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An important and rare famille verte Tibetan-style Kapala skullcup and cover Kangxi
£20,000 - £30,000
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Find your local specialistAn important and rare famille verte Tibetan-style Kapala skullcup and cover
The Tibetan-style ritual vessel modelled as an overturned top section of a human skull, supported on a high triangular stand with three moulded heads flanked by gilt flame walls reserved on a pale green ground, all surmounted by an oval domed and stepped cover similarly modelled to the bowl, delicately enamelled with borders enclosing a continuous lotus scroll, the bajixiang, 'Eight Buddhist Emblems', cloud scrolls and ruyi-heads, all below the gilt flame finial.
14.5cm (5¾in) high (2).
Footnotes
Provenance: J.P.Morgan, collection no.849, label to base
Duveen Brothers Inc, New York
Saint Louis Art Museum, no.146:15 B
Illustrated: The Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, New York, 1904, Vol.I, no.849, p.131.
Compare a related kapala skullcup and cover from the Palace Museum, Beijing, attributed to the 18th century and comprising a human skull, illustrated in E.S.Rawski and J.Rawson, eds., China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795, London, 2005, Catalogue no.58, where it is noted that kapala skullcups are one of the principal ritual implements of Tibetan Buddhism. They are made from the skulls of donors, usually persons of special rank, wisdom or holiness. Only after meeting the approval of the lamas can a skull be made into an offering vessel for presentation to the divine beings.
Whilst skullcups made of human skulls are not uncommon, it appears that no other example of a porcelain skullcup has been published. The rarity of the vessel and its religious importance certainly suggest that it was a special commission and very possibly made for a high ranking lama, for the Imperial court or a temple.
As noted by Patricia Berger, ibid p.130-133, the Manchus courted the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat order) whose leader the Great 5th Dalai Lama (1617-1682) sent emissaries to Mukden in 1643. In 1652 the Dalai Lama travelled himself to Beijing, where he recognised the Shunzhi Emperor as a 'cakravartin' world-ruler who would unify Tibet, Mongolia and China into a single Buddhist empire. The Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors established dozens of temples in Beijing, most of which were dedicated to Tibetan Buddhism and the Confucian rituals of the state. The Kangxi Emperor may have been the first to take the title 'Manjughosa Emperor', referring to his own bodhisattvahood in his preface to a Mongolian translation of the Kanjur, the Tibetan Buddhist canon completed in 1720. Indeed, under the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors, the Imperial Rehe estate became a site for temple building, Buddhist study and cultural exchange with Tibet, with the series of Eight Outer Temples modelled on the Tibetan Samye monastery and the Potala Palace.