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A Private European Collection of Tibetan Thangkas
Lot 3022

A THANGKA OF BHAISHAJYAGURU
CENTRAL TIBET, 14TH CENTURY

19 March 2018, 15:00 EDT
New York

US$150,000 - US$200,000

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A THANGKA OF BHAISHAJYAGURU

CENTRAL TIBET, 14TH CENTURY
Distemper on cloth.
Himalayan Art Resources item no.58520
20 7/8 x 18 7/8 in. (53 x 48 cm)

Footnotes

西藏中部 十四世紀 藥師佛唐卡

This important painting depicts the Medicine Buddha, Bhaishajyaguru, with an intense sapphire blue. He holds a medicine bowl and a myrobalan plant in his apricot colored palms. The flawless execution of details, chromatic diversity, and iconographic variety enhances the richness of this composition. What is unusual about this painting is the placement of Bhaishajyaguru's attendants, Suryaprabha and Candraprabha. Instead of flanking the Medicine Buddha, they are placed on either side of the rainbow arch while two disciples in monastic attire flank the central figure.

Prajnaparamita, the personification of wisdom, is directly above Bhaishajyaguru, while the space around him is filled with repeated Shakyamuni Buddhas to enhance the painting's religious efficacy. Descending in the outer registers are the Ten Dikpalas on their characteristic mounts and the Twelve Yakshas.

In the Bhaishajyagurusutra, cited in the 8th-century tantric Manjusrimulakalpa, Bhaishajyaguru vowed that those who utter his name would be cured of diseases. This sutra describes methods by which one may gain merit from Bhaishajyaguru, which include merely thinking of his name, reciting the sutra, or creating an image of him.

The rainbow arch is a leitmotif in 13th-/14th-century portrait thangkas of early Kagyu masters. Compare with numerous examples for instance in Jackson, Painting Traditions of the Drigung Kagyu School, New York, 2015, ch.5, pp.75-99. The arch indicates that this painting would have also been commissioned for an initial setting like Drigung, Taglung, or Densatil monastery.

Compare this thangka more specifically with other significant examples published in Pal, Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure, Chicago, 2003, p.192, no.125 (Fig. 1); Rhie & Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion, London, 1991, p.417, no.162; and sold at Sotheby's, New York, 20 March 1997, lot 79.

Exhibited
Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 4 February 2015 - 11 January 2016.

Provenance
David Tremayne Ltd, London, 30 June 1987
Private European Collection

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