,600 and Toshogu Shrine in standard jizuri condition at approximately $2,149. Night or seasonal variants of temple subjects command additional premiums.
- Jizuri (artist-supervised) seal: $1,500–$4,000
- Studio/posthumous edition: $400–$1,200
Description
Yoshida depicted the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai — one of the great Dravidian pilgrimage complexes of South India — in multiple prints from his 1931 India series, and this color woodblock version renders the temple's massive gopuram towers with their extraordinary encrustation of brightly painted stucco figures. The towers, which can contain over thirty thousand individual sculptures, represent a visual richness that the woodblock medium struggled to fully contain, and Yoshida's approach here focuses on capturing the overall massing and color of the structure against the Tamil sky rather than attempting to reproduce individual sculptural detail. The resulting image conveys the temple's overwhelming presence while maintaining the compositional coherence that his finest prints achieve.
More Prints by Hiroshi Yoshida
More Temples & Shrines Prints
Fushimi Inari Temple
伏見稲荷
Woodblock print
The Compound of the Tenman Shrine at Kameido in the Snow (Kameido Tenmangu keidai no yuki), from the series "Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (Toto meisho)"
c. 1832/38
Color woodblock print; oban
Temple with lanterns
Woodblock print
A Section of the Byodo Temple at Uji (Uji Byodoin no ichibu), from the series "Souvenirs of Travel, Second Series (Tabi miyage dai nishu)"
Uji Byodoin no ichibu
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Great Temple in Madurai was created by Hiroshi Yoshida (吉田博) in 1931.
Great Temple in Madurai uses Bokashi, Nishiki-e, and Moku-hanga, on color woodblock print.
Great Temple in Madurai was published by Yoshida Studio (1931).
Great Temple in Madurai depicts temples & shrines.
Great Temple in Madurai measures 27.6 × 40.3 cm (Oban format).